Advertisement
Published: January 28th 2009
Edit Blog Post
The freneticness of Hanoi
The energy in Hanoi was unreal! A constant flow of motorbikes whiz past you, people are constantly asking you to buy a book or some fruit, and the narrow streets of the old quarter buzz with life. I made it to Cambodia!! As I've been far too enamored with my surroundings to post anything about Vietnam, I'll have to go back to it with the help of my pictures once I'm back in China.
Brief overview: Vietnam smells of incense, smoke, and dirt-- people burn paper money in the streets to pray for wealth and incense burns under every tree and in every family shrine. The cities smell of exhuast-- hundreds of motobikes whiz by you at every intersection. For tourists, Vietnam sounds like Abba-- every restaurant and transportation hub the tour agencies herd you into plays the same CD. Our private car from Can Tho to Chau Doc at least gave us a choice: Abba or "Children's Songs in English."
We started in Hanoi, which demands its own entry. We then visited Halong Bay and its limestone karsts by boat, went kayaking at dawn to see the sunrise, climbed a mountain on Cat Ba island, rented motor bikes and explored a hospital that was built into a cave during the American war. Next we took an overnight train to Hue, Vietnam's most spendid imperial city of the Nguyen empire, where we rented bikes and became
The streets of Hanoi at night
Neon, motobikes, and movement. Constant. expert bargainers in the local market. Vietnamese coffee is to die for-- the slow drip process makes deliciously strong coffee and they add sweetened condensed milk...heaven. Hoi An was next. A town of tailors situated on a small river, Hoi An was my favorite place in Vietnam. We took a cooking class where we learned to cook garlic/ginger fish cooked in banana leaves, green papaya and carrot salad with shrimp (or tofu if you were me), and vegetable spring rolls. We explored a temple built into caves in the marble mountainside and discovered giant buddhas, found a beautiful beach, and a few of us got some clothes made. It was very quaint, with French colonial architecture and paper lanterns all around.
Transportation prices were skyrocketing because the lunar new year was on its way (Tet in Vietnam), so our overnight bus was bought out by people willing to pay double what we did and we were exiled to a regular upright seat bus rather than the sleeper we paid for...it was a terrible 16 hour ride. I was surrounded by smelly French men who thought the whole situation was a joke, "Cet bus est magnifique! Garcon, mon cafe!!" They
Halong Bay
A fishing village floats among the karsts of the bay. were amusing but we gave the bus the moniker of the "funky bus." Eventually we arrived in Moi Ne, a beach resort town...with no beach. Our hotel had bungalows on the water with sand brought in, but the water came right up to cement. Somehow we found the kite surfing beach on the other end of town and talked our way in for a quick dip. We explored some red sand dunes, adventured down a river through a red and orange clay canyon, and our 12 year old guides told us we were risking our lives. Yangaton-- snakes. Next was Saigon for Tet...which again requires its own entry. We hit the Mekong Delta and its floating villages and houses, and stayed with a family in Vinh Long. Cruising around Can Tho and its canals by boat and then up to Chau Doc for our crossing into Cambodia...which I'll probably write about separately. Today we arrived in Phnom Penh.
Cody and I started light-- we went to the genocide museum at S-21. I knew it'd be powerful, but I had no idea the extent to which it would touch me. The prison used to be a high school and the
Sunrise in Halong Bay
A dawn kayaking trip yielded the best photos! classrooms had been converted into cells. The beds and many of the torture implements were still in the rooms, and pictures of the bodies they found when they liberated the prison were on the walls. Skulls from the killing fields filled a room and the rags of the prisoners killed at S-21 were displayed in a box. The one thing that moved me the most was the mug shots of the prisoners...there were rooms and rooms of them. It wasn't because I knew the regime had tortured and killed them, but because of the wide range of human emotion those photos portrayed. There was fear, sadness, disbelief, horror, anger, despondency...but the image that will stay with me forever are those prisoners who looked at the camera with an expression of pugnacious defiance. Their eyes said that whatever their captors did to them, they could never destroy what was inside them. The profound bravery that I saw in some of those photos shook me to the core and made me proud of the human race-- even in the face of such brutal cruelty the human spirit can defy it. Even though they come in small numbers, there are those who will
Cat Ba Island
Climbing a mountain on Cat Ba. There was a rusty tower at the top where the view was incredible, but the photos don't give it justice. stand up to evil. On the whole it was a rough experience, but I knew I had to see it. We're probably going to the Killing Fields tomorrow...but then heading up to Siem Reap to take in the wonder of Angkor Wat and the Khmer empire. Smell ya later!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.095s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 46; dbt: 0.037s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb