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Published: January 1st 2006
Fitting In
Thanks to the helmets and face masks, we no longer looked like foreigners!HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
Our last day in Saigon consisted of more royalty treatment from Peter and his friends. They took us on a 3 hour (one way) motorcycle journey from Saigon to a little vacation spot on the coast of Vietnam. The motorbikes were fun at first, but after about 30 minutes your butt starts to go numb! Halfway there we pulled over and took a break at one of the many restaurants along the road full of nothing but hammocks where we were able to let the blood flow freely between our heads and our feet! Riding on the back of a bike is exhilarating! I don’t believe we ever went faster than 70 or 80 km/h but when you can’t see where you’re going, when you have the wind hitting you with phenomenal force, when you keep having to pick out small bugs from your teeth and when you can feel the heat radiating off the vehicle you’re passing everything seems to be moving a lot faster! Thank goodness helmets are a law on the highway and even moreso that we were treated to masks to keep our faces somewhat clean. I wonder why everyone thinks Mel’s Vietnamese!
Nice Hats
Since I was constantly being mistaken for Vietnemese, we thought the traditional hat was a nice added touch! We spent the day enjoying delicious seafood and the sun before Peter gave me a quick lesson in driving a motorcycle. At first it’s scary, then you start driving and it’s becomes scarier! It took me a bit to get comfortable driving at faster than 30km/h! Things are a lot different when you don’t have any doors, windows or traffic laws! After leaving Saigon, we took a 2-day boat trip through the Mekong River that ended us in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The boat trip was OK, more beautiful brown-coloured water, a fish farm, a small minority village (yep, full of kids!) and tried some banana rice wine (sounds better than it tastes, honest). We stayed overnight in Chau Doc after being crammed onto a local bus. For a minute we weren’t sure if the bags were going to make it the bus was so full, but that’s all part of the excitement!!!
OK, so with a population of 13 million people and half of them being under the age of 15….there are a lot of children in Cambodia!!!! The cutest kids selling everything from postcards and wooden bracelets to bamboo flutes and all with surprisingly great English. All of
The dilema
You'd think that they had never encountered backpacks before.... them, when asked where we were from, knew the capital of Canada and some even knew the Prime Minister’s name! To top it off we thought we'd stump them by asking them to say things in our second language, and they spoke it better than us!. We spent almost 2 weeks in Cambodia and saw some amazing stuff.
We arrived in Phnom Penh to rain (thankfully, that was the last of it!) and settled into a guesthouse near the river (great for nightlife, bad for mosquitos). Our first day there we headed to the S-21 torture chamber. We really know how to prepare for the Christmas season! S-21 is an old school that was transformed into cells to house prisoners for the Khmer Rouge during the late 70's to the early 80's. Here they were tortured into confessions before being shipped to the Killing Fields. It was basically the site of the SE Asian version of the Holocaust. We spent the next couple days checking out sights during the day and spending the evenings happy-hour-hopping our way along the river—we must have hit about 7 different pubs in one night trying to find the cheapest draught beer! We ended
The solution
When it won't fit in the back...put it beside Mel (yep, real cozy!!) up staying a while at Le Croissette where we made friends with the employees and German owner. One of the waitresses was so cute and she was kind enough to tell us a little bit about her life, her jobs (yup all 5 of them), and her British boyfriend. She was even kind enough to let Mel jump behind the bar and create some shots—The Man ______ (insert inappropriate word) and the Okay Bedsheet (named for it’s fushia colouring much like the satin sheets we had on our beds at Okay Guesthouse!). After some tasty shots, Polv (somehow it’s pronounced ‘ball’—I may never get the Khmer language!) offered us a shot of Snake Whiskey. For all of you who think you’re brave enough to try it (we sure thought we were after 9 beer) it goes down a lot harder than expected, I believe it burned for a total of 5 hours. From our pub hopping we hit up The Heart of Darkness bar where we danced on the stage with locals and one crazy guy from Bangkok returning home late and changing our bus ticket to Sihanoukville from 8:30 to 12:30!
Although we didn’t stay long in Sihanoukville
Fish Farm
For 1 billion dong, you too could have your own fish farm.....you know you want to! long, we were able to see a lot of it via our rented motorbike. We tore through Sihanoukville, after I ran into a BBQ (apparently it wasn’t in neutral!) visited the market and found ourselves on the beach late in the afternoon. That’s right we had finally found the sun!!!!! We spent a few hours laying there with children trying to sell us everything, and once they sold us a cold drink they hung around for the empty can! We bought a fruit salad off one girl simply because she carried all the necessities for the salad on her head, and Mel just had to try it! Mel held it on her head for a few seconds, but it was no competition to this girl’s running on the beach with it (but to Mel’s defense the girl had been doing if for several years). That night we headed out to the dirt roads and I taught Mel how to drive the bike. Turn the key to on, start the ignition, shift up with your toe and down with your heel and give it gas with your hand. I always knew I had the makings of a great teacher! After a
Feeding Time
One giant hole in the floor, 60,000 fish and a few hundred pounds of spinach-flavoured fish food! few ups and downs of a dark road I hopped on the back (praying I had taught her well) and we did some loops around our guesthouse. Although she didn’t run into a BBQ, the ride was exciting!
Back in Phnom Penh on Christmas Eve, after our 2 day excursion south, we hired a driver to take us around so we could make plans for Christmas Day. Our first stop, the Catholic Church to find out mass times (for English we were told 9:30am). Second stop, the Light House Orphanage to find out how many children there were and what we could bring. After that we headed out to enjoy a delicious meal at a fancy restaurant (one where the meals cost us each over $5!). At the end of our meal we were admiring the large number of lizards on the wall (no matter the class of restaurant the fact that none of them ever have windows makes it impossible to keep the little guys out!), when a preying mantis decided to land on my head. As I didn’t see it coming, I assumed it was a lizard but after its long legs started feeling around on my
Twins
First of many cute children... forehead I realized it wasn’t. Laughing, we asked the waiter where it came from, however it took him a few minutes to locate it as he kept looking past my head—some fancy restaurant! After dinner we headed back to the guesthouse stopping along the way to try some Cambodian dessert…..tarantula. It wasn’t bad, it was grilled in garlic so that was mostly what you tasted, but the hairs on the legs were a little hard to get used to!
Christmas day was very rewarding. We headed out to mass at 9am, when we got there we noticed that it wasn’t being held in a church but rather under a tent in a field, furthermore we walked in on the end of the Khmer mass. Patiently waiting for the end we watched the children run around outside the tent, many of them dressed up in little Santa Claus outfits. Shortly after 9:30 the mass ended and everything was being cleaned up. Confused (and very tired I might add) we asked the Priest when the english mass was and he kindly told us that there wasn’t one. GREAT! The worse part was that we had to wait over an hour for
Mr. Muscles
Poor kid that got Leslie's monstrous bag....but he did get a nice tip out of it! out drive to return as we had sent him away thinking we’d be 1.5 hours! Once back at th guesthouse we quickly changed into some play clothes and headed out to buy a 50kg bag or rice and 4 bags of toys for the children at the orphanage. With the bike nearly scraping the road due to all the extra weight we headed to the orphanage and once there we were greeted by 43 beautiful children all wanting to know what was in the bags!! The children range from 9 months to 16 years of age and are all so amazing! The land for the orphanage was donated by a lady a few years ago and since then a small house used solely for sleeping, a classroom, and a tiny kitchen were built for the children. There are a few volunteers that live with the children and they cook, clean, monitor the garden and work on projects for the orphanage (such a building a proper bathroom). Unfortunately the only funding the orphanage receives is from tourists and locals and since neither source are really rolling in the dough the orphanage struggles to pay for food for the children. The orphanage
is one big family and it was neat to watch the children interact with each other, whether is was fighting, breaking up a fight, helping cook, or picking our lice from each other there was definitely a strong connection between them all. Each child was so unique and due to the volunteer English teachers (that are not always able to stay there long) the children were able to have a simple conversation with us. There was one boy who stood out though. He was 2, and he reminded us both of our grandpa Woo especially when his shorts were hiked up to his armpits! When we first met him, he started counting to 10 for Mel when he was finished we applauded and he counted again, only this time he yelled it! So funny! He is very independent, as most of the children there are, and is able to tell you exactly what he wants (that candy over there) and climb the makeshift stairs to the top loft in the sleeping quarters. After a few hours there, we had to say goodbye, this was probably the hardest part particularly for Mel who wanted to take about 5 of them with
Games
Although I managed to get this game down, I did lose numerous games of Thumb-War. her! We were bagged that night and ended up having a simple dinner at our guesthouse and a relatively goodnight sleep. We spent our last day in Phnom Penh exchanging Merry Christmas’ to the family and in the afternoon visiting the Killing Fields (the name is pretty much self explanatory, the final destination for the prisoners of S-21).
We headed north to Siam Reap next, to visit Angkor, one of the 7 man-made wonders of the world. Exhausted from the early mornings and lots of travel we spent the 1st day there enjoying HBO and the second day touring around the old market. After seeing a few signs asking for blood donors, Mel thought it’d be a great thing to do so we headed to the Angkor Hospital for Children and Mel got ready to give blood. I stood by and watched not because I don’t like needles but because my ‘sticky’ blood would cause more harm than good! Being brave, Mel laid down on the bed, stuck out her arm and exchanged dorky medical jokes with the doctor. Everything was fine until he pulled out the needle. I swear it looked like he was inserting a juice box
straw into her arm---it was HUGE! Normally being pretty curious about needles, Mel had to look away after she realized she could see directly down it! Surprisingly it didn’t hurt more than normal and after 350mL of blood was drained from her body Mel received a bag of cookies (most of which I’ve enjoyed) a can of coke and a cute shirt saying ‘I gave blood for a friend’. Mel was also informed she is O+ which means if anyone needs blood, she’s your girl! That night we caught a ride up to Angkor to watch the sunset. Entering the lost civilization was indescribable. We climbed to the top of the mountain and then up the skinniest steps we’d ever seen to the top of one of the many temples there. We, and hundreds of other people, watch the sunset and then attempted the 2 inch wide steps again, but this time going down. These steps are crazy, the edges are rounded, most has been chipped away (some of the buildings are over 1000 years old) and they are basically at a 45 degree angle, when you stand at the top, you can’t see the bottom steps!
The next
Royal Palace
Simliar to the Grand Palace in Bangkok only cheaper admission! morning we woke up at 4:45 to catch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. Having never been to Angkor Wat before, we found a seat among hundreds of others, by the main entrance and slowly watch Angkor Wat come into view as the sun rose. It was beautiful. We moved on to the other temples, all structurally amazing and all included the crazy stairs! Along the way we had lots of children try to sell us stuff and we found enjoyment in their attempts to speak exceptionally fast in order to get out all they had to say before we crossed the ‘no vendors past this point’ line—the safety of the temples! We saw most of the temple of Angkor including temple Tomb Raider was filmed at but the most spectacular one was Angkor Wat itself. It’s carries an amazingly powerful aura and it’s clear now why it’s Cambodia’s national symbol, the name of their beer and found in the middle of their flag. You could honestly sit on a broken ledge peering out over Angkor Wat or stand in front of the bas-reliefs (wall carvings that tell a victorious story) and never understand how it was possible to create such
Shooters with Friends
Shooting the "OK Bedsheet" with Tom and Ben and our favourite waitress. a masterpiece, but become lost in the appreciation for it regardless.
On our last day in Siam Reap we took a short tour to the Tonle Sap lake. This lake is connected to the Mekong River, so it too is a beautiful cappuccino colour! Every year, during the we season, the river gets backed up and so the water begins to flood the lake—thus making it an amazing source of freshwater fish, the lake almost triples in size. It was so huge, and it’s in the dry season, looking at he horizon made me feel like I was on the ocean—there was no land to be found in the distance!
The next morning we headed off to Bangkok, praying we’d make it there in time for New Years! We had been warned about he road from Siam Reap to the boarder but we thought we’d try it anyway—probably a mistake! We spend 8 hours on the bumpiest road in the junkiest minibus possible. I think we spent half the time actually out of our seats! There is apparently political reasons for the horrible highway including the owner of the Siam Reap airport paying off the Cambodian government not
Sihanoukville Beach
Didn't take us long to suit up and finally get some sunshine!! to fix the road so that more people will fly! Once at the boarder we transferred into the deluxe Thailand bus, which is why it’s so much harder for people to go from Bangkok to Siam Reap than the way we did! We arrived in Bangkok just after 8, we ran to our guesthouse, showered and headed out to Khao San Rd to celebrate the New Year, it was like a mini Time’ Square, the street was packed! We celebrated late into the night and in the morning we started our day off with a good old hangover cure…McDonalds!! It’s off to the beaches soon, but it’s apparently raining everywhere…so if anyone knows where the sun is perhaps you could send it to Ko Phi Phi!!!!
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Dan Eriksen
non-member comment
Wow
That was great reading,verry nice pictures ass well..Hope I see you girls again some day!! Take care..