Video links

I forgot to mention that I have now worked out how to upload some of our videos to You Tube - I have put links to these on the blog. Unfortunately I haven't yet worked out how to rotate some of the videos so you may get seasick watching them on the side until I work out how to do this!

Last day in Saigon

We have now met up with Paul's friends Angus and Debbie who have come to travel with us for the next two weeks. We spent the last few days before they arrived checking out the History Museum and the Museum of Ho Chi Minh City. We also took the bus out to Cholon (Chinatown) and checked out the market there (which was absolutely huge) and a few of the pagodas. We also had a relaxing day where we had our hair cut and went to see a movie (Fast and Furious 4). The cinema was really nice and the quality of the movie was good too (pretty sure this one wasn't pirated!).

The local buses around HCM City are really cheap. They are all air conditioned and they only cost 3000 dong per ticket (less than US$0.25). I don't think that many tourists use the buses though - I haven't seen any tourists on them. It is kind of hard to use them unless you know where the name of the bus stop where you are going, but it is easy enough to catch the local buses between Cholon and Ben Thanh (the central market) for example or between the interstate bus station and Ben Thanh.

We didn't realise that Angus and Debbie were arriving right before a big Vietnamese holiday which lasts for three days. Our plans to go to Dalat were foiled because there are hardly any buses running during this time and the ones that were running were all full. Luckily, we managed to nab seats on the bus to Mui Ne which is a beach town north of HCM City so we will head there for a few days before going to Dalat.

23rd April 2009 – Can Tho

Our last week in Cambodia was fun as it collided with the Khmer New Year when everything was happening.

What Naomi forgot to mention was that when we were in Kratie, I decided to explore an island in the Mekong River on a bike by myself while she was lying in bed pretending to be sick. It seemed a great idea at the time.

After I endured a ride on a small boat carrying the bike with 20 people sitting on the edge of the boat when the waterline was only 10cm from the edge, I soon realised that this was probably not for the faint-hearted.

After we landed on the beach, first someone fell out of the boat accidentally, then I discovered that we had to jump into the knee-deep water and walk all the way up the beach. It was okay for commuters with not much luggage. It turned out to be struggle for me with my hired bike which had to go into the water then had to be dragged up a 200m long beach and then up a hill. Before I even started riding, I was charmingly covered in sweat.

The island was a big contrast to Kratie as it was a very rural community with mostly straw housing. I am not even sure whether they had electricity in the houses. It was however calm and tranquil riding my bike along beside cattle, haystacks, and heaps of friendly locals sitting outside their straw houses watching me and my beach mat in curiosity. They all seemed very interested in my mat for some reason.

After about 30 minutes of riding, my butt started to ache big time from the bumps on the dirt road. I decided to turn around and rode to the other side of the island. I stopped by this cliff and sat on a bench to read my book and enjoy some quiet time.

As usual, my peace and quiet time did not last long. After I was about 20 pages into the book, the wind started to pick up, and within 2 minutes, it became a gale and then the rain followed. I have not seen wind as strong as that for a long long time. If you can imagine the rain falling at an almost horizontal level, you kinda get the gist. Outdoor furniture of some of the houses started to fly off into the air, my bike got blown over, pots and plates were everywhere. I was sheltering behind this wooden straw house when the roof started making creaking noises. I seriously thought if the wind was any stronger, the whole roof would just fly to the beach.

I don't get scared easily. But at the time, I was petrified. I had no idea the weather on the Mekong could turn so suddenly and I had no where strong enough to shelter.

Life is so unfair! Naomi was eating chocolate and watching TV in our air-conditioned room when I got back drenched by the rain.

The rest of our time in Phnom Penh was good. We stayed only one night before we came over to Saigon in Vietnam.

Cambodia turned out to be an amazing country. I am surprised how many people speak English and how friendly some of these people are. Although the country is severely hit by poverty and corruption, the attitude of the people and the hope that Cambodians conveyed was memorable.

Saigon, Vietnam

As soon as we entered Vietnam from Cambodia, I discovered that everything is a lot more developed. Power lines everywhere, concrete buildings were also everywhere.

We were scared of Saigon when we first got here. There were countless motorbikes and cars on the road. Naomi was scared of crossing the road by herself. Apparently, according to her, it's harder to hit 2 people together than one. Go figure.

I was once stuck in the middle of a 4 lane road during peak hour with thousands of scooters and cars shot past me and missed me by centimetres. It was NOT fun!

After I got used to the traffic, I started to appreciate how big this city is. Apparently unofficially 9 million people live here. It takes hours to go from one side of the city to the other side.

Food is amazing here. We have been pretty much eating all Vietnamese food as soon as we got here and are still going strong. We have also discovered a night market full of cheap, yummy and traditional food which we went to 3 nights in a row. Vietnamese food taste so much better here in Vietnam. I love Vietnamese food in Brisbane, but the food here is just so much better in variety and flavour. Not mentioning how cheap it is to eat here too.

We went to the War Remnants Museum a few days ago and it was full of a lot of propaganda about the Vietnam war and the France-Vietnam war. They do have some interesting artifacts, but the explanatory plaques were not exactly objective.

Can Tho is where the floating markets are in the Mekong Delta. We stayed in this hotel for US$10 per night which we thought was a bargain. After we settled in, we decided to go and hunt for a boat which could take us to the markets the next day.

Prices seemed to fluctuate greatly here for foreigners. We had people offering us boats from US$40 to US$60. After some heated bargaining, one boat driver agreed on our maximum price of US$35, which still appeared to be inflated.

We ate at this local beef restaurant in the side-streets because we could not afford to eat anywhere that had an English menu. It worked out well, we were the only foreigners in the whole restaurant, which in fact was fully packed. As we had no idea what steamboat to order (which everyone else was eating), we ordered beef noodle soup for less than US$1 each. Bargain! It was really yummy too. It was fun eating in local restaurants and just point to whatever is on the menu.

The floating markets were a lot smaller than expected. The Mekong was however majestic to say the least. It was so wide that it would be easily 200 metres wide. We went through small canals on the way back. Because it was low tide and not much water was in the canals, it turned out to be very difficult for our boat driver. She had to jump out to push our stuck boat out of the mud. It was pretty foul as the mud was knee deep and who knows what was in there.

We were pretty glad to get back to our hotel in one piece. It was very hot in the middle of the day and 8 hours of cruising was more than enough for me for one day on a small wooden longtail. Oh, by the way, we had a 5:30am start. I nearly fell into the Mekong after I accidentally fell asleep in the longtail.

We are now back to Saigon for a few more days for Naomi to go to every single market there is here to do her souvenir shopping.

22 April 2009 - First week in Vietnam

We finished up our last week in Cambodia by making a trip up to Kratie in the north to see the rare Irrawaddy dolphin which lives in the Mekong river. We have realised that whenever anyone tells you how long it is going to take to get somewhere on the bus you should add at least two hours to whatever they say. Getting to Kratie took a total of about 7 hours for what was supposed to be a four hour trip! Kratie town is quite small but has a really nice location right on the Mekong – you can see across the river to a big island where people live.

We stayed in the Oudam Sambath hotel which was quite expensive as it was right in the middle of the Khmer New Year (US$20 per night). Actually everything was expensive for the three days of New Year. The hotel charged us $10 each for a moto to the dolphin viewing area which was about 14km north of town (we probably could have gotten a ride from the market for about $4). Then it cost us $9 each to go on the boat to see the dolphins (Cambodian people paid $2).

The boat trip lasted about 45 minutes and we saw about 6 different dolphins. Some came quite close to the boat but I was pleased that the drivers didn't use the motor close to the dolphins. Apparently there are only about 100 dolphins left in Cambodia...

We also spent a few days hanging out in Phnom Penh, seeing the Royal Palace (vastly overpriced at US$6.25 per person – don't bother), picking up our Vietnamese visa and seeing Wat Phnom which was quite a sight during New Year with tonnes of families and kids running around throwing water and talcum powder over each other. Just a hint for anyone heading to Phnom Penh – in total we stayed in four hotels/guesthouses and we found Okay Guesthouse by far the best of the bunch. The rooms were really clean and reasonably priced (we paid US$10 for hot water, cable tv and air con) and they can arrange any kind of tour or bus ticket. Steer well clear of the Royal Guesthouse (bedbugs!).

We took the bus from Phnom Penh to HCM City (Saigon) on Saturday 18 April ($9). It was pretty strange crossing the border that way – a guy on our bus took our passports and our entry cards and gave them to the border guards who stamped all the passports and then called our names and let us through the gate one by one.

We had booked a guesthouse in HCM City through www.hostelworld.com as we wanted to have something waiting for us when we got there. The bus dropped us right off on Pham Ngu Lau (the backpacker district) and our guesthouse (Vy Khanh) was just down a little alley off that street. It's a really nice guesthouse (US$15 per night) with everything you could want and the family that runs it is really nice. The location is really good because it's central to everything but it's not too loud and it's nice to walk down the little alleys looking into people's houses.

We spent a few days seeing things around HCM City including the War Remnants Museum which has a lot of relics and photos from the war, the Museum of HCM City and the big central market Ben Thanh. We also made a trip to the post office to pick up my parcel from poste restante (of the clothes I want to get copied in Hoi An) – confusing!! If anyone is wondering – pick up the ticket with the details of your parcel at the main post office, then head around the back of the same block to the international mail section where you actually pick up the parcel. It took about 45 mins to work that out and we squeaked in just before the 5pm closing time. Most importantly, Paul got the computer screen fixed and it only ended up costing US$80 which was better than expected.

HCM City is massive and there is soooo much traffic. However, we have found that the driving here isn't really any crazier than the driving in Cambodia – it's just that there's so many more vehicles! The craziest thing we have seen are the powerlines – you would not believe how many powerlines can be attached to one single pole!

As usual, everyone here thinks that Paul is Vietnamese – they all talk to him in Vietnamese which he doesn't understand of course. That has to be some kind of record – now he has been Malay Malaysian, Chinese Malaysian, Iban Malaysian, Khmer and Vietnamese! I think it's pretty funny – he has been trying to learn how to say “I don't speak Vietnamese” in Vietnamese as he's positive it will be the phrase he uses most!

Since we got to Vietnam we have totally abandoned our safe eating rules (to the extent that we were still following them). The salads are just too good to pass up! We met up with Paul's friend and his fiancee who took us out for a delicious seafood meal. We have also been eating tonnes of the national specialty pho (noodle soup) as well as rice vermicelli salads and this yummy ice dessert thing that has coconut milk on top (not sure what that's called). We are still drinking tonnes of ice lemon juice (it's called da chanh here).

Today we caught the bus from HCM City south to a city called Can Tho which is close to a number of floating markets. After wandering around the waterfront for a few hours this evening we managed to reduce the price for an eight hour boat trip around the markets and the canals from US$60 to $35 (still pricey but not that bad). So that's what we're off to do tomorrow. After we spend a few days here we are thinking of heading up to an area called Dalat which is up in the mountains and is supposed to be a bit cooler. Then it's back to HCM City to meet up with Angus who is coming to spend a few weeks with us.

Food and drink

What have we been eating and drinking so far in Cambodia?

Cambodians seem to eat anything and everything! We have seen Cambodians buying little plastic bags of deep fried crickets from the ladies balancing big cane baskets on their heads, and crunching into them like they were potato chips! However, both of us being soft, we have stayed away from these kinds of delicacies, including the deep fried tarantulas and the really big insects that look kind of like giant cockroaches.

Lots and lots of restaurants around Phnom Penh do western food, including tonnes of pizza, pasta, burgers and English breakfasts. Mostly we try to stick to the Cambodian food, although we have had a few "relapses". The breads and pastries here are amazing. Most mornings (if I am up before midday) I will have a fresh plain French baguette and a glass of the iced coffee or tea they do here (both really strong and made with tonnes of ice and condensed milk). Cambodian people often eat pho for breakfast (noodle soup, usually with beef) which I have had a few times (although I'm more likely to have it for lunch). Paul can't come at noodle soup for breakfast so he usually has omelette or scrambled eggs. If I can find the ladies walking around with the baskets of fresh donuts and sugary pastries on their heads then I will have those. Yummy!!

We have found that the cost of eating lunch and dinner can range from very cheap (just US$1) to very expensive but you can usually get an average meal for US$3 - $4 and a very nice meal for $10. How well we eat depends how much money we have left at the end of the day! As we are supposed to be sticking to a budget of only US$20 per day this sometimes isn't much!

As for traditional Cambodian food, I can safely say that our favourite is amok fish (a kind of steamed fish curry). I think it has coconut milk and lemongrass in it. Whatever it is, it is really yummy. There are tonnes of other yummy Cambodian dishes, lots of which seem to have Thai or Vietnamese flavours (but without the Thai spice!!). We have of course eaten lots of noodle soup, fried rice and fried noodles as sometimes this is the only thing on the menu that we can afford! The couple of times we have had western food we have ended up paying more. A large pizza here in Phnom Penh costs around US$8 - $12 but you could get a burger for less.

Cambodia pretty much has any kind of drink that you could want. We have continued to drink a lot of coconuts as they are really refreshing when it is hot. Diet coke always tastes amazing when I get really hot. Our new favourite drink is iced lemon juice. It is literally water with fresh squeezed lemon and tonnes of ice and sugar. Mmmmm. Cans of drink are usually US$0.50 at the supermarket and can be up to three times that at a restaurant. Luckily lots of the hostels come with a minibar for their US$15 price tag so that we can stock them with tonnes of supermarket drinks. Most non-alcoholic drinks will be US$1 at a restaurant.

As long as you go during happy hour, alcohol can be quite cheap here. You can usually get Angkor Beer for US$0.50 per can and cocktails for as little as US$1.50 or US$2. Still, at US$20 per day we still can't fit in many cocktails, especially as Paul's birthday celebrations have blown the budget right out of the water!!! - N

Paul's birthday debacle...

We first arrived in Phnom Penh on Tuesday 7 April. Because Wednesday 8 April was Paul's birthday, we decided to spring for a better hotel for a couple of nights and booked a room at the Bougainvillier Hotel on 10 and 11 April. We were quite excited at the thought of spending Paul's "birthday week" not worrying about money.

We woke up on the morning of Paul's birthday having planned to get massages and go shopping in air conditioned comfort in one of the big shopping centres in Phnom Penh. Unfortunately, Paul decided to check his laptop before we left in the morning and when he opened it up he saw the screen had been cracked!! It must have happened in the bus as it was in his backpack in the luggage compartment and may have gotten banged around.

That meant that the morning of his birthday was spent ringing the insurance company and figuring out how to get the laptop fixed. Despite this mishap we still managed to have a good day and squeezed in some shopping and a massage before going for a sunset cruise on the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers followed by dinner at a French restaurant. The river cruise was really nice and could have been quite romantic if Paul didn't ask me "If a cow died in the Mekong in Laos, could it float all the way down to Phnom Penh?"!!!

Unfortunately, Paul's bad luck hadn't ended with the computer!! That night we found bed bugs crawling all over Paul's bed in the hostel. We asked to move to a new room but the hostel said they were fully booked. By this time it was past midnight so we didn't have much choice but to stay. The hostel took the bed away and gave poor Paul a campbed!! Then during the night Paul got really sick and threw up! So much for the lovely French dinner.

The next day Paul was still feeling terrible with the tummy bug but we had to move hostels because of the bed bugs - there was still one night before we were due to check into the fancy hotel. Paul spent that day pretty much out of action and he couldn't even finish the two slices of birthday cake I bought him the day before :(

The next day we had to go and apply for a Vietnamese visa at the embassy. We decided to go straight to the embassy to get our visa instead of getting one of the numerous tour companies in town to arrange it for us as we figured it would be cheaper. So, we arranged to get a tuk tuk there and back (to our hotel) for US$4. Alas!! When we got there we realised the embassy was closed between 11.30am - 2.30pm!! There was a cop stationed out front who had a stack of application forms and offered to process our visa for us but we were somewhat suspicious so we elected to come back during opening hours. Thwarted, we arranged for the tuk tuk driver to take us to the Tuol Sleng (S21) museum for an hour or so while we waited for the embassy to open again.

When we finally started back to the embassy we realised that we had forgotten our headshots for our visa application!!!! So, it was all the way back to the hotel to get our photos and then back to the embassy. This jacked the price of the tuk tuk up to US$7. Aaargh! When we finally got back to the embassy we realised that the price of the visa was US$35 anyway - which seemed to be what the tour companies charged anyway!! I don't know how they make money... Anyway, hopefully our visas will be waiting on Monday morning for us. We have elected 18 April as our entry date to Vietnam.

Even the two nights in the (vastly overpriced) fancy hotel were kind of ruined cos he was still feeling sick and couldn't take full advantage of the buffet breakfast. Also, true to form, he had decided he wanted to go to a seafood buffet for his birthday and the only hotel in town which seems to do one is Raffles Hotel Le Royal. Being sick, he couldn't really get his US$30 worth! Oh well, it was still nice... I had to go out and buy a new outfit just so they wouldn't kick me out (they have a dress code, you know).

After a week of mishap and misadventure he last night agreed to take some medicine out of the veritable pharmacy I have been carrying around in my bag. Hopefully this will soon fix him up! - N

5th of April 2009 – Sihanouk ville

Gosh, I haven't blogged for ages. I am pleasantly surprised by Cambodia overall so far. Everyone here is superbly friendly, food has been great, transport has been easy, and broken English seems to be enough for us to get by. I am happy.

Siem Reap

Siem Reap was absolutely amazing. I met this Australian backpacker guy in our hostel in Siem Reap who was there 3 years ago and said he hardly recognised the town anymore this time around. That pretty much summed up how things are moving in Siem Reap.

Most people go to Siem Reap to visit the ancient temples. Guess what? So did we. It's surreal to walk through the thousand year old temples and visualise thousands of monks praying, chanting and meditating in unison.

Wandering around in some of the larger temples like Angkor Wat and Bayon made us very hot and tired. I was however also awed by these temples. Angkor Thom was a royal temple city that used to accommodate a million people. And Angkor Wat is pretty much the size of the whole Brisbane CBD. Despite their magnitude in size, they were very well preserved and it 's easy to see how symmetrical that they once were. 4 faces of all buildings were built precisely to the 4 directions.

The interior of Preah Khan was like a maze. Thanks to the tour guide that I got conned into to hiring, I went to see a section of the temple that would not have been visited by many tourist in the past which was once the queens' chambers.

The children selling stuff at the temples were nothing but nuisance. It's a pity that Naomi was always besides me. I discovered that these kids think that I am Cambodian and whenever I walk by myself, they tend to leave me alone as they think that I am not interested in their stuff. I did get sucked into buying something from these kids when I was with Naomi at times. After all, 50 cents probably is a lot to these kids.

Siem Reap is a great place to party. There is even a street called the 'pub street'. With happy-hour 50 cent beers flowing from 10am to midnight, I was very surprised that most backpackers were still sober by dinner time. But then again, we didn't meet too many Aussies in town to lighten the spirit.

Battambang

Battambang is the second largest city in Cambodia. We were there to look at these French colonial shop-house buildings. There were pretty interesting. I felt like as if we were back in time. The photos turned out pretty good. The town itself is otherwise quite boring.

I went on a moto-excursion to an old temple about 25 minutes outside town. The temple is nothing too special. But on the way back we stopped at the fish-paste market and the bamboo sticky-rice village.

Fish paste seriously stinks in production. They cut the fish open, and leave it in water for a few days in the open, then move them to a big barrel and add salt and water to it and store it for 1 month before they bottle it. It's seriously rotten and disgusting. I nearly spewed when I was walking through the market.

Sticky rice in bamboo is soooo nice. It smelt awesome and tasted great. They cook it with coconut cream and banana scented as they wrapped the bottom of the bamboo with banana leaves before cooking it. After I tried a little bit from my driver, I simply couldn't put them down. I had a whole one and decided to buy another one for Naomi who was resting in our hostel.

We also stopped by this Khmer Rouge killing field memorial on the way back. My guide who was probably younger than me was explaining how his parents were forced to move from the city to the country and plough the rice field as it was cheaper to use forced labour than cows. His parents told him that if you couldn't work, you would be dragged aside and executed later as you were meaningless to the government.

The memorial also showed some human skulls and bones that were later found in the mass grave near the memorial. It was also very powerful that there were paintings on the walls that depicted a part of the events happened during the Khmer Rouge reign that many would probably choose to forget.

We also spent one day doing a tuk-tuk tour around Battambang. As most of the roads were dirt-roads with some holes almost half the size of our tuk-tuk, it was bumpy to say the least. Naomi nearly fell off the tuk-tuk a few times and I almost ended up with a few bruises on my butt.
The country side was very flat and long. It would have been pretty scenic if it was during the rice season. There were a lot of kids offering to be our tour guide. It's almost impossible to say no to these kids. Once you say no, they ploy another tactic against you - “sorry sir, we no money for school and food. No mama and no papa. Please give us some money...” Luckily I have the advantage of saying “Me not speak English, do you speak Taiwanese???”. Unfortunately Naomi doesn't have much luck in that department and just have to content to have her head “shaved” as the locals put it.

Battambang is interesting, but by far, it's the most boring town in places we have been in Cambodia.

Sihanouk Ville

We could not resist from coming to Cambodia and not go to its famed beach. The beach had some nice sand and little rubbish, but the water was too hot for me to fully enjoy myself. I felt like I was having a hot bath in the salty water. It's bit green too. Most Europeans (and Naomi) seemed to enjoy themselves tremendously in the hot water.

It was very relaxing just chilling out on the sand and having a cold drink in the arvo and reading my book. Seafood dinner on the beach also proved to be a highlight of our stay here. A whole snapper bbq-ed together with salad and chips only cost me US$4. Soooo cheap!

We were there for 3 and half days and felt like we could have spent another few more just putting out feet up and relaxing for a bit. We could start to understand why backpackers more often than not pick small beach towns to relax and take a break from their immensely stressful self-searching journey around the globe.

We arrived in Phnon Penh on 7th of April just in time for a special day in our calendar – yep, my birthday.

Happy Easter

Just a quick note to wish everyone a very happy Easter. We are currently in Phnom Penh having spent a fewdays in Battambang and a few days at the beach in Sihounoukville. We leave for Vietnam sometime around 20 April and hope to check out the northeast areas before then...

Apologies!

We are gradually building up a backlog of photos which we haven't yet managed to put into the album. This is mainly because we only have three weeks in Cambodia and so we're going at breakneck pace trying to fit it all in. Also, we took so many photos of the temples that it took half a day to load them all up!

I plan to eventually ensure that we get back on track - whenever Paul will let me have another rest day (apparently this is "wasting time"!) - N.

I'm a sucker!!

I entered Cambodia with this idea that there was NO WAY that I would give any money to begging kids or buy anything off the kids selling stuff on the street. I had decided that, since there was a good possibility that the kids had been forced by some adult to go begging and would probably not reap the rewards of their hard labour, it was better not to encourage the trend. It also meant that they were missing school (provided that they could afford to go) and staying up well past what should be their bedtime. I thought it would be better to make a donation to some NGO geared towards helping poor kids.

But seriously, there is only so much "Lady, Lady, you buy from me! I give you special price! Ten postcards for one dollar! See - one, two, three, four..." that a person can take! Around every temple or tourist attraction there is a hoard of kids with their dusty feet and their big eyes pleading for you to buy their postcards, bracelets or photocopied books. And there's so many ways they can get to you!

The other day I stopped at the foot of the stairs to a temple near Battambang and was immediately surrounded by three girls of around 10 who started chatting to me about where I was from. When we started to climb up to the temple, they all started coming too. I thought that this was pretty cute - I had obviously made such an impression on these girls that they wanted to climb all the way to the temple with me on a 30 degree+ day!

It was only when we got to the second flight of stairs that we became suspicious - shortly thereafter we realised that by letting them all come up with us we were inadvertently hiring three "tour guides" and we would be bound to give them all some kind of payment once they guided us to the top of the staircase and pointed to the temple. (If we refused to pay we would have had to look at their faces which would have been much, much worse). So we had to send them down.

When we finally got to the top of the staircase, a chubby little toddler came running over (prompted by Granny lying in the shade) yelling "Hello, hello!" and gave me a flower. Well, with Granny keeping an eye on me from a distance and this little girl looking up at me beseechingly, what was I going to do??? And all this was after we had paid a miniature tour guide at the previous tourist attraction for pointing us down to some caves that we were having difficulty finding!!!! - N.