hoi an .... coastal vietnam

ok ... ariel and i are no longer in hoi an...we are in bangkok about to fly home, but i thought i'd post this blip i wrote two weeks ago anyway. i think i will be blogging this trip in retrospect.

old news:

ariel and i are now in hoi an, a city on the central coast of vietnam. we took the train here from saigon, which for me was a lovely experience, but i think for ari, it was a little less relaxing. we got the hard sleepers, just like in china. the train is divided into little compartments, with six beds: a bottom, middle, and upper. we both had middle bunks but because we bought our tickets so late, we were at opposite ends of the train. in china, there is a one person per bunk strict limit....not so, apparently, in vietnam. i had lovely people in my compartment and they smiled at me and tried to talk to me. i tried to speak back to them in chinese (because it is now my instinct to do that every time there is no english), but they didn't understand me and i didn't understand them. a nice lady wanted to hold my hand and share food with me. ariel, however, shared her compartment with 5 rowdy kids and a hamster in a paper bag. oh, and the mothers of the children. i could hear the kids in my compartment, and we were at opposite ends of the train. ariel loves kids, but these kids? maybe hard to tolerate on a 18 hour train ride.

hoi an is a lovely city on the coast, spared from bombing in the war and many old houses are preserved. it is a unesco site and while ariel and i so far have had the best of intentions to see the traditional houses, we have been unable to focus on anything that doesn't involve the beach. the beach here is lovely. looking to the northwest, we can see the mountains of central vietnam and looking to the east there are beautiful islands poking out of turquoise islands that very clearly are ringed in white sand beaches. the beach is 5 km out of hoi an on a very busy road. the first day we walked, but since then we've been renting bicycles to ride back and forth. i was extremely hesitant about this at first, despite living in asia for two years i never encountered the traffic as anything other than a pedestrian. i guess we rented bikes once in guilin, but we rode through rice paddies and had to contend more with mud than oncoming traffic. oh, and there was the failed motorbike attempt in thailand, too, from which both kellee and i still carry scars.

the bikes have turned out to be enormously fun. the ride to the beach has been relaxing and beautiful along rivers, canals and rice paddies. traffic is very heavy, but we've been here for two weeks and i just about have it figured out. tonight we stayed on the beach for sunset and rode home in dusk and then dark. the bikes have no reflectors, and no bells! with traffic zooming by, ariel and i had to act as our own horns, imitating the large trucks to make ourselves sound more intimidating. at one point, just as it was getting really dark, we passed two brush fires on the side of the road. as we passed the first one, all the mopeds ahead of us swerved and two motos full of girls shrieked and thew their feet in the air. why? a four foot snake writhing in the middle of the road!!! ariel practically rode her bike up a coconut palm to get away from it.

mekong meanders

i love the mekong! ariel and i spent the day on the main branch of the river and a number of its tributaries as we traveled from the capitol of cambodia to chao doc in vietnam. our trip to asia is short, only a month (other travelers we have talked to express outright shock that we are only traveling for one month!) and so we aren't going to have as much time in the mekong delta as we'd like. rather than taking a bus from cambodia to saigon, we chose the slower route and took a boat.


we learned a fascinating thing about the mekong and the river's effects on cambodia: at phnom penh, the tonle sap river meets the mekong. normally, the tonle sap river drains the tonle sap lake (the largest fresh lake in southeast asia) into the mekong. however, in the rainy season, the mekong swells and actually causes the tonle sap to change the direction of its flow, so it is flowing back into the tonle sap lake. when ariel and i were standing on the riverfront in phnom phen (once again, waiting out a monsoon rain under a ledge) we thought the river looked like it was flowing the wrong way. fascinating!



the tonle sap is a very important fresh water resource and spawning area for fish. we heard that fish migrations from lake tonle sap restock fisheries as far away as china. the worry here is that dams upriver will alter the level of the mekong's flow to the extent that the rainy season will not reverse the flow of the tonle sap river, and thus the tonle sap lake will not swell to the necessary level. the lake is also suffering from increased use of pesticides by farmers around the lake and silting as more forests are cut and erosion increases.


we followed the mekong (or actually, we followed the lower branch, the bassac, as it splits after phnom penh) into vietnam on a very, very loud wooden boat with a handful of other toursits. twenty minutes in, it started to pour and tarps dropped down over the open sides of the boat. ariel and i, by luck, had the best spot. despite the tarps, everyone else got soaked. the border crossing went smoothly and we had lunch with a lively girl from the netherlands we'd been bumping into since angkor wat. after lunch we boarded another boat and left the mekong to travel down a maze of tributaries and canals, eventually dropping us in chao doc.

the life along the river was beautiful and simple. many people lived up on the steep red banks above the river in simple wooden houses. the houses were brightly painted and while some were on stilts, most were on the ground. we saw children and old farmers bringing their water buffalo to the water, a very steep descent for the buffalo. a lot of life takes place on the river, but there are no floating homes of the main branch of the mekong in that area because the water is too rough and changes so dramatically. looking down any of the side streams or canals, we could see houses overhanging the river on stilts and floating homes. along the edges of the river were fish traps.

we saw a lot of fish farming (catfish) and people raising hundereds of ducks and geese. little girls played on boats and washed clothes in the river and the boys had volleyball nets set up away from the edge of the canals. they strung huge fishing nets between their playing field and the river so as to not loose their ball.

arriving in chao doc we saw row after row of floating homes. they looked like they were floating on empty metal drums. ariel read that under each house, the people have suspended metal nets and raise fish under their homes. they toss their leftovers to the fish and the fish get to live in the natural water beneath their houses until they are dinner.

sightseeing in phnom penh

ariel and i are back in phnom penh for a few nights before heading to vietnam. phnom penh is a charming city and we are both really enjoying it. the streets are crazy, filled with tuk tuks, bicycles, cars, giant suvs and hundreds of thousands of motorbikes. motorbikes are by far the preferred method of transportation. we decided to stay at the same guesthouse as the last time we were in the city (because we enjoyed it, and because we had left our passports with the woman to get vietnamese visas) and they picked us up at the bus. everywhere in asia there is a press when tourists get off a bus or boat. people are screaming to see if we want a tuk tuk, hotel, taxi, another bus...it is crazy. the chaos that meets us every time we get off a bus in cambodia is the worst i have ever seen. india is legendary for this kind of stuff, and it isn't half as crazy there as it is here. we have to push our way through the people trying to get us to go with them as quickly as we possibly can because, inevitably, someone has already taken our bags and is walking away from the bus with them so that we have to follow them. it is madness. we arranged to be picked up by the guesthouse to avoid this, but they only sent one moto (moped) for the driver, ari, me, and our giant backpacks (each the size, if not the weight, of a human themselves). we stood in shock for a moment, amazed that they thought we'd be able to fit on one moto, and then we swallowed our reservations and hopped on. for years in china i saw entire families commuting on a moto, often 5 or more people. the driver put ari's bag in front of him, she climbed on behind him, and i climbed of the back, still wearing my pack. the logic? at least if i fall off the back of the bike the pack helps protect me from spinal chord injury?!! i don't know, but the dirver was safe, the ride was a lot of fun and we reached out guesthouse safely.

we got our vietnamese visas without issue and although the woman told us we would have the same room as last time, she put us into a bigger room (with hot water!!) that could sleep three. ariel and i were pleased, but very soon it became clear as to why we needed a room for three and we were only two people. the room had a resident roach, one of the largest i have ever seen. clearly, the extra bed was for him. he crawled all over our stuff for days and would retreat to sleep in the sink.

first thing in the morning we got up and went to the wat phnom, a temple located on top of the only hill in the city, overlooking the u.s. embassy. locals go there to pray for good luck in school or exams. we went and made an offering for ariel to get into the nursing school of her choice and to give me success and concentration for law school. if your wish is granted, you are supposed to go back to the temple and make another offering. we also visited the royal palace and the silver pagoda in central phnom phen. the buildings are magnificent, with tons of gold paint. the silver pagoda even has a silver floor! it is covered in carpet, but you can see it in places. the buildings are oriented along the tonle sap river which meets the mekong less than a mile south of where we were standing. so we had our first glimpse of the mighty mekong. both rivers seem very high because of the rainy season and they are the color of coffee with cream.



we walked up and down the river front where there are tons of restaurants serving western food and bars for foreigners. a man handed us a flier advertisiting the screening of two films that evening. both were under an hour and we decided we'd like to see both. the first was on pol pot and the cambodian genocide. the second was on landmines, a real issue as cambodia is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world (along with angola and afghanistan). the video covered a lot about landmines that i'd never thought about before. there are an estimated 4 - 6 million mines still in cambodia. the video said world wide, a mine detonates and either maims or kills every half hour. everywhere in cambodia there are signs warning people to not leave established paths and trails. the video said that the mines come in three different types (the first kind is stepped on and explodes beneath the person, the second is triggered by a trip wire and sprays up to 10 meters in the direction of the trip wire, and the third shoots into the air and explodes approximately in the persons face) and can be buried up to 9 cm below ground. to detonate, most need only 3 - 5 kilos of pressure. mines are designed to maim and not kill. they were used in cambodia to protect the borders and slow the advance of enemy troups. for this reason, the heaviest minefields lie along the borders, especially the border with vietnam, as the vietnmaese were using land in cambodia to travel through as a supply route. eventually, too, the vietnamese invaded cambodia and so more mines were laid.

mine removal efforts seems to be making good progess all over the country, but the best way to remove them is manually and it is a very slow process. around the tourist sites and museums in phnom phen and siem reap are homes for those who have been disabled by landmines. it is very sad to see and cambodia will take many more decades to recover from the khmer rouge and civil war.

waiting out monsoon in the temples of angkor wat

angkor wat is amazing! yes, it was crowded and touristy, but our tuk tuk driver, hindar, did a great job of keeping us away from the crowds. we visited the main temples of angkor wat, the banyon, the jungle temple of ta phron, the 12th century monastery of benteay kdei and the prasat kravan. what neither ariel or i appreciated before coming to angkor was the huge influence hindu culture has had over southeast asia, especially cambodia. in fact, the cambodian language is a derivative of hindi! the temples are both hindu and buddhist and depending on who is in power, they switch back and forth. hindu culture came to cambodia through trade. boats would put into ports along the vietnamese coast on sea trade routes from bengal to china. the temples are filled with buddhas (or, the buddhas and pieces of buddhas that survived the khmer rouge) and the walls are covered in carvings of scenes from hindu mythology. the most impressive was 'the churning of the ocean of milk' which we saw depicted again and again. i am not sure if i have the details right, but i seem to remember that the gods and the demons are tugging on opposite ends of a long serpent who is coiled around mt. mandala. the tug of war between the gods and demons produces an elixir of immortality that everyone wants. we could recognize vishnu, hanuman and shiva in the carvings. i guess the gods win, but if that is depicted in the temples, we missed it, all we saw was the 'churning'.

the level of preservation is amazing, considering many of these temples are 1000 years old. all of the temples that we visited are being restored and preserved by cambodia in partnership with international ngos and non-profits. at the front gates to many temples land mine survivors played traditional music to raise money. the music was beautiful and set a perfect atmosphere to explore the temples.

the most famous pictures of the temples of angkor come from ta phrom, the jungle temple. here huge trees grow right out of the temple and huge vines encircle the statues. we have some amazing pictures off my camera, but i can't get them off right now. the above pictures are ariel's and cover only angkor wat. even with so many tourists the temples were large enough that we could explore on our own, away from other people. we sat in the temples and read, talked and thought.

in the afternoon the monsoon clouds piled up again and we got stuck in the entrance of a ruined monastery while we waited out the downpour. some of our happiest times in south east asia so far have been spent waiting out the rains. the rain fell in sheets outside and dripped steadily through the limestone blocks above us. the only ones there, we felt so alone and ancient. it was powerful and we had a great time waiting out the rain.

the woman who ran our guesthouse in phnom penh told us it was a crime to spend only one day at angkor. for us, it was perfect. we ended our very long day back at the three spired temple of angkor wat to watch the sunset. we stayed until the temple closed, the monsoon clouds reflected the light beautifully. more pictures soon, i hope.

giant, hairy spiders....

first of all, hot pot was wonderful. ariel and i got to have hot pot in cambodia, and i know the temples at angkor are going to be amazing, but if we leave cambodia having only had hot pot, i will be happy. it was just like china (including large fish tanks up and down the walls) and i spoke chinese and got everything we needed ordered perfectly. love!!!

currently we are in siem reap, the gateway city to see the temples of angkor. we will see those tomorrow. this morning was spent in phnom phen and the whole afternoon was taken up by the bus ride to siem reap. this morning we visited a former khmer rouge detention/interrogation center. pretty heavy stuff, i will have to cover that in another post. actually, we are going to go back when we get back to phnom phen. i didn't have quite enough time before we had to get on the bus.

again, we spent many happy hours observing the cambodian countryside. it is just so beautiful! the road we were on was lined with houses continuously, for the six hour duration of the trip. behind the houses stretched miles of rice paddies, for as far as we could see on either side of the road. the houses were the same as we saw in south western cambodia, on stilts, built out of anything and everything. each house has a yard, and then, basically, a moat between the house and the road. in many of the yards we saw large sheets laid out with food drying in the sun. lots of chili peppers and corn. some of the houses had water underneath them, and i saw many pigs tied to the stilts wallowing in the shady mud. it was dry under most of the houses, and people hung hammocks between the stilts. a lot of family life happens beneath the homes. the actual houses are dark, and none of them had any electricity. we happened to be driving through the villages in the evening and watched as dusk fell over the homes and rice paddies. at 5:00 children in blue uniforms (very similar to the kind i saw in india) began to make their way home from school, walking and on bicycles. a half hour later, just before dusk, the road filled up with cows and water buffalo, driven home from the fields by 10 year old boys. the animals were tied under the houses for the night and for a while, the people and the animals spent the evening together. next to the cows, among the stilts, cooking fires lit up under each home.

none of the houses had running water or electricity. even with the building materials, the place might have looked largely the same 1000 years ago. we saw a number of different rainwater collections systems, including a large piece of plastic hung between two sticks that would catch the sheets of rain. the rain would then drain off the plastic into a plastic lined hold dug into the ground.

the bus ride was like many in asia. we were on the local bus and so we were treated to a lot of cambodian music and movies on the tv in front of the bus. mostly we tried to ignore it and look out the window. they do the same thing on chinese busses, i just don't understand how they can listen to music that loudly!! for about an hour the music was really frantic and with the bus honking incessantly i thought we were going to loose it. we finally pulled over at food stalls and everyone got off to get food. there was a young couple sitting across from us and they got back on the bus with bags and bags of food. our window was a little dusty so we were staring across them to look out of their window. it was then that we noticed that they were eating the largest spiders i have ever seen. no exaggeration, the spiders were 6 inches long. they were huge, hairy, and roasted. the couple pulled the legs off first and nibbled.....yum? when the legs were gone they broke the head, abdomen, and thorax off and ate those separately. i don't even know if the music was still on, we were captivated. they also consumed about 4 cups of roasted grasshoppers, but i've seen that before. the spiders??? wow.

so far, cambodia and i are in love

sorry i haven't been very good about updating this! i could make a bunch of excuses but the real reason is that, until yesterday, there wasn't very much going on. ariel and i took a few days to get on our feet in bangkok. we walked around through the neighborhoods and back alleys, but for the most part, we were getting over some wicked jet lag like none i have ever experienced. we snaked at cafes and laid out a basic plan for the month that we have here. once we did all of this very hard work we rewarded ourselves by going to the beach!

koh chang is an island in the gulf of thailand, east of bangkok. it wouldn't have been our first choice for beaches, we'd both like to get back to the andaman coast, but it is on the way to cambodia. it has the requisite coconut palms, white sand and turquoise waters so i guess we couldn't have asked for much more. we spent a number of days there in the sun, relaxed and content. we had a lovely little bungalow and in the evenings dined at tables in the sand. one night we had dinner right at high tide and the waves went past us and we found that we were having dinner in the ocean! the surf was really gentle so there was no reason to move and it was nice to have our feet cool. our tables and chairs sunk deeper into the sand with every wave and by the end of the meal we rose from a little kiddie table.

yesterday we finally got the real traveling underway. on previous trips to thailand i'd always appreciated the tourist infrastructure. i'd come for a week here and there on vacation from china and it was nice to have a tourist district and everyone speaking english. now, it is frustrating me and i want nothing more than to be far away from it. the prices are so high, ariel and i are really burning through our funds and we are surrounded by westerners. i find it suffocating. unfortunately, we do want to do some of the most touristy things around - visiting angkor wat and halong bay in vietnam. the trick of the trip is going to be getting away from the southeast asia backpacker's circuit.

we are currently in cambodia, having crossed a lesser used land border from thailand yesterday afternoon. i was thrilled to be using local transportation and have long hours spent with no other westerners in sight. we are traveling in monsoon and while there is plenty of sun, there are huge thunderstorms in the afternoon. all day dark clouds were gathering, and as we skipped away from the border with our beautiful cambodian visas tucked into our passports the wind started to pick up. the moment after we checked into our hotel the clouds broke with by far the most impressive monsoon rain i have ever seen. it rained in sheets for more than an hour. at our hotel the thunder shook the wooden floorboards of our room. off the back deck the family running the hotel had gigantic jugs, both ceramic and plastic, that they rotated under the downspots until filled. tubs with laundry were thrown into the courtyard when the rains started to let the power of the storm do some of the work.

cambodia is magnificently beautiful. when we got up this morning we boarded a bus headed for the capitol, phnom phen. we planned to head for the beaches of cambodia, but we do have limited time and we are both feeling the pull of vietnam. the road was in wonderful condition and we had a magnificent ride. cambodian houses are built on stilts, of any building material available. a single house can make use of wood planking, courregated metal, bamboo and thatch. the huts we passed were in the middle of rice paddies and fields, with dogs and water buffalo wandering near by. we saw a number of waterfalls off the side of the road and swollen rivers that looked remarkably lazy and still. the mountains were covered in dense jungle, the kind that once you step into it, all light is blocked out within 5 feet. dark, dark jungle.

as we were arriving in the outskirts of phnom phen another brief monsoon rain fell. again, in sheets, and every moped on the road retreated to the overhangs of gas stations and small shops to wait it out. we passed on gas station that must have had nearly 100 people gathered around the pumps waiting out the rain with their bikes outside. once the rain stopped, like an army, they all hopped on and took to the roads again.

tomorrow we are going to hit the museums in the morning and take a bus to siem riep (to see angkor wat) in the afternoon. we've been told that it is amazing, but we have been also told that we can skip it. i expect the experience will be similar to visiting the taj mahal or the great wall, so i am excited, but i know what to expect in terms of commercialism and tourists. no romantic jungle explorer fantasies here, we know we are going to be in the middle of touristville.

tonight we are going to hot pot. yes, that is right, HOT POT! i am addicted. when i was in western china it seemed to me as if i had a 6th sense for finding hot pot, and my luck has carried to cambodia. we were walking from our bus to the hotel, i look up and see the familiar chinese characters. i nearly jumped out of my skin. ariel and her family had hot pot with me a number of times last winter, and so i know she is just as excited as i am!

we're here...

ariel and i arrived in bangkok around 2 am last night. all with the flightes went well and we have had not a bit of trouble. we must seem like we know where we are going!

we have to go get something to eat, as we haven't eaten in nearly 20 hours. we are both feeling a bit under the weather (probably just colds from the airplane) and have been sleeping for most of the day. it is 7 pm here so we decided to stay in bangkok for another night before heading out to...where? yeah, we still haven't really planned anything. we keep promising ourselves we'll do it over dinner, so let's see if that happens. right now we are just happy to be back in asia.

yay!

it is traveling time again!

for the next month my dear friend, ariel borden-deal, and i will be traveling in southeast asia.  it will be my first international trip in almost two years, and i am really ready to see asia again.  our plan is to visit four countries: thailand, vietnam, cambodia, and laos.  i am not sure if we will end up getting to all four or not.  we’ve done very little planning and so we are free to stay anywhere as long as we like.  this, to me, is one of the best parts of traveling. 

with that said, we have talked about hitting the beaches in thailand, cambodia and vietnam.  i want to go snorkeling.  we’d also like to see the temples of angkor wat in cambodia and i really want to see halong bay in northern vietnam.  halong bay is pretty close to the rail link into china.  sadly, we aren’t able to include china on this trip (with the olympics in august, chinese visas have become difficult to get and expensive) and i am a little reluctant to go so close to the border.  i’ll want to run across like crazy and hop a train to wuhan, but i’ll have to restrain myself!

my greatest interest on this trip is the mekong river.  as we travel the region we’ll cross over the river many times.  i am fascinated by river systems and loved living on the yangtze in central china.  the mekong starts in the tibetan plateau and flows for 2700 miles before entering the south china sea.  i’ve heard we may be able to see river dolphins in laos and cambodia, and if we are really lucky there is the rare siamese crocodile and manatees!  i never got to see the river dolphins in china.  they were believed to be extinct in the yangtze but there have been recent reports of a sighting. 

the mekong flows from the tibetan plateau through yunnan province in china before heading into burma, thailand, laos, cambodia and vietnam.  occasionally the river acts as the border between the countries.  my great interest comes from the international cooperation necessary to manage such a resource and use it sustainably.  i read that over 90 million people rely on the river for food (the mekong is famous for HUGE catfish) and irrigation waters for rice paddies. with lasting peace and stability, the countries of southeast asia are developing economically and demands on the mekong grow.  the river is increasingly polluted by the use of pesticides and industrial waste.  china has built a number of hydroelectric dams on the river and has more planned.  while these dams and the electricity they produce benefit many chinese people (even outside of the mekong watershed), the impact of their existence is felt downriver.  other dams exist along the river south of china and more are planned as demand for electricity grows.   dams are traumatic to the environment of a river, many species do not survive their construction and existence.  in addition to these problems, the mekong river delta relies on annual floods.  when the floods come, sediment brought downstream replaces the land lost through natural erosion.  the sediment is also rich in nutrients and therefore important to agriculture in the delta.  other practices are changing the flow of the mekong as well. traditionally, the river was shallow with many rapids and difficult to navigate.  to increase navigability and therefore trade, rapids along the length of the river are being blasted.  all of the development and modifications to the river’s natural flow effect the people living on or near the river, both positively and negatively.  yay for this opportunity to see the mekong!        

i’d better stop there for now.  i am visiting my sister and her two kids in san diego and we are off to the beach!  tomorrow, ariel and i meet at the l.a. airport and our flight leaves for bangkok tomorrow afternoon.  next time i check in, we will be sweating in thailand!