Angkor Wat… holy moses…

i can honestly say now, looking back on most of our trip sitting here in the Singapore airport, that the most spectacular thing i saw was Angkor Wat.  i thought i pretty much knew what it was before traveling to Siem Reap, Cambodia but boy was i wrong.  it was bigger, brighter, more fantastic than i could’ve ever imagined!  i can safely say it blew both of our mind’s!

we took a 6 hour bus ride to siem reap from phnom penh where we were greeted again by a mob of tuk tuk drivers.  we found a nice guy for a great price and he kindly took us around to a few guesthouses where we eventually found one that not only suited our needs but was within our price range.  guesthouses in siem reap were far more expensive than i ever would’ve imagine.  the deal is though, the town wouldn’t exist if angkor wat wasn’t there.  it’s strictly a tourist town with many spas & resorts, restaurants, and shops.  since we liked our tuk tuk driver so much we decided to hire him for the following day to give us a one day glimpse into the world of angkor wat.  a one day pass is $20 and it goes up from there.  due to time and money constraints we opted for only one day initially feeling pretty bad about it because how many other times were we going to get to siem reap?  however, after one long arduous day we decided one suited us pretty darn well. 

angkor wat is about 6 km north of siem reap.  we left our guesthouse around 10 a.m. and got there soon after… just before the crazy midday heat set in! neither one of us realized just how much land area the wat’s covered or how complex they are.  the first one we visited had gigantic trees growing in, over, and around it, the second was a giant pyramid that had been struck by lightening at the top, the next had a 1,000 different faces and heads on it, and from there it just kept getting more and more beautiful with crazy stories attached to them.  the last one of the day for us was angkor wat.  as lame as it may sound, it totally knocked us off our feet as we approached.  it’s the largest religious structure on earth and my god is it beautiful!  i’ve seen castles and fortresses and cathedrals and all kinds of buildings that are magnificent but the only thing i can maybe compare this to, mind you i’ve yet to go, are the pyramids in egypt or machu pechu in peru.  we’re talking about a lost city that had 1,000,000 inhabits at a time when london was a mere 50,000 people.  we’re talkin’ pyramids that date back thousands of years!!! this is crazy shit (sorry, mom!)  it was so remarkable!  not to lessen it any but a few of the wats were featured in Tomb Raider (starring angelina jolie) if anyone remembers.  there are so many they seem to go on forever!  i think we managed to cover 6 or 7 of them before we were exhausted from hiking around and the sweltering heat.  siem reap is by far and away a place i would HIGHLY suggest to anyone and everyone.  as far as temples and other tourist attractions on this trip we have yet to see anything better. 

we were in and out of siem reap pretty darn quick.  the following day we headed to the airport where we flew to vientiane, laos.  for anyone thinking about doing this i would highly suggest it, however there’s a $25 departure fee in the airport which pissed us both off.  c’est la vie…

 on to the most bombed country in the world! 

p.s. i must add that the market in siem reap is killer with lots of neat gifts as well as shoes, tshirts, fish, and other once living creatures!

Holiday in Cambodia

our bus ride to cambodia came close to being an absolute catastrophe when the border guy couldn’t find my passport for about an hour.  no matter how hard you want to hold onto your passport and stay near it, it’s always needed for something out of your sight and if you protest, you risk being left behind and having to fend for yourself.  i must say though, they came through in the end after sifting through all the hundreds of other passports and came up with mine!!!

the land is cambodia is completely flat and extremely dry.  there were parts of it which reminded me of the national geographic african safaris i’ve seen on t.v.  the houses are on stilts and surprisingly very beautiful.  they were very colorful with really neat wood shutters and doors.  as with all countries we’ve been through, even the crappiest shacks have televisions and satellite dishes on them.  phnom penh, to my surprise, was full of hummers and mercedes and very expensive automobiles.  we found out later there’s actually quite a bit of money in the city.  an average home there cost around $300,000!

when we arrived in phnom penh we were mobbed by tuk tuk drivers, which we had been warned about.  drew and i decided it would be best to walk to the lake where we planned on staying (great advice Missy!).  it wasn’t a long walk but it was certainly a hot one.  that was the first time i remember fully sweating through my shirt and leaving a huge sweat stain on my back pack.  the lake side had been recommended to us over the river side by a few people.  one would never ever guess a gigantic lake would be smack in the middle of such a big city.  the interesting thing is, it’s completely surrounded by buildings all the way up to the river’s edge so unless you’re sitting on the deck of said buildings you’d never know it even existed.  in laos we met a girl who had been living in phnom penh for a year doing legal work and she said most people who live in the city don’t even know it’s there.  she also told us the lake had been sold and it’ll soon be filled in and built upon.  so sad.  the road we stayed on was nothing more than an alley tucked off the main streets.  we made our home there at a guesthouse called ‘happy guesthouse’ which certainly lived up to its name.  i gotta say, cambodia was the first country we spent time in where we honestly felt like we were somewhere new and exciting.  all of the previous countries had such a western flare to them. here, for the first time, our eyes were opened up to something so completely different. 

the main two tourist attractions in phnom penh certainly aren’t happy ones but nevertheless should not be missed.  you see, back in the mid to late 70s the khmer rouge took over and their goal was to establish a plebeian society.  in order to attain their goal, pol pot decided to kill all the monks, intellectuals, people who wore glasses,  basically anyone who seemed or looked ’smart’ or who he thought could potentially cause an uprising.  now, how does one get rid of so many people?  you guessed it… genocide! 

we hired a tuk tuk driver for the day who first took us to The Killing Fields.  at the entrance is a monument which houses 8,000 skulls which were found at the killing fields.  along with skulls were clothes that had been dug up.  as you walk the fields the mass graves that were found are marked, a long with a tree where children were beat and areas where they housed chemicals that were meant to kill and/or hide the smell of the rotting bodies.  i’ve never been to any of the concentration camps in europe but i imagine them to be similar.  the difference is, no one was kept at the killing fields.  they were simply brought there to die.   interestingly enough,  there’s now a fence that borders the killing fields and on the other side is a school where we heard children laughing and playing the whole time we were there.  what a contrast…

tuol sleng genocide museum also called the s-21 museum is where the people were kept and tortured before being killed.  the s-21 museum used to be a school before pol pot closed it down and took it over.  it’s three rectangular 4 story buildings all facing a courtyard.  there are still remnants there of pol pot’s regime such as rusting beds and medical equipment used to torture.  the second building you enter on the ground floor is completely covered in photos of all those who stayed in the facility as well as some pretty horrifying pictures of those tortured and killed.  twice a day they show an hour long film with people who had been there and those who had lost loved ones.   i think sometimes it’s easier to watch films like this when the events that took place were years and years before.  i guess the more time that passes it’s easier to distance yourself from the events.  it’s quite hard to do this when these atrocities were happening in my sister’s lifetime or even moreso in drew’s lifetime and i know it’s happening now, today in places like Burma, it’s just… i dunno…

afterwards we went back to our guesthouse to sit on the deck and digest all that we’d seen.  in the lake there are a few small boys who paddle boats up to your guesthouse and ask if you want a boat ride for $1.  i decided it’d be a fun thing to do so we had some really yummy special smoothies and hopped in the boat with a sweet 12 year old boy named Rambo.  Rambo paddled us around and told us about the watercrest growing in the water that they pick and eat (oh man, the water was so filthy and full of trash. i totally saw a maxi pad tangled up in the watercrest!!! and there were rats!!!!!) and how he goes to school for 3 hours a day for free and then paddles the boat for money.  he was mesmerized by the sparks of construction on the city’s first high rise.  he was really sweet!  as were all the people we met in cambodia… it was quite a contrast from china and vietnam.  it was so much more relaxed and the people weren’t trying to always get something out of you… at least not the people we met.  in poor countries there’s always somewhat of an agenda when the native people see westerners coming their way but so long as you’re pleasant, smile, and say ‘thank you’ both parties generally come out on top.

 oh and the most important thing of all.  MONKEYS!!!! Like real life, not in cages, cold chillin like squirrels!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 wat? wat? are you a light bulb?

 Check out our pics of Cambodia!

24 hour bus ride!? here we come!

we opted for the cheapest way to saigon, or as the people in northern vietnam like to call it ‘ho chi minh city’. this bus ride was only the beginning of a series of long, painful rides that was to come. thankfully though, this was the longest ride we had to take. now, i don’t know ifi’d tell someone to go this route but i’m happy we did for one reason only. we passed through this small beach town about 6 hours south of nha trang and 6 hours north east of saigon (Mui Ne). it was one of the most beautiful beach towns i’ve seen so far and would recommend anyone stop there.

we got to saigon around 7 p.m. and found ourselves in a race to find a guesthouse that was relatively inexpensive and not fully booked. it was pretty intense because we were having to run into a guesthouse, check it out, and then run to the next one to compare and by the time we ran into the next one, there was a good chance the last one was booked full and we lost out! there were a lot of guesthouses but ten times as many people it seemed! the streets insaigon were swarming with restaurants and bars of all kinds. it had a more western feel to it, i think largely due to the wider, straight streets.hanoi’s streets were very small and curved all over the place. we took no time securing our spot on a cu chi tunnel tour for the very next day, anxious to get started and move on tocambodia.

now, i didn’t know anything about the cu chi people or the tunnels they dug and lived in for 20+ years until i arrived in saigon. these tunnels are just another testament to the strong will of the vietnamese people. i couldn’t bare to go in them because they were too small; i can’t IMAGINE living your everyday life in one! our tour guide was a rad, young vietnamese guy who was probably our favorite tour guide of this whole trip. he was so informative and pleasant and optimistic. he told us how the people in the south still have a democratic mindset while the people in the north are very communist. he pointed out that thevietnam war was 30+ years ago but for them the remnants of the war were still very visible because they’re a poor country and don’t have the money or resources to rebuild as quickly as others. he pointed out tanks and bombs insaigon that were left there after the war. he said they were ‘parked’ there and never moved. interesting.

the cu chi tunnels are a series of tunnels northeast of saigon that the cu chi people dug and lived in for years and years. there were levels of tunnels and different rooms such as the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom, much like we have above ground. there were different exits and entry ways and a tunnel that lead to the mekong river. they had strategic ways of losing enemies in the tunnels, lots of booby traps within them, and in-case the enemy (americans) tried to smoke, bomb, or flood them out they had made doors and flood-ways and all kinds of tricks in order to escape. the persistence of these people is indescribable!!! there’s a portion of the real tunnels that thevietnamese people carved out a bit to make bigger for western people to fit through, because otherwise they wouldn’t. i couldn’t go in there becausei’m insanely claustrophobic but drew managed to work his way all the way through after most gave up, and came out dirty and sweaty. just sitting here thinking back to those tunnels i start to feel likei’m suffocating.

after the cu chi tunnels we headed to the war remnants museum which had a fascinating yet sad photography display from the vietnam war. all of the photos were taken by photographers, who died during the war, from all over the world. i found a lot of them to be french photographers but it certainly wasn’t limited to just them. they had bios of all the photographers and captions under all of their pictures of what was going on and in some cases which were their last photos ever taken. it was really emotional and so heartbreaking. another portion of the war museum was a whole section devoted to landmines and land mine victims. it didn’t begin and end withvietnam, it included victims of land mines even today from laos to cambodia to all over parts of africa. i learned a lot more about land mines when i went to laos because they’re still so plentiful there. land mines are certainly something i never knew too much about before this trip as well. i guess what i didn’t know is just how many were dropped and how many people to this day suffer from them. the numbers are so much larger than i could have ever imagined. thesaigon war remnants museum had less american propaganda than the one in hanoi (no surprise there). it had big american tanks, bombs, and aircraft just like the one in hanoi did too. the dead photographer section made this one tops for me. if i only went and paid to see that i would’ve left feeling like i got my money’s worth for sure.  Another cool thing about the museum is that a huge part of the photo installation was on loan from KY, USA.  Very cool indeed, and a testament to hatch-burying.

the rest of saigon was errands we had to run such as mailing home the large amount of clothing we had made in hoi an. that city is more beautiful at night than i would’ve imagined after seeing it in daylight, however i never got the feeling like i was somewhere insanely different.cambodia though, that place surprised the heck out of us… In the best of ways!

 check out our photos of Vietnam!

and GO M’s, Go Phills!!!!!!

da nang me, da nang me! take a rope and hang me…

so, after a very comfortable overnight train ride, we made it to Da Nang safely.  From there, we took a minibus to a small town called Hoi An.  Now, we had heard from a few people that Hoi An is all about clothes but i don’t think we really grasped just how rad it was going to be.  to be honest, i didn’t think, prior to going, that i was going to even get anything. once there though, we spared no time trying to find the perfect tailor. 

let me back up by saying, Hoi An is one of the only towns spared by bombing during the war.  all of the buildings are a beautiful pale yellow color and the streets are made of compact dirt.  there’s really only two main streets that run through the town with a few small side streets and an open market.  it’s no surprise, the food here was absolutely incredible as well. 

ok, back to shopping…  so, drew and i are cruising through town trying to find the right tailor.  what ya gotta do is, walk around, kinda figure out in your head what you want, and then go ask each shop how much it would be for them to make.  while in the shop, you generally get a good or bad feeling about the place (keep in mind, every other shop is a tailor so there’s quite a few to check out).  so, we’re making our rounds and as we’re doing so we also decide to scope prices from travel agencies for train or bus tickets from Hoi An to Saigon.  as we turn a corner, we see a travel agency and a dude sitting at the counter talking to the agent.  drew does a double take and almost immediately notices it’s a friend of his from back home named Jed.  Jed received a grant through the University of Washington to travel the world.  pretty rad, huh?  Anyway, Jed had already spent a few days in Hoi An so he gave us the lowdown as far as tailors to see and places to eat and drink.  we wound up going with the tailor he suggested, Mr. Xe, and making plans for drinks later that night.

Mr. Xe is a tiny Vietnamese man who always wore white pants and was outrageously gay.  we fell for him pretty quickly!  drew got an amazing chocolate brown pin stripe suit and a fabulous chocolate brown toggle coat while i got an emerald green satin dress!  custom made clothes? yes puhlease!

 the next day we hitched a ride to Da Nang with Jed who was on his way to the train station.  we said our ‘goodbyes’ to him at the American military base and headed for the hole in the wall to get a better glimpse at the place our father’s spent some serious time.  as we were walking up to the hole i noticed three vietnamese men watching us from behind.  as we neared the hangers inside i saw the men behind us had stopped and were now just staring.  i turned to tell drew and as he turned to face me, from behind drew came a guy running towards us yelling with an AK-47!  i said, “drew! behind you!” then turned and ran as fast as i could to get out of there.  on my race back to the street i looked back and saw drew standing there with his hands in the air while the guy cocked the gun and pointed it at him.  i left drew behind!  i took a peak behind the wall and saw drew walking calmly towards me and knew that it was cool.  still though, the guy with the gun followed us out of there and watched us walk away.  i’m sure it was pretty funny for the three guys who stopped to stare at the dumb tourists naively walking onto private property…  someone later told us that apparently that American military base has the highest concentration of Agent Orange in the entire country.  could it be they were just trying to keep us safe?

from there we walked down china beach for about an hour or so. the weather wasn’t so great so we decided to call it quits.  our woes continued when we tried to hail a taxi back to Hoi An (a mere 30km south).  ALL of the taxis wanted to charge us an insane amount of money to take us home.  we eventually found our way to the train station where we sat for two hours waiting to find a taxi to Hoi An that was reasonable. 

the next day we collected our clothes and prepared to leave on a 24 hour bus ride to Saigon.  At least we had a sleeper bus for the night portion of the ride.  the awesomest part was when just a few hours before our bus was to depart drew got really sick and was puking his brains out.  drew being the brave soul that he is though sucked it up and we took off on time. 

i thought 24 hours on a bus was bad until i got to Laos and took a meager 5 hour bus ride, but that story is saved for later…

Bonjour, Hanoi!

First off, the French influence in southeast asia is everywhere!  Russia, France, America, China they’ve all played their part in Vietnam but I think the French left the greatest influence.  Baguettes.  Dear, sweet, yummy, baguettes.  They’re everywhere! The bread all over Vietnam was so delicious and oh so cheap!  The best part were the street food carts where you could get great baguette sandwiches with cheese, veggies, all kinds of meat, and sauces for next to nothing.  Drew’s favorite baguette was the spicy lamb kebab.   This is also the first place we noticed many different kinds of ethnic restaurants with the people of that ethnicity actually making and serving the food.  Hanoi definitely held a vast array of people from all over the world.  This is also the first time we ate Indian food that blew us away.  The guy that owned the Indian joint liked us so much he gave us free dessert, something I’ll never turn down. 

The architecture all over Vietnam had a french flare to it.  That is, the buildings still standing after the war.  Bright yellows and french blues with black and white trim on all the buildings really brought the city to life!  Not to mention, the sheer amount of motor scooters!!!  At first we were intimidated by the amount of scooters and were so uneasy trying to cross the street because hundreds come at you at all once, but we soon realized that it’s actually quite easy.  All you have to do is walk slowly and look at the oncoming scooters and they’ll all manage to swerve around you.  Pretty soon we were stepping off curbs like it was nothin’!  Speaking of which, the streets in Hanoi are all pretty narrow with lots of cafes, ice cream parlours, boutique shops, art galleries, and travel agencies.  While I can’t say I dug the shopping here as much as other places, I also can’t say I looked very hard.  They did have a lot of neat bamboo bowls, vases, and serving trays that Drew and I now wish we purchased. 

We did manage to go see Ho Chi Minh though!  For a guy that’s been dead for a long time, he was lookin’ pretty good.  I don’t even want to know how they perserve the dude.  Yuck.  In the same day we went to the War Remnants Museum.  There was a lot of American propaganda in there from the Vietnam War.  It’s not so surprising since Hanoi is in the north.  Interestingly enough, the entire museum had captions in vietnamese, english, french, and I think chinese.  However, the Vietnam War photos only had captions in Vietnamese so we couldn’t read them.  I’m positive this was done on purpose.  From there we hit the Hanoi Hilton, famouse for keeping American pilots downed during the war.  Made even more famous by a certain Senator from Arizona.  They still have his flight suit on display. We also searched high and low for the right Ha Long Bay tour for us.  They range in price from $35 to $100 or so for one night, two days.  The tour consists of sleeping on the boat, all meals included (no drinks though), sea kayaking, transportation (3 hours there, 3 back on a bus), and a tour through one of Ha Long bay’s ‘most spectacular caves’.  This is definitely the biggest tourist attraction outside of Hanoi because when we got there, there were tons and tons of boats (called ‘Junk’), and even more people lined up waiting to fill the junk.  Everyone was herded like cattle onto their designated boat and while we all left the port at the same time our boats played ‘bumper boat’ and crashed into one another, on purpose mind you.  The saying “you get what you pay for” definitely sums up our Ha Long Bay experience.  We decided to opt for one of the cheaper tours because, at the time, we didn’t understand how crappy it would be.  After all, all of the tours offered the same stuff.  We thought we found a deal!  To sum it up, the mountains weren’t as nice as Yangshuo, the food was terrible, and the service on board was even worse.  The sea kayaking was probably our favorite part.  It was my first time on a kayak, which was no problem, but as most people know I’m scared of the ocean so the entire time I’m convinced Jaws is going to see our tiny boat and come racing to the top of the water, flip us over, and drag our bodies out to see.  I think I sucked it up pretty well though because we managed to kayak around one or two mountains before it was time to head back to the boat. Remember that ’most spectacular cave’ I mentioned? It was fake.  Fake. Fake. Fake.  The whole thing looked like it was sprayed down with concrete, it was spotlessly clean, and there was no moisture.  Cheesey colorful lights were also put up to make it feel more like a disney attraction.  I don’t know, I think if you go to Yangshuo, there’s no real reason to do Ha Long Bay because the mountains and all the beauty is so much  more intimate in Yangshuo.  If Ha Long Bay interests you, pay the money and get the good service. 

Do you like clothes?  I sure do.  So does Hoi An, next post…

Love Teamblew

 Check out our Vietnam photos!

Yangshuo – Sweet Cherryette

From Beijing we flew south to Guilin, where we then took a bus to Yangshuo.  The plane ride was great… normal.  The bus was the opposite.  First off, we dubbed it the “dirty diaper express” due to the waft of dirty diaper smell that permeated the bus the entire trip.  Thankfully the spectacular view kept our minds off the stench and on something much better.  Despite the overcast weather, you could still see the silhoutte of all the crazy mountains that seemed to come out of nowhere.  The mountains around Yangshou were interesting because there were single mountains popping up everywhere instead of one long mountain range.  Aside from the scenery and the poopy diapers the bus ride was quite an adventure.  The road we traveled was a two lane road but everyone passed one another either in the left lane or on the shoulder and horns were going off every couple of seconds.  We never felt in danger even though everyone was seriously all over the road.  We soon came to realize that in southeast asia horn honking and passing at any opportunity is a way of life. 

The more I think back on Yangshou the more I realize how much it held.  The karst mountains, the beautiful Li River flowing through it, the great market, and the fabulous happy hour were things, at the time, I thought we’d find everywhere and we have found one of those elements in every city, but to have a town with them all is truly awesome.  The markets were packed with all kinds of goodies but the one item that dominated was silk.  There was also an overload of knock-off Columbia and Northface winter jackets that I resisted to buy. 

Yangshou was a beautiful small town we used to relax in in-between city sight seeing.  We rode bikes outside of town through small villages and over beautiful bridges and we took a motor boat ride up the river to get a better look at the mountains.  While the motorboat ride was fun, the weather was still chilly and a bit overcast.  We recommend if you’re going to go and do a boat ride it’s probably best to do a bamboo boat ride on a beautiful sunny day while someone paddles you.  You’re also able to hire a bamboo boat with a table where you can eat dinner while going down stream. 

Interestingly enough, we ran into a guy in Yangshuo from the town next to where I live, who is a photographer named Shea.  Shea and his tour guide, Julie, met up with us one night for some happy hour drinks.  That was still the best happy hour we’ve found on this trip, buy one cocktail, get the second free!  Keep in mind, the cocktails were around $2 each.  However, the greatest part about the drinks were they were made by a ten year old!  This little girl had a bartenders guide and couldn’t see over the counter top.  Gotta love those lax Chinese drinking laws!  Actually, Julie, Shea’s guide told us in China drinking isn’t a big deal (much like in Europe) and most Chinese youth don’t really start drinking until after they’re done college.  Julie also asked us why our government is so oppressive.  We laughed and asked her the same question!  Needless to say, this whole trip has been a huge learning experience as far as getting to know the people, gaining a better knowledge of how they work, and coming to understand how they view us as well.

Our next stop… Vietnam! I wish I could say we jumped from Yangshuo to Hanoi, Vietnam in no time but our trip took us from Yangshuo to Nanning, China where we had to catch a train to the border.  In Nanning we stayed in the grossest roach motel I’ve ever seen.  While brushing my teeth I started to gag from the poop fumes and Drew freaked because he saw his first rat here (not in the motel thankfully).  Crossing the border went without a hitch and we were off to start a whole new country! 

View all of our China photos, CHEERS!!!