Cambodge and Vietnam, part 1

Sin Chow from Hanoi! Me oh my, I have been very neglectful of this blog. I'll try and summerise the last month in as succinct and enjoyable way as possible, but please feel free to stop reading when overloaded with waffle.

After 3 weeks of travelling on my lonesome (although never actually being alone), I finally had a Bethan to keep me company! We started off our Cambodian adventures in Siem Reap, home of the Angkor temples. Exploring on bike and from the back of a tuk tuk, we were awe-inspired, astounded, amazed, and other adjectives beginning with "ahh". Siem Reap is also home to a bar with a half pipe on the roof, which is not quite as spectacular, but pretty exciting as bars go. After a week of temple going and floating village visiting, and a bit of frog eating and 50 cent beer drinking on the side, we headed on to Phnom Pehn.

We instantly disliked Phnom Pehn - Cambodia is hot as hell, but it seemed just about manageable in Siem Reap, which is quite chilled out and slow paced. Phnom Pehn is not. In addition to the 40 degree heat, its noise and proliferation of people on motorbikes who can't ride motorbikes made it completely overwhelming. Perhaps in reaction to our new situation, both mine and Bethan's guts declared mutiny and we spent the next three days holed up in a hotel room, being very very ill. So we actually barely saw Phnom Pehn. Dosed up on antibiotics, we escaped the city and headed to Sihnoukville on the coast of Cambodia. Here, we stayed in a bamboo shack mere metres from the waters edge and did absolutely nothing at all, apart from swinging in hammocks and playing with puppies. Our short break by the sea calmed us down and, with new found tolerance, we headed back to Phnom Pehn.

Our second go at the city was a mixed affair. We warmed to it much better, mostly thanks to the man who ran our hostel and not vomiting on arrival. But Phnom Pehn is also the main place to see the evidence of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal regime. We visited Tuol Sleng prison, a school which became a torture and incarceration camp for over 17,000 victims, and The Killing Fields, an area of land just outside the city that was used as a mass grave. It's impossible to describe the feeling of terror and desperation that still hangs in the air, but it permeates everything and is still evident - not only in these places, which have been preserved as a monument to the suffering inflicted by a few warped individuals on a desperate populous, but across the whole of Cambodia. Reflecting back on our time there, we've been a bit unable to work out how we feel. We had a great time making merry in Siem Reap and hammock hunting in Sihanoukville, but at the moment, the thing that has really stuck in our heads is how sad the country was - their history is painfully tragic, and the country is still a long way from recovery. We had some idea of the level of poverty that we'd see, but when it came down to it, it was worse than we had imagined. Throughout history, Cambodia has been royally screwed over by everyone, but the Khmer Rouge's indiscriminate and unfathomable brutality on its own people seems like the ultimate betrayal. And the Khmer people are still being screwed over - by fake NGOs, real NGOs, sex tourists, normal tourists, and each other. The worst part was not really being able to see how big changes can be made - without huge foreign investments in education, healthcare, industry and agriculture. That's not to downplay the people who are out there now, really trying to help out, or the Khmer population themselves, who were so friendly, welcoming and happy despite all the awfulness. I'll step down from my ill-informed and mildly ignorant soapbox and just say that I would love to go back, but I don't think I could be a tourist there again. Thus, it was with some measure of guilty relief that we moved on to Vietnam.

We decided to travel by boat along the Mekong, which was a big relief after the sweaty buses we'd been carted across Cambodia in. The best bit of the journey was heading into the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, as the river was full of boats, buffalo, children, ducklings and, quite curiously, lots of turnips. A tasty soup indeed. Bridges, that can barely be called bridges, cross over the delta, and Vietnamese people very gallantly (or is it stupidly?) try and use them as major roadways. Our journey finished in a little port town called Chau Doc, which had some lovely mangoes. The next morning, we journeyed to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City (I'm still not sure of the difference - I'll refer to it as S/HCMC from now on, to keep everyone happy). Our bus was driven by one of the biggest douche bags I have encountered in on my travels. His partner in douche was the conductor of the bus, who was also a spectacular idiot. They treated Bethan and I as if we were completely backward - at one point, demonstrating very aggressively how to sit down on a coach seat. Apparently, it's the same as sitting on any normal seat. Man, what I wouldn't have given to boot him up the behind, but I don't think that would've gone down very well. First impressions of S/HCMC were, again, not all together positive. To describe it as hectic doesn't quite do it justice. But after we had been enticed into a guesthouse and set out to explore the city, we quickly decided otherwise. We were taught how to play 4 square (a playground game that every American kid knows - I guess like British bulldog, but without the violence) by some lovely Americans, ate pork fillet with spoons and sesame buns on street corners, and spent ages just watching the traffic, mouths agape.

Due to our tardiness in leaving Cambodia, we were running a bit behind on our very loose plans, so hopped on a bus the next day to Dalat, a town in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. This place has everything going for it. It's located in a beautiful valley, guarded by green hills and lush with every kind of fruit and vegetable that they feel like growing. Tiny, colourful houses are piled on top of each other amidst the hills, and the bakery had a beautiful banana cake. But absolutely best of all, it was actually cool. A UK March day temperature, but without the mizzle (that's misty drizzle for those who don't live at 145 Fort road!). In celebration, Bethan and I put on our jeans and strutted around, not sweating. I even got a few goose bumps! Dalat is also home to a group of Vietnamese motorcyclists called the Easy Riders. They and their Hondas take tourists across Vietnam for a not so small price, and in as many days as you can spare/afford. So as to keep this short, I'll not describe how we found ourselves departing on a three day tour, with our bags strapped to the back of their hogs and helmets squeezed over copious amounts of hair (in my case). But depart we did...and I'll leave it there for the moment, in a very Lost-esque cliffhanger. I promise it won't be another month before you get the final, thrilling installment!

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