Last Day in Cambodia

 

Cambodia is beautiful (what we’ve seen of it, anyway) and breaks our hearts. We’re very glad we came here.

It’s an extremely poor country, nothing like the very prosperous looking Vietnam, and until 13 years ago was devastated by occupations, civil war, and the Pol Pot/Khmer Rouge disaster which lasted 3 years, 8 months and 20 days (according to our guide Rida) and resulted in the massacre of almost 2 million people out of a population of 14 million.

Rida says everyone in Cambodia had one or more extended family members killed during that time, with a focus on those who were wealthy, educated and had professional jobs, but including many more, and many children.

During the last 13 years Cambodia has had a stable, if corrupt, government/military/police, the doors have been opened to tourism, and the citizens are learning capitalism. At least in the cities of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap, and we hear development is beginning to occur on the coast with nice beach resorts.

Despite all this, Rida states with not even a touch of sarcasm  that “Cambodia is a very lucky country – not like our neighbor countries – because we don’t ever have any earthquakes here.”  He is earnest if lacking perspective, as we know of no earthquake that ever killed 2 million people.

Everywhere we go, people mention Angelina Jolie, her philanthropic works here after the filming of “Tomb Raider” and her adoption of a Cambodian child. One local bar where she and her film crew hung out during the time of filming features her photo on the menu.

The U.S. dollar is the de facto currency here. We get Cambodian riels in change anytime we’re due something less than $1 (they don’t use our coins) but otherwise prices and purchases are all in U.S. currency, and even the ATM machines give U.S. dollars.

There is no potable water in Cambodia. Tourists and locals alike drink bottled water, and those who use the tap water must boil it before drinking or cooking with it.

Both for reasons of tradition, having to do with keeping out bad spirits, and because of regular flooding, almost all rural homes are built on stilts 4 – 18 feet above ground.

We haven’t seen Phnom Penh, the capital, but Siem Reap, the second largest city in the country, has no buildings over 4 stories, and none that go beyond functional in design.

 

Like Vietnam, the motorcycle is the major means of transportation, though bicycles are much more common here, and the Tuk Tuk (tiny 3-wheeled carriage which carries 2 people, pulled behind a motorcycle) is used by both tourists and locals alike.

Several of the tourist sites we’ve visited outside the city are ringed with signs saying they’ve been cleaned up by the Central Mine Action Center, a NATO organization that spent years clearing the minefields that were everywhere here following the Khmer Rouge days. We’ve seen more artificial legs in 3 days here, and blinded people, than cumulatively throughout our lives.

We have eaten “Khmer food” here, but have not been able to distinguish it from Vietnamese food.

Prices here are very affordable.  We’re staying in a wonderful 4-star hotel with a swimming pool and lavish gardens, and don’t know what we paid for it, but the rack rate we found on the internet is $110.  The four of us have had very nice dinners in town (linen tablecloth, wine, attractive lighting and fountains) for $30 or less, including wine, for all 4 of us; main courses are typically $4-5 per person.

Today we went 1 1/2 hours out of the city to see the incredible “Lost Jungle” tomb, then stopped at a Killing Fields collection of human bones and photos of the Khmer Rouge massacre.

Today we leave Cambodia and fly back to Saigon with a 5-hour layover, then on to Hong Kong.

Temples, Temples Everywhere!

We’re in Siem Reap, Cambodia, a world away, it feels, from Vietnam.  Our guide Ridah (not sure of the spelling) picked us up at 8am and we began our tour of three temples, though there are many more in the vicinity. We toured Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat and Banteay Srei (Women’s Temple). 

Each of these temples is 800 -  1,000 years old, though in truth the Banteay Srei temple was destroyed, and the current one is a reconstruction, as are portions of the others. We feel not overwhelmingly interested in temples in general, but found these to be gorgeous, fascinating, and full of interesting history and scenery.

Another enormous feature of the day was that it was hot, hot, HOT . . . and humid, and thus very uncomfortable.  Our guide handed out umbrellas (to shade us from the sun) and  cold water bottles from a cooler, as well as damp, icy hand towels to wipe ourselves down with periodically throughout the day – and still it was too hot! We sweated and suffered, but persevered through the day’s itinerary because it really was fantastic, and our guide is extremely good, including his English.   We’ll let the photos suffice from here.

 

More Later

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We're having some trouble keeping a charge on our netbook, and haven't found a good Blogger app for the iPad, (recommendations?) so our posts are going to be formatted differently for awhile.
Today we flew from Saigon to Siem Reap, Cambodia, about 1 hour, and 30 economic years away. We'll save the description for later when we know a bit more, but suffice it to say we feel like we're in a different world from Vietnam, not just one country westward. Here are some images to start with.

Tuk Tuk Ride to Downtown

Downtown Siem Reap

Siem Reap Market

Bridge Over Siem Reap River

Street-crossing Lessons

When we were children, our parents taught us to cross a street safely: wait for the light to change, or traffic to stop at the stop sign; cross only at corners; look both ways; hold hands with the adult, if one is present. Here in Vietnam we’ve been given street-crossing lessons by our guides in both Hanoi and Saigon.  None of what we learned as children applies exactly the same.

In Saigon the roads downtown are often 8 or more lanes wide, and there is NEVER a complete break in traffic.  Pedestrians are somewhat more likely to cross at intersections, but not necessarily. Traffic mostly drives on the right, but not always (motorcycles, but not cars, drive the wrong way on one-way streets), and the centerline is largely meaningless, as motorcycles and cars weave ‘round each other for long distances. Oncoming traffic is not perturbed by this loss of space in their own lane.

The procedure for crossing a street on foot is to wait for a tiny gap between vehicles, then step off the curb while trying to make eye contact with the wall of cars, vans and motorcycles coming at you.  Then, keep walking, slowly, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, never take a step backwards.  All the cars and motorcycles are watching pedestrians, and aim to weave their way through right behind (inches behind) each pedestrian, so if you step backwards, even a few inches, you will be hit by a vehicle.  When you are in the middle of the lanes, you have traffic flowing by you closely on both sides. It’s disconcerting initially, and our guides don’t trust us entirely to do it safely, so they tell us when to go, to keep going, and to hurry up.  We feel a bit like children again, but we became confident and skilled at it in Hanoi, and now that we’ve been here awhile, our skills in Saigon, which is crazier, are improving too.

Check-in/OK Siem Reap Cambodia

Latitude:13.36454
Longitude:103.87856
GPS location Date/Time:11/01/2011 00:42:18 PDT
Message:We are happy, well and having fun.
Click the link below to see where we are located.
http://fms.ws/6MF1q/13.36454N/103.87856E

Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta is a two-hour drive from Saigon.  On arrival the 4 of us plus our guide, Vu, boarded a small boat to travel to an island in the middle of the river delta. It’s a place where people’s lives are lived out almost entirely on the river.

Above: making sticky rice alcohol

Above: making lacy rice wraps

We visited a small shop where they make coconut milk and coconut candy by hand; another where rice paper wraps are made from scratch by hand; another where coconut palm roof shingles are made, stitched together by hand; and another where lacy-looking rice wraps are cooked. 

We also saw the “floating market”.  We had always imagined this to be something much like the land-based markets, but on boats.  It turns out it’s really lots of boats spread out along the river.  Many boats are anchored, and they fly a “flag”  indicating what it is they’re selling.

Above: a pineapple seller

Others go along the river from boat to boat selling things like coffee or Pho. In theses cases, they leave the coffee or soup behind and return an hour later and pick up the dishes and money.

Our boat driver then transferred the 4 of us to a tiny sampan, rowed by an old woman, to tour the shallow, narrow canals of the island, lined by simple homes, gardens, jungle and water hyacinths used to capture fish and shrimp.  It looked like a scene out of the movie “Apocalypse Now” for those who recall that.

After returning to our original boat, we stopped at a simple home for lunch consisting of 4 courses, served by a woman and her mother, followed by live traditional Vietnamese music performed by the father, daughter and son. The small eating area was lined by hammocks, and each of us spent 15 minutes lying in a hammock, swinging in the slight breeze of the otherwise relentlessly hot day.

Above: the woman who served our lunch.

Above: the fish that served as the basis of our Vietnamese version of “fish tacos”, served in rice wraps, of course, not tortillas.

(We’ll try to post a video link later)

This was one of the highlights of the trip and well worth the time; we’d recommend it to anyone coming to Saigon.

Saigon: 10 Million People, 7 Million Motor Bikes

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City -- which everyone in south  Vietnam still calls Saigon, except in official government documents -- after a short flight from Dalat. 

First stop was the Chinatown wholesale market. Nice thing about a wholesale market is no one tried to sell us anything!

We visited two pagodas where the predominant features are various alters and LOTS of incense. The spiral incense you see in the photos burns for a whole month.

Late in the afternoon we were taken on a Cyclo-tour for an hour, seeing the sights around the financial center of downtown Saigon.

Saigon feels very different from Hanoi – much bigger, more crowded, more prosperous, more modern.  There are more tall, very modern, new buildings here than in downtown Seattle. Many joint venture projects have poured money into this place recently. North Vietnam “felt” like a communist place, while Saigon feels like a turbo-charged capitalist environment.

We took this picture of Uncle Ho in front of the People’s Revolutionary Committee Building (aka: City Hall) both for its being a major sight, but also because we thought our blog reader tCL would like it.

In the evening we took a dinner cruise on the Saigon River, on a “dragon boat”. The city lights by night were spectacular.

We’re staying at the Majestic Hotel, built in 1923 and one of the places many American journalists stayed during the Vietnam War (which they refer to here as the Civil War).