Farewell Vietnam, Hello Cambodia

Escape from 'Nam

We’ve decided on a collaborative effort for this blog entry – Laura (that’s me) is covering Vietnam and Dan (that’s him) is covering Cambodia. I have to warn you in advance, this is going to be another long entry, so grab your cup of coffee and settle in – we’ll try our best to keep it entertaining. We’re in Siem Reap at the moment and have spent a few wonderful days exploring the temples of Angkor (more to come on that courtesy of Dan later in the blog), and tomorrow morning we fly to Phuket to begin 11 glorious nights of beach bumming in Southern Thailand. As always, make sure to check out our full compliment of pictures at Flickr!

You will surely scoff at us and we know we deserve it, but we need a little vacation from our vacation. Somewhere around our eighth week of consecutive travel we found ourselves a bit crankier (than usual!) and the little things started to affect us more. For example, Dan found himself more frustrated than usual that I scratch my mosquito bites to a bloody pulp and then tell him that mine really do itch more than his do and he can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be me, and I found myself more frustrated than usual that Dan was born without the memory chip that allows men to remember to zip up their pants after they use the bathroom. We think we’re a bit worn out and a little homesick and it definitely comes out in strange ways. So the beach is just what we need to get that spring back into our step. After all, Dan hasn’t gotten a third-degree sunburn for at least six weeks now so we figure it is about time to get working on that melanoma. Speaking of Dan’s injuries, his finger seems to be healing slowly and the toothbrush splint is still in place. It has severely limited our ability to high five, and those of you who know us well can appreciate that this has a negative impact on our ability to really bond.

Last time we wrote we were back in Nam. We spent three nights in a lovely UNESCO World Heritage town named Hoi An, and then two nights in Saigon before flying to Siem Reap in Cambodia. Hoi An was where the eight-week slump really set in, and it was a good place for it because it’s just a nice place to chill out and enjoy life. Hoi An is about a half hour by car outside of Da Nang, which is Vietnam’s fourth largest city. Da Nang is of course most famous for China Beach, where many of our nation’s soldiers took their much needed R&R during the war. Hoi An is also known as the city of tailors (over 200 of them in total!) and many travelers go there just to have inexpensive custom clothes made. We did have a lovely suit made for Dan which is a relief for me - now we don’t have to show up to weddings and other formal events with him in his “dress cargos.”



I really fell in love with the local cuisine of Hoi An, particularly a specialty called Cau Lau which is made with a noodle unique to the city, mixed with pieces of pork, lettuce, herbs and these crunchy crouton-like things. It really doesn’t sound that appetizing on paper but it is delicious and I had to have it for almost every meal. Another highlight of our time in Hoi An was a full moon festival where locals send hundreds of paper lanterns with a single lit candle in each down the river, and there was much singing, dancing and merriment.

Hoi An during the full moon festival - those lights are candle lanterns floating down the river.

Other than ambling about the lovely historic streets, taking boat trips on the river, napping, and reading a lot, we also managed to take a trip out to My Son to see the Cham ruins. Brace yourself now – we actually signed up for a sunrise trip in order to beat the crowds and the heat, and we thought it would be lovely to see the sun come up over the ruins. Well, it turned out that “sunrise tour” merely implied that the sun would in fact come up while we waited and hour and a half from being picked so that we could haphazardly pick up other passengers who were also told to be ready at 5am and progressively looked like they were going to kick the living (expletive removed) out of the punky little kid who kept saying, “It’s okay we go now.” The mob was pretty much ready to riot when we finally arrived at the ruins at 7am in full sun and it turned out that the entrance fee to the ruins wasn’t actually included in the price of the tour, something we are finding to be very common but not ever explicitly stated in SE Asia. Once everyone found their humor in the whole situation the visit to the ruins themselves was very nice. The Cham people came over from Java and built gorgeous red brick Hindu temples, and later on in their history, Buddhist temples. Many of the temples were destroyed by bombing in the Vietnam War, and it was sobering to walk by huge bomb craters just meters from the ruins that did survive.



We flew from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City, more commonly referred to as Saigon by the locals. When we asked which name was more appropriate to use, they said it didn’t really matter, but that Ho Chi Minh City is four words and Saigon is one word, so which one would you want to use all of the time? Good point, Saigon it is. Saigon is an enormous, pulsing and relatively modern city. There are even more motorbikes here than in Hanoi, though the locals seem to have worked out a system that involves about half the amount of honking. Crossing the street is still treacherous, though. We didn’t find it to be very charming there, and in truth we didn’t really feel like there was that much to do. Maybe that was just the eight-week burn-out talking. We did go to the War Memorial Museum, which was again sobering, and mildy frustrating because it focuses only on the atrocities of the Americans and French and not at all of the atrocities that were also committed by the Viet Cong (quite similar to the A-Bomb museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki). It’s such an important part of our history, though, and we are glad that we were able to go and see the museum, as hard as it was to face some of the images there.

We did have a good laugh when we were walking through a park and saw a sign saying, “Not be drunk, play gamble, participate in fortune-telling and other evils in the park. Not allowed to hunt and catch fishes, bath, tease animals as well as bring pet dogs into the park. Keep public security.” It just seemed like such a perfect, all encompassing statement. The US should really beef up their public signs.

On our final day in Vietnam we decided to go to the Mekong Delta, about two hours from Saigon, and arranged for a private guide and driver because we had to be back to the airport by 4pm. Leaving the hotel in the morning was another bizarre experience; the cleaning lady came in and started cleaning the room before we had actually left. It’s not like we were checking out late, it was 7am! But she was shuffling things around and throwing things away (Dan had to rescue his book from the trash can) and we were completely flustered. We had also just gotten our laundry back twenty minutes before we were supposed to be picked up, and it was totally damp, mostly dirty and we were missing a pair of underwear each. When you are traveling for five months and only had seven pairs of undies to begin with, this is tantamount to a complete disaster. Alas, we left our prized quick-drying underwear behind and bid farewell to Saigon. The delta made for a fun day of boating through canals, talking to local people and sampling local fruits, candies and foods. Dan even held a boa constrictor, see below! Our guide also informed us that “if it moves, we eat it,” and we were rather horrified to learn that he had once eaten his neighbor’s pet dog because it had to poor sense to come over to visit. We know they eat dog, cat, rat, bat, you name it in Vietnam, but we’re still not sure if he was messing with us about the pet dog story. It didn’t really seem like it. Either way, the wildlife in the area is very scarce because of the Mekong diet.




Okay folks, thanks for reading, I’m handing it over to Dan.

Angkor What?

Seeing that we were already pretty ready to move on from Vietnam, our arrival in Cambodia was a very happy one. It may be a little silly, but just stepping off the plane and walking into their airport was a bit of a treat. One thing I’ve been wondering at during our travels in SE Asia is the lack of an Asian architectural aesthetic for anything but the temples. Most of the buildings look like they could be anywhere in the Western world. But Siem Reap’s airport had a distinctly Asian flair to the roof and structure that was a delight. I’d include a picture, but we weren’t smart enough to take one.

We also found out rather quickly that the US Dollar is the unofficial currency here in Cambodia. All of the ATMs distribute USD instead of the Riel. The only time you’ll actually see Riel used is as change since they don’t have US coins. So if something is a dollar and a half and you plop down a fiver, you’ll get back three Dollars and 2000 Riel. Neither of us is knowledgeable enough about it to know, but we’re pretty uncertain whether the US is OK with that or not. Doesn’t matter to us much since the ATMs only tag on a $2 charge per transaction to get cash just like they do at home.

What’s most immediately curious about Cambodia – Siem Reap in particular – is how everyone here, despite the horrors in their past, is perfectly friendly, honest as far as we can tell (no one has tried to scam us yet that we know of), and seem to have a pretty good outlook on the future of their country. Many of the businesses in the city are very well run establishments that have a pretty terrific grasp on what makes tourists happy; something that the rest of SE Asia is still working out. Perhaps it’s the fact that this country was in ruins and has had to rebuild itself with the help of friendly countries around the world and therefore had plenty of time to build up with plenty of helpful advice whereas the other countries in the area were more set in their ways?

One of the wildest things about the city here is the number of monstrous hotels popping up, which may provide a false sense of riches. Yes, there are a lot of tourists here, but we haven’t seen nearly enough to fill up thousands of rooms spread around the area. It may not be high season, but it’s not slow season either. There were plenty of dark windows in each of the hotels along the route to the airport when we arrived and we’ve easily seen more than a dozen hotel currently being built during our Tuk Tuk rides to and from Angkor. Judging by our search for a hotel, none of them are willing to drop prices either. Most were over 150 per night with several much more than that. Meanwhile, we’re staying in a very nice guesthouse for 25 a night. I’m not sure how many normal travelers are going to be willing to pony up the big cash for those rooms with these nice cheap places around considering SE Asia is supposed to be one of the cheapest places to travel.

BUT, Siem Reap does have something that the other parts of SE Asia don’t that may actually allow them to get away with it: Angkor. The Angkor area (Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm, Preah Khan and the rest of the temples and cities) is magnificent. Our visits to these ancient Khmer ruins will undoubtedly sit as one of the most memorable highlights on our entire trip. The Khmer style of architecture is singular in the world and doesn’t really seem to have been copied anywhere curiously enough (Laura wondered why Vegas hadn’t capitalized on the interest in this place).

What’s so spectacular about the area is just the size of it. The city of Siem Reap could nearly fit inside the moat island of Angkor Wat and could easily fit inside the moat area of Angkor Thom. It’s enough that you just don’t want to do everything in one day and may not want to do everything ever because there’s too much. We decided to split our visit into two days, which turned out to be perfect for us, both days hiring a Tuk Tuk and driver (the same who came to the airport to get us holding a sign saying "Abans") to scoot us around.

Bayon temple at Angkor Thom

Our first day was spent in Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. We wanted to rest up to enjoy everything so we slept in (which turned out to be good since our air conditioner decided to start screaming at us in the middle of the night so that we had to turn it off and I had to wander downstairs to look for a fan) and paid the price in sweat. Arriving around 2pm was great to miss the crowds, but you could have followed our path by the puddles of sweat left behind us like soggy breadcrumbs at the places we stopped to admire the Khmer’s skills. Every Western tourist you see around here looks like they’ve been running through sprinklers and I’m not sure it’s even that hot. It’s certainly not the hottest season yet. Thankfully there’re plenty of Cambodian entrepreneurs set up selling cold drinks outside of each of the major sites at Angkor. With the nice drink sellers came the pushy sales for postcards and trinket as well, almost all children. These kids actually managed to pass up the Sapa women in their sheer “in your face” attitude by often actually shoving their wares in your face until they smacked up against the invisible barrier they weren’t allowed to pass still shouting that they would sell 5 flutes for 2 dollars instead of 4.

Thankfully we were too enthralled by our first stop at Bayon to care much about the heat or the souvenir bludgeoning. This temple sits at the center of Angkor Thom and each of the towers is covered in faces and carvings. It’s probably my favorite of all of the stops in Angkor, especially since they haven’t forbidden tourists to climb in and check everything out. They have a few guards stationed to make sure everyone behaves themselves and doesn’t climb where there not supposed to, but it’s really something else to be in the middle of something so very alien. Immensely cool stuff.

Bayon temple up close, Ankor Thom

The rest of Angkor Thom was pretty cool as well, but honestly, it was hard to compare to Bayon. There’s definitely an order you should visit these temples to pique your interest because both Laura and myself were still talking about Bayon even while walking through the ancient grounds of the mighty Angkor Wat, which is obviously a very impressive structure that has withstood a lot of time, looting, and vandalism. It’s pretty wild to step back in time like that and imagine the tourists replaced by people going about their business, worshipping, and living. Of course, it’s hard to imagine what the structure looked like originally with all of its extremely ornate carvings and detailed structure. It isn’t hard to imagine that it took the Khmer people 36 years to build.

Angkor Wat

Our second day we dragged ourselves out of bed to leave at 7am with our Tuk Tuk driver and went to visit Ta Prohm first. Many of you will have seen this place even if you didn’t realize it. It’s been in more than one movie, though the biggest of them was likely the first Tomb Raider movie. It’s a structure overgrown by jungle and covered in years of neglect. It’s a magical place to visit. I can only imagine what it must have been like before restoration work was started, stones were cleaned, and sections rebuilt. There are plenty of places you can’t go here, but there’s enough to get one of the most dreamlike pictures of a jungle temple that you could imagine.

Ta Prohm

The last big ruin we visited (we hit up several smaller ones in various stages of reconstruction) was Preah Khan, which was spread wide with many pathways going here and there. It wasn’t as ornate as some of the other structures we visited, but it was still a great way to end our visit to Angkor (though again, ending up at Ta Prohm might have been a better idea) and had a spectacular tree growing over one of the walls at the other side where we and several other groups took turns taking pictures for each other.

Dan and Laura at Preah Khan

Today has been spent wishing Laura’s Dad a happy B-day (HAPPY BIRFDAY DAYWID!!), sitting in a restaurant with couches called the Blue Pumpkin (which as far as we can tell has no connection to the color blue or pumpkins), farting around town, and ending up in the Internet Café to write the blog.

We’ll be heading out of Cambodia tomorrow and back into Thailand. We’ll be flying into Phuket where we’ll spend a couple of days before heading out on a three day excursion to camp on an island and snorkel in some of the more remote reefs. After that, we’re not sure what we’re doing except that we know it will likely involve some sort of beach resort and colorful fruity cocktails that taste of victory.

Finally, you can find an update about Beard immediately below and an uh... appendix entry below this one.

Love to all,

Laura & Dan

Beard (March 5, 2008 - March 28, 2008)

Unfortunately, though short of the time originally promised for Beard’s life, the mangy mongrel had to be put down. After nearly four weeks of hoping Beard would grow up and do something useful with his life,we’ve given up hope of ever expecting anything but mediocrity.

Beard was a malformed beast. He was born fuller on the right side of the face than the left and missing circular patches under the chin and left jaw. After further maturity, it was also clear that the left side of beard was also strikingly more red (just like dear old dad) than the right.



The depressing countenance, and thinly veiled insults were too much to Beard to bear as he rebelled with tireless scratchiness. I would say Beard will be missed, but he was way too dirty a cur to healthily lie about. May his ugly semi-hairy self rest in pieces…

R.I.P. Beard