Cambodia and Vietnam in a whiz...

We left Bangkok on Friday 9 Feb ready for a change. I was so excited because after a good 3 weeks (it might have been longer! eek) in the city I was ready to get out and see some stuff. I do love Bangkok though - it's clean, the people are friendly and it's a lot of fun. It's probably one of the most convenient places we've been to on our trip... and easily where we've spent the most money!!! But that said, I was sooo glad to get out of there!!

And into Cambodia...



Cambodia is a gorgeous country. Such a tragic history... and yet every Cambodian I met had the biggest smile on their face. Such nice people.

So our first stop had to be Siem Reap. We were extremely lazy and did what we would never usually do... we stayed in the hotel that our bus brought us to when we arrived. Such a mistake when you're traveling on a shoestring but it was late at night and I was not in the mood to walk anywhere with my backpack on. I did, however, manage to bargain them down to $4 for a night - and our lovely room had a tv and a BATH (I overindulged in this particular luxury!). In the end our hotel of choice actually worked out really well for us, we were in a quieter area so there was no noise at night (a treat not to sleep with earplugs!) and we were really close to a local market where we bought fresh baguettes, tomatoes, mangoes, naartjies etc everyday.

On our second day in Siem Reap we found ourselves doing what every tourist to Cambodia does... driving to the oh-so-famous wonder of the world - Angkor, the old cities of the Khmer empire. We arrived at 5:30am ready for the sunrise and proceeded to spent the rest of the day wandering around with our jaws open, the Angkor temples are truly magnificent pieces of man-made architecture. The entire empire was built over a period of 300 years, between 900 and 1200AD.

Map of Angkor area


Our first stop was Angkor Wat at sunrise. Angkor Wat is the principal temple of the empire, built between 1113 and 1150 by the King at the time. It was built mirroring the Hindu cosmology, with the towers in the center representing the home of the gods (Mount Meru), the outer walls representing the mountains surrounding the world and the moat representing the oceans beyond the mountains.

Angkor Wat - said to be the world's largest single religious monument


Close up


As we spent from 5:30am till almost 7pm there we got quite an eye-full of temples and architecture while we were there. It was seriously amazing, but I think I was most grateful to our tuk-tuk driver who spent the day ferrying us around!! It was baking hot and the number of stairs we had to climb was incredible. I felt like every temple /ruin we saw that day had at least 100 steps to climb. I'm probably exaggerating but when its 40 degrees in the shade, those steps are hell!

I love tuk-tuks!


One image that I saw over and over again in Angkor was that of apsaras... a female spirit of the clouds and waters in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. I thought they were really beautiful and thoroughly enjoyed myself trying to find them in the nooks and crannies of every temple we went to.



Another cool photogenic moment was when we climbed the Bayon, built in the exact center of Angkor Thom during the 13th century. This was the only temple built as a Mahayana Buddhist temple, but other local gods and goddesses were also worshiped here. All over the Bayon were these faces smiling down on us...



So once we had Angkor under our belt, we headed down to Phnom Penh in what we were told would be a "big luxury air conditioned bus". What we actually traveled in was a small 25-seater with no air conditioning and only partially functioning windows. All the luggage was put inside the bus, which added to the 'comfort' as everyone had to squeeze around it. The road was terrible, mostly worn-out tarmac and in parts just dirt road. Coming from South Africa I'm not averse to a bit of dirt road and a pot hole or two, but for almost 9 hours... help!

When we arrived in Phnom Penh we took a tuk-tuk to the lakeside area and found a cheap guest house for only $2 a night! To celebrate our budget-friendly accommodation price we splashed out on dinner - $2.5 each for an all-you-can-eat buffet!! It was delicious: lots of coleslaw, chicken, baguettes, soup etc and although we suspected it wasn't quite as authentic as 'traditional Khmer food' would be, it was yummy so we went to bed with full bellies and smiles on our faces!!

The next day we went on another sightseeing spree... this time to the Choeung Ek Killing Fields and the S 21 Museum in Phnom Penh itself. The Killing Fields is an area that used to be an orchard about 17km south of Phnom Penh, where the Khmer Rouge (an extremist Communist party that was ruling Cambodia at the time) executed about 17,000 people between 1975 and 1979. At Choeung Ek you can see many mass graves from which the bodies were exhumed and there are even human bones still lying around the various pits. Almost 9000 bodies were discovered after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, many of whom were former inmates in the S21 prison (Tuol Sleng).

Skulls at Killing Fields


After Choeung Ek, we drove back into the city and visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (S 21). This used to be a high school, but was turned over by the Khmer Rouge and used as security prison during their reign of Cambodia. Inside the museum you can see rooms and rooms of photos of the victims... very eerie.



The next day we sadly left behind Cambodia and headed to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam.



It was another long bus ride, but not so painful this time. We arrived in Saigon just after lunch time to rather distressing news. Congratulations to us, we'd arrived smack bang before Tet - Vietnamese New Year. We knew all about Chinese New Year of course, but didn't realise that Vietnam celebrates at the same time!! This meant the prices for accommodation, transport etc would double and there'd be loads more people visiting all the nice places. Bugger! But we took it in our stride and made a new plan... we'd try and get a bus straight out of Saigon that same night and head to Hoi An, where we hoped there would be less tourists than Nha Trang (the beach area we had wanted to visit). It took us a while to find a company that had any seats left but we managed it and had a ticket direct to Hoi An for that evening. Yay. We spent the rest of the afternoon pounding the streets in Saigon and enjoying the local food delights.

That evening we hopped on our Hoi An-bound bus and prepared ourselves for the 20 hour ride. The scene that met our eyes when we boarded the bus was crazy... the pavement and most of the street was FULL (seriously no space left) of people waiting to get on night buses to various parts of the country. When a bus pulled up the Vietnamese all rushed towards it and tried to squash on first... very similar to the Chinese who always seem to desperately need to be first getting on or off any form of transport and will do anything to be first (as if the train/bus would leave without them)!

We had a really good ride to Hoi An actually. We stopped for lunch the next day and Martin and I made friends with a lovely guy from Saigon called Thao. He helped us order some food (we were being overcharged by the waitress for everything until he stepped in) and wouldn't let us pay when we were done. A super nice dude.

Hoi An was a really lovely little town. It used to be an important international seaport town until the late 19th century and has managed to keep a lot of its old architecture. Walking around the old town part is fun, and you can still see a lot of old houses and bridges.



Another thing I loved about Hoi An, and even Vietnam in general, is that you can still see many women walking around in traditional dress. They always look so beautiful.

Vietnamese girls with traditional clothes and conical hats


The conical hats you can see (and buy) everywhere in Vietnam


We stayed in Hoi An for about 5 days, enjoying our lovely hotel (huge bathroom with bath, satellite tv, free internet, mini bar...) and spending a few days just doing nothing. But we didn't just sit around in the hotel room (honest!)... we also hired bikes and cycled down to the beach (more than 5km away) and spent the whole day swimming and lolling about on the soft white sand. Gorgeous.

Once we'd had our fill of Hoi An we took a 4 hour bus trip up the coast to Hue - the old capital of Vietnam from 1744 to 1945 when the last emperor abdicated. It's in an area of Vietnam that was severely damaged during the American war (or Vietnam war as we know it), but many architectural gems still remain in the city.

The citadel


We only spent a day and a half in Hue, but filled that time with walking around the city visiting the sights (all free as we didn't go into the expensive ones!) and eating lots of pineapple. "The pineapple lady" as we've come to call her was probably my favourite part of our time in Hue... she was a small local woman who sat by the river selling fruit and sweets. The first time we went there she couldn't believe we wanted a whole pineapple and kept offering us a stick each (each stick had 1/4 pineapple on it)... we kept refusing saying we wanted a whole new one cut up and could we have it in a bag. She spoke no English and we spoke no Vietnamese but it was a hilarious encounter. We went back to her 4 more times before we left so we built up quite a relationship with her. Everytime we saw her she had a grin from ear to ear and would laugh and make gestures showing her "chopping up a whole pineapple", while saying "chiah chiah" - our communal Engnamese sound-word for chop! She was great.



We left Hue on an overnight bus to Hanoi on Feb 21st, hoping that the capitol city would be cheap, fun and full of free things to do! The bus arrived at 5am and unceremoniously dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, leaving groups of foreigners stranded with no idea where to go. We made some friends and shared a taxi to the Old Quater, an area just north of a pretty Hoan Kiem lake with lots of hotels, restaurants etc. Searching for a cheap hotel at that hour of the morning is never fun, but when you come up with nothing cheaper than $6/night for a room with no bathroom, its pretty depressing. We don't mind sharing a communal bathroom, but we expect to pay a lot less than $6!! However, this we couldn't find so we had to settle for that as it was the cheapest option around (believe me, both us of did a lot of walking to try to find a cheaper place... even dorm beds were going for $5/bed!! Crazy).

That first day in Hanoi we were so tired we didn't manage to do much... we had a nap in the morning, then walked around unsuccessfully trying to find noodle soup for 10,000dong. That's what we'd paid everywhere in Vietnam so far, so we were being stubborn and refusing to pay double that just because it's new year. We did manage to find a place, but I must say the fishy-tasting noodles weren't exactly mouthwatering. They did the trick though! We also walked around a local market, bought more pineapples (I can't stop eating them!) and enjoyed people-watching by the lake.

The next day we made a more concerted effort at sightseeing... we must have walked about 15km around the city! First we went to see the old Imperial city, and managed to get in for free. Not sure how we did that, in fact, I'm not sure how we found the area in the first place - we got kind of lost and ended up walking for a lot longer than planned. Either way, we had a nice chat to a Vietnamese tour official there (who barely spoke English but tried so hard) and he gave us a free copy of a book on the citadel.

Next we went to see Ho Chi Minh and his mausoleum (Martin was looking forward to seeing him in the flesh!)...



Sadly, we'd picked a stupid day to go sightseeing as we discovered the mausoleum (and other sights) were closed because it was Friday. Bummer.

We then saw the one-pillar pagoda (which is nothing to write home about) and then it started to rain. Goodie. I started to worry about Martin catching a cold and us not being properly prepared for this (we gave away all our winter clothes when we left India). We started to walk back to the Old Quater when we saw something that made me forget all about how cold I was... a tiny little kitten was just sitting on the pavement crying and shivering. It had no mummy (that we could see) and was just stranded there, poor little dude. We played with it for a while and then left it near a wall before it got too comfortable sitting on Martin's lap.

We got back to our hotel in time to organise some food for the next day's bus trip to China. We'd managed to find a not-so-good-but-do-able deal on a bus straight to Nanning the next morning. We stocked up on sausages, cheese triangles and baguettes... what yummy sandwiches.

You can find baguettes all over Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam - a trend left by the French colonialists


So our trip through South East Asia finished on Sat 24th Feb when we arrived in China again. It's great to be back in a land where I can speak the language (well some of it anyway) and I know some of the culture... almost feels like home in a wierd way.
We're in Yangshuo at the moment and loving it!! We've got a divinely cheap hotel (Y40 for a triple room with bathroom inside) and the surrounding limestone hills and Li river may just keep us here longer than we think :o)