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Published: February 1st 2008
Cu Chi Tunnels
Janine gets into an original sized entrance to the Cu Chi tunnels. Before they widened them for western tourists anyone with a waist bigger than 34 inches wasn't getting in!hello folks - we're in Bangkok at the mo and we actually wrote this blog a couple of days ago in Cambodia but we had a few technical difficulties in getting it published - we still haven't managed to get all of the piccies that we wanted onto it so we'll put more on in the next few days if we can.........:-)
We left Dalat in the Vietnamese Central Highlands and travelled south on a bus for around 8 hours to Saigon (nowadays officially known as Ho Chi Minh City). We didn't really expect much of Saigon as we hadn't really heard anything endearing about it but we really enjoyed it. We stayed in a 'backpacker' area (District 1) which was very lively with a good atmosphere - hustle and bustle, full of neon signs, bars and restaurants and what not. We also spent time in the city centre and that was pleasant too, very much a modern city with wide boulevards and posh shops and restaurants etc.
From Saigon we did a trip out to the famous Cu Chi tunnels which was fab. The tunnels were originally dug in 1948 when the Viet Minh were fighting the French
Down in the Cu Chi Tunnels
Steve is very pleased wih himself as the great big fart he just let go begins to take effect down the Cu Chi tunnels. for independance. In the American war the Cu Chi tunnels were expanded to over 200km in length over three levels including living accomodation, schools and hospitals. The Viet Cong used to attack the American forces from these tunnels and then they would disappear back down them again. Eventually the Americans found these tunnels right on their doorstep, approx 5km from one of their bases in the south. On the trip we were shown some of the booby traps the VC used to defend their tunnels - some of these traps were horrible (designed to both kill and put fear into the enemy). "You wouldn't need to pay a visit to your doctor after falling in one of these" our enthusiastic guide told us after one particular trap had been demonstrated - a couple of spiked rollers that unfortunate soldiers would fall into - the spiked rollers would then perforate the body from foot to head as the soldier fell through! We also had the chance to crawl through 90m of tunnel at a depth of 8m. The tunnels have been widened from 80cm in height to 120cm (to cater for us bigger western tourists) but it was still a heck
of a struggle for us - it was hot and dark (pitch black in places) down there and we had to crawl and feel our way around in places as we dropped down levels, felt our way around corners and eventually crawled up and out again covered in dust and sweat. We were really pleased with ourselves for having completed the full 90m (there's a 'get out' exit every 30m) and we enjoyed the experience but we certainly didn't want to do it again! We also had the chance to fire a hand gun, AK47 or M60 but we gave that a miss. Some other travellers we've met have told us that you can blow up a cow in a field with a rocket launcher in Cambodia for between $100 and $200 - we'll probably give that the miss too...
We left Saigon and travelled south and west through the Mekong Delta, eventually ending up on the Vietnamese/Cambodian border which we crossed by boat on the Mekong river - which all sounds very adventurous doesn't it! The Mekong Delta was very picturesque indeed - waterways and paddy fields everywhere as you would expect. We travelled around on various waterways
on rowed boats, motorised canoes and on ferries. We also visited crocodile and fish farms. We ended our Delta trip at the Vietnamese frontier town of Chau Doc - apparently around 40% of the 'workforce' here are involved in smuggling cheap goods in across the border from Cambodia - as such there's a lot of cheap contraband available here. We decided to cross the border into Cambodia by legitimate means via a 6hr fastboat ride (just stopping off a couple of times for Vietnamese and Cambodian customs alongside the river bank) up along the Mekong River right up into the capitol city of Phnom Penh where the Tonle Sap river joins the Mekong. It was a great way to enter a country - speeding along a wide river watching the countryside pass by before floating right on into the big city!
We liked Phnom Penh - we stayed (as a lot of people do) along the river side with it's plentiful supply of excellent bars and restaurants. We spent some time walking around the sights - various wats, the Silver Pagoda and the very grand Royal Palace. There's also some grim stuff to see in Phnom Penh too. Cambodia,
like it's neighbour Vietnam, has a horrific recent past.
Cambodia's recent horror started in April 1975 when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge took over the country and kicked off a mass Genocide that would see between 1 and 3 million (estimates vary) people executed over a 44 month period. The population was estimated at around 7 million when the Khmer Rouge took over so between 1 in 7 and 3 in 7 of the population were executed. We visited the Choeung Ek site (commonly known as the Killing Fields) where more than 20,000 people met their fate. It's a somber place, the people who came here were executed with implements not bullets (e.g spade, metal rod) and at the 'peak' the executioners struggled to keep up with the demanded 300 executions a day. There are excavated mass graves all over the site as well as the odd human bone lying around and there are lots of rags sticking out of the soil - the clothes of the executed. The executioners used to pour chemicals over the bodies to both mask the smell (to keep the executions secret from the 'general' population) and to kill off any unfortunate enough to have
been buried alive. In the centre of the site lies a large glass tower full to the top of human skulls that have been excavated. Around 9000 'bodies' have been dug up so far. We also visited the Tuol Sleng (Security Prison), a former school that the Khmer Rouge used as an interrogation/torture centre. People here were tortured horrifically - we won't even attempt to describe how in our blog. Some of the rooms here still contain some of the actual torture equipment used on the many victims. There are photo's taken of what was found by the Vietnamese troops when they liberated the place - tortured bodies with unrecognisable features - pools of blood. There are also pictures of people during and after torture - these pictures made us feel physically sick, left our legs shaking a little, left us wondering how such cruelty could be allowed to happen. There are also hundreds if not thousands of pictures of people who came here to be tortured and then executed - all victims were numbered, tagged and photographed by the Khmer Rouge - row after row of pictures, room after room, babies, children, men and women, rich, poor, government leaders,
teachers, students, foreigners - anyone unlucky enough to be thought to disagree (or anyone associated/related to those who 'disagreed') with the Khmer Rouge movement. The executioners had to carry out their gruesome tasks or they became the executed (along with their wives, children, parents etc). :-(
The folks of Cambodia are cracking on with putting all of this horribleness behind them and the place is a great place to be now and the people are very warm and friendly (well most of them anyway but more on that later). One of the ways in which the people here are spreading happiness is the use of marijuana in their cooking...! In Phnom Penh there are Happy Pizza places everywhere - no prizes for guessing what makes them happy! You can even ask for an Extra Happy Pizza - good luck! We didn't have any happy Pizza as fortunately we're happy enough already.
From Phnom Penh we travelled on a very fast boat trip (6hrs) up the Tonle Sap river and across the mighty Tonle Sap lake (the biggest lake in South East Asia) to the north west of the country, to Siem Reap - gateway to the Angkor Wat
Killing Fields
Row after row of excavated mass graves at the Killing Fields Ruins, the biggest religious monument in the world spread over a radius of more than 25km. The boat journey there was excellent, we zoomed past fishermen on their small wooden boats, past floating villages, houses on stilts, villages, towns and jungle. We're very pleased with oursleves (quite probably because we are a pair of geeks) for having travelled across most of this country from the south east to the north west on water. ;-)
The Angkor Wat 'Ruins' are really quite spendid, magnificent even, and in jolly good nic too! Angkor Wat is the main reason for tourists to come to Cambodia and for some it's the only reason i.e. fly in, check out them there ruins and then fly out to the beaches of Thailand/Vietnam. We had a right good butchers around them. It's pretty tough being a tourist around Angkor Wat if you want to do it 'properly' - we got picked up from our hotel by our tuk-tuk driver at 5am (to catch that all important sunrise) and then we put in a solid 13hrs sightseeing in 30+ degree temperatures for the rest of the day. We had to go back the next day for around
Skulls
Just a few of the human skulls 'on display' at the Killing Fields. 5hrs to polish off the main sites we didn't catch on day 1 too...phew. We enjoyed it loads - there are some 'tomb raider' style ruins with trees growing in them that we liked the most - in fact the tomb raider people used the site for their filming! The town of Siem Reap was a pleasant place to hang around of an evening (before collapsing in bed with sightseeing exhaustion!) - with a pedestrianised street full of good bars and restuarants. Looking around ruins is dead good but after a while it gets a bit boring so we decided to head to the south of the country, to the beach, to Sihanoukville. A quick (!) 10hrs on a bus via Phnom Penh and we were there.
Our arrival in Sihanoukville didn't really go as smoothly as hoped - we arrived late in the day and got a tuk tuk chap to take us around some of the hotels - we started with the three hotels with a pool (all full), then we looked at the ones that were quite nice but without a pool (all full), then we looked at the ones that one wouldn't normally stay in
but when one's desperate...(all full) and then we really started to scrape the barrel - we ended up on the ground floor of a hotel still under construction! The 1st floor wasn't an option for us as they were still building it - the builders seemed to be very pleasant chaps though. To add insult to injury the tuk tuk driver wanted even more money off us than the extortionate price we had already agreed (after a 10hr bus ride we couldn't be bothered to barter). We have our principles and there was no way we were going to give in and so a bit of a stand-off ensued....Anglo-Cambodian relations weren't exactly helped along when Steve took it upon himself to confiscate the tuk tuk drivers ignition keys. Fortunately the stand off ended with a successful conclusion as the chap got his keys back, we got our correct change back and the tuk tuk man had a good go at practicing his more colourful English vocabulary! Things did get better for us as on our 2nd night in town we graduated to a good place without a pool and then for our remaining four nights we've ended up in a
super fab place with the biggest and most wonderful swimming pool on the beach :-) . You can even get free accomodation here - quite a few of the 'shacks' on the beach offer free bunk bed accomodation - you're probably expected to order a couple of happy pizza's a day from them or something like that...
Cambodia isn't really known for it's beaches but this place is a cracker of a find. There's a few beaches to the place, we're staying on Ochheauteal Beach. It's not a very wide beach but it's more than big enough for the numbers of people here at the moment - it looks like that's gonna change though as the few hotels that are here are full to busting and there's a load more under construction. It's a fine beach here with blue sea and a blue sky - we're loving it just chilling out and doing not much - we're currently having a holiday from our holiday if there is such a thing! There are supposed to be nice beaches either side of our place (around the coves) but we're not going anywhere for the time being - our days are spent
Steve with the masses
Crickey - it wasn't just us who set the alarm for 4:30am for that all important sunrise shot!!! with spending a bit of time on the beach, dipping in our great big pool, eating large amounts of food and our evenings are spent at a chair and table on the beach just a few yards away from the sea with sand between our toes, loads-a-food and cheap bottles of wine. The spag bol is so good in one of the places here that Steve has had it for 4 nights running!! Of course we're also spending some quality time with our beloved and constant travelling companion who's been with us for our 9 weeks in Asia, the Star Movie channel! ;-)
We leave here tomorrow for Bangkok for a couple of nights and then we change continents and hemisphere's and we head south and east to New Zealand. We'll have a permanent home there for a change, even if our permanent home won't be staying in a permanent place, if that makes sense - we're staying in a campervan. :-)
We're having a really great time travelling - really getting in to it now, work and the real world is but a distant memory for us now - we've especially enjoyed the 30 degrees odd temperatures
Faces
South gate at Angkor Thom we've been enjoying for the last few weeks. Hope the weather has been nice for you too wherever you are folks!
cheerio
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Hanna and Hauke
non-member comment
Greetings
hy u guys, great to see u again!! we enjoyed looking at ur pictures and reading about your adventures...:-) we re in danang at the moment - not good weather and freezing tempratures... but nha trang and hoi an (the clothes!!) were fantastic! we also remembered going to cargo club - superb!! safe travels, and have the best time in new zealand, Hanna and Hauke from the cloudy, muddy one day trekking in danang