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Published: January 12th 2009
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We took a bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon and wow what a difference. There's been quite a revival since they eschewed communism. Nice parks, museums and restaurants. But the traffic is the scariest ever. There are very few signals and millions of motor bikes. We learned from watching the locals that to cross the street you have to wait for the cars to go by and then you step into the road and the motor bikes swerve around you as you make your way across. It's totally unnerving.
On New Years we watched performances on a stage in a park which ran the gamut from traditional dance to pop music. The next day we visited several museums including the war remnants museum which is a tough place for Americans to be. There were several exhibits including one of the women and children killed at My Son (which we call My Lai) and pictures of all the people still being born with deformities due to all the defoliants we dropped on the rain forests. Hindsight being 20-20, we could have just let them go commie and figure out for themselves that it doesn't work.
We traveled south to the
We left behind the blues & rock
If only that was all we left behind! Mekong Delta and visited floating markets and boated around the canals. And ya know what, it looks just like it does in the movies. Women in matching pajamas and conical hats wash clothes on the riverside, kids pick odd looking fruit from trees, people row small boats while standing, and the larger boats have eyes painted on their bows.
Next we traveled to the coast and went to Phu Quoc Island. It was a nice laid back place and we were never hassled by vendors on the beach. We met a nice American guy and his wife from Vietnam who taught us how to swear in Vietnamese.
Unfortunately I must report another mishap though. We rented a motor bike to drive around the island and it was a great time visiting empty beaches and waiving to friendly villagers. Then we drove through a rain forest and I was enjoying the scenery when suddenly we slid sideways and skidded on our sides along the dirt road. I asked Toby what happened and he pointed to a cable running across the road. Some guys were installing cable and didn't bother to control traffic probably because there's very little traffic there.
Nose flute player
I'm glad he didn't come down with with a cold before this performance. We got up and assessed our wounds, some road rash on our left arms and legs. Toby's were larger while I got a couple of deeper spots on my ankle bone and arm. But altogether, it wasn't that bad. It was a long 15+ kilometers back to our hotel. Toby stopped to buy a couple of beers from a small store (go figure his priorities!) and the couple who ran the store were bringing out local medicine for us which was really kind. But we said we just needed to go a few hundred meters to our hotel where we would wash up. At least we weren't carrying around all of that first aid stuff this whole trip for nothing. The repairs to the bike cost about $70 some dollars which could have been worse but the hotel owner was going to do the repairs himself.
I'm really glad that Toby was driving. Had it been me I would have laid awake at night rehashing the whole thing wondering how I could have handled it differently or thinking about how it could have been worse. Toby has mastered the mai pen rai thing from birth and knows that he
Vietnamese traditional dance
Quite different than the rest of SE Asia. There's much more of a Chinese influence here since China controlled them for a thousand years. made the best decision he could at the time. I need to learn from his example.
When we got back to Saigon the bus dropped us at some random place outside the city. You never know where you are going to be dropped when you take a local bus! A young local guy we met on the bus who spoke a little English arranged for us to take a couple of motorcycle taxis to the airport for a good price. It was really nice of him but it was the scariest ride of my entire life. All the motorbikes swerve in and out with seeming near misses, we crossed oncoming traffic at round abouts, and tailgated giant buses. And we had to wear our backpacks too. Never again!
Kids down south love to say hello to you, often encouraged by their parents. Everyone was really friendly and honest which restored our faith in the people. We got massively overcharged on two separate occasions in Saigon which made us put our guard up for anyone who seemed overly helpful. And one of them was a woman in her fifties which was rather disarming. We met some other people who
also got sheistered on a bus so it's a rather common occurrence there. We've joked about bringing fish sauce along with us on buses so if someone overcharges us we'll threaten to throw a stinky bottle of fish sauce on the bus if they don't give us our money back. 😊 And shout "du mame!" which I shouldn't translate for you.
But Saigon's a big city which are always rife with opportunities to get ripped off though some more than others. We're wiser and about $50 lighter for the experiences. Could have been worse, mai pen rai.
As a side note, we have really been so fortunate to have so many people in all of the countries we've visited be hugely helpful to us when we are lost. A guy in Malaysia even drove his car ahead of us to where we needed to go when he saw us trying to figure out where we were in our guide book. So when we get home we will always try to help out someone who seems to be a foreigner trying to get around. I hope you do the same. Pay it forward. 😊
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Paul Zikmanis
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Got the pics
Hey guys I just figuured out how to download the pics from your blog! These are totally cool! Maybe I'll sell them on ebay!! Just kidding LOve the one of Toby going Native, It'll be my new wallpaper. Paul