Our second attempt with the overnight bus (from Buon Ma Thuot to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City) wasn’t as refreshing as the previous one… this bus company decided that shrill, loud, traditional Vietnamese music was perfect for notifying us of any pit stops or that we arrived in the city (at 5am).
Our first day in Saigon was spent getting familiar with the city… we walked all over the downtown area and saw most of the major sights. Our first stop was the War Remnants Museum, where we were reminded of our respective ‘imperialist’ countries and their invasions of Vietnam. The Museum itself was interesting and we were able to see the toll foreign influence had taken on the country. Our next stop was the Independence Palace, which was the ‘White House’ of South Vietnam. Walking through the Palace, it seems as though the decor hasn’t been touched since 1975, when South Vietnam was ‘liberated’ (or invaded, depending on your point of view) by the North Vietnamese/Viet Minh. Other sights we saw were the Ben Thanh market, the French post office, and a cathedral replicating one from Toulouse.
The next day, we joined a tour group to see the Cu Chi tunnels, which are the famous guerrilla warfare tunnels used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war. Our self-aggrandizing tour guide, Jimmy (“Jimmy knows everything, no other tour guides know this”), showed us reconstructions of the tunnels and hideouts used by the guerrillas. For both Cédric and me, it was interesting to see how innovative the Viet Cong were, with their trap doors and booby traps, in circumstances with very limited resources. As the tour ended, our guide who knew everything forgot to mention that life in the tunnel wasn’t so idyllic (pests and sicknesses ran rampant) and ultimately, the tunnels didn’t hold up to extensive bombing.
Our last day in Vietnam was spent visiting the pagodas and shops of Saigon’s Chinese district. With a few extra dollars on hand (which goes really far in Vietnam), Cédric and I had fun buying odd spices and herbs in the Binh Tay market and lighting a prayer incense coil in the last pagoda we visited. As the day progressed, however, we both started to get overwhelmed with the noise, pollution, and general urban chaos. We were happy to be leaving that evening.
Before we returned to Munich, Cédric and I had another short layover in Beijing, but long enough to stretch our legs outside of the airport. This time, we visited the Temple of Heaven Park. In contrast with the last time that we were in Beijing (the beginning of March), the trees showed green buds and the smog and pollution had cleared to the point where we could see the mountains encircling the city. We ate both lunch and dinner in the city, and both times we ate some pretty odd things; for the most part in Cambodia and Vietnam, food wasn’t so different from what we know as Asian food in the West, but in China, knowing what you order is a challenge. We also had a bizarre Chinese breakfast with tea / soy sauce soaked eggs and fermented mustard root on our flight back to Munich.
We’re now in Dalat, the honeymoon capital of Vietnam- but for a good reason. It’s located in the Southern Highlands, a mountainous area favored by Vietnamese royalty, army generals, and French colonialists for its cooler temperatures and green forests. This city also serves as a weekend retreat for couples and families in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon).
Yesterday, we took a bus to climb up to Lang Biang, a large mountain in the area. The hike was relatively uneventful, except the beginning being on a road where and cars race up to bring national tourists to a lower summit nearby, but it was neat to see the pine forest give way to a tropical forest about 400 meters from the summit. The rest of the day was spent walking around the city – with notably a clone of the Eiffel tower and a French cathedral – and we had the local speciality for dinner: meats grilled over our own clay pot barbecue on the table.
Today, we acted like Vietnamese tourists and saw all of the kitschy attractions in the area. The first stop was the Art Deco summer palace of the last royal family in Vietnam (rule ended ca 1950s). The front lawns are now full of objects for lovey photo sessions. Next, we saw the highly developed Dalanta waterfalls (the falls were still there, but now surrounded by concrete viewing areas and bobsled). Then, we scootered over to the Valley of Love, an odd, mostly empty love-themed amusement park and recreational area. Lastly, we visited the flower gardens of the area. Due to the cooler temperatures here, Dalat is great for growing plants, as seen by the sea of greenhouses on the outskirts of the city, including surprising not very tropical plants like strawberries and tulips.
Tomorrow, we’re going to Lak Lak, the highest mountain lake in the area, in an area of ethnic minority groups.
– landing in Beijing: If you wonder why the plane is preparing to land…but you have no idea neither where it is going to be nor what could possibly be your altitude, it just means you are a surfing a gigantic pollution cloud. Until the last minute we were not able to see the ground, although in perfect weather conditions. It feels really weird to have a 20m inhabitants city completely invisible due to the smog.
– buses in Cambodia: Having experienced many bus networks around the world, the one in Cambodia is likely to be one of the less efficient one (apart from western countries were buses are usually suspicious…). All buses in Cambodia seem to make only one route per day with a departure at 930. And apparently always take around 6h (+-1h). To ease things there are no central bus station but small “shops” around towns for each company. Some small lines thus use their shop only once in the day. Connections seem to imply waiting for next day’s bus. 930 + 6h usually implies that you are spending your day in the bus. The solution: Talk to as many people as possible, believe few of them and you may get an access for a bargained taxi or a minivan. Commissions not helping, most of hotels and English speaking people will direct you to the snail-buses.
– Phnom Penh: Considering the GDP per capita, a surprisingly clean and pleasant city, with well maintained monuments, parks, not too noisy, few trashes around or weird smells, some varied restaurants, it feels safe (okay it’s probably not Singapore but tourists with their backpacks in front and focusing on running to wherever following the guidebooks are very amusing – and seem like perfect scamming targets)
– Phnom Penh (the back window): We had booked a really great hotel in the touristic center. Street 130, near the riverfront – also age difference inappropriate dating neighborhood because prostitution is forbidden. During the day lots of restaurants and nice shops. However starting at 6pm some other shops start to open: Small entrance bars. While Cassie was in bed remembering her last week(s) meals, I spent an hour observing the rodeo from the terrace of a restaurant: Apparently Phnom Penh is also the Mecca of weird old (and/or creepy looking) guys from western countries. The kind of person that would look perfect in serial killer c-movies. Apparently the game is to find a very young Asian girl in the evening – the rate first depends on the price of drinks – and then keep her acting as your (granddaughter’s friend) girlfriend for up to several day if you also go shopping with her during the day. Very weird, creepy, and definitely not the best image of westerners… For the girls, the alternative is often a t-shirt factory for 2$/day. Apparently Cambodia is also the refuge of many pedophilias networks and other mafias related. In the ugly part of Cambodia, I could also enumerate the capital becoming a central drug trade center in Asia and an important use of child labor.
– Vietnam: So far very lively, very friendly people, approaching us to simply help when their neighbors seem to have a cult for tuktuks referring to the number of occurrences per day. The food (also applies to Cambodia) is also very varied and also far from the clichés in Europe. No, it’s not spicy, it’s full of vegetables, not just fried noodles, it’s cheap and many possibilities (never had the same dish twice so far) and “relatively” (Cassie will disagree after the last days) clean.
– crossing the borders: Entering china -> should be easy for one day (special conditions) but it looks like the custom officers are not all aware of visa rules.
Entering Cambodia, very simple and straightforward with a small fair fee.
Entering Vietnam: First you need some sort of recommendation letter from a company “governmentish” doing nothing but cashing cash, and then a second expensive 50$ real visa at the first entry, for at the airport. Total an expensive stamp. However crossing from Cambodia with a bus is literally a joke. It seems like waiting long enough makes you cross the border. We went through without handling the passports a single time, a smile at the infrared camera and an xray of whatever you present to whoever is present gives you entry to Vietnam. Literally nobody verified if the number of people in the bus was correct, if the passports were available, etc. Next time I’ll try with a Disneyland passport…
– wifi and cellphone: Even in the most remote place so far, a sandwich street food stand kilometers from a town…you may have a free wifi hotspot and no issue whatsoever to get a 4g signal. Germany, wake up: I’m fed up to lose signal in downtown Augsburg !!!
– saying words in Cambodian: We tried, we failed
– in Vietnamese: We tried and people are amused…second check with hands though (or English)
– gesture “come”: It seems like asking someone to get closer is like a sign “Go away” or “I’m not interested”. That brings situations were Cassie goes away instead of coming on a boat and the people making even more signs more expressively, and Cassie even more confused
– silk: I so didn’t get a fake silk mao shirt that so didn’t break after 5 days.
Probably more random stuff some other day!
]]>We left Phnom Penh in a nondescript bus from the outskirts of the city early Tuesday morning and made our way to the Vietnamese border (which was a nondescript check point where it seemed that if you stood outside the bus in the heat long enough, you were allowed to cross the border). As we drove closer to the border, the dry Cambodian landscape turned into flooded rice fields, spotted with small mountains- very different from what we had seen for the last week.
Around noon, we arrived in Chau Doc and dropped our bags off quickly at the hotel so we could spend the rest of our day motorbiking around. Our first stop was Tra Su, a small wetland reserve 30 km away that also served as a type of bird sanctuary. We rented a boat with a young Vietnamese couple and spent a few hours floating among the mangrove forests, watching the numerous bird species. Afterwards, we scootered back to the city, with a small detour at Sam Mountain (a small, sacred (but also developed) mountain that is spotted with Buddhist temples and shrines).
Our next day followed a similar rhythm: bus to Can Tho, renting a moto to take to Vinh Long, taking a boat ride there, then motorbiking back. Yesterday was also the first day that we experienced driving on the chaotic, yet self-organizing, madness that is the Vietnamese ‘highway.’ Vietnam is significantly more developed than Cambodia and thus comes with more people who own their own vehicles (albeit mostly motorbikes) and road lanes. Here, it seems as though everyone has a right to use the highway, from fruit sellers to school children riding bikes to old men in wheelchairs moving against traffic to buses on a tight time schedule. As long as you drive slow enough and keep a vigilant eye, there will be no major issues. That being said, I made it clear that our motorbiking will be kept to smaller, more rural roads next time.
This morning, Cédric and I left our hotel before dawn to catch a glimpse of the floating markets near Can Tho. We spent about six hours on the river and saw the fruit and vegetable vendors selling their wares at Cai Rang and Phong Dien market, along with other parts of river life, like the fishermen and small freighters moving up and down the Mekong. The rest of our day was spent drinking iced coffee and wandering around the city. For lunch, we tried Banh Xeo, a local dish comprised of am meat and mung bean filled omelet, which is eaten with herbs, lettuce, and rice paper.
Tonight, Cédric and I are taking a night bus to Da Lat, the so-called City of Eternal Spring due to its cooler temperatures, and hope to spend a few days hiking and biking around the mountains there.
