Ho–Hee-Ho–Chee Minh and Foo Kwok!

See photo album here.

After recovering from my malaise in Phnom Penh, I hopped on a bus to the city that never shuts up - Ho Chi Minh City! We crossed the Vietnamese border without any major issues other than being treated a little like cattle; the best one can hope for at a border crossing in Asia I suppose. I didn’t have to worry about overcharging this time as I purchased my visa in Bangkok and they had their way with me at the Embassy instead.

While I was waiting in the line up, a Vietnamese family walked past me and rolled over my bare foot with their suitcase and no apologies. This was my first taste of the negative side of Vietnam, but more on that coming up in later blogs.

I sat beside an English army vet who I thought was around 45 but learned was actually my age. When he finally awoke from his apparent drunken siesta, he told me all about how he had been shot and wounded more than once during various duties. When he got the call to go to Iraq, he stayed awake for 3 days so he could claim he had gone crazy and wouldn’t have to serve. He now lives in Cambodia on money he receives as a veteran and drinks most of it away. We made the obligatory pit stop at a roadside restaurant and he drank 2 beers in less than 20 minutes and then purchased 2 more for the rest of the bus ride to the border. Of course the nurturing mother in me wanted to plead with him to get help (yes she IS in there somewhere) but I felt it was not my place to preach and I can’t imagine what this poor bloke has been through and is trying so hard to forget.

I met 2 girls from England – Odette and Jen – and 2 girls from Quebec – Anna and Nicole, when we arrived in HCMC. We decided to all pile into a cab to head to the ‘backpacker’s district’. The driver drove us around for about 10 minutes and when we got to our ‘destination’, he pointed to the metre - 500,000 dong, equalling $31.25 US! This is Vietnam for god sake! So we fought with him for awhile but since the meter said what it said, we eventually all paid our $6 reluctantly. A couple of days later, Odette and Jen walked around the corner from our guesthouse and saw the spot where the bus had dropped us off and the cabbie had picked us up. Yep! We were a block away from our destination and had taken a $30 cab ride to get there!

I had planned to go with the girls to Mui Ne but wanted to see the War Museum first so had stayed another day. I met a girl from Israel in my dorm room, Elisheva, who had just spent the last 10 months traveling through China and Mongolia! She was planning to go to Phu Quoc Island for some beach time, which had been part of my original loose itinerary, so I decided to tag along.

I said a temporary goodbye to my 19 year old Vietnamese/Australian ‘little brother’ who speaks barely a word of English. I met him at a place called Cafe Sozo just down the street from my guesthouse. Cafe Sozo helps underprivileged families in Vietnam find employment (http://sozocentre.com). In Hong’s case, his dad (Australian) has nothing to do with him and same goes for his mom (Vietnamese). He works 12 hours a day, every day as a waiter there for 4000 dong/hour – that is about .25 cents US. He has to support himself and wants to go places but has to work so much harder than any of us just to make ends meet. We bonded and it was nice for me to have a regular place to go edit photos, where people knew my name and I could hang with some locals!

Elisheva and I took 7 (yes, SEVEN) modes of transportation to get to Phu Quoc Island. First was a cab ride through HCMC. At one point, amongst a flurry of motorbikes, it felt like we were in the middle of a wasp’s nest - motorbikes circling us from all angles, with no way out. I couldn’t imagine being on a motorbike or on foot in that havoc.

In HCMC, the whole fam-damily piles on (up to 5, and sometimes even their dog). Traffic there is Ridiculous (note capital ‘R’). There is no rhyme or reason to any of it and no one really obeys traffic signals but instead honks there horn to warn everyone else to look out and get the hell out of the way. When everyone is honking their horns like hooligans at the same time, how are you supposed to know WHO their honking at? As a pedestrian, I seriously prayed for my life every time I crossed a street. If I hesitated - poof! - a teensy Vietnamese lady would appear to take me by the arm and lead me safely across. This was a nice gesture but a little scary if you’re not ready to let someone else take your life into their hands! At one point, I tried to see how high I could count before hearing a horn; ’one, t..BEEP!, on..BEEP!, one..BEEP, on..BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!, one, t...BEEEEEEEP!!!’.

After a one hour stop at the bus ticket office and a mini-bus to the bus station, we departed at 11 PM on another local mini-bus to Rach Gia (so much for the sleeper bus!). The driver had the a/c and Vietnamese tunage blasting throughout the entire 5 hour journey. He kept braking at warp speed right before every bridge we traveled over (and there were many) where we would then strike the approach and catch enough air to cause all of our behinds to take flight off our seats. The guy beside me bumped his head on the roof on more than one occasion and also thought my shoulder made a nice pillow.

We arrived at Rach Gia sleepless at 4 AM in the dark with not a clue where the ferry was located and wasn’t due to leave to the island for another 4 hours. So we walked to the nearest street which was just a hummin’ with people preparing for the morning market. Elisheva was extremely sick and had such a sore throat that she wasn’t able to talk which made devising plans an interesting task. After observing the market for awhile, hobnobbing with the locals and some sign language, we set out to find the ferry first by foot, but gave up after realizing no one spoke a spit of English and all seemed to point in ambiguous directions to the ferry. So we hopped on a moto (transportation vehicle #4).


When we finally boarded the ferry, the two of us fell into comas for the entire 3 hour journey before getting to Phu Quoc Island and catching a bus into town. Then came the part I always dread when arriving in a new place - negotiating transportation to a guesthouse. This is always tricky business because they will first try to overcharge you and second, take you to an expensive guesthouse where they can make a commission from the owner (hoping also that you are so tired from the journey that you will just decide to drop your backpack and pay the extra dong).

The most concise way to describe the next 45 minutes is that it was a complete ‘shit show’! After much negotiating in the heat of the midday sun, we got our way and FINALLY ended up at our guesthouse of choice. The entire journey took us 15 hours from start to finish. The moral of this story is – take the one hour flight to Phu Quoc Island from HCMC - it’s WORTH it!!

Up next – cocunuts, coffee and....high tech monks!

Cambodi-odi-odi-o! Part 2 - Phnom Penh

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See photos here.

When Cait and I arrived in Phnom Phen, we were greeted by the usual suspects – taxi and tuk tuk drivers as well as guesthouse touts offering ‘cheap cheap’ and ‘same same, but different’ accommodations. We settled on ‘OK Guesthouse’ after consulting the Lonely. We sat in the tuk tuk facing the traffic and felt like rock stars (but not really in a good way). People stared at us like we were either monstrosities to society or high royalty – it was really QUITE uncomfortable.

After we arrived at the guesthouse, we walked to the riverside where tourists and locals blanketed the boardwalk awaiting sunset and some respite from the heat. It actually reminded me a little of English Bay in Vancouver, minus the naked children running amok, garbage strewn all over and excessive heat (have I mentioned how HOT it is here?!). We decided to take a breather and sit down near a group of children playing by the river. They were ridiculously cute so I tried to steal a photo. The first was taken of them hanging out on the riverside and I couldn’t have posed them more perfectly for the cover of a pop album for kids!

Soon they were taking photos of us with my camera. I had not had this much fun in a long time. They were so excited to see their faces on my LCD screen and even more so when they got to take the picture themselves. The warmth and happiness that we felt from these children made a special place in my heart for Cambodia.

The next day, we took a tuk tuk to the Killing Fields. Unlike most people, I had heard of the movie but not actually seen it, nor did I bother to ever find out much about it as I was never really into the whole war history thing. On this day, I found out more than my heart could take. Between 1975 - 1979, 30 percent of the Cambodia population (approximately 2 million people) were eradicated by the Khmer Rouge, lead by the Pol Pot regime. Phnom Penh was brimming with hope for the future when on April 19th the Khmer Rouge took over the city to fulfill their plan to create an agrarian society. They abolished the monetary system (all financial institutions closed), markets, schools and parts of Angkor Wat (Cambodian’s source of national pride) were destroyed. People considered intellectuals were immediately killed and those left over were forced into hard labour on collective farms, starved to death or executed. Children between the ages of 10 to 15 years old were turned into soldiers and unfeeling killing machines. The extermination camp called Choeung Ek, now dubbed The Killing Fields, is about 5 km from Phnom Penh. Several prisoners were also taken to S-21, the headquarters for the Khmer Rouge, where they were tortured into admitting crimes (such as treason) that they did not commit. They were barely fed; one prisoner who survived said that he only went to the bathroom twice in 2 months while being held there. The acts of tortures that were practiced are too graphic for me to even begin to describe.

Vietnamese troops finally captured Phnom Penh in 1979 forcing the Pol Pot regime and their followers into the jungle where they were originally established in the 1960’s. Pol Pot died of natural causes in 1985 and never paid for his crimes against the Cambodian people. Cait and I bought both the Killing Fields and S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine to watch because we were so intrigued with the how’s and why’s of this atrocious era in Cambodian history. I am afraid that we still didn’t find any clear answers. How could the rest of the world let this happen? How could we not have helped them? How is it possible that the soldiers can show such little remorse even today for what they did to their people, in some cases their own family and friends?

What I have learned has made me so appreciative to have the opportunity to travel and gain so much knowledge that I wouldn’t have otherwise pursued myself. I have lived a mighty privileged life. Our last night in Phnom Penh was spent with Cas. We met him at our guesthouse and decided to go out for dinner the three of us. Cas is in Cambodia volunteering for a NGO called Bridges Across Borders. He is also working on building an orphanage. Cas is the kind of person that has and will make a difference in the world. He was inspiring to listen to and we thoroughly enjoyed our evening together.

Cait left at 6 AM the next morning and I was NOT well. I had felt nauseous before we went to bed and a couple of hours later I was throwing up. I was supposed to catch a bus to Ho Chi Minh City that morning but had to cancel it. I didn’t want to stay in my guesthouse that not only had a musty stank but even worse, a putrid aroma wafting in through the bathroom window. Luckily for me, Cas said he would stick around an extra day to make sure it was only something I ate that was making me ill and not something more serious.We walked to a place to exchange some money for dong (Vietnamese currency). I stood there watching the lady counting it when I started seeing little dots darting around in front of my eyeballs. The next thing I knew, I was ground level. I didn’t pass out – I just couldn’t stay standing up! From out of nowhere, a little Cambodian angel shoved a small, clear glass bottle of brown liquid into my hand and gestured to rub it on my temples. I did so and za-za-zing! My eyeballs felt like they had been dipped in icy cool water and the world seemed like a much better place. They got me sitting on a chair and Cas went and bought me some water. He suggested that maybe perhaps I was not well enough to be out and about and should think about going back to my guesthouse. I agreed reluctantly and slept away the afternoon and early evening. Cas returned to take me for tea by the river when I started to feel somewhat human....ready for the next leg of my journey.....the ever bustling, horn blowing Ho Chi Minh City!