I'm going home...

Well.. the time has come.. today is the last day of my trip.

As I've said, Siem Reap was an amzing town, and the people I hung out with were really excellent. Marissa is still there, living at Ivy 2 guesthouse (so if you're in the area, say hi from me), but Za Za and Alan have headed onwards for Phnom Penh and Vietnam. Some other guys I met there who also live and work in Siem Reap: Bevan, Ben, and Lim, as well as the girl who works at Angkor What, whose name escapes me right now. On my last day, after visiting the school, I was walking along the street when Lak - one of the students approached me to come and eat at his restaurant. He was still wearing the jumper that Marissa had given him, even though it must have been around 34 degrees at least!

I flew into Singapore from Siem Reap, via Saigon airport, where I bumped into Maike and Jose, a Spanish couple from Madrid I first met on the bus from Nha Trang, and have been bumping into ever since. They were also on the Singapore flight, and so after a coffee and the worst airport food Pho Bo (Vietnamese beef noodle soup) I've ever had, we headed off.

Singapore airlines would have to be one of the most amazingly fitted out I've ever been on. Really comfy seats with adjustable backrests (lumber support and reclining) as well as individual tvs in every seat... unbelieveable!!

After leaving Siem Reap, Singapore was a huge culture shock. I've come from dusty dirt roads, tuk-tuks, landmine victims, street kids, really old school markets, taxi girls, expat bars, excellent low cost street food, friendly smiling people to Singapore...

I caught the fast modern MRT (subway system) from the airport. There were ticket machines, announcements, everything was clean and orderly. The whole city was ablaze with lights, and everyone was either on a mobile phone, listening to music on an iPod or playing on their PDAs. Train announcements were in 4 languages, and included gentle reminders that passengers could get their refund of $1 on a single ticket from any machine at their destination. Signs in the station announce that being friendly to each other is gracious and makes for a better Singapore. Everything is about how to do things so that life runs more smoothly - 500 video camera survey this station for your safety - don't eat or drink on the train, keep it clean for everyone - chewing gum is now allowed, but only sugar free and from a pharmacy.

Singapore is a totally modern, up-to-date city. But it's a very sterile one. Everything is for your own good, and to make things better, so little inconveniences are tolerated so that everyone can enjoy the finer things. For example, food stalls (a common way of eating throughout Asia) are regularly visited by the health department and given a rating that they have to display, so that customers know how clean the establishment is. All of this of course means that you know you aren't going to get sick, but it just makes it all feel very ordered and predetermined. It also means that tourists won't necessarily visit those stalls who may be fine, but who just aren't up to the "A" standard..

It's nice to wander into those parts of the city where there are still some chances to be taken - where you're not 100% sure that everything has been certified and double-checked before you even saw it.

Of course there's a lot of benefit in all of this - you know you're in a safe modern city. Should anything go wrong, you have access to all the latest medical facilities and so on. But as a place to live I would find it a little difficult.. I think it would dull your senses - when everything is always double-checked for you in advance, you stop doing it yourself.. and you become complacent.. at least I think I would.

After getting over the initial shock of the new, it is quite nice here, and I'm very glad my friend Jo's Dad has let me stay with him. I've been able to do some shopping to replace some of the things that were stolen in Vietnam, and today I took a boat down the Singapore River which was really nice. I just find that everywhere I go is mainly shopping areas, and so it makes it hard to just sightsee, or wander around. I guess it's also that in comparison to Vietnam or Cambodia, some of the 'spice' is missing...

On a 12:30am flight tonight....

Farewell Siem Reap...

Well - am staying one more day here, due to a combination of exhuastion, really loving the town and a bit of a ticket mix up. I've seen some truly amazing sights here.

The temples were really incredible.. some of the most interesting were the ones people don't go to as much, the more remote ones. It was thoroughly exhausting though - 3 full days of temples, including the last temple in the pouring rain!!

I've also been hanging out with some great people - Marissa is an Aussie who works at my guesthouse, and she also teaches English and works at a local radio station. I went today with her to the school, which is free for anyone to attend, and met the students - who range from about 5 - 59 (Mr Lieng who was a soldier, and was wearing Thai boxing shorts to class today!)

I've also been spending a good many nights checking out the Siem Reap nightlife.. tonight is my last night, so no doubt we'll be going out again. I had a quiet one last night, and no temples to see tomorrow, so it should be fun!

Want to take some photos of the town before the sun goes down, so I'll head off now..

Anonymous comments

Have removed this feature due to heaps of spam, which I hate. I think my blog was featured on a "new photos uploaded"link or something.

Anyway, what it means is you'll have to register to comment.. sorry but as Ms D says - SPAM sucks!!

I leave tomorrow for Singapore... will miss Siem Reap. I love this town..

Welcome to the Wild Wild East

So.. I've been in Cambodia for 4 days now... it's a completely different experience to what I thought it would be like. Phnom Penh was a real kind of frontier town, placed on top of an ancient but damaged culture/society, and with some amazing architecture thrown in to boot.

There are so many expats living there - teaching english, working for NGO's, just kind of hanging around. It's very easy to get a business visa, and they just let you extend it year after year, so there are all these people who have just been in Cambodia for so long they wouldn't know what to do if they had to leave. I met an ex bar owner last night who has been here 15 years, and is still dancing with young bar girls every night...

I decided to go to PP first, that way I could do all the depressing disturbing things first and then end my holiday by going to Angkor. The Killing Fields, and especially S21, the Tuol Sleng school where the Khmer Rouge systematically tortured thousands of people after meticulously recording all their details and taking photographs are some of the most disturbing things I've ever seen. In S21, one of the most chilling aspects is that it's just in a suburban street, surrounded by houses and other everday buildings. It's only inside that you see the photographs of the horror - actual shots of the remains of the last tortured people the Vietnamese found when they liberated S21, as well as wall after wall of the photos taken when people arrived. Some people knew what was about to happen - you could see it in their eyes. Others had no idea... there was a whole wall of children under 5, another of boys all around 10-12 wearing the fashionable cap of the day.. and it just went on and on. The rooms where people slept, were tortured.. the equipment.. it's all been left pretty much how it was found, except for the installation of photographs.

And the fact it's an old school somehow makes it even worse. Seeing school rooms transformed into cells about a metre wide and a metre and a half long with almost no light... You can feel the spirits of the dead who's remains never got a proper burial, and who were thrown into mass graves in the Killing Fields.

The Killing Fields themselves seem rather banal - until you read the signs describing how many bodies were unearthed there, and when you see the monument to the dead - made of found skulls, most killed by blows, or hacking chops of a machete to the head to save on bullets... it's all very harrowing.

The other side of this is the abject poverty in which many families now find themselves. I went to an orphanage, which was in a really poor slum area, where kids slept 5 to a room on lino if they were lucky, and tarp if they weren't. The kids are great - I took some rice (well 25 kgs) I'd bought at the market, but was completely unprepared for how much more was needed. They also try and get you to pay for some of the kid's schooling, which is heartbreaking, becuase it isn't that much, but there are so many kids, and the centre isn't well enough set up yet to guarantee that the kids would get the money. I'm thinking of sending a big parcel of items wehn I get home, like pens, paper, clothes, toys etc etc. Think I'll try and get a bunch of people involved. They are teaching the kids singing and dancing skills as well as regular school and also english.

So I left PP feeling drained, and overwhelmed and a bit unsure of how I was going to deal with the rest of Cambodia. But Siem Reap has been really good. It's still as underdeveloped - perhaps even more so than PP, but the atmosphere is better, people are friendlier, there's less weird shit going down, and it's just a nice town. The place I'm staying is great - the people are really nice, and I spent my first day at the temples today which was amazing! Saw Ta Prohm - the one the jungle has taken over that was apparently in "Tomb Raider" (I never saw it), and saw the Bayon with the big faces, and a whole lot of others... I have 2 more days checking out the temples, and then I leave on Monday lunchtime for Singapore, via Saigon.

I'm going to attempt to load a few pictures with this entry, but I'll see how the computer goes...

Photos - thanks to Tamsin

Someof the photos in the most recent posts are Tamsin's - mine were burnt at 6mb each,, and are taking far too long to load..

Thanks Tamsin for sharing!!

Gratuitous Mention #1

This is an entirely gratuitous mention of my friend Siobhan, who told me she was sure she'd read my blog if she was mentioned in it...

So - here you are.. I do missyou, and I'm looking forward to catching up with you when I get back.. maybe even a trip to the Korean Baths the next time you come down from the mountains to Sydney..?

I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again..

Tonight is my last night in Vietnam... Tamsin left today togo to Bangkok for a day and then back to Blighty, and I head off to Cambodia tomorrow.Not 100% sure how I'm going to fit everything I've bought in my bag. I'm kind of avoiding packing by blogging downstairs on the free internet..

Saigon has been excellent...but pictures are taking a while to load,so no more for a bit...

Had a manicure at a salon today while waiting for Tamsin to get her haircut.At first it just seemed slightly unusual that there were so many girls hanging around in quite skimpy outfits for Vietnam, and that the main woman of the place was perhaps previously a man. However it wasn't till I looked down and saw that everyone was wearing 6 inch "hooker heels" (perspex high heeled shoes) that I decided perhaps the place was more than it appeared to be, and they'd taken us in on a slow Sunday afternoon.

Finally a taxi arrived with 3 chinese guys,who proceeded to get their hair cut by the very good male stylist, and then went into the back rooms - perhaps for a shampoo or a massage, or more likely for "full service"...

Mekong

Went on a really good public tour of the Mekong Delta. Had been hoping to do a private tour, but the costs was just way too much and Tamsin & I couldn't find anyone else who wanted to go on a private tour,or who had the time. Ironically, after we'd booked and paid, we met a couple at the deskof our hotel who would have been interested,and we managed to find Claudia who'd been wanting to go all along... typical!

Still the tour was excellent, the guide was really knowledgeable and friendly,and I really felt like it was worthwhile. The best bit was staying in a homestay like I'd done in Sapa. We stayed with a guy called Phong, and his family.It was about a 10 minute walk in the dark across 'monkey bridges'(small bamboo log briges over streams) and paddy fields) from a 20 minute boat ride downriver from the 10 minute bus ride we took from the hotel where all the others were staying in the centre of Can Tho - the South's second largest city, and hence not much differentto Saigon in terms of a different more "rural" experience. We had a great dinner with the family,and then stayed up for a good part of the night drinking the local rice wine and banana wine spirits, before going to sleep on thin mats under mosquito nets in bamboo huts, and waking up early to go for a walk in the rice paddy field. It was a really great experience.

It kind of made up for the fact that the most picturesque part of the tour, in a small rowboat down a Mekong tributary to a longan and dragon fruit orchard, was completely drowned out by rain, and I couldn't take any photos...

I also saw a coconut candy village, a rice wine village, a bee keeping village, and an incence making shop, the floating market, the regular market as well as doing lots of cruising down 2 of the main Mekong rivers.

Cu Chi Tunnels

Despite organising a very good trip to the Vinh Moc tunnels up north, I decided to investigate to Cu Chi tunnels here near Saigon where the Vietcong burrowed their way into the ground,and right into the middle of the US camp.

The tunnels are tiny, but have been already widened for tourists. They are incredibly claustrophobic now, so I'm glad I didn't have to crawl through them when they were in their original state..

Advanced Scuba Diving 101

I am a certified advanced open water scuba diver! I sent off my forms from Saigon today, and hopefully I'll have my card a few months after I get back,which will be a blessed relief, as it replaces my first open water scuba diving card which some of you may have seen as having the worst photo of me ever on it- and it was a lifetime licence, until I did a higher level.

For the first time I took sea sickness tablets,and wasn't sick at all- amazing!! I'll never dive off a boat without them again. And on the third day I took some tablets to help me equalise my ears, and they worked really well too. As one of the dive masters said nothing like diving on drugs- really does the trick.Not sure what drugs he was referring to, but my over-the-counter medication was completely worth it.

The dives I did for my course were:
*buoyancy
*navigation
*deep dive
*photography
*naturalist

The deep dive was to 28 metres, and was completely different to other dives I've done. The visibilty wasn't great either, and at that depth, water absorbs more light, so we had to hold hands with our dive buddy to keep from getting separated and lost.

I had a fantastic time diving - had forgotten how much fun hanging out with the dive community can be..I'll def be doing more in the very near future. (well when I've paid off my credit card debt..)

Photos

Have finally managed to pepper the blog with some photos.It takes so long to upload that there aren't heaps,but check them out-browse through the current and the archives and you may be pleasantly surprised.. (well - I can only hope so..)

Further Qualifications in Nha Trang

I caught the night bus to Nha Trang.. 12 hours, almost no sleep, loud Vietnamese domestic tourists - one of whom slung a hammock from the pole near the back door and a seat so he could get a decent night's sleep, the bus making a stop in Nha Trang at their "recommended hotel" where all the people get on and try and convince you to stay there.. it was pretty much as ghastly as I had thought.

At least I wasn't on my own. Tamsin and I managed to fight of the crowds (well.. 2) touts who accosted us as we left the bus at the actual final destination, and find the hotel another person had recommended along the way. Sharing a room keeps the costs down - will be paying around $5 a night here, whcih is excellent.

Nha Trang is renowned for scuba diving, so I decided to do a refresher course, which becme a refresher course and 3 dives to qualify as an "Adventure Diver" - next level up from what I currently have, which became 5 dives and I get my Advanced Certificate! Considering I hadn't dived in 10 years and it's been on my to do list for at least 5 - I'm very happy! Went out today and did my refresher course - just like riding a bike, once you're doing it again, it all comes back. And then I did the first part of my course requirement - a buoyancy dive, where you learn to control your bouyancy just by breathing, rather than by inflating your bcd. I'd forgotten how much I love diving!! Shelle, if you're reading this, see - managed to do a refresher course and a bit more... ;^)

The one thing I don't love though is the sea sickness.. yep happened again. I can't bear it - I love diving and snorkelling and so on, but when the boat stops and you have to deal with all the equipment and look down while the boat sits there and rocks.. well, that's when I get sea sick. Tomorrow I take a seasickness tablet before I get on the boat, and hopefully that'll do the trick.

We met an old uni friend of Tamsin's on the bus, and he and his girlfriend are doing the advanced course too. and today Tamsin decided to go for her open water certificate.. so it's all diving for 3 days for everyone!

Another early start tomorrow - 7:30 at the dive shop.. I'm doing underwater navigation and underwater photography!!!! Can't wait :^)

Hue & Hoi An - the full story

Well, as I've said, Hue cost a lot of money. And doing the prearranged tour meant very little time at any one spot. I met a Swiss-Italian couple on the boat tour of the tombs and temples (of all the old Kingdoms - you catch a boat down the river) and we went to the citadel together the next morning, as well as hiring a car to take us up to the Vinh Moc tunnels (there's a picture earlier). This meant I didn't have to do the full 13 hour DMZ (demilitarized zone) tour, whcih picked you up at 6am and returned you to Hue at 7pm. In between you saw some generally interesting sites, but also some piles of rocks and some very dusty broken highways. Everyone I've met who has done it says that the tunnels were the best bit, which is what I thought and which is why I managed to convince the Italian Swiss couple (Antonio & Daniella) that they wanted to see them too, so we could hire a car and go together ;^)

The tunnels were fascinating - several children were born in there - they had a maternity ward (a tunnel like the one in the last picture, filled with life size figurines of a woman who'd just given birth, the nurse, and the newborn baby!), some family rooms, a meeting hall (basically a bit of the tunnel where you could stand upright) as well as several levels and exits. The tunnels were fully guided and really interesting. All the surrounding area has these huge craters from American B-52 bombs.

We also stopped off at the Ben Ha river - former dividing line between North & South, and saw the bridge which used to be painted red up until the middle on the norther side, and yellow till the middle on the southern side. We also saw a famous church of which only the shell remains after major bombardment, as well as several towns where major incidents happened.

In one of several contemporary accounts by Western photographers and journalists that I've read about Vietnam during the war, I'd read a description of Highway one just before the dividing line - how it was all rice paddys that meant you felt like a sitting duck as you drove towards the border, never sure if someone was going to jump up out of the rice field and attack you. As we drove through, I thought about that. There were people working in the fields and they looked just like they would have looked at the time.. it was very surreal...

That night we had dinner at a place accross the river and then walked back of a bridge designed by Eiffel (of Eiffel tour fame) which is lit up and changes colour gradually across the span of the bridge.. beautiful..

The next day I caught the bus to Hoi An, stopping off ever so briefly at Marble Mountain (ummm... several mountains of marble, with incredible carvings and statues of...marble inside). Didn't really get to see as much of it as I would have liked - yep, once again the pre-organised tour buses only stop long enough to buy food and souvenirs. We had 45 mins, but that was no where near enough time to see the whole complex. I saw one mountain, and it was fascinating, but couldn't even find it's description in the guide book, so am pretty sure it was a minor one.

The tour buses are a really good and cheap way to get around, but you never meet anyone but tourists, and you never get to stop long enough to enjoy anything. I'm really over them, but am considering getting one to Saigon/HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City, as it's now known) simply because there is no day train, and the night train gets in at 4:45am!!!

So I arrived In Hoi An mid afternoon, and ended up at a hotel very far out of town, but it had a pool, fee cocktails by the pool every evening, breakfast and airconditioning. The walk into town was only 10-15 mins, and we were slightly closer to the beach.

Antonio & Daniella left a day or so after, but I stayed a full 5 days in Hoi An - I loved it. It was a beautiful historic town on a river, with world-heritage listed buildings, lovely cafes, wonderful sights and historic museums... and of course the most incredible tailors you've ever seen.

Every second shop was a tailors' shop, selling the most incredible made-to-measure clothes, which could be ready in as little as a day! Some of the most elegant designs, beautiful fabrics and stylishly made clothes I've ever seen. Needless to say I had some things made. My good friend Liz had advised me to take any favourite clothes to have copied, so I took a favourite pair of pants, a skirt and a jacket, and I now have wonderful hand-tailored copies! Have to admit I went a little mad.. I am now lugging around 2 dresses, 4 pairs of pants, a jacket, several skirts and a few tops. The minimalist bag I'd managed to whittle my stuff down to in Hanoi is now fairly full again!

I met heaps of wonderful people in Hoi An: Michelle - an American who lives in Coogee that I'd met previously in Sapa, and we're going to catch up back home. Aruna - an Aussie guy and Michelle his travelling partner from Luxenburg - we had dinner and drinks one night in town and they introduced me to the bar called "Bar", where I met other people later on. Katerine - a French Canadian who'd spent a year on exchange in Ecuador, so we spoke Spanish as our common language. We hung out and went to the beach together on our last day in Hoi An. Some French girls with a scooter - we had dinner in a restaurant on stilts in the river and I spoke very mediocre French and they spoke some English, and I got driven there and back on the scooter. The Spanish guy and his Swedish partner who'd been on my boat in Ha Long Bay when all my stuff was stolen - we bumped into each other in a rain storm, sheltering under a tarpaulin in the market, and confused the hell out of the stall owners as we had a very animated half hour discussion about what had happened and the guide in Spanish. Claire, Lucy & Jeremy - all from the UK, who visited Mr Phong's village with me, and finally Tamsin - from the UK, and Claudia, from Germany, who she'd met on a bus.

I was checking out a Chinese Assembly Hall that I didn't get to go to, when Tamsin and Claudia walked out, and I started speaking to them. This lead to further discussions about travelling and so on, and eventually led to Tamsin and I getting night bus tickets to Nha Trang together, staying in the hotel here, and probably doing a Mekong Delta tour from Saigon! But more of that later..

Fom Hoi An, I went to My Son - a Cham Temple Ruin several kms away. It was interesting, but crowded, and having seen Prambanan and Borobodur in Java, and going to Angkor soon.. I was a little "ruined" out, and was annoyed that after all that effort, it was only going to end up being 1 hour to see the whole site. It made me more determined to do the Mekong Delta with some other people on a self-organised trip.

One of the most interesting things I did was go out to Mr Phong's village, and hear his stories of the war, both from his side as an ARVN (South Vietnamese) soldier, and also from his uncle - a decorated Vietcong soldier. Everyone was lovely, and his family were fascinating - all the people in the village were so welcoming.. it just wasn't touristy at all.. I learnt so much, and got to meet a whole lot of real Vietnamese people, as well as see some of the local produce and learn about it - all without any pressure to buy anything - in fact I didn't buy anything the whole day - except to pay Mr Phong something towards his time and for the wonderful, enormous helpings of food we had for lunch. Excellent!!

I will post photos later - they've put gaffa tape over the cd rom drives here, and the other internet place I went to was so slow I could have flown home and told people my stories before the page would load...