Advertisement
Published: March 8th 2006
OK, so I last left you in Nam. We have done a lot since then, but it doesn't make such fascinating reading & I really want to tell you about how incredible somne recent sites have been.
To summarise what we did since the last email: Spent one night in Natrang,. A beach resort in Vietnam. We were pleased we didn't spend long as it was really a big city (not huge skyrises, but many hotels etc) that happenned to be on a beach - much like I picture Surfers Paradise to be. It was dirty, there were vendors everywhere & a main road between any hotels (& jost cafes) & the beach. The waves were so big it was unswimmable. Glad we moved on to Mui Ne. This beach resort was lovely. So nice that we extended our stay. Our days consisted of rising for a run along the white sand beach, swimming in the beautiful sea just 10m (make that about 2m at high tide) from our resort, rinsing off in our lovely rooms & going to the inclusive-in-the-room-fee buffet breakfast. Our favourite (apart from the brown bread, homemade jam / marmalade, fruit & yougurt) was something delicious called museli pie. Yum & yum! We then read our books in the open air part of the cafe which was an open air balcony, with a big roof (so no melanoma) right n the beach. Later we moved to a lounger under a sun umbrella by the pool. IT was very tough work I tell you. ANyway the resort was Aussie owned & run, fantastic - with a top class restaurant & well worth the splash out of a cool $50 per night. Ridiculously cheap compared to any resort in the Pacific or Australia - but 5 times what we'd paid elsewehere. We could have sayed in $6 per night accomodation - but were pleased wehad chosen to spoil ourselves here.
Then we had a whirlwind tour of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC - or Saigon). A much more international seeming city than Hanoi, the people were far friendlier and Brendon in particular found the whole place much nicer than Hanoi. Unfortunately our lucky runof good health didn't hold & Brendon came down with a virus there. He dragged himself out of bed to go to the War Remnants Museum (was previously called the Museum of American & Chinese War Crimes, so you can guess that it was quite biased in what was presented. The museum was (expectedly) horrific - particularly the deformed foetuses in jars & photos of maimed, burned & deformed children courtesy of Napalm & Agent Orange. Agent Orange touched our lives in NZ, as Brendon's classmate's father had been a pilot spraying the stuff in the war (there were just under 600 NZ'rs who participated in the war) and hisson had been born with a hare-lip. Tragically, his daughter, Reagan Allen, a year behind me at school and a really special person has since died of cancer - also thought to be caused by this awful chemical. I truly cannot comprehend how people could willingly & knowlingly unleash this horror n so many innocent villagers. And I wonder how many generations will suffer - effected by residue chemicals in the grounds they plant their crops in & the streams they get their drinking water from.
Brendon was exhausted after looking at the museum, so we put our future Saigon-sightseeing plans on hold and went home for a sleep. That night I dragged him out to dinner & afterwards we visited the Rex hotel (a famous hotel where generals used to stay in the war, it was also talked aboutin detail in our book 'Up Country'). Unfortunatley & this is another story (but a fun one) in our mission to get my doxycycline that I had left in the Mui Ne Sailing Club Resort we ended up on a massive motorbike chase around town & got to bed very late.
The next day we were up at 6am & departed on a 2 day tour of the Mekong Delta that would end in Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Sold as a great scenic boat ride, the tour was really a study in how many times you can change your transport on one trip. While we loved seeing the coconut candy & puffed rice factories (everything is so manual over here!), and cruising down our old frend the Mekong at dusk, much of the tour was really moving from bus to boat & back again. I kid you not, with no exaggeration this is what we did:
Day 1:
minibus to group transfer point in city
Bus (nearly 3 hours) to Vinh Loc
Boat (cruise) to coconut candy & puffed rice factory
Boat (cruise) to lunch at a 'local orchard' where you get to try the local fruit (one lychee & one longan each with meat & rice)
Bus
hop off bus to board car ferry
back onto bus
onto boat for 'sunset cruise up river'. Which was actually delightful as this was the time all the villagers came to bathe. The river was lined with mothers washing, children playing, jumping & diving in the water, and men washing their cows (they must be clean cows!). We floated down the river to a chors of excted 'hellos' & mad hand waving from excited, friendly & exceedingly happy children. I have to say, they must be doing something right - it was a pleasure watching the kids have so much fun.
bus to overnight accomodation in Chau Doc.
Day 2:
Bus back to river
Sampans rowed by local women to a Cham village & mosque
Back on the Sampans to a floating fishing village - very cool - just like real homes, complete with dogs, but all floating in the middle of the water.
climbing off the Sampans to a small 'ferry' boat (lunch on the boat) to the Vietnam border.
Off the boat (after an hour's wait for our passports to be stamped), up a steep bank, walk 100m to leave Cambodia, down another steep bank to a different boat.
After 10 - 15 minutes we hopped off this boat, got out Cambodian visas & stamps in our passports & back on the boat.
At 5pm (we were told we'd reach PP at 4pm!) we exited the boat & hopped on a bus.
We finally arrived n PP in the dark at 7pm.
What we loved about Nam & Laos was the lack of visible sex trade. It was disappointing to see it so alive & well in ou hotel in PP. The dirty old men sitting next to us at breakfast in the cafe with tiny little things (who looked like little girls but I hope were a wee bit older) crouched on their laps & groins. Even I was asked if I wanted to get lucky!! It was enough to put you off your food & we decided to leave PP a day early - having just one full day there.
Unfortuantly I caought Brendon's virus & it was my trn to be weak & exhausted - but there was no way I was missing the Tuong Sleng Museum - the S-21 Prison in Cambodia.
Although I've read up a lot about the Khmer Rouge regime and grew up with some kids
who'd families escaped it, nothing can prepare you for the photos of babies
before they're murdered, torture chambers, complete with blood stains
still on the walls, the floor - and the roof - and pictures of the
last victims as they were found by the 'liberators'- being eaten by
vultures after having suffered most awful deaths. We asked our guide
her story - as she looked old enough. She was 14 when it happened &
the rest of her family were murdered 2 days after arriving in the
village they were moved to. She showed us her scars from torture &
beatings - and her stories were just horrific. It is really weird
being in a country where I know that every adult bears these awful
emotional scars - and has lost some or many (or all) their loved ones. One very real and obvious effect is that here people seem to value life so much more than we do at home.
OK - well that's enough for today - my next update will tell you all about the wonders of Angkor Wat.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.043s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 8; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0241s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Chris C
non-member comment
Ahhh, the memories of Nam... great to hear you discovered Mui Ne, where Jedd, Emma, Tim, and I played coconut-touch-rugby and got burnt to a crisp on the beach. And interesting to hear of your 1st-hand experiences with people affected by Agent Orange. While travelling on a tour near the centre of Nam, our guide pointed out a very obvious feature of the landscape (which our Larium induced brains missed at first), the rolling hills covered in tussock and bare patches, where lush jungles once stood. You prob would have also seen quite a few deformed beggers, also a by-product of the chemical. A truely horrific detail of war, and another of the many acts which not only ruined the lives of civilians at the time, but 40 years down the track is still doing the same (like the landmines all through that area). But its quite satisfying to know that although the West killed millions of Vietnamese, using sneaky tactics like agent orange and napalm, they still gave up, and pulled out!