Wat a Sight!

Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City as we were told call it by every local we asked, apparently its renaming after the war hasn’t won over the citizens even today) was a crazy whirlwind of everything that is Vietnam. All the knock-off goods, cheap food, war memorials, mopeds, and the throngs of people bus around in a beautiful balancing act.

We spent a couple days getting in as much Vietnamese food as we could and soaking up our last of Vietnam. We visited the War Remnants Museum which gives a great deal of information surrounding the Vietnam (or American as it’s called in Vietnam) War. While it does obviously have the communist slant (the US and the south did all the awful things while the north was just fighting for our land, etc…) It was a very graphic and eye-opening account of the war, something we don’t get taught much about. Travelling around Laos and Vietnam you can still see the effects, with unexploded ordnances continuing to kill people every year. The whole museum really speaks to the absolute atrocities that is War. I also went to the Cu Chi tunnels (Andrea had already been) outside Saigon, it was a huge network of tunnels used by the Viet Cong and used as a base of operations. It was quiet amazing they were able to build such a vast network. Walking through the quiet forest it is peaceful and beautiful, but you must remember this was used for war. Then a burst of automatic fire shatters the quiet and you are reminded of that, traps which were as awful as they were brilliant on their simplicity are on show, a burnt-out tank, the tunnels themselves which must have been awful to live in. They have made one wider and taller (or tourist size as the locals call it), I crawled 120 meters through it and even that was enough. It was hot and stuffy and you didn’t have enough room to turn around only head straight. Always hunched over and on your knees, I had to crawl for some parts all the while thinking to myself that this was the upgraded tunnel and there wasn’t a war going on with bombs raining down on me when I finally reach the exit. The onsite firing range where you could fire a variety of guns from the M16 and AK47 up to a M60 provided a fitting background track to the place.

In stark contrast from the horror of war, Bui Vien Street in Ho Chi Minh is the peak of freedom and the hedonistic lifestyle packed into a couple blocks. Loud music, tons of drinking, bars, offers of massages (for some reason mostly to men not walking with women… hmm) and everything else you probably shouldn’t be involved in for health and legal reasons. But it is a great place to eat some good food and people watch. We even did a Vietnamese escape room, which had the most realistic derelict/ruined apartment we have ever seen in an escape room…complete with fake rat dropping and garbage…. Wait a minute…

From Saigon it was North into Cambodia which we were only doing a quick trip through. We arrived in Phenom Phen and it was very different from the city Andrea remembers form 7 years ago, built up with a new lease on life. I toured the S21 prison and the killing fields, Andrea stayed home she said once is enough. I can now understand that.

Both places are monuments to atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge during their time in power. Thousands of Cambodians tortured and murdered for no real reason, sometimes for just having soft hands, as Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge tried to carry out their insane plan to reset their civilization back to “Year Zero”. Emptying cities and turning everyone into peasant farmers, they killed the educated, dissenting, and just plain innocent people along the way. Both sites are somber and awful testaments to just an atrocious event. They are very worthwhile visiting if you are in Cambodia, an important part of Cambodia History.

From Phnom Phen we headed north to Battambang, a quiet dusty city with not really a tremendous amount to see but we enjoyed relaxing here for a couple days. We found a restaurant with an amazing mother and daughter team who served the best and cheapest food and always went out of their way to take care of us – we are going to miss their food. One afternoon we went to Sampeou Mountain and walked up it to take in the views of the plans and the temple crowning it. But the real stars were the bats – we took a table near a crack in the mountain just before sunset and had a beer. Just at sunset a million (ok I’m not sure how many but it was a lot) bats burst forth from the cave in a tight formation of a weaving and darting black columns, flying together for a while till they split of in search of food. This continuous exodus went on for over 20 mins with the flow slowing after that but still stragglers continued to leave. It was quite remarkable.

From Battambang we took the boat to Siem Reap, it was a great journey through tiny canals at first so low with water because it was the dry season that we got stuck once briefly to larger waterways. Past fishing platforms with cantilevered fishing nets on homemade cranes through floating villages and stilt villages with daily life going on as it has for generations. Before finally we were spat out onto Tonle Sap a large fresh water lake attached to the Mekong River and the last section before Siem Reap. We had a great time doing this boat ride, we felt that we really got to see so much of the local villages and local life as our boat picked up and dropped of people along the way.

Siem Reap one of “The” destinations for Travelers because of the Temples of Ankor (Ankor Wat being the headliner). Once the capital city of the might Khmer Empire, which rose from the 9th to 15th century, this once megacity is now an impressive collection of ruins in an encroaching forest. It is a beautiful place with some temples that have been well preserved and restored and others firmly in the grasp of the forest giving them a beauty of their own. The intricate carvings in the stone make it look like wood with large faces, detailed relies, and soaring temple spires giving praise the Khmer Monarch or God King and Hinduism and Buddhism. They are fantastic to explore and it’s hard to imagine this amazing construction which used much more stone then all the Egyptian monuments, and was apparently the largest pre-industrial city ever built. One temple made famous by Tomb Raider and Angelina Jolie is particularly busy with crowds of visitors all trying to get their picture in a certain place which is very similar to numerous other places, but you know…that one is special. And yes, we did the same thing.

From Siem Reap we took a bus crossing the border to Bangkok, we were just here for a couple of days to get ourselves for our next Journey. A Flight to Pakistan.