Vung Tao

We made it over to Vung Tau today. I can't imagine it looked anything like it did when my father was stationed here during the war. Mostly 2 star hotels lining the beach where people sell trinkets and beer.

What hasn't changed is the South China Sea surrounding the city and just for a second when turning towards it I just may have seen something he did.

Moving on up the coast tomorrow

SE Asia out-takes 2

1. This could be an entire post: things you can carry on a scooter!
2. Gas station: it's hard to believe, but gasoline is sold in coke bottles in stands all along the road! SE Asia is full of entrepreneurs, that's for sure.

SE Asia out-takes

Jon and John, our great scuba instructor in Koh Tao, Thailand
And Temple of Banteay Srei, Cambodia. AD 967, and apparently some of the finest stone carving on Earth. Really beautiful.

Doesn't get much better than this...

Before we get into describing how much we love Vietnam, I would like to share some things about Cambodia. Most of our posts about Cambodia were about the temples and the genocide, but besides those things we had a really lovely time exploring the cities. The people were so friendly and helpful to us, and had a good sense of humor. We got used to the children selling things and the loud tuk tuk drivers, and loved all of the great restaurants and cafes in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh. The French colonial architecture is an interesting contrast, and there are some really nice outdoor patios and rooftops to chill at. One of our favorite rooftop spots was in Phnom Penh called Nature and Sea...lovely fresh organic food and smoothies. (pictured above with my lovely husband. One of the photos before his Saigon haircut! Photo to come...) It's so luxurious to spend an afternoon sipping coffee and reading at a cafe! So Parisian! It's an interesting difference between the former French and English colonies that I've started to notice. I suppose the French have historically been more interested in pleasure. Anyway, besides gorging ourselves on ice cream and croissants and veg spring rolls, we have been interested in finding a place to volunteer while here, and found an interesting organization in Luang Prabang, Laos that focuses on improving literacy, which is an issue near and dear to my heart. We will keep you posted on that. We found a cool organization in Siem Reap called Artisans d'Angkor that teaches impoverished youth traditional Cambodian arts and crafts (silk dying and weaving, stone carving, woodworking, etc) and gives them food, shelter, and a paying job. We toured the studios and it was great. I would have loved to help out with something like that. More about Vietnam soon....
-jesikah

Good morning Vietnam

Jes is sleeping so I thought I'd post a few pictures of my beautiful wife.

First one is of her composing a post on our balcony in Siem Reap.

The last is one of her ascending a ridiculously steep and narrow temple at Angkor.

Writing this from Saigon, Vietnam...apparently only Wikipedia and the Vietnamese government refer to it as Ho Chi Minh City.

Cambodian Genocide cont.

S21 prison cells and corridor, still blood stains the floor

Killing fields and S21 Phnom Penh, Cambodia

From 1975 to 1979, 2 million out of 7 million Cambodians were murdered by Pol Pot and his henchmen the Khmer Rouge, (our guide and history scholar who was 15 years old at the time and forced into hard labor said he thought the number was closer to 3 million). Today we visited 1 of around 300 killing fields in Cambodia, each containing numerous mass graves. We also visited S21, a former high school the Khmer Rouge converted into a prison for torturing the educated, the upper class, anyone connected to the former government, and foreign journalists, in an attempt to close the gap between classes.

Both of the sites seem to have not changed much from their original state, with blood stains and bone fragments littering the ground. The sites are extremely crude and elicited a solemn emotion from both Jes and me.

I felt like an intruder walking over and past a history I'd have no possibility of understanding. Being a tourist can leave you feeling dirty in a place like this. However there is no doubt that these sites are powerful and important to history.

Below is a picture of the strange monument constructed to house bones and clothes of victims from the Choeung Ek killing field. Located 16 km from Phnom Penh.

Below is a tree which Khmer soldiers swung small children and babies against in order to save expensive bullets. You can still see the blood on the trunk. Also notice the bones located at the base. Our guide told us every time they get a hard rain bones and clothes from the victims reveal themselves.

-Jon

Cambodia

The Temples of Angkor are the epitome of Khmer architecture and a source of fierce pride. (I dont know if they talk about this in Western news, but the Thai initiated a really stupid border despute over a Khmer temple on the Thai/Cambodian border, which was built by the Cambodians and has been theirs for centuries! It is just maddening to me that the Thai government wants to start a long arduous expensive dispute with a poor country that has endured such great hardship. Especially something that petty. So ridiculous.) In any case, the architecture at Angkor Wat, the main attraction is startling and gorgeous. Seeing it at dawn is the best way because the light is subtle and not too hot, and the crowds haven't yet descended. It is well preserved because of the surrounding moat, and the bas reliefs and stone carvings are so intricate and interesting, each carrying symbolic weight or depicting stories of the Mahayana or the Ramayana (ancient Indian tales.) It is really hard to imagine how these carvings could be so uniform, symmetrical and precise. Extremely skilled craftsmen, and many many devoted hours. They main annoyance in Cambodia thus far, specifically at the temples, is the throngs of barefoot children and women screaming and chasing after you to buy little trinkets, postcards, silk scarves, jewelry and food. It is unbearable, and I can't bring myself to buy a single thing because being harassed like that is so uncomfortable. The children are the most manipulative, and the way they try to emotionally bend you every which way makes me really sad....to think that they were trained to do that, and don't have a chance to be in school. It seems like buying things from them will only perpetuate that cycle, and I refuse to support that no matter how hard it is to say no to them. Instead, we try to make conversation with them, and this is often how the conversation begins:
-Where you from?
- we are from the USA
And then they say (all of them say this exactly): Washington D.C. capital. population 326,000,000....
And today a girl stumped us by listing several US capital cities she had learned from tourists...Jon gave her a dollar for being so smart! I wish she could be in school...I am sure she would do very well.

So our subsequent paranoia and avoidance of tuk tuk drivers and peddlers, and people selling scams has been a little bit difficult and a source of frustration for us. Unfortunately, I think sometimes it is just part of traveling in this part of the world. But of course, that doesn't make it right.

-Jesikah

Below: Jon is a big hit with the kids, and played hacky with them at the temples
And bas relief at Angkor

Cambodia

As Jon mentioned, we've been spending the last few days visiting the temples and historic sights around Siem Reap, Cambodia. I love Cambodia. There are extreme juxtapositions here, which became immediately apparent at the border--our border crossing experience was awful and hectic and confusing, but we made it here to Siam Reap just fine. I think our experience at the border was mainly the fault of the Thais selling us an overpriced visa at the border claiming it was the only place to receive them, but the whole scam began from the bus drop off at the border market, a tuk tuk taking us directly to the "border consulate" to sell us the overpriced visa and then a cab ride with another disgruntled German couple to Siem Reap. If you plan to undertake a land entrance from Bangkok to Cambodia, be sure to push through to the actual border at Cambodia before purchasing a visa. We only lost like $20 US, but it is just frustrating to be had in broad daylight. But in all honesty I am quite glad to be out of Thailand and in Cambodia. The Cambodians are an amazingly resilient people and have endured much intense hardship this century, including the horrors of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Unbelievably horrible, but it is amazing to me how a community can prevail...can find strength to move on after such atrocity. And everyone smiles and is so friendly! It is easy to forget the power of a smile. (Speaking of the resilience of a people, how exciting for the people of Egypt! We were watching BBC and al jezeera every night, especially because we will be visiting Egypt in May. It should be a really exciting time to be there if things are a bit more stabilized. It is awesome to see the power of a people when they speak in a non-violent way...to see the strength of a community. It is so interesting to see the role that the internet and social media played in the whole thing...and to see how it has shaken the surrounding countries. I hope that it will help to shape the whole region with more power to the people....even the bloggers in China might have a chance to speak out! It is so easy to take our freedoms in the States for granted. Although things are certainly not perfect, we have a lot to be thankful for!! Traveling always makes me thankful!)

-Jesikah

Below: Jon at Angkor Wat
And young monks

Sunrise at Angkor Wat

This place (temple) is unlike anything I've ever seen.  My words cannot do it justice.  We woke up at 4:30 this morning to see it at sunrise, revealing itself from complete darkness. Built in the 12th century by King Suryavarman II, it was first constructed as a Hindu temple, then later turned into a Buddhist temple.  The surrounding city of Angkor was the largest pre-industrial city in the world and may have contained over 1 million people.  At the same time in history London's population was around 50,000.  The city is now abandoned, it's people leaving behind 1000 temples.  We are staying in the near by city of Siem Reap and taking a 3 day tour on a tuk tuk, tomorrow is our last day. 

-Jon

Bangkok

Ah, Bangkok!!! It's amazing to be in a big city again after so many weeks on the road...it has all of the pulse, energy, chaos, glitz, squalor, and beauty of other large Asian cities I've been to, but Bangkok is certainly unique in many ways. I was here for a couple of days 10 years ago, so it is cool to be back and experience it in a much different way this time! Jon and I have found a nice rhythm in traveling the last few weeks, and are really enjoying exploring the city- it just doesn't feel like we have enough time to see it all! We arrived yesterday on a night train from Koh Tao (we really really loved Koh Tao and it was hard to leave! But such is life on the road!) and will be heading off to Cambodia tomorrow, so we will probably save 4 or 5 days at the end of our SE Asia leg to do some more exploring here. Trains are so romantic...how they lull you to sleep and wake you up in a new city. We arrived at the Bangkok's main station around 8 am and wove our way through the city to our hostel in Sukhumvit. The public transit system here is awesome and clean and easy to navigate, so no problems there. We then booked it to the north end of town to the Chatuchak Weekend Market! This was insanity! But oh so much fun....everything you could possibly imagine being sold (spices, antiques, vintage clothing, anything and everything plastic, fake flowers, puppies-yes real ones, books, street food of all types, Qing dynasty furniture, gold buddhas, tapestries, Indian saris, chandeliers, shark fins, ivory carvings, vintage Gucci sunglasses, trinkets galore, hand-knit wool things, ancient Siam decor, and I'm sure, if we know the Thais, they were selling motorbikes somewhere, but we didn't make it that far in the sweltering heat) all to the tune of a blind traditional Thai band. And did I mention that there were a guzzillion people crammed and roaming this enormous outdoor wonderland that seemingly spread for miles?! It was great fun, but surprisingly we came home empty handed...I think we were a little overwhelmed by the enormity of it all, the intense heat and the masses of sweaty people. Normally I would go crazy at this kind of thing and buy up everything, but it is hard to do that when I know we have so much time left to travel. I keep reminding myself that it will be better to just find one really lovely thing to take home, and when I find it I'll know...
I will write more soon about our visit to the historic sights, and I am going to write a blog about our food experiences. Hope you are all well and warm :)

-Jesikah

First Week in Thailand

We've been in Thailand a little over a week now and we've finally found a place we really love. We liked our little beach in Phuket (Kata Beach-really phenomenally gorgeous, although lined with European tourists, which was just fine with us) and the little guest house we stayed in. But all in all Phuket is complete madness---Patong is like Spring-Break-Cancun times a million, so we didn't spend any time there and moved along to Koh Phi Phi, which is supposedly like THE place to go in Andaman Thailand. We didn't pre-book a room which was our first mistake and ended up paying twice as much as we wanted because practically everything was full. But we actually didn't like it at all so 2 nights were all we needed. We had really built up Phi Phi in our minds as the quintessentially idyllic beach paradise, and our experience there was the perfect example of how easy it is to imagine a place to be one thing when the reality is something entirely different.  The little island was completely swarmed with tourists and only tourists, and everything catered specifically to them. (ok, like Phuket to the 10th. Absolute madness.) We did get some nice massages there, though!! (1 hour for  US$9! Amazing!) So we left the Andaman Coast to head east to Koh Tao in the Gulf of Thailand, which is where we are now. It was an interesting journey, including an 8 hour overnight cargo ferry where we were all lined up like sardines on a thin mat on the ground! Would not recommend this, but it was really cheap! We have loved our time in Koh Tao. The people here are so friendly, our little guesthouse (Captain Nemo's) is great and clean, there are tons of great international restaurants, the weather has been perfect, and we are about to finish our Open Water Scuba Diver course tomorrow! We feel really fortunate because we are the only students in our class and our British instructor is fantasic. We completed our first 2 open water dives today, and they were amazing..we really loved seeing all the coral and fish, and experiencing being completely submerged and weightless and able to explore such a unique environment. We feel like we could stay here awhile, but are taking a night train to Bangkok on Saturday and then off to Cambodia....

-Jesikah

Thailand

Arrived in Phuket yesterday apparently without anyone noticing. Customs and security waived half our airplane through without even making eye contact. Maybe I watch too much tv but I thought Thai customs was worse then just about any travel situation possible. We went to the beach by our hotel today then rented a scooter and raced it around the different neiborhoods in Phuket. Now I've only been to a few different countries but this was by far the best beach I've ever seen. Crystal clear blue water, white sandy beaches, 1 dollar beers, and sun. Unfortunately we forgot to bring the camera. Below is a picture of Jesikah on our scooter and an ariel view of the beach we were at today.

Jon