South and Central Vietnam

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City a couple of weeks ago and are now traveling up the coast of Vietnam.  We really enjoyed HCMC, and stayed for longer than planned. During our days we explored the city and surrounding areas: visiting the Reunification Palace, the War Remnants Museum, and the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were really interesting to see and crawl around in.  Even though they have been widened for tourists, they are still so cramped and it is hard to believe anyone could have lived in them. Good thing the Vietnamese people are tiny! During our nights we sat at the little street tables around our backpacker area and drank 30 cent beers. Vietnam must serve some of the cheapest beer in the world, and its not half bad either!

View from our hotel in HCMC

Emerging from the Cu Chi Tunnels

After HCMC, we took the bus to Dalat.  To our surprise, the city was completely packed with Vietnamese tourists and left us searching for a hotel room for 2 hours.  It was the first time in our entire trip that we had trouble finding a place to stay and we were quite worried that we would have to take up an offer to sleep on a mattress in a lobby somewhere.  Dalat is popular for Vietnamese honeymoons and has quite a kitschy feel to it, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.  We visited the "crazy house" that looked like something out of a Dr Seuss book, and the Bao Dai palace where we took some excellent photos dressed up as Vietnamese Royalty.  The other tourists in the palace loved the fact that there were some foreigners around and started taking pictures of us dressed up as well.

Dalat is also famous for its vegetables, some that cannot grow anywhere else in Vietnam.  The vegetable market was great to walk around in, and we were also able to sample some artichoke tea.  Sounds a bit strange but it is surprisingly delicious!

Our next stop was Nha Trang for some beach time.  The weather was great and we spent most of our time relaxing on the beach.  We also squeezed in a trip to some nearby hot springs where we were able to indulge in a mud bath.  Not quite as fun as the mud volcano back in Colombia, but still can't complain.

We then made our way to Hoi An.  We were here for 6 nights and pretty much spent all of our time running between tailor appointments.  There are so many tailors here that it is hard to know which ones to pick, but we had some great things made with Kimmy's and To To Boutique.  For more simple items, we went to the cloth market and bargained with our favorite lady at Stall No. 15.  Two suits, three shirts, four dresses, four pairs of trousers, and one winter jacket later, we were finally finished with our clothing orders.

We ate at some great places here too that we'd definitely recommend: Pho Xua, Bale Well, and Cafe 43 (great food and 15 cent beer!!).  If you are in Hoi An, you must try them out. For the best ice cream in town, go to Casa Verde by the river. So good!

Mi Quang lunch at the Central Market

We are now in Hue and spent a couple of days wandering around the city, checking out the citadel, the market, and eating some more delicious Vietnamese food!

Cambodia

We spent about two and half weeks traveling through Cambodia visiting Siem Reap, Battambang, Kep, Kampot, Sihanoukville, and Phnom Penh. While we were in Siem Reap, we spent a day wandering around Angkor Wat and some of the surrounding temples with our excellent guide Chhay.  We also visited some of the night markets and saw some traditional dancing.

After visiting the temples, we made our way to Battambang - the second largest city in Cambodia and home to the bamboo train.  For an interesting ride through the countryside, you can jump on a small raft-like train with a motor in the back and chug along the tracks at 30 km/hr or so to a nearby village. If you come across another bamboo train, there is no need to worry - you simply jump off, disassemble your train, and let them pass.

We also took a tuk tuk through some villages on our way to Phnom Sampeu: a mountain with a killing cave from the Khmer Rouge regime.  Our guide lived through the regime and had some very interesting and sad stories to tell about his life. We passed by a school near to the mountain which had been converted to a hospital during that time and in which our guide was treated as a young boy.  The doctors had all been killed so the hospital was run by young girls without training who would treat people with things like young coconut juice.  Some of the stories seem so cruel that it is hard to believe they actually happened, especially in such recent times.

Remains in the Killing Cave

On our way to the mountain, we passed by a roadside restaurant with a small sign written in Khmer.  Our guide stopped and pointed the sign out to us and told us that it served "special meat", or "the fast-running cow" or in other words, dog.   In Cambodia, it is not very common to eat dog and so the restaurants prefer to use discrete signs to advertise their offerings.  Good to know. 

We also stopped at a villager's house in the area.  Like most houses in the countryside, it was raised on stilts.  Our guide explained that during the day, the residents will spend their time underneath the house where it is cooler.  Come nightime, they must move upstairs to sleep and be careful when walking around outside due to the cobras.  After hearing that, we were more than ready to hop back into our tuk tuk and be on our way...

After Battambang, we traveled to Kep, a small town on the coast famous for its delicious crabs. It was a popular seaside resort during the French colonial era and there are many old abandoned French villas around the area.  Nowadays, there isn't much to do other than eat crab and that is exactly what we came here to do.  For $4-5 dollars, you can get a large plate of fresh crab - literally - once you order, you can watch the staff wade out into the ocean to take out some live crabs from the traps they keep offshore.  The local specialty is fried crab with Kampot pepper, a world-class pepper grown nearby.  It is one of the best meals we have eaten throughout all of our travels.

The town of Kep's signature statue

Rabbit Island - nearby Kep

The delicious fried crab and Kampot pepper

Abandoned villa facing the sea

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Kep and its crabs and move on.  We made our way to Kampot.  It was a quiet place and we didn't get up to too much.  The most exciting thing that happened while we were here was finding our neighbouring guesthouse on fire. We chose our accomodation wisely I suppose.

In Sihanoukville we enjoyed more seafood on the beach and relaxed. One day, while Adam was napping, I went to the beach to have a pedicure and was accosted by a couple of young girls selling bracelets. Despite their age, I found them particularly mean and had to listen as one girl explained to me why I was without a boyfriend (clearly I had to buy some of her bracelets to remedy this problem).  When I later told the story to Adam, he laughed and said he was hassled by some very mean young girls a few years back.  A later stroll on the beach confirmed that these same two girls have apparently been terrorizing the beach for years.

Our last few days in Cambodia were spent in Phnom Penh where we walked along the riverside, scoured some markets, and visited the Tuol Sleng Museum: a high school that was converted into a prison during the Khmer Rouge regime.  Although the museum is incredibly depressing, we think it is important for people to see.

Bathroom Basics: Asia Edition

During our travels we have learned to expect the unexpected.  This seems particularly important when dealing with bathrooms abroad.  When we reach for that unfamiliar bathroom door we need to ask ourselves a few questions: Western or squat, flush or self-flush, toilet paper or bucket or spray-hose (or as we like to call it - the bum gun)?  Can we flush toilet paper or will there be a garbage can...or my least favorite: neither.

We had thought we had seen it all when we came across our most basic bathroom yet.  Our bus had come to a brief stop in Laos for a bathroom break.  I was waiting my turn when Adam came out of the stall with a frown upon his face and said "It's not really a bathroom..."  Without further elaboration, I strolled in thinking I was such an avid traveler, I could handle any type of toilet system. Wrong. I think I actually laughed out loud when I found myself standing in a small stall with a drum of water in one corner and an ever so slight angling of the concrete floor into a different corner.

I guess we have to add another question to our list when we reach for that door now: toilet or no toilet?