Melanie and Steve, Around the World in __ Days

Thursday, March 04, 2004


sue-sid-eye (our own phoenetic spelling) from Cambodia, Phnom Phen

We've fallen for each country in Asia. We were sad to leave Laos, but Vietnam turned out to be it's own unique and unforgettable experience. When Vietnam came to an end, we didn't want to let it go. But the good news is, Cambodia has made a powerful first impression and looks like it's going to be equally incredible - and maybe more indescribeable than the other countries. The depth of the recent pain and history here pervades, and without seeing it first hand, words just don't seem to cover it.

HIGHLIGHTS: PHNOM PHEN

-PK: Met our new guide, PK, short for Phal Kun. He made a great first impression, and we soon learned, is a perfect representative for the people we have and will meet in this special country. He has lived through some unspeakable challenges and losses in his life due to the Pol Pot regime, yet he is so warm, joyful, ever smiling, ever helpful, and willing to speak, field questions, and take time out very personally. We've found that other's with similar experiences as his are also as warm. Sometimes it's difficult to believe how they do it.

-NITH: Met Nith, who we expect to get together with after our guided tour ends. Nith works with Kampuchea for Christ, a cheritable Christian Organization with a long list of good works and important causes. We hope to meet up with him in a week or so and help out. He exuded some of the same warm and special qualities as did PK.

-GREAT LOCAL MEALS: We've been fortunate enough to get some recomendations for food at genuine local spots. Sometimes the cost of this is the inability to communicate easily with the wait staff, or the inability to get some of the expected tourist type foods, but its all very worth it for the experience of reality and cheap good quisine. We've discovered that locals don't use menus, they just say what they want. The menus that the restaurants have are just crutches for the travellers, so it's been difficult for our guides to interpret what the menus say. Usually, everything on the menu is one dollar, U.S., no matter what it is.
---1) PK took us to a favorite corner market spot (for Khmer style spicy vegetable soup),
---2) Seang - a guide who took us around today, tried to take us to a tourist-frequented favorite of his. But Melanie asked him to take us somewhere more local - so he took us to a water front dining facilty where he says only locals go, and we think it's true because the workers were very amused and stairing at Melanie when she got up from the table to go to the squatty potty. The restaurant has no name. It can be referred to by the name of the lake over which it stands on stilts. There wasn't even a street sign for the alley on which it was located, and our driver got lost getting us there. The food - noodles, veggies (and for Steve, meat) was spectacular.
---3) And lastly, we befriended 22 year old Sok Bona, a worker at our hotel and he offered to take us out to show us his favorite after-work eats - - we wonder if he egretted taking us because we all needed his help in communicating our orders to the staff, so his outing turned into more stress than he may have anticipated, but the food was great.

-VERY HOT HERE, PERHAPS NOT A HIGHLIGHT: and Humid. Takes some getting used to. A couple of our co-travellers said they felt ill from the heat today. We find it uncomfortable, but after a little bit, you get used to it.

-S-21, HIGHSCHOOL TURNED PRISON: The Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, AKA S21 for Security Office 21 is where the Kmher Rouge took a highschool on 17 April 1975 and made it a horrible torture prison. They forced the students and the entire city to leave Phnom Phen, telling them it would only be for 3 days, and telling them which direction they had to go- even if it was not the same direction as other family members. Those three promised days turned out to last for 3 years, 8 months, and 20 days. Now the prison is a morbid and very eye opening museum which is testament to both the cruelty and stupidity of what went on there. Tortured inmates ("victims") would be interrogated, starved, tortured, and held there until the KR decided to have them killed. Then they'd be sent to the Killing fields to await execution.

-THE KILLING FIELDS: The ground is pocked with craters where there were mass graves. In the center is a monument pagoda with a glass display case 11 stories high stacked with the skulls dug up from 86 of the 129 mass graves excavated. The other bones have since been cremated, but the skulls were saved for the monument as a testament to the sheer numbers of deaths - one skull meant one person. On a "touring day" like today, one can't help but begin to feel a little ill, and to spend a great deal of time questioning ourselves - what it means to be human, how a human can become the way they were, how a surviving human spirit can be so strong. We've seen the movies, read the history - - seeing the real things and talking to the real people is so much more. PK, our guide, says he saw the movie Killing Fields, and what he went through in his opinion was much worse.

-THE ROYAL PALACE: The king still lives here when he's in town. But right now he's in China for medical reasons. We walked the grounds, looked at Buddhas, appreciated the ornate architecture. It was similar to the Royal Palace in Bangkok, but less gold and more spread out. Perhaps a little more comfortable.

-COLLOQUIALISMS AND AM WORKOUTS - A FUNNY STORY: Mel has learned that just like Vietnamese, Cambodians appreciate their early a.m. work outs. On arrival to Phnom Phen, Melanie was questioning PK on how safe it would be for her to go out alone into the city in the dark of morning before the sun rose. PK felt it would be just fine because there would already be so many other people out there doing their tai chi, badminton etc... the funny part of the story came when he tried to explain what type of people do that - get up so early, that is. We think he was trying to explain that the people of Cambodia have experienced many emotional traumas and have mental stresses, and it helps them to be physically fit. But remember that English is his second language, so the ways he expresses himself can sometimes be quite unique. He described people who work out so early in the morning as people with Mental Problems. I know that Steve, or a lot of people in our groups who think Melanie is "Crazy" for getting up so early to explore the cities would agree with him. As for me, Mel, it doesn't matter, once I get jogging, I just sort of zone out and I stop hearing the voices in my head. Just kidding.

Do Not underestimate the awesomeness of South East Asia when deciding where your future travels are to take you. It is so special here.


Tuesday, March 02, 2004


Greetings from Saigon - Ho Chi Minh City - the big city, 8 million people, and they're all in the middle of the street at the same time, it seems.

Crowded: Vietnam has 80 million people. (Australia, for contrast, just reached 20 million.) The streets here are a sea of people, and there is no road rage - despite many obstacles, people going every which way on the streets, and pedestrians like us getting in their way jay walking. Not uncommon to see a whole family - parents and children on a single motorcycle. Incredible sense of balance. Today, Steve saw a girl sleeping in her dad's lap on a motorbike.

Joke: told us by our Vietnamese Tour Guide:
A Bishop and a Vietnamese Taxi Driver go to the Pearly Gates. They let the Taxi Driver in, but they turn the Bishop away. The Bishop could not understand why and appealed the decision. The explanation he got: When you do your work, it makes some people sleep. When the Taxi driver does his work, it makes everyone pray. (You'd laugh, if you were here.)

Beautiful things: The women wear audai's - traditional silky long pants with full dress length shirts over them - very thin and flowy and beaufitul. Highschool girls wear them as uniforms and they look like angels - riding their bicycles down the streets, usually sitting with perfect proper posture. The saying is that these beautiful flowy gowns cover almost everything, but they hide almost nothing.


HIGHLIGHTS SINCE LAST BLOG: we're still in Vietnam, writing from Ho Chi Minh City now (former Saigon, and everybody still calls it Saigon.)

-NHA TRANG: our two days of R and R in a resort style beach city. We spent a day on the beach and a day on a boat. The boat day was unforgettable with snorkelling, diving off the boat's roof, swimming visiting a fishing village, signing up to parasail (though the speed boat broke so we got our money back instead of the ride), and seeing round basket boats used for fishing. It was all topped off with a feast on board our boat. Great two days. We loved it. Steve loved it whole heartedly. Though Melanie found it a little more resorty than she would choose, but that didn't stop her and Steve from enjoying the evenings at the Sailing Club basking on the warm sand shores relaxing with friends.

-HO CHI MINH CITY: Took an overnight train to Saigon and got started right away living up our two days here.

---WAR REMNANTS MUSEUM: Very eye opening experience educating us all about "The American War." Lots of amazing pictures, quotes and information. As with many museums we've seen in Nam, there are times you notice a bit of spin or propaganda, and the perspective is quite interesting when you are from the land of the 'enemies.' It reminded Melanie of wondering how tourists from Japan felt when visiting museums in Pearl Harbor. Steve found the descriptions of torture practices by the American backed Diem regime shocking. [Museums in the North Vietnam seemed to focus on the French in the first Indochina war while in the South the focus was on the "American War." ]

---REUNIFICATION PALACE: This is the building where tanks crashed through the fences on 30 April 1975 and hung the communist flag on the former Presidential Palace. The then General Minh, head of state for only days, said he'd been waiting for them in order to turn over power to them, the response was, you can not turn over what you do not have. Vietnam has been a united Communist country ever since.

---CU CHI TUNNELS: Got Dirty, and felt clastrophobic, sweated like crazy crawling through the tunnels that Viet Cong soldiers lived in for years during the war - underground, just meters below unknowing American troops.

---BINH SOUP SHOP: Ate Lunch at the hole-in-the-wall pho (noodle) restaurant where many Americans and South Vietnamese soldier ate during the war not knowing that it was the secret head quarters for the Viet Cong Infiltration where plans were made to bomb the American Embassy and other attacks in the '68 Tet offensive. The Owner was arrested after the Tet Offensive and nearly executed, but after the war, he went right back to serving noodles at this still unchanged hole-in-the-wall, just like before. Now his son owns the shop and proudly shows us pictures and news paper articles (but shows us no menu - it's a set meal - you just say whether you want pork, beef, or no-meat soup.)

Vietnam has been unforgettable. Tomorrow, Cambodia.
Expect that Vietnam will be a favorite travel destination in the future once Americans realize that Vietnamese are extremely welcoming.

Congrats to the New Foster Child (not as in "foster child") - welcome
Congrats to the New Rottenberg Child
and Congrats to the New Parker Child.






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