My family (that’s me, my mom, dad and younger sister) spent much of a recent month together on our epic Asian Adventure. The adventure included stops in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and, of course, Cambodia.
(Some pictures taken by my dad and sister.)
June 30 and July 1: The waiting game in Sisophon
I wait the entire afternoon and evening for my parents and sister to arrive. They told me they were spending last night in Bangkok and making their way to my house today via train and taxi. The journey is about seven hours, so I expect them to arrive by late afternoon.
After cleaning and buying breakfast goodies for the next day (baguettes and fruit), I spend the afternoon walking the orphanage grounds and telling everyone I encounter that my family will arrive any minute now.
That doesn’t happen. I still haven’t seen or heard from any of my family members by my usual bedtime of 8:30 p.m. After calling each of their Canadian cell phones again and receiving no reply, I begin praying — and I’m not the least bit religious.
I also make a plan. I will wake up at 1 a.m. and call my aunt, the only person I’m certain has my family’s flight itinerary. By now I’m convinced that their plane has gone down and that they’ll never arrive in Cambodia.
Thankfully, I don’t have to go through with the 1 a.m. telephone plan. I get a call from my mom at 11 p.m. Turns out they forgot that Cambodia is 11 hours ahead of their home in Toronto, Canada, and they were a day behind in planning.
I thank whoever answered my prayers and go back to sleep until the next day, when my family arrives at the orphanage at the time they should have arrived yesterday.
July 2: To market to market — and the Country Love Garden
I wake my mom at 8:30 a.m. for a trip to the market with some of the orphanage’s high-school-age girls and the caretaker of the orphanage’s children. We don’t buy anything, but my mom looks like she enjoys checking out the wares at each of the stalls — except for the live and freshly butchered food out back. “I’ve seen enough,” she says, nearly gagging, as we flee the flopping fish and the skinless chicken she mistakes for a frog.
In the afternoon we walk to the Country Love Garden, a popular wedding venue near my house. Driving bow-wrapped cars that look like presents, wedding parties come from as far as the seven-hours-away Phnom Penh to get married in the Country Love Garden.
The “garden” has nicely manicured lawns, but few flowers. Instead of flowers, the love garden is planted with a bouquet of painted statues resembling characters including Elmer Fudd, a red-eyed gorilla, and a zebra. There are also replicas of a bride and groom and a giant, tiered wedding cake.
I’ve heard the garden compared to both a miniature golf course and Disney Land. My first visit prompted me to ask my Khmer teacher for the Khmer word for weird. (Of course, I immediately forgot that word.)
July 3: Afloat up the lake of Siem Reap
We catch a taxi in the early morning for Siem Reap. The ride is a honk-filled hour. My mom says she’s never heard a driver honk so much. In Cambodia, honking is rarely a sound of anger. It’s a sound of courtesy. A honk means “I’m coming, please get out of my way.”
Drivers honk when they want to pass someone, when they are passing someone, and when they are driving really fast and can’t be bothered to slow down for motos, bikes, pedestrians, or other cars. Our driver wants to drive really fast. He even slams out warning honks to cars and motos on the opposite side of the road.
Because we don’t arrive in Siem Reap until the already sweltering mid-morning, we put off Siem Reap’s famed temples until tomorrow, and catch a tuk-tuk to Chong Kneas, one of the province’s many floating villages.
The tuk-tuk dumps us at the boat-loading site. The boats are small fishing boats with wooden benches. A Cambodian flag waves from atop each boat. It’s the rainy mosquito season, and therefore not tourist season. This means the four of us get our own boat.
At least I can see what he’s talking about: Muddy brown water banked by small shacks and houses. According to what my mom hears from the tour guide, the residents of these shacks and houses retreat to the mountains when it floods.
Other houses are floating in the dirty water — predecessors to the floating village.
People are floating in the water, too, and walking in it — some fully dressed. We pass the same woman on the way to and from the floating village. She is walking barefoot along the rocky bank, a large plastic bag slung over her shoulder. Her eyes are trained to the rocks below. I don’t see her put anything in the bag, but I’m guessing she’s looking for food — perhaps the tiny rock-like snails Cambodian women sell from platters atop their heads.
Signs planted on the shores are painted with waves. We assume the signs mean, “Don’t make waves, please.”
Of course, drivers make waves anyway. As they pass us, the offending boats send miniature tidal waves of brown liquid cascading over the side of our boat. One such wave splashes my mom. She swears, apologizes, and scampers to the other side of the boat, only to be sent back by the driver so the boat won’t tip.
The problem is getting stuck on the bottom of the lake. Early on the ride we pass a boat whose propeller is spinning and spinning but not getting the boat anywhere, only churning up muck from the lake
bottom. With help from a long wooden pole, the driver eventually frees his stuck boat.
There aren’t any “No Littering” signs, and some seem to consider the lake a watery dump. We watch people throw trash over the sides of boats and a woman empty a bag of trash from her house boat into the lake. Minutes later, we pass the floating Gecko Environmental Center and our driver remarks upon its merits.
These reptile kids want money, of course. That’s not a peace sign they’re making with their fingers — it’s a two-dollar sign. For two dollars we can get the photos of them we’ve already taken, and a soda, which would normally cost fifty cents.
Our driver tells us not to give these kids money because their parents will just spend it playing cards. He tells us we should spend our money at the gift shop up ahead, since that money will go to the lake’s floating school/orphanage.
My softie dad buys a peach-colored Fanta from a boat of kids anyway. The little boy who pockets the money blows my dad kisses.
The last stop on out tour is, unsurprisingly, a gift shop. The gift shop that benefits the school we passed. The usual assortment of souvenirs is available, as well as a peek at a pack of drowsy crocodiles. The crocodiles look as dead as the purses for sale in town. A couple of the leathery beasts have their jaws wide open. I throw down a wad of chewed-up gum to try to get a rise out of them. It lands next to an open jaw, but the croc doesn’t react. Then I throw a small rock. It lands on a snout. The jaws snap closed and then gape open again.
We start on our return trip and the songboat pushes off in search of more appreciative customers.
In the evening we cruise the night market and sample Khmer food at a restaurant on Siem Reap’s bustling restaurant row.
July 4: Saluting Cambodia’s national treasure
Most memorable Siem Reap quote: “Do you want some coffee, Emily?” Said in perfect English by a Cambodian woman selling plastic cups of coffee before our temple tour. I do not know this woman and I did not tell her my name. She was simply mimicking my sister, who moments earlier had asked me the same question.
It’s the Fourth of July, but that doesn’t matter in Cambodia. We spend the day admiring the ancient architecture of not America, but Cambodia.
This ancient architecture is the temples of Angkor in Siem Reap. The more than 100 temples were built between AD 802 – 1432, during the height of the Angkor empire, which spilled out of Cambodia into much of present-day Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.
The temples, especially the big-hitter, Angkor Wat, are the pride of Cambodia. Angkor Wat is everywhere — on Cambodia’s flag, money, beer, cigarettes, hotels and practically every other Cambodian product.
Angkor Wat is Cambodia’s top — sometimes only — tourist destination, for foreigners and Cambodians alike. My students can’t get enough of Angkor Wat. They go there on nearly all their vacations and are constantly asking me if I’ve been yet. Now I can finally say yes.
Despite the “Lonely Planet’s” cries of “blasphemy!,” we spend only a half-day at the temples. Time enough to see three of the biggies: Angkor Wat and its trio of iconic mountaintops, Bayon and its 216 giant faces and Ta Prohm and its wild vegetation.
We start our tour before sunrise, in an attempt to catch nature’s golden orb rising over Angkor Wat. But the sun’s too slow and we’re too hungry. We break for breakfast before we’ve even begun. I load up on delicious but overpriced fruit pancakes and coffee.
The magnificence of Angkor Wat is undeniable, but Ta Prohm is my favorite. Who doesn’t love trees that can eat a temple? The gnarled wood monsters look like they escaped a Tim Burton movie.
In the afternoon, my mom and I head to a silk farm, where we witness the creation of silk – from the mulberry tree to the scarf. I learn why vegans don’t like silk: Silkworms are boiled alive! At least they help make some beautiful products.
July 8: Hoi An, Vietnam: Noodles and tailors and no hair removal, thanks!
Most memorable Hoi An quote: “I want you inside me!” Called out to my sister and I by a woman shop owner. I’m pretty sure she meant in her shop, not in her.
I reconnect with my family after a doctor-ordered dengue rest. I catch up with them in Hoi An, Vietnam, after they’ve spent a lot of time traveling to and from Pakse, Laos. I’m bummed to have missed Pakse, not bummed to have missed all that driving.
Siem Reap to Hoi An is a short two hour flight, with a layover in Ho Chih Minh City (formerly Saigon). My house to Siem Reap is a short drive, but I overestimate the length of the taxi ride and arrive at the airport four hours early. I kill time by eating a second breakfast and watching fish swim in the pond through the restaurant’s window. I eat what the restaurant calls an “American breakfast,” but what is really an American-English breakfast. Scrambled eggs, sausage (more like hot dogs), baked beans, toast and coffee.
I change planes in Ho Chih Minh City. The airport is lively and definitely not Western. The gates are filled with brightly colored plastic chairs and countless tiny groceries selling plastic-wrapped snacks including mangos, coconuts, fish, candy and alcohol.
After an uneventful flight, I arrive in Hoi An in late afternoon — hours before my family. I go out on the town. With its café-and-boutique-filled streets, Hoi An has the quaint, touristy feel of Luang Prabang, Laos, But there’s more of an authentic feel here. More Vietnamese, less European tourist. The majority of the town’s shops are clearly targeting tourists, but most of its restaurants are Vietnamese, not Western.
I bop around the boutiques and stop for dinner at a Vietnamese-looking place. Actually, the characters identifying the place look Chinese, but I make a boob of myself by voicing that opinion. (Actually, I’m not that far of base. Vietnam’s alphabet included Chinese characters until French colonials installed a Latin alphabet in the early 1900s.)
Dinner is a delicious four courses — all indigenous to Hoi An. (Or so the menu says.) Shrimp inside won tons, a fried shrimp kabob, a fried egg pancake stuffed with shrimp and greens, and crunchy noodles topped with pork.
I get back to the hotel around 8:30 p.m. and head to bed. I’m woken around 1 a.m. by the phone ringing. It’s my mom. Didn’t I hear my sister ringing the doorbell and pounding on the door? Nope. Getting in the room isn’t made easier by the front desk people, who tell my sister I’m out drinking. After an hour or two of waiting for a moto driver to bring me back from a bar that I’m not at, my sister finally makes it inside our room.
The next day we have some clothes made at one of the tailor shops Hoi An is famous for. Our two skirts and two dresses are ready before the day’s over. My sister and I grab lunch on the street and practice our Vietnamese with a pair of local women. These friendly women rope my sister into an after-lunch manicure and pedicure in a nearby “salon.” The salon is little more than a spare room in a house. We perch on beds while the work is done.
The work isn’t as much as the ladies would like.
One of the ladies has polished fingernails and toenails and has removed most of the hair from her body, including her arms and buzz-cut head. She can’t understand why we don’t want to give her all of our money so that she can polish us up and remove all of our hair, too.
I have to insist several times that I don’t want any polish, massages or hair removal. My sister does the same, but she still partially receives these services.
Not taking no for an answer, the nearly hairless woman starts massaging my sister’s arm and upper back and then threading her leg before she finally realizes she isn’t going to get anymore money and lays off.
July 10 and 11: Driving to and lounging in Nha Trang
We spend the day driving to Nha Trang. Our driver is really slow. We’re in Nha Trang for only one day. It’s a touristy beach town, and we while away the hours on the beach, swimming and saying no to the vendors trying to sell us books, food, jewelry and toys.
July 12 and 13: More of nothing in Mui Ne
The train takes us to Mui Ne. The train is old and rusty, and looks nothing like Amtrak. The toilet empties directly onto the tracks, and despite the “No Smoking” signs, people smoke in the space between cars. But the ride is short and mostly comfortable, and food is served, which is my most important travel requirement. The food is chicken and rice. Delicious.
Mui Ne is another beach town, but less populated than Nha Trang. We stay in upscale eco-lodgey bungalows right on the beach. It’s the type of place with notes instructing guests to place a polished stone on their beds if they want their sheets changed.
We do nothing for our two days in Mui Ne but swim, lay on the beach and eat. Our stay is relaxing, but by the second day we’re ready for more action.
July 14 and 15: Tunneling and smothering in Ho Chih Minh City
With nine million people and five million motos, we hope Ho Chih Minh City will provide the necessary action.
One hundred to 150 people die a month in motorcycle accidents, our tour guide Lim says. Those hip, army-style helmets we see everywhere aren’t good, he says. Vietnam should worry about motorcycle accidents, he says. But not about terrorists.
“Never worry about terrorists. No terrorism in Vietnam,” Lim tells our bus.
“Right now we can have everything we want.“
Lim is taking us to the Cu Chi tunnels, part of the network of underground passages that helped the Viet Cong guerrillas defeat American troops during the Vietnam War.
Many guerrillas lived in the tunnels. The camouflaged, booby-trapped tunnels were perfect for hiding people and supplies and for transporting people and supplies. The Cu Chi tunnels stretch 75 miles.
The tour begins with a blotchy black and white film made a year or two after the Vietnam War. The film is straight up pro-Vietnamese, anti-American propaganda.
The Vietnamese built the first Cu Chi tunnel in 1948 for fighting the French, who controlled Vietnam for 70 years. But the tunnels were mostly used for fighting the “crazy batch of devils” — the 8,000 to 10,000 American soldiers who invaded the peaceful Cu Chi during the Vietnam War.
The people of Cu Chi survived by moving underground, into three levels of tunnels. The tunnels were equipped with an escape hatch to the Saigon River, used only at night.
Only sticks were used to dig the tunnels. Still, “no architect can design such a system,” the film’s narrator claims.
With “a rifle in one hand and a plow in the other,” the Cu Chi guerillas killed by day and plowed by night.
With “a rifle in one hand and a plow in the other,” the Cu Chi guerillas killed by day and plowed by night.
They built bombs and grenades from American scraps and converted bamboo animal traps into spiked death machines.
Garlic kept dogs away from the tunnel’s air holes. Dogs are apparently afraid of garlic.
According to the film’s narrator, the Americans should have also been afraid of the Vietnamese.
“Although day after day Americans wanted to take over Cu Chi, they were defeated,” the narrator says.
For their war successes, Vietnamese guerillas received awards with titles like “American Killer Hero.”
The next part of the tour is ogling the spiked booby traps responsible for killing, or certainly maiming, American troops.
The pits of rusted spikes we see have names like “Clipping Armpit Trap, “Sticking Trap” and the mildly named but mightily feared “Door Trap” that our tour guide says made men into ladyboys.
Next up: the shooting range. My sister and I are excited to shoot AK-47s. Our excitement extinguishes when we learn you can only fire one shot. That one shot makes a lame “blam!” sound, not the fierce “rat-tat-tat” of Rambo’s gun.
Still, tourists parade down to the range to take their turns at one of six guns. Firing one bullet costs a little over $1.
Lim tells us the tunnel has been enlarged for beefy tourists. I’d hate to be down there pre-enlargement.
Hey Ho Chih Minh, where’s all your fun?
Aside from dodging motos and learning about the Vietnam War, my sister and I can find surprisingly little to do in Ho Chih Minh. We can barely find a restaurant, let alone any bars or night life.
But one restaurant finds us. We are looking at the outdoor menu when one of the owners virtually pushes us up the stairs and into his restaurant. “You come inside,” he says. “One minute,” we say, trying to scan the dishes and prices. He then pauses for one second and says, “OK, you come inside now.” We repeat this exchange several times before we finally surrender and go inside.
A waiter stands nearby, staring at us until we finish eating. Finally he backs off and we discover that the woman owner is very friendly. She tells us about the man in the giant poster on her wall. The man is her son, Michael Tran, who she says is Vietnam’s first professional golfer.
Our stay in Ho Chih Minh City is short, but by the second day we’re ready to go. Phnom Penh awaits.
July 16, 17 and 18: Shopping, pool and depression in Phnom Penh
The capital of Cambodia since the collapse of the Angkor empire in the 1430s, Phnom Penh is a lively city with about two million residents. My appreciation of Phnom Penh has blossomed after the busy but boring Ho Chi Minh.
Our first day is errands and a trip to Central Market. We eat in a spot on the hip restaurant river row. Then we head to the night market. Best find: Underwear printed with the Apple Computer logo.
After the market, my sister and I ditch the ‘rents in search of an open pool table. Easy. We find an unoccupied bar and make friends with the two bartenders, who are also sisters about the same ages as us. It’s a fun night, but pool is a bust. We both quit well before the table is cleared of either solids or stripes.
Between 1975 and 1978, more than 17,000 men, women and children from S-21 were taken to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek, where they were killed and then left to rot in secret mass graves.
A harrowing display of the Khmer Rogue’s brutality, the museum is stocked with black and white mug shots of the victims. The most gruesome photos depict the 14 tortured-to-death bodies of prisoners killed just before the Vietnamese took control of Phnom Penh.
Perhaps only seven prisoners survived S-21. Thanks to exploitable talents, the lucky seven escaped a trip to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.
Perhaps only seven prisoners survived S-21. Thanks to exploitable talents, the lucky seven escaped a trip to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.
In an effort to give the deceased a proper burial, a Memorial Stupa was erected in 1988. The elegant building houses more than 8,000 skulls behind glass.
The man who ran S-21, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, was recently sentenced to a paltry 19 years in prison. Duch, 68, is the first member of the Khmer Rogue to be punished for his crimes.
July 19-22: Red-lighting, templing and shopping in Bangkok
July 19-22: Red-lighting, templing and shopping in Bangkok
Oh Thank Heaven: According to Wikipedia, Thailand has more than 5,400 7-Elevens, half in Bangkok. Thailand is third on the list of countries with the most 7-Elevens. The United States is first and Japan second.
July 19: Watching the hook-ups on Patpong Street
We watch the happenings while sharing a dinner of pad see ew and green curry at a restaurant on the notorious Patpong Street, which caters to tourists.
The happenings at the club-lined street aren’t immediately apparent. Girls in skimpy dresses dribble out the club doors, but most look like they’re just hanging out, like the group sipping beer out of a giant communal stein.
Young men clutching laminated picture sheets flank the girls. The pictures are of faces and more. OK, so the girls are for sale, but where are the customers? My sister spots the first one — an old, potbellied white man.
After dinner we stroll the street. The formerly demure girls have become aggressive, pouncing on men walking by and shoving the laminated picture cards under their noses.
The girls and their cards slink back as we walk by, but further down the street, sleazy men poke more picture cards in our faces and try to sell us into explicit ping pong shows.
July 20: Sold up the river and into the tourist rip-off centers of Bangkok
The next day is scam day. First scam: My sister and I pay the hotel way too much for a trip up the Chao Phraya River.
Aside from the tourists in the hotel boats that speed by, few people are out. A soldier and a young girl walk the shoreline and a man lounges in a hammock farther up river. Under one of Bangkok’s many bridges is a pair of boys fishing.
Our driver breaks her silence partway through the trip. “Madame?” she says, pointing out a small crocodile near shore.
We turn down the opportunity to see more crocodiles at the Crocodile Farm. The advertised show is about cobras, and doesn’t sound worth five bucks.
We do grab lunch at the Crocodile Farm though. For me, it’s sweet and sour chicken and veggies over noodles.
After the farm, we pass a boat of tourists throwing food overboard. A pair of signs explains their littering. ”Free to donate bread to feed the fish,” and “Please feed the fish.“
I don’t realize I’m in a tourist rip-off zone when a salesman asks if I want to take a tuk-tuk to the Sitting Buddha, Thai Fashion and Thai Export.
I would rather see the nearby Grand Palace, but the salesman says it’s closed because today’s a holiday. He can’t tell me which holiday. I also would rather shop the backpacker zone, but I don’t know where that is. So I agree to the tuk-tuk ride. It’s only 15 baht, or 50 cents.
I should see the Grand Palace, the tour guide tells me.
Next is Thai Fashion, a warehouse of fabric where tourists can get clothes made in a day. The fabric looks super expensive and I can’t think of anything I want. But I can’t escape the man who herds me into the store and tries to lead me to a chair, which I politely decline, saying I just want to look around. He responds by snapping that “There’s nothing to see here.” He then follows me to the souvenirs and to the door.
Thai Export is another tourist-exploitation warehouse— this time with jewelry. Watching the workers polishing stones and making fittings is much more interesting than the actual jewels and fittings. I’m not a bling-bling kind of gal.
A guide leads me through the building to progressively cheaper display cases. We go from jewels to gold to silver to junky souvenirs to the door. Finally!
Back at the hotel I learn that tuk-tuk drivers get paid to take tourists to the clothes and jewelry warehouses. I also learn that some tuk-tuk drivers are liars. Today is not a holiday and I could have gone to the Grand Palace.
July 21: Now for that stuff we want to do
My mom and I hit the Grand Palace the next morning. It’s her second trip in two days.
The Grand Palace was built in 1782 when King Rama I took the throne and created a new city capital.
A sprawling 218,00 square meters, the glittering gold-and-gem-studded estate includes the unoccupied royal residence as well as government offices, chapels, a library, a miniature Angkor Wat (seriously!) and the esteemed Royal Monastery of the Emerald Buddha.
I spend a few minutes searching for the Emerald Buddha before I realize he’s that tiny green thing topping the other finery. The small green guy was discovered in a stupa in 1434 and is not actually emerald, but jade.
Even on an early morning in non-tourist season, the palace is swarming with tourists. It’s impossible to stay out of pictures of people grinning in front of the countless golden spires.
The street’s a busy mix of restaurants and bars, hostels and clothing and souvenir stalls. The tackiness of the wares is less than at previous markets we’ve seen, and I actually see a couple shirts I like. Too bad I can’t get them over my White-Giant head.
Our next destination is the answer to the question: “Where should I go shopping in Bangkok?” MBK Mall. (Short for Mah Boon Krong.)
The mall is a colossal eight stories spread over 89,000 square meters. We last a little over an hour. Everyone goes home with a new possession. Mine’s a shirt.
The show is performed by a cast of Thai ladyboys (usually male-to-female transgenders or femmy gay men) and ranges from a geisha cooing in front of a cherry blossom backdrop to a ladyboy with a giant fro screeching and running into walls.
Other highlights include a stage of serenading Marilyn Monroes, a Carmen Miranda, a song by the Korean girl band that is the obsession of many of my high school students, a couple routines from “Chicago” and a staged wardrobe malfunction that puts Janet Jackson’s to shame.
July 22: Back to the land of rice
The bus to the Thai-Cambodian border is a non-stop four hours. By the time we near the border, I’m starving and really have to use the bathroom. Fortunately, our stop is at a restaurant just minutes from the border.
The restaurant provides a good opportunity to shovel down some final noodly Thai food before heading back to the land of rice. Also an opportunity for a final encounter with a Thai ladyboy — my server. She has stylish, short auburn hair, black eyeliner and a squeaky mouse voice.
I’m now back in the land of rice and pork. I miss my family and the adventures we had, but it’s also nice to be back among my orphans and mosquitoes.
Thanks for letting me relive those fun times!
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