Ho Chi Minh City

It was another early morning to catch my shuttle to the bus stations at 6:30 AM. The bus started east from Phnom Penh on Highway 1. Highway 1 is paved two lanes wide in most places, but there are several construction projects that create dusty and bumpy detours. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch just before the Vietnamese border. Customs went well and we were on our way after about half an hour.

The drive from the border to Ho Chi Minh City started through a rural landscape that quickly changed to endless suburbs. We arrived around one in the afternoon and I set about finding a hotel. The first place I tried was full, but their second location, just around the corner still had some rooms. I walked up to the reception desk to find a Dutch woman, Jaqi, looking for cheaper accommodations. She asked if I minded splitting a room, which I didn't.

After checking in, Jaqi and I set out walking to see a bit of the city. Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, is much more developed than anything I saw in Cambodia. It is much more ritzy, lively, and loud. We looked through one of the markets, checked out the industrial waterfront, and found a few blocks filled almost exclusively with Japanese restaurants.

I'd like to write a bit more, but I'm very tired, even after sitting on a bus for six hours of the day.

The boat to Phnom Penh

Last night, Voun took me to a Cambodian restaurant on the east side of Siem Reap. I was the only Westerner there and Voun was the only Cambodian who spoke English. The main dish was a communal plate of cut steak which we dipped in a sauce that we each made from several ingredients on the table. The food was quite good, but it was frustrating not being able to talk to anyone.

My shuttle for the boat to Phnom Penh was to arrive at six o'clock this morning. I had set my watch alarm, but the hotel attendant helpfully knocked on my door to wake me up. At 4:53. So I thanked him and then went back to be for about an hour. I waited outside in the predawn until about 6:25 when the already packed twelve passenger van finally arrived. We stopped at three more guesthouses and eventually had eighteen passengers crunched inside.

Siem Reap lies about ten kilometers north of Tonle Sap, which is an enormous lake, the biggest in Southeast Asia, in fact. The road out of town runs on a spine overlooking some beautiful farmland that was beautifully lit by the low morning sun. We arrived at the chaotic boat platform just before seven o'clock, in time to buy some bread and water before boarding.

The boat platform actually sits at the end of a channel maybe two kilometers from the actual lake. About half of the passengers started the trip sitting outside the cabin at the bow or on the low roof, until we reached the open water and sped up. The wind started showering everyone with cold spray and there was a bit of a mad slippery dash to get inside.

We crossed the lake in about ninety minutes the water calmed as we started down the river. The rest of the trip was a pleasant and sunny three and a half more hours. Fishing villages lie on both banks occurring more frequently as we approached Phnom Penh. There were fishing boats out along almost the entire length of the river, with long nets that sometimes stretched entirely across the channel. Our boat avoided the fishermen, but drove right over the nets, knocking the aerosol cans used for floats aside.

Children we passed almost always waved as we flew by and occasionally a fisherman whose boat was at the river bank would run down to make sure our wake wasn't throwing it against the shore.

The boat arrived at Phnom Penh at about 1:30 PM and a throng of drivers waited at the pier waving guesthouse signs and trying to secure fares. I stopped by the bus station to arrange my trip to Vietnam and then checked in at the Angkor International Hotel. After a short nap, I had lunch and walked around the waterfront. I feel surprisingly tired for a day of not doing too much and I'm looking forward to a long night's sleep.

The bus to Siem Reap

Pictures! I have started uploading pictures from my trip to a Flickr account. I've added a link at right, but here's the address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronslevart.

I woke up early this morning to pack, having fallen asleep last night instead of getting ready to leave. A minivan arrived at 6:40 to take me to the bus station, just late enough for me to drink most of a cup of really bad instant coffee. We picked up six other people on the way and arrived at the bus station just before seven. After checking my luggage, I had time to buy some water and baguette at a shot just down the street before we left.

The bus ride took a little less than six hours, including the stop for lunch along the way. I talked a bit with the young attendant working on the bus and her friend who was riding. At lunch I met the two Canadian women from Toronto who were riding just behind me and had a pleasant chat. Most of the time, though, I spent looking at the country side.

Almost all of the houses along highway 6, except those in the few towns we passed, were traditional Khmer architecture: on stilts about ten feet high with a staircase leading up to a door. They construction materials varied from brick and tile to wood to thatch. The towns through which we passed seemed very much like the outskirts of Phnom Penh with thin buildings three or four stories tall standing immediately next to each other.

Most of the countryside is dry and flat with a few scattered forests and hills. Even in the driest fields sugar palm trees seem to grow, a few to a group with fifty to a hundred feet between groups. Since their is so little elevation change, I haven't seen much of Siem Reap, just the road from the bus station into town.

We arrived at the bus station around one o'clock in the afternoon. Since I had taken a bus tour company instead of the public bus, the drivers at the station were orderly and only one approached me for a ride to my guest house instead of the usual gang of five or six. After getting a room at the Kagha Oudorm Guest House for six dollars a night, I set out to explore Siem Reap a bit before dark, which brought me to this internet cafe.

Tomorrow I hope to see several of the huge ruins that stand just north of Siem Reap.

The Khmer Rouge, the Royal Palace, and the Silver Pagoda

This morning I woke up at five-thirty to recorded music playing across the street. When I looked out, I saw a rectangular red tent that stretched from the shopfronts out into the street. The tent must have been constructed during the night, because I did not see it yesterday. It was pleasant dozing to Cambodian music for an hour or two. I found out later in the day that the tent was for a wedding. Sunday seems to be the day for weddings here--I must have seen six or seven.

During breakfast at the waterfront, a tuk-tuk driver stopped at the curb to wait until I was finished. He spoke fairly good English and since I was planning to see sights that are too far to walk, I hired him. First, we drove out to Choeung Ek, one of the killing fields where the Khmer Rouge liquidated their prisoners after interrogations at Toul Sleng, the prison in Phnom Penh. There is a memorial at Choeung Ek containing the skulls of the bodies that were unearthed from mass graves there. The buildings are no longer standing, but the mass grave excavations are everywhere.

I talked a bit with my driver on the way back into town for the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum. Between his accent and the traffic noise, it was often hard to understand, but he is an interesting man.

The tragedy in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge hit me much harder at Toul Sleng than at Choeung Ek. Even though Choeung Ek was the sight of the actual murders, it was at Toul Sleng that the Khmer Rouge tortured their prisoners to extract confessions. Of the thousands of people who where incarcerated there, only seven survived. The hundreds of portraits that the Khmer Rouge took of their victims on display in the actual mass detainment cells paint a tragedy of ordinary people.

I returned to my hotel around one-thirty and read the history section of my guidebook, trying to understand the context of the Khmer Rouge. I can't say I succeeded.

This afternoon I hopped a moto to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, which is maybe ten blocks south of my hotel. The Royal Palace is a compound comprising the royal residence, a throne hall, and several others buildings. Some of the buildings are open to the public and contain exhibits on royal clothes and seals. Immediately next to the Royal Palace compound is another slightly smaller walled section. The Silver Pagoda stands imposingly in this section amidst a few other pagodas and monuments. Most parts of the floor in the Silver Pagoda are covered with carpets and rugs, but those parts that are not reveal the silver panels that give the building its name. Unfortunately, photography is not allowed in any of the buildings on the grounds.

Now, I'm at an internet cafe I found walking back to my hotel. Tomorrow, I have an early bus to Siem Reap. I've gotten a couple requests to upload more pictures, so I'm trying to set up a Flickr account. Right now, it seems to be impossibly slow, but hopefully I can make it work.

Wat Phnom and the National Museum

I fell asleep a little earlier than I planned last night, yesterday afternoon, really. I should have known that taking a short nap before dinner was a bad idea. I pretended I was napping for about an hour, resetting my fifteen minute alarm three times until five o'clock when I gave up and turned it off. I woke up once or twice during the night but was able to sleep until six this morning, which was a lot of needed sleep.

Phnom Penh is pleasant in the morning. The streets don't get loud and crowded until seven-thirty or eight. I had breakfast at a cafe next to the waterfront. The coffee machine was broken (I had tea) and the cook didn't arrive until seven-thirty (I waited). While I was waiting for the cook I watched Cambodians walk and run to the waterfront promenade to get their morning exercise. I also saw a man on a bicycle walking an elephant up the sidewalk, but I was too slow to get a picture.

After walking around a bit I took a moto to Wat Phnom, the temple after which the city is named. Motos are small scooters or motorbikes that perform almost all public transport here for locals and foreigners. The passenger sits behind the driver while he navigates the chaotic, but reasonably slow traffic. There are few stoplights here and most intersections are like a four way stop except that none of the traffic actually stops. The drivers seem quite good, though, and I have yet to witness an accident. Fitting three people on a moto is quite routine here and I have sometimes seen four.

Wat Phnom sits on a small hill in the French Quarter in the middle of a large roundabout. The encircling road sits about fifty feet from the foot of the hill. There is a brick pathway that circles the hill up to a side entrance, but the stairs are more direct. The temple building is at least twice as long as it is wide--the entrances are on the short east side. There are varieties of Buddhas, flowers, incense, and random offerings inside that occupy the western half of the building and three long mats spread across the floor for people praying near the entrance. I saw probably two dozen monkeys roaming the hill. They all seemed docile except for one that chased some screaming school children up a slippery brick channel build to drain water from the hill.

In the afternoon, I walked down to the National Museum. The streets in Phnom Penh are laid out logically and are nicely numbered, which eases navigation, except that only about half of the intersections have street signs and of those that do, the print is often small and faded. I finally arrived after getting lost three times and inadvertently seeing some cool sights.

The National Museum was created at the beginning of the twentieth century and was run by the French until the 1950's when a Khmer curator took over. The Khmer Rouge made a mess of the museum, neglecting what they did not loot or destroy outright. When Cambodia was liberated by the Vietnamese the museum housed broken exhibits and thousands of bats. The restoration has produced a nice building with a beautifully peaceful courtyard.

Arrived in Phnom Penh

Wow, that was a lot of flying. This was my fifth time across the Pacific and everytime I seem to forget how LONG it is. I just arrived in Phnom Penh about three and a half hours ago. Other than the duration, the trip was smooth.

When I arrived in San Francisco, the check-in line for my next flight snaked through three switchbacks and then continued out of the cordoned area for another two switchback's worth. Families were pushing carts piled high with luggage and boxes of goods to take to Asia: "smart" mattresses, diapers, stereo equipment. At check-in, the agent seemed quite alarmed that I had no visa to enter Cambodia. I told her that I would get one on arrival, but then she was even more alarmed that I didn't have a return or onward flight document. She made me sign a waiver that I wouldn't hold them accountable for being denied entry.

The flight from San Francisco was not as comfortable as my last experience with China Airlines. I was seated in the row that faces the large projection screen in the center section--the screen was about four feet from my face. I did manage to get about six hours of sleep, which was nice. The international terminal in Taipei was familiar and the flight from Taipei to Phnom Penh had larger seats.

We touched down at the small Phnom Penh International Airport at ten-thirty in the morning, local time, but it feels odd when people say, "Good Morning". I was granted a visa in about four minutes and sailed through arrival and customs just as quickly. In all, I could have used a little more acclimatization before being thrust upon the mad moto and taxi drivers outside.

I was about to arrange a ride with a moto, when a woman in her mid-twenties who was being shepherded towards a cab asked whether I would split the fair with her, because she was scared to go alone. On our way into the city, I found out she was a teacher from Taipei, on vacation here in Cambodia for fifteen days. I thought I was disorganized, but at least I had picked a guesthouse on the plane and written down the address. She spent part of the ride, trying to figure out where she wanted to stay.

After dropping her off, I made it to a bank to change some money and then to the Lucky Ro hotel near the waterfront. It is a little more than I plan to spend on my accommodations but at twelve dollars a night, I think I can at least recover from jet lag there. I got a room, took a shower, changed, bought a bottle of water and now I'm on a mission to keep myself occupied walking around until a somewhat respectable bedtime.

Local Time: 2:00 PM - Friday, 26 January