Hello Vietnam

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Sorry for the delay of this post but we haven't had too much of internet access lately, but no worries, we're good and still on the adventure!

We left Siem Reap satisfied with our attempt at understanding the temples of Angkor. At least, what we did figure out was the schedules of the other tourists so by the second day we pretty much had all of the temples to ourselves. What an eery feeling it was walking around in such huge, intricate and deserted ruins! Unfortunately, the Tomb Raider temple (officially known as Thep Prohm) was always full with Chinese tourists, so after putting on quite the show for them as Dina tried to jump and pose in mid air like Angelina Jolie (and failed) for an action shot (the Chinese tourists gathered around and started clapping and cheering after she jumped), we decided to call it a day.

The next morning, the alarm was set for 5 am for a pick up to go to Ban Lung, in Ratanakiri provine in the Northeast of Cambodia, close to the border with Laos and Vietnam. We were expecting a very long day but had no idea how long was Cambodian long! Our adventures began at 2 in the morning with one of the feircest rain storms I have ever seen. With the power cut off in the entire city, the room got warmer and warmer so sleep got lighter and lighter and that was that! The subsequent 12 hour bus ride was quite the adventure with a not so nice driver but I want to limit myself to one bus story in this entry and the Vietnamese bus experience below is definitely worthy of its own post.

Once at destination, we found a really cool hotel with bungalows perched in the jungle and got to enjoy some delicious curry overlooking some amazing views. The occasional humongous flying cockroaches freaked us out and the other tourists around but other than that, it was pure delight! The town of Ban Lung itself is comprised of a few streets with not too many sights but the surrounding area is full of gorgeous natural landscape. On our first day there we decided to go to Yeak Laom, a beautiful clear blue volcanic crater lake that formed a perfect round circle surrounded by dark green jungle. We found ourselves a platform with some locals doing back flips off of it and decided to join the fun! On Day 2 we rented motorbikes with our newly made friend Lars ( a german teacher on a one year paid leave! Ahhhhh the germans, You got to love them) and a local guide to go visit a tribal village and their interesting looking cemetery. The hour boat ride in the little boat was fun: we got beached in the middle of the river, had to disembark and push the boat to deeper waters. We were well rewarded at the end of this day with coconut shakes: our newly found delicious treat, made of fresh coconut meat, coconut cream, milk, sugar and a little ice. To die for! Finaly, Day 3 was spent from one waterfall to the next.

Overall Cambodia has been good to us, the people are the nicest, most welcoming and smiling people we have ever met. It was sad though to see the amount of deforestation everywhere, we saw acres upon acres of rain forest destroyed, 100 year old trees cut down, and the resulting clouds of red dust. There are a few places where the calm and beauty of fertile nature still reigns supreme, and those were the places we sought. We managed to try some very tasty food, finished reading Atlas Shrugged, and really bonded with this country.

Once across the border into Vietnam, we came to miss the buses of Cambodia, which we didn't think was possible. Here is the not so brief summary of our first day in Vietnam:

We left Cambodia at 7 am and got to Hoi An in Vietnam at midnight and what an adventure that day was! Sooo first we get picked up by the dirtiest van I have ever seen in my life then the guy seems to not only be the van driver whose going to drive us to the border but also the mail man and how mailmen work in this region of the country is that they go around the streets of the city and basically honk the whole way, if anybody has any package they want to send somewhere along the way they come out to the street, pay and give him the package which he drops off on our way to the border. EVERY single time we passed by a town or a street that seemed to have people living there he would just press on the honk and wouldn't let go. So at first it was just small packages coming in then all of a sudden he starts picking up people and dropping them off on the way. Then as soon as we cross the border to Vietnam, another van picks us up and same deal honks all the way, packages/people etc until we get dropped off 4 hours later. One lady came in with a carton of chicken babies or maybe they were ducks, I couldn't really tell from the smell 😊 This driver seemed to think it was okay to turn off the AC when it's 35 degrees celsius outside and we're all piled up one on top of the other. Oh and in true Southeast Asian style he blasts the radio at full volume with romantic Vietnamene music. A passenger decides it's not really her thing so she puts house music on her phone out loud, oh and did I already mention there was a carton of chicken in the trunk so from time to time you would hear "tiw tiw tiw tiw." Four hours of this then we get dropped off at another bus station where we were told that there was an hourly bus to Hoi An (our final destination.) We go talk to every agent at the station, the next bus was at 9pm (it was 11am) or 5am the next day. Seeing how crazy the roads were and the driving was just too dangerous, we decided against taking a night bus. But at the same time we were in a "city" where there wasn't one foreigner in sight, not one person speaking english and not a clue where we could go to spend the night. Basically we were screwed. But the Moroccans that we are we end up talking to a bus driver who was going more North then where we wanted to go but asked him if he could drop us on his way (Vietnamese style), he agreed but knew we were desperate so he made us pay more than what a bus with beds would have cost but hey we needed to get out. The van was definitely an upgrade, new black leather seats and the AC was on full blast. It was just us in the van at first and Dina was naively excited, since we were leaving from a bus station so she expected the ride to be more 'civilized'. Within an hour of honking through the first town, the 15 seat van now seated 21 WITH three huge boxes of live crab to my left and boxes of chicks behind. 11 hours of this..... but the thing is most people got off within an hour or so, but for every dropped off person another one or more was picked up within 5 minutes. On top of this the drivers here are just INSANE! I mean going at full speed, way beyond any speed limit and overtaking other buses, trucks when cars and motorcycles are coming head on. So the amount of breaking and honking made a lot of passengers feel queazy so they would open their windows for air, and the hot air would basically cancel out the AC. DISASTRO. 11:30pm, the driver tells us to get down, we get our backpacks, and go down in the middle of a deserted dark street (not even on a sidewalk), in the middle of an intersection. We were 10 km away from the city still. We found a guy having tea outside, talked to him, he ended up being a cab driver and he finally took us to the hotel. Fun first day don't you think? We're still wondering how the bus companies make money here because the drivers just get cash from the people coming onboard without actually giving them tickets so I guess being a bus driver isn't that bad if you manage not to kill yourself and all your passengers.

We then vowed not to take a Vietnamese bus again and ended up biking 900 km through the country with a super cool Vietnamese rider instead 😊 which resulted in extremely sore bums but hey better that than having crab juices on my lap! The 5 days riding deserve their own entry so stay tuned for more!

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Photos

Pedicure by fish
The fish eat the dry skin on your feet, veeeery ticklish!

1.5 hours on the Sesan river to get to Tamuan Hill Tribe
This is a multipurpose river, you can fish, shower, wash your clothes and much more!

The Bridal House
In this tribe that we visited outside of Ban Lung, the custom is that at 15, a girl is usually ready for marriage and a bridal hut is built for her to indicate to the single men that she is available. She then proceeds to sleep there rather than with her family in the bigger hut. If a man comes at night and leaves at 2 or 3 am that means he's not interested in getting married. If he sleeps in until 7am then that's it, the deal is sealed, they get hitched!

The little girl was getting potable water from underground
Behind her there were many mothers and their children showering in the river. The interesting this is the women only wear skirts in this tribe, that's it.