Same Same...But Different

Hi everyone! I'm in Phnom Penh, Cambodia at the moment but I haven't updated for nearly a week so I will rewind to where I last left off in Vietnam.















From Hanoi, we took an overnight train to the ancient imperial city of Hue (pronounced "hway"). It is located just south of the the Demilitarized Zone which was the designation between the North and the South during the war. The city is separated by the Perfume River, on one half is the ancient ruins of the Nguyen Dynasty which includes a large palatial citadel and numerous interesting historical remains. The other side is much more urban and modernized. It is not nearly as fast paced as Hanoi, yet it does have the feel of an urban city. I was only there for a day and a half, but it was very memorable. Our group got an amazing motorbike tour of the city and countryside. The country is only a short ride from the main city, but the difference is striking. We drove through vast rice fields and small villages. The countryside is so beautiful and green. We stopped for a break in a small village and I got a chance to talk to a local women who tried to sell me a drink. She was very friendly and I could tell she was very poor so I was happy to buy a coke off of her. She told me that she has never been outside of Hue. A lot of other local people I've talked to have told me the same thing and it makes me realize how lucky I am to come into a foreign country and see so much of it, when so many of the local people can't even afford to travel outside of their hometown.

Another highlight of the tour was visiting a conical hat maker seen here that was born with only one arm because her mother worked out in the fields and used agricultural chemicals on the crops. Her father was killed in the Vietnam War (The American War from the Vietnamese perspective). She has been making conical hats for 30 years and can only make about 3 a day due to her disability. I bought one for 20,000 dong which is a little over a dollar. Once again, it makes me thankful for what I have.

We traveled to a bunker in the country that was close to the famous battle at Hamburger Hill. Apparently it got that name because so many people died in the battle that the hill was rotting with corpses and looked like a hamburger. Being in such a beautiful place with lush plant life and green hills, it was hard to imagine that such horrible things took place there.


This is a picture of a monk setting himself on fire to protest the South Vietnamese president's Anti-buddhist policies. It is on the cover of a Rage Against the Machine Album. The monk who did it was actually trained in the temple that we visited. In the early 60's, he drove to Saigon, got out of his car, doused himself with gasoline and lit himself on fire. It was pretty amazing to see such the actual car from such a famous incident. I don't think that Buddhist teaching actually promotes self immolation as a valid means of protest, rather this monk was acting on his own behalf in an attempt to send a message to the people that discriminating against Buddhists is wrong.

Here are some random pictures I took in Hue:

From Hue, we drove over a large mountain pass into the ancient trading town of Hoi An. It is a small, slightly touristy town that is sort of a cross between Luang Prabang and Chiang My. When we first got in, the town looked kind of shitty in rundown and I thought to myself: "why the hell are we staying here for 3 nights?" But once we arrived and walked around in the town I could see why. It has a really nice small town feel and the weather is excellent. It wasn't cold and overcast like Hue. It was warm and only slightly cloudy. The town is close to the beach as well. The local hawkers are aggressive as usual in Vietnam, yet a lot more personable. They all have a funny sense of humor and can speak english really well because they deal with a lot of tourists. One of the main businesses in Hoi An is clothing. There are about 200 different shops that will custom make clothes. A lot of people in my group planned on getting clothes made, but I told myself that I wouldn't do it because my bag was too full. That all changed on the second day when I met a charming young lady about my age. She approached me and asked me all sorts of personal questions like most of the Vietnamese do: Where are you from? How old are you? Are you married? Do you have a girlfriend? I figured she was just trying to sell me something, but as it turned out she was being genuine. I mentioned that I had considered buying a suit and before I knew it she was grabbing me by the hand and leading me across the market to her cousin's shop where I could get an excellent suit made. Before I know it I had picked out two fabrics and was handing over my credit card to get suits custom made. I got 2 suits and three dress shirts for about $175, which is an amazing deal, plus they are custom made for my body. After making my purchase I immediately regretted it since it was so spontaneous and I didn't even know if the suits were going to be high quality or not. But the next day when I tried them on and saw how good they looked on my, I knew I made the right decision.



Since then, I've had a few other funny experiences in Hoi An. After trying on my suit I was in the suave GQ metrosexual mood so I decided to buy myself some nice cologne. As I walked through the market, a lady yelled at me to buy from her and asked me what I was looking for. I told her and she grabs me by the hand and takes me to her friends stall. For the next 20 minutes she tries to help me pick out a cologne as I spray her and myself. I don't like any of the colognes, but end up buying to pairs of boxer shorts that turned out to be too small and some shower gel that I actually needed. After buying all that stuff I walked through the market some more and realized that I needed a haircut. I was considering going to a place near the hotel when a lady started talking to me again, trying to get me to buy some T-shirts. I mentioned to her that I had to get a haircut and she grabs me by the arm and leads me across the market to her friends massage parlor. See a pattern here? The lady there yells at me "My husband will give you haircut, he's very good!" Two seconds later, the husband appears on a motorbike and tells me "Its two minutes away, hop on!" I try to resist, but the Vietnamese are very convincing and the next thing I know I'm riding on the back of this guy's bike across town to some back alley haircut place that he apparently owns. I bartered him down to 40,000 dong for the haircut, but ended up giving him the whole 50,000 because he did a pretty good job.



















All those experiences and interactions with the friendly locals really left me with a good feeling about the entire area. Its really funny how everyone knows everyone and people just lead me around, convincing me to buy stuff.








































In addition to buying clothes that I may or may not actually need, I rented a motorbike again and drove all over the town and countryside. It was so much fun. We had 4 bikes between the 6 of us and we gunned it down the street on the outskirts of town. I was probably only going about 50 mph but it felt a lot faster with the wind in my face. We drove out into the countryside and got to see what Vietnam is really like: 80% of the population lives in small villages and farms for a living. The kids would wave and yell "hello" at us as we went past. The fun day was dampened a bit when my tour guide got arrested and had her bike confiscated for driving down the wrong side of the street, driving without registration and driving without a license. The penalty wasn't that bad, only a few hundred thousand dong, but it scared me enough to call it a day even though I had half a tank of gas still left.

























After spending a few days in beautiful Hoi An, we drove to De Nang and caught a short plane trip to Ho Chi Minh City. On the plane ride I fell asleep and right after we woke up our plane slammed into something and everything shook. I thought I was done for, but then realized we were just landing. It took me about 5 minutes before my heart fully calmed down from that traumatic incident.



Ho Chi Minh City is insane. HCM is extremely hot and humid, kind of like Bangkok. A few minutes after leaving my air conditioned hotel I would be drenched with sweat. There are ten million people in the city and at anytime I would guess nine million of them are driving around on their motorbikes, clogging the roads. I didn't think anything could top Hanoi, but Ho Chi Minh city definitely falls in that category. We were only there for a day in a half but I managed to wander into the biggest traffic jam known to mankind outside of a school right as classes got out. Parents were picking up their kids and it was pure chaos. Even the locals didn't dare venture out into the madness to try and cross the street.



We went to the Museum of War Remnants (formerly the Museum of American War Crimes). It consisted mostly of photographs of the war and surprisingly showed both sides of the conflict. It wasn't very informational, but as they say a picture speaks a thousand words. It was really strange to see all these pictures of the fighting and then read where it took place: Hanoi, Saigon, Hue, De Nang.... all places that I have traveled to on this trip. Like I said before its so hard to fathom that such horrific fighting and violence took place in all of these beautiful and interesting places that I have been to. Another interesting exhibit in the museum was a section on different countries protesting the Vietnam War. There were countries from all over the world displaying displeasure with the war and the US involvement. They even showed actual protests in the US and the incident in Ohio when the National Guard killed four protesters. I'm glad that the US protesters were recognized because it shows that there is an understanding of the distinction between the governmental actions and the beliefs and attitudes of the citizens of the country. It was especially difficult to look at the pictures of the My Lai massacre and the victims of agent orange mutations. But it is good that they were displayed so that people can be reminded of the horrors of war and how it can terribly warp the human spirit to carry out such atrocities. In addition to the War Museum we visited the Cu Chi tunnels. It was an hour and a half out of the way and I wasn't sure if it was worth driving that far to see a few holes in the ground, but it turned out to be well worth it. Our guide was an interesting character who served in the war with the Americans and spent five years in a re-education camp after the war ended. He didn't speak to us, but rather yelled...in a friendly, energetic way that is. I understood about 60% of what he said, but he was still very informative. It was amazing to see this vast network of tunnels and booby traps that the Viet Cong utilized during the war. They created a larger version of the tunnels for tourists to experience, but it was still too cramped, hot and dark for me to venture inside. I can't imagine living in the tunnels for months at a time.


























I was happy to be leaving Ho Chi Minh because it is such a dirty, hot and overcrowded town. It was nice to experience it for a day, but that was enough for me. Yesterday we said goodbye to Vietnam and boarded a bus bound for Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I was kind of sad to leave Vietnam because I really enjoyed the people and I was there for almost 10 days so I had grown accustomed to the culture and the language. I know how to say I'm drunk, cheers, rice wine, I am happy, I love it here, hello, goodbye, thank you, too expensive, go away, and you are beautiful. A few more weeks and I would be nearly fluent.




My first impression of Cambodia is that the people are very poor (this picture doesn't really capture that statement, but just take my word for it). There are a lot of beggers living on the streets. There are even families with small children in babies who sleep on the street and look very unhealthy. It is sad to see so much poverty all out in the open but that is a fact of life in a third world country. It is even hotter than HCM and the infrastructure is severely lacking. There are large piles of garbage in the streets and it reeks of raw sewage in certain ares.



Today we travled to the Tuol Sleng Prison here in town. This is the main prison area that the Khmer Rouge used to interrogate, torture and starve more than 17,000 people during their reign of terror between 1975-1979. For those of you that aren't familiar with Cambodian history, the Khmer Rouge was an extremist communist regime that came to power in 1975 and carried out the genocide of nearly 2 million Cambodians in an attempt to rid the country of the educated class and revert the people back to an agrarian farming community of the stone age. During this time, 1 in 5 Cambodians were killed by Khmer Rouge. After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, the prison was turned into a museum to document the genocide and atrocities that were committed there. It consited of pictures of all the people staring into the camera, moments before their were executed. There were also some very graphic pictures of tortue and mutilation. It was pretty difficult to take all this in, but it was also a really informative experience. Our guide was extremely knowledgeable and very thorough. He lost 5 brothers and sisters and his father to the Khmer Rouge, yet he was able to speak with amazing clarity and detachment about this dark period of Cambodian history. Despite his veneer of detachment, I sensed glimpses of torment and rage as he walked us through the prison and spoke in detail about how prisoners were raped, tortured, killed and starved all in the name of a bizarre and horrific idealogy.



After the prison, we went to the Killing Fields, which is the spot where the guards shipped the prisoners to be murdered and then dumped in mass graves. There were still remnents of bone and clothing as we walked through the fields which consisted of large craters were the mass graves were dug up. In the center of the field was a memorial pagoda containing hundreds of skulls found in the fields.

It was an emotionally draining and deppressing day, but I'm glad that I experienced it because it reminds me that horrible things really do happen, but hopefully we can learn from them. Before booking this trip, I had never heard of what happened here and I don't think a lot of other people my age know about it either. But after today I really want to learn more about it, how these people came to power, why they committed these atrocities and what was done to punish them.

Tomorrow we are flying to Siam Reap where the famous Angkor Wat temples are located. The tour is almost over and I still have not figured out what I'm going to do afterwards. I have 2-3 weeks. Originally I planned on staying just in Thailand but now I'm thinking it would be nice to see a few other countries, plus plane tickets within Southeast Asia are usually pretty cheap. I'm thinking maybe Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia or the Philippines, or all of the above. If anyone has any feedback or has travled to those countries, let me know what you think. I appreciate everyone's support and comments...the next time I update I'll probably be back in Bangkok. Talk to you later!