Cambodia Day 1 - Phnom Penh

Looking cool...

After waking up with migraines and sore throats from the paint fumes our decision to move hotels was very firmly justified and we didn’t waste any time in transferring before heading out for a day of activities.

With only one full day to spend exploring Phnom Penh we decided to get our fill of history and visit two of the most important sites near the city – Choeung Ek (better known as the killing fields) and S21, the primary school turned prison turned genocide museum.

Choeung Ek was a fair distance from the city so we hired a tuk tuk driver for the day to take us to both. We had contemplated hiring a scooter and doing it ourselves but as soon as we hit the road we were so glad we didn’t – it was pretty much dirt track with giant potholes the whole way, and it was so dusty our driver had to stop off and buy us some face masks for the journey!

The fields and lake

After about 40 minutes we reached our destination – neither of us were really sure what to expect from Choeung Ek, before it’s rather disturbing use in the 1970’s it had been a fruit orchard and that’s kind of what it looks like today. It’s a pretty tranquil spot and it was hard to imagine the horrendous things that happened there. During the height of Pol Pot’s paranoia of being overthrown millions and millions of people were sent to Cheoung Ek and other killing fields across Cambodia. Anyone considered to be a bit of a free thinker was rounded up, imprisoned and then shipped to the fields. Wearing glasses, speaking a foreign language or ‘having soft hands’ was considered reason enough to be incarcerated.

The Stupa at Choeung Ek

We were given audio guides to wander around the site with which were really informative, only also sometimes so harrowing that you kind of wished you didn’t know the kind of stuff that went on. One of the things that we both found really haunting is that even now after heavy rains the ground washes away and exposes new clothing and bones from the mass graves, so much that the volunteers go around and collect it all every week or so. As we were walking around there was so much of it just buried under the surface or caught around tree roots.

We’ve tried to make an effort in every place we’ve visited to experience a bit of the culture and history as well as the fun stuff, and much like the war museum in Saigon, whilst it was really interesting to visit Choeung Ek we both found it quite upsetting at points and needless to say we didn’t feel like taking too many photos, hence the absence of them from this blog.

Feeling a bit somber after our visit, we realised we’d been rather foolish to arrange to visit the genocide museum on the same day – but we’d already paid our tuk tuk driver for the afternoon so we headed there anyway.

Remembrance bracelets on the children's mass grave

We didn’t really think it was possible but we found the genocide museum even more disturbing than Choeung Ek. The Khmer Rouge transformed a primary school into a prison and torture chamber and it’s pretty much the same today as it was in the 70’s. They haven’t changed the décor, the wire frame beds are still in all the rooms and all the original torture equipment is still there.  They also have a mug shot of everyone who was ever imprisoned there and it was quite disturbing to wander around with thousands of eyes on you.

S21

We took a wander for ten minutes or so and then a guide mentioned to us that a video would be starting soon on the top floor of one of the prison blocks. Hoping for a bit of light relief in the form of a historical documentary about the prison or something similar we went and took our seats at the front of the room.

Unfortunately, rather than a historical documentary about the prison it was one woman’s harrowing story about her son and daughter-in-law during the Khmer Rouge, about an hour in and getting progressively less cheery we had a flashback to a paragraph we’d read in the LP about watching a two hour video at one of the museums and suddenly the penny dropped. We felt pretty bad for getting up halfway through but there was absolutely no way we could’ve lasted another hour with our sanity intact!

By this point we agreed we were pretty mentally exhausted from our day of sightseeing so we decided to head back to the bright lights of Phnom Penh.  Fortunately we’d already arranged to meet Chris and Holly for drinks, otherwise I think chances are high we would’ve curled up in a ball in our hotel room for the rest of the evening!

Cheers!

It’s also fortunate that Phnom Penh looks a lot prettier at night than it does during the day and the guys had managed to pick a pretty nice rooftop bar overlooking the river for our much needed happy hour cocktails!

Vietnam Day 14,15 & 16 - Saigon

We woke up the next morning and had absolutely no motivation whatsoever to stay in Dalat another night. There was still a couple of things that interested us out of town – but they were about 40km away, so we didn’t fancy scooting that far – especially after having seen the crazy bastards on the mountain roads the day before. Plus it would mean another night in Dalat – and it had only taken us two hours to see the best of it already, so told our guesthouse to cancel our second night and second day scooter hire – booked a bus to Saigon for 1pm and waited around for the pickup.

At this point we discovered possibly the best thing to eat in Vietnam! We’d seen loads of street baguette vendors since arriving in Vietnam (pretty much one on every city street), but had generally discounted them for fear of getting something weird. This time though, we had little choice before our bus arrived so took the plunge, and it turned out it was really easy – like a small Vietnamese Subway! They tasted amazing – which was fortunate as it helped forget the near-death-experience that was our shuttle mini-bus ride to the larger bus… no matter how often you get a crazy driver, it never quite prepares you for it!

We got on the big bus – and were two of only four whiteys on board. There was a welcome speech and details of the itinerary given at the start – at least I think that was what happened, but it was exclusively in Vietnamese so we had no idea! We headed out of town and into the windy mountain roads again – stopping a couple of times for more passengers or food, each time having to guess how long the stop was meant to be! What was meant to be a 6 hour journey ended up taking the best part of 10 (mainly thanks to a roadworks stop which lasted over an hour and resulted in them playing BAD VIETNAMESE TV on the big screen REALLY LOUDLY.)

We arrived in Saigon in the heart of the backpacker district, scraped our bags off the pavement and set off in search of our hotel. Despite now being almost 10pm, it was fucking unbearable out there – especially compared to the chilled mountain air in Dalat – and far worse than we’d had in Hanoi. After a few heated discussions with each other on the walk there (fairly standard now whenever we have to walk anywhere with our full gear on) we found the backalley it was located on, checked in and (after raiding the minibar) went straight to sleep!

So much for our first night in Saigon.

The next day we were determined to make a better go of it – first we met a jolly nice couple from Blighty at breakfast who were having an eerily similar holiday to us and had also been living in Australia and were heading back. We had loads in common and traded a few war stories, before coming to the conclusion that we wanted to catch the same bus the next day to Phnom Penh.

Next we hit the streets. First stop was the central indoor markets – they were pretty large, and pretty sweaty. We wandered around in a bit of a daze not really knowing what we were looking for and soon escaped – into a rain shower. It felt just like Brisbane on a Saturday in mid-February – sunny, hot, sunny, rain, sunny, hot…repeat throughout the day.

We strolled past a few of the landmarks on our tour-map, the Opera House, Cathedral, Royal Palace – without actually going to any, the heat was sapping any enthusiasm we had for culture! We had to kill some time before heading to the War Remnants museum (poor choice of words there) so went for a mediocre lunch followed by a rather surprisingly expensive ice cream in the park. (Lisa: It was Haagen Daas! I wasn’t surprised…)

The Museum was the main thing we had planned for the day so we got there with a couple of hours left before closing time. As you enter, the outside is littered with old US Forces planes, helicopters and tanks left behind after the war. Inside the museum is broken into a few different sections – the ground floor was (without being titled) propaganda central. Just in case you were in any doubt about how they were going to be portraying the Vietnam War here – it is soon clarified. The walls were covered in a combination of images from anti-war rallies and marches held globally at the time, and also pro-Vietnam posters made by different governments.

Upstairs is where the heavy stuff started – fortunately we had been warned it was pretty graphic and shocking in places so we were semi-prepared. First we saw the war crimes room – detailing some of the many massacres that took place during the war, perpetrated by US soldiers (many of which have now been confirmed by both sides) against the Vietnamese, with the focus being on those having nothing to do with the Viet Cong. It was pretty tough, a lot of powerful images and stories many of which are difficult to imagine happening – especially as it was only 40 years ago.

Next was the section I found most interesting – chronicling the stories of some of the hundreds of press war photographers who had been there, and died in the battlefield. The photography was incredible – especially given the circumstances, and was made even more poignant by the fact that 5 or 6 of the guys featured died in the same helicopter crash over Laos.

The next level up went through the details of the use of Agent Orange and other various chemical weaponry to effectively starve the Vietnamese resistance into defeat by poisoning vast areas of arable land. Unfortunately for everyone involved – on both sides – it has a rather drastic effect on humans as well. Again, more harrowing images mainly of children and young adults born in the affected areas years later – mainly Vietnamese but also a few American children whose fathers had handled the chemicals during the war. By this point, we were both a little bit traumatised by it all (but at least we weren’t American!) but the last room we saw was a photographic display of the rebuilding work that has taken place since the war which was a bit of a high note in an otherwise very sobering experience.

Outside – I took some pictures of tanks and helicopters, before we decided to retreat back to have a shower and make the most of our one night in Saigon. And make the most of it we did! We pulled our glad rags up from the crinkled depths of our backpacks, hailed a reliable taxi and headed for the Sheraton Towers which has a bar on the 23^rd floor overlooking the posh part of the city. We strolled into the lobby, trying to act like we knew what we were doing – it was fairly fancy, but we were probably the fanciest people there (loads of world-tour pensioners and khaki).

We made it up to the bar, secured ourselves a seat at the balcony and it was a pretty good view. The cocktails & snacks cost more than our hotel room for two nights – but it was worth it!

View from the Sheraton

Afterwards – we were not content with one rooftop bar, so went to the Grand Café on top of another hotel. This time we strolled in with even more confidence (for some reason we always think they will rumble us for being riff raff and not let us inside!), headed straight for the elevator and hit 12. The bar however was on 13, and you can’t access 12 without a hotel access card, so after being in the lift for 30 seconds panicking the doors opened again and we looked up to see the receptionist and two porters laughing at us. “13!” one of them called out, laughing as he said it… We sheepishly made our way up, having completely lost all of our cool points – but as luck would have it this bar was half the price with more comfortable chairs, and a view over the river.

Living the high life!

The next morning we again had breakfast with the English kids – Chris and Holly, and it turned out we’d all booked onto the same bus. We were all kind of relieved as we were a bit daunted by the prospect of the border crossing over to Cambodia that afternoon – having read many blog posts about people being overcharged by gun-wielding police for no real reason other than they can.

We were with a pretty reputable bus company though – and as it turned out it was a breeze! They drop you off at Vietnamese customs to get stamped out, then back on the bus to the Cambodian office where we queued for about 20 minutes – got our e-visas confirmed and in our passports and were through and back on the bus within the hour! The whole journey took about 7 hours and we got into Phnom Penh about 8pm. We bargained a Tuk Tuk driver to take all four of us to our separate hotels – theirs looked pretty swish from the lobby, ours was a backpackers but had really good reviews on tripadvisor.

It soon turned sour though – we checked in to the room, which was in a part of the hotel they were renovating and so absolutely reeked of paint. Also, the wifi signal didn’t reach into the room, the bathroom looked one step up from a prison-cell bucket and there were mosquitos EVERYWHERE from the doors and windows being left open on account of the paint. Ah the joys of blindly booking ahead!

We had some (surprisingly nice) food downstairs, and some cocktails at the rooftop bar whilst using the wifi to book the same hotel Chris and Holly were at after we’d sent them a message asking for the lowdown.

Vietnam Day 11, 12, 13 – Nha Trang & Dalat

Beached.

We arrived in Nha Trang at about 7am, looking like zombies. There was another couple on the bus, also heading to the same hotel – and we told them it was only a 5 minute walk from the bus drop-off so we set off in convoy. Unfortunately at this point our phone GPS decided to abandon us so we were wandering the sweaty streets for ages trying to find it – the other guys didn’t look impressed, but equally also had no idea. Eventually I got directions from a shop, and fortunately it was 2 minutes until we were in the lobby.

The owner was a dutch ex-pat called Danny (with token Vietnamese spouse), who had a very serious and almost teacher-like tone as he checked us in. We lucked out with the hotel - we’d only booked the previous afternoon, but fortunately got the last available room – which was family sized with three beds (leaving us with a goldilocks-esque dilemma), and the most comfy mattress and pillow combo we’d had yet! We whacked the air-con up, drew the curtains and promptly slept until 11:30am. Then Lisa woke up, and I continued to sleep until 1:30pm!

Sleeping Buddha

We were both ravenous at this point, so headed to a Texas BBQ place around the corner for some ribs and beers (we didn’t feel bad about eating Western food, as this was about the least Vietnamese place we’d seen so far – it just felt like the Gold Coast – absolutely soulless). Given it was now about 34 degrees out, we ventured to the beach to cool off – it was pretty breezy down there, and much cooler so we hung out for an hour or so. I braved the water, but there was a massive shore-dump with head high waves smashing into the beach and a bit or a rip so it wasn’t all that much fun!

Post-beach we thought we’d walk to the Long Son Temple – again, we foolishly used the LP map as a reference and it looked about 20 minutes away. 45 minutes later, again we were dodging rush hour traffic along the busiest road in town (you’d think we would learn our lesson!) – but at least we were sweating out the onion rings from lunchtime. We had to walk through a school that was just kicking out which was pretty funny though – all the little kids were playing and messing about until they saw the giant, red faced man and his pixie sidekick approach and literally stood and gawped at us as we cut through, trying our best to smile and wave at them all and hold back the urge to kick our way to freedom.

James and the Giant Buddha

Eventually we found the place, and were delighted to discover that it involved about 200 steps to the summit! Fortunately, halfway there was a really amazing statue of (I think) sleeping Buddha – about 20 metres long and 5 metres high. It wasn’t mentioned or signposted at all – we just happened to look across en route and see it.

Just above that was a giant bell – used by the monks for various monk related things (we’ve seen loads of monks on our travels so far and have no idea what they actually do all day!), and then – finally at the summit was what we had come to see. A GIANT 74 foot tall seated Buddha– on top of a circular platform of Lotus flowers, looking out over the city. It was pretty awe-inspiring – especially with the cloudless sky behind as the sun was setting. We walked around it – then got encouraged by a little old man to go inside – he unlocked the door, then promptly lit some incense sticks and gave them to us to say a little prayer (I think) – then put them in the pot in front of a smaller Buddha inside. We duly obliged, then I went to put some cash in the donations box – he quickly stopped me and held out his hand, gesturing with the other that I should be paying him! The joke was on him though, as I only handed over about the equivalent of 5p and legged it before he knew what was happening.

We hung around for about half an hour as the sun went down – waiting for them to turn on the spotlights and illuminate the statue, thinking that they were bound to do so any minute. Unfortunately, it never happened so all we got was bitten by mosquitos and a perilous jaunt back down the poorly lit, death steps to the streets below. There – we promptly couldn’t find a taxi for ages (the first time in 3 weeks!), so had to battle the streets again before finally hailing one at the train station and being whisked back to plan our next move.

Cablecar ride -  Dalat

We had a couple of options – either head straight for Saigon on an overnight bus/train or go inland up into the mountains to Dalat. After not going to Sapa, and wanting to see some central highlands scenery and something a bit different from the well-beaten coastal route we opted for Dalat. We went and bought our bus tickets for early the next day and took a stroll down what looked like the main artery of the party area. As we saw all the backpackers spilling out into the streets, glowing lobster-red from a day on the beach and too many shots of rhum we were glad we’d only booked the one night in Nha Trang – quite honestly, it was a shithole.

No, I'm pretty sure they aren't just pets...

In the morning, we were suitably late checking out (why change the habit of a lifetime) so had to scamp quickly back to the bus company office to make our 7:30am check-in. We needn’t have worried however, as we then had to sit on our backpacks on the pavement for 45 minutes waiting for the bus to arrive. One large one came and went and looked relatively comfy – but not heading to Dalat. Then a dirty old minivan showed up – the driver shouted our destination and we piled in, expecting that this would be the shuttle bus to our nice, shiny, air-conditioned, modern vessel to glide us through the mountains. As they loaded our bags however, it seemed like they were taking way too much time fitting them all in, and it dawned on us that because they had only sold 7 tickets for that morning – this was to be our transport.

There were three seats in the back, three in the middle and two up front (one being the driver). Fortunately for us, there was a group of three girls who got wedged in the tiny back row – then Lisa got in with a couple of locals in the middle (they were tiny women, and it was still a squeeze so we were glad it wasn’t a couple of HUGE Scandinavian Viking women – which we had already experienced, so it could have been worse – but not much) and I called shotgun and took my chances in the front.

Rawr!

As I got in I asked the guy – “this van to Dalat…?” – already knowing the answer. He knodded, confirming our fears – it was going to 5 hours in this sweaty death-trap taking on the winding mountain roads, oncoming trucks and man-sized potholes. Nothing you could really do, but since we’d forked out extra for this company because of their reputation (Sihntourist again) we were both a bit pissed off. Not as bad as the three girls at the back though – who after an hour on the road were still holding onto the hope that we would be transferring to another bus!

“Excuse me – when do we change bus? We pay for assigned seats!”. The driver and the locals had a good old laugh at this in Vietnamese before he broke the bad news. The drive wasn’t too horrendous for the first half, until we started climbing into the mountains and the driver decided that air-conditioning was no longer required, so turned it off to let in the cool mountain air. Unfortunately for us, 24 years of living in South West England has conditioned us to feel that an air temperature of 28 degrees  is pretty fucking warm – regardless of it rushing into your face through a window. I took out the laptop and tried to blog my way through it. Mainly because I had my closest view yet of local driving up front, and a few times as we were overtaking a truck around a blind corner with a 300 foot drop on the otherside down a cliff to our certain deaths, I did start to wonder why we didn’t pick the train to Saigon…

On the plus side, he did give us boiled sweets.

Another plus was that we somehow didn’t plunge to our untimely demise and we arrived in Dalat at around midday – actually on time! We’d emailed a couple of hotels, but hadn’t heard back – so called them both, opting for the $8/night option over the $25. She said they’d send over someone to pick us up and within 2 minutes they had arrived. Unfortunately for us – it was ‘they’ plural, two young guys on motorbikes! Before we had the chance to ask if they had a car instead because we had a lot of luggage – they grabbed our big backpacks, shoved them in the front footwell and handed us both a helmet.

Weeeeeeeeeee!

It wasn’t my first experience of a local motorbike ride, but Lisa had a look of terror as we departed – fortunately they took it pretty easy, and it was only a 5 minute ride. I actually enjoyed being on the back for a change, although I’m never sure where I should put my hands, and straddling a strange young Vietnamese boy so closely should be kept in the realm of elderly overweight European men (we’ve seen plenty).

We checked in and they were all really nice – the hotel seemed to be near the action, and the room (although basic) was fine for $8. We debated what to do for an hour or so, then decided to hire a motorbike from them for $4 and head out to see some sights. Dalat is famed for its motorcycle tours as there are quite a few things in the surrounding areas of interest – mainly waterfalls and silk factories but also somewhere called the Crazy House (more on that later…). The easy riders story is actually quite good – apparently a bunch of ex-army guys had nothing to do after the war ended, but all owned motorbikes to started charging tourists to drive them about all day and earn themselves a decent wage (tours were about $20 each I think), compared to farming. Word soon spread, and more and more guides have emerged all over the place – but we’d rather have a go ourselves for a tenth of the price!

Bear hug.

We had lunch and set off to a cablecar just outside of town – which is one of the longest in Asia, and takes you from the top of the hill, through rainforest for about 10 minutes and to the top of another hill with a temple, and lake. The temple was OK, but we’ve already seen more than our fare share – and we got scammed buying ice creams, and harrassed by a tour guide who was insisting he show us the way (then they ask for $10 at the end) as we got there which didn’t help. They did have some amusing animal hedges, but other than that it was kind of dull – and the lake was actually miles away.

We scamped back to catch our return cable-car before they stopped running and we were stuck with the hordes of Korean tourists (who take really amusing pictures at sightseeing places – we stood and laughed at their poses for quite some time).

On the way there we had passed over loads of fields, farms and a town. One of the houses had a big tree just growing through the middle of it – they had built the roof around it! Another place had a big garden – and about 10 German Shepherds running around. “Aw, look at all those dogs!” Lisa excitedly said to me as she noticed them… “Why would anyone keep that ma….” she tailed off as the realisation set in that it was probably free-range dog we were seeing, not just an enthusiastic pet lover.

Crazy House

On the way back, we looked down at the dog-house again, this time we could only see five…

Filled with that cheery imagery – we drove another 5 minutes down the road to check out the waterfall at Datalna. It was 4:30 by this point, and we thought it closed at 5, so weren’t hopeful – especially as it took 10-15 minutes each way to get down to. As luck would have it – it was still open, and they also have a toboggan ride which you can catch both ways for an extra $2 each – sold! The toboggans were awesome – we had single seaters, and they were controlled with hand levers so really easy. It was just us riding too – so we had time to mess about a bit, and ride far too closely to each other. They didn’t feel like the safest of things, and actually went pretty quickly down the hill and round the corners!

We made it down in five minutes – checked out the waterfall for some pictures, then as they were closing we caught the last ride back to the top (not as exciting as they just pull you pretty much straight up – but at least we didn’t have to walk!).

We were on a sightseeing roll – so decided to see if the crazy house was open. This is a residence built by the daughter of a dignitary after a jaunt to Moscow inspired her.

 The place was insane – it reminded us both of the various Gaudi buildings we’d seen in Barcelona, but all kind of mushed together. Many of the ‘houses’ within it have the look and feel of being trees, with narrow winding staircases connecting very random bedrooms – each themed in some way (a giant bear, a bee, ants, a tiger etc on the wall). There were walkways connecting some of the buildings in the complex which intertwined like vines from a fig tree – only wide enough for one person that climbed to three or four stories high, but with only a waist or shin high barrier on either side.

The garden had ponds with hundreds of frogs and bugs chirping away – and a giant (fake) spider in a web. We walked around for over an hour as the light disappeared and stayed until they closed at 7 – it was really good fun exploring and we were glad we sought it out that evening.

Easy Rider.

That night we researched a food place around the corner that apparently did a really tasty vegetarian buffet – consisting of rather convincing mock-meat dishes. We found it and got there as they were about to close. No one spoke a word of English – so we just pointed at a few things, grabbed some beers from the fridge and took a seat. They were all chatting and laughing at us – and at one point an old lady came up from the cellar, clocked me and just stared for a good minute or so! To top it off, the food was amazing and has given us a craving ever since for whatever it was – but we’ll probably never find it again!

We briefly scooted around the night market – which resembled a jumble sale dealing almost exclusively in knitwear – then to the main backpacker street to see what action we were missing out on. 

It turns out – not much at all, so we called it a night.