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Published: October 27th 2010
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Jenna with CopterWe have arrived in Cambodia and are in the capital. We ended our time in Vietnam on a high note in Saigon (ho Chi Minh City) by taking in as much as we could in 3 days. We visited the war remnants museum, loaded with photojournalism and physical leftovers from the french and american wars. It made no effort to hide the scars and horrors of war with everything from models and pictures of decapitated prisoners to defoliated forests filled with burnt peasants to cases filled with embalmed stillborn fetuses that were a result of exposure to agent orange. We learned a lot about the local history and horrors that don't get communicated by our education system. The next day we took a tour to the infamous tunnels of cuchi where siege after siege were launched against the vietcong unsucessfully for years. This is the best and most hands on tour we took in all of vietnam. You tour old buildings that were part of the above ground vilalges and then decend into the tiny passage ways that connected the villages and made safe haven for locals during aerial and land bombardments. The style of guerilla warfare confused and bewildered enemy
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defoliation troops and lead to the area remaining a stronghold of defenders for most of the american war. The tunnels are small and one can just crawl or scoot through them and they have already been widened for tourists. The real tunnels were just big enough for the average vietcong and are full of bats but you can still go through one of them. Dirty, sweaty and claustrophobic, we headed to the tour-end reception centre with cold drinks, kitchy memorabilia, and the rifle shooting range where you can fire M16, AK47, and automatic carbide rifles. I opted for the classic, the most used military rifle in the world, the Kalashnikov! The sound of all the firing is much scarier than holding one and after the first two shots its a breeze aiming and firing. Looking forward to shooing more guns in Cambodia.
To get to the border we grabbed a local bus to the mekong river town of Chau Doc. Border towns are always weird and basically exist more for political purpose but we only spent the night and were on a slow boat to Phnom Penh at 8 the next morning. In keeping true with the rest of our
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we think these guys are lungfish, any ideas? vietnam trip the whole trip from start to finish was rife with constant attempts to sell us rooms and tickets for things hundreds of kilometers away to keep us in their racket. It isn't as though they are forcing you to do anything but it gets really annoying. When we were dropped off in Chau doc a guy pulled up after we chased off a dozen moto drivers looking for our money. He ran a guest house which sounded nice enough but made sure to drive alongside us while we spitefully walked 2 km to the centre of town. Again this wasnt pushy and 'he was offering us a good deal but its the sentiment... across the whole damned country; everything is paired with a ruse to keep you as a customer in a long chain of commission based sales. The room was fine and we bought a ticket from the guy after shopping around town to check for better options so they aren't scam artists but i swear they'd sell you someone to wipe your ass if you wanted.
The next morning we met up with our boat after a long and painful cycletaxi ride across town. We
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deactivated ordinance opted for the slow boat so we could get in touch with the scenery a little better and slow it was. The first boat took us to the border in 3 hours where all the pomp was very short and hassle free. We boarded a second that took us to near phnom penh where we were driven in a car to the city. The whole journey was 10 hours and we could have paid double to do it on a fast boat but puttering by scores of villagers along the mekong is a great way to relax even with a wooden seat. Our driver kicked us out in front of the guest house they tried to sell us on all day and we promptly walked away from it. The pass around game is easy to get into and hard to stop... there is no point to independent travel if one lets everything be predetermined for them. There is an area of the city that surrounds the small lake Boung where ramshackle buildings frame crooked corridors and uneven pavement. This is the kind of grunge you want. Dirty enough that there are no yuppies, cheap enough that your room has only
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The Cao Dai temple. a bed and a fan, streets filled with chickens, dogs and children. It's the kind of place that gets a picture in national geographic and its where everyone you want to meet already is staying. There is no glitz or glamour, in fact the court yard of our place if flooded as well a half the rooms on the ground floor but our digs are high and dry. There is even a sketched out young drug dealer who shakily walks up to you with a slight limp and chokes out, "hey man... i have EVERYTHING! what do you want?"
To which we say no thanks and continue on down the alleys, fresh in our minds is knowing this whole area is to be demolished for high rise condos. A curse not avoidable if you are near water and a city anywhere in the world. As children chase old bike wheels, pursued by miniature peking mutts the thought of the polished sterile court of some ugly tower instead of women doing there laundry and dishes in the street seems distasteful, especially with the history of continual displacement in Cambodia.
We are dead tired from days of being crunched in tiny
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Its massive and pink vehicles and walking around for kilometers a day with our packs. Luckily this is an easy-going city with affable locals. (as long as they aren't driving a tourist vehicle) The food is somewhere between lao and thai; the soups are mostly coconut-curry based and rice once again trumps over noodles. During happy hour a jug of local brew is $2 which is less than you dinner plate will cost you. Abound at night are the delicious and bizarre street vendors which i plan to raid for snake on a stick, deep fried tarantula, duck embryo eggs while aiming to avoid the bat and dog meat. Today we visited the National museum which covers the entire history of Cambodia up to french occupation. Apparently the war museum and killing field tours pick up the chronology from there. We plan on hitting up the Khmer Rouge detention centre s21 and the killing fields later before heading to more cheery locales. It's nice to get in the nitty gritty all in one burst anyways.
The Water Festival signifies the end of the rainy season and is marked by several boat races and the doubling of the population of Phnom Pehn. For us
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Monks and Nuns praying it signifies being able to get into the back roads of eastern Cambodia which is reportedly now ALL mud but will soon dry out under the baking sun. We don't know where we are able to go right now but have a bunch of plans in the works. Top of the list is getting a massage from a blind man at the "seeing hands institution". I am stiff asia continues to be not built for tall people. That is all for now pictures to come ASAP. We love and miss you all!
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