From August 1 to 12th, 2015, we took our summer vacation with our good friends, Maria and Matthew, to Vietnam and Cambodia. We spent the majority of our time in Vietnam and only three days in Cambodia. It was probably our most successful vacation yet because we didn't run into any major, unanticipated problems. Maria and I planned the majority of it together, so the lack of issues during the trip were definitely a result of our amazing planning skills!
On Friday, July 31st, I got the day off from school to finish packing. We all met at the express bus station to catch the last bus of the day up to Seoul. Our flight was the next day in the early morning, so we thought it would be easier to stay in a hotel by the airport for the night instead of having to get up and leave Daegu at an ungodly hour. We actually stayed in the hotel that Matthew and Maria spent a night in when they first arrived in Korea. Their time in Korea really came full circle. The hotel we stayed at had a free shuttle to and from the airport, so that was really convenient. We got up the next morning and got to the airport with plenty of time to check-in and go through security. The flight to Vietnam was the only one we were concerned about because the budget airline we booked on, Vietjet, had mixed reviews online and a lot of talk about delays. Fortunately, we didn't experience any issues, and we made it to our first stop in Vietnam, Hanoi, safely.
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| architecture of Hanoi |
Hanoi is a very big city in northern Vietnam. The airport was super small. Americans have to get visas when traveling to both Vietnam and Cambodia, so we had to go through that process. We had already gotten our names on a list by paying extra money and applying online. When we got to the airport, we just had to give them a visa fee, our passports, and a photo of ourselves. It was fairly simple, and we didn't have to wait very long in line. The driver of our free shuttle to the hotel was waiting for us at the airport. We decided to stay at Asia Star Hotel in the Old Quarter area of Hanoi. Asia Star Hotel is owned and operated by the travel agency we booked our Vietnam tour package from, so we thought it would be the most convenient option. Immediately, it was apparent that Vietnam--at least northern Vietnam--is no where near as built up as Korean cities. I expected it to be more like Thailand, but there were many ways that it was different. We drove past a lot of fields to get into the city, but even in the city, the architecture was so interesting and different. Hanoi's houses, shops, and restaurants are all built tall and narrow. Because Vietnam was a French colony from 1887 until 1954, there is also a lot of European-style colonial architecture. The buildings are all really colorful as well. In the Old Quarter, it feels quite exotic because all kinds of vegetation grew into the streets. The roads were narrow and packed with motorbikes and people. We learned later that there is a 200% import tax on foreign goods in Vietnam, which is why there really aren't many cars at all. They are all too expensive for most Vietnamese people to afford. A decent wage for a Vietnamese person is only about $300 a month. There were definitely more foreigners around than I expected to see, but the Old Quarter is where a lot of the hotels and hostels are located. Another thing that we noticed everywhere in Vietnam were all the Communist propaganda posters around. Vietnamese flags waved everywhere, and there were billboards and posters of happy-looking workers and the hammer and sickle logo. We never felt unsafe or threatened in any way though. We were greeted at the hotel by the tour company manager, Linda, who I had been emailing with for quite a while. She gave me a packet of all info we would need for our 4-day tour of northern Vietnam. We had the rest of the day and most of the following day to spend in Hanoi before heading out on our tour. At our request, Linda booked us tickets to Hanoi's Water Puppet Theater, so we had just an hour to freshen up, eat dinner, and find the theater. We got some directions and dinner recommendations from the concierge at the front desk. We stopped for dinner at a place right around the corner from the hotel that looked foreign-friendly. The food was delicious. Matthew and I got an amazing soup dish called bun cha where the rice noodles and meat were served outside of the broth. We were supposed to dip them into the soup. The flavor was amazing, and Matthew was really happy he got to eat cilantro again on this trip. They don't have cilantro in Korea, and he'd been missing it. We had to rush through our dinner, which was really sad because it was delicious. We were told that it would only take about 10 minutes to get to the puppet theater, so we thought we had enough time to make it to the show if we rushed. That was definitely not the case, and the concierge at the hotel gave us incorrect directions. We wandered around in the rain for almost an hour before finding the theater. By then, it was only 10 minutes before the performance was supposed to end! The ticket person tried to seat us, but we had no interest in seeing just the end of it. Instead, we bought tickets for the following night and continued wandering around the Old Quarter, looking at all the interesting shops and buildings and trying not to get hit by cars while crossing the streets. Hanoi makes any pedestrian feel like they are playing advanced-level Frogger. You kind of just have to walk out slowly and let vehicles, primarily motorbikes, drive around you. We got back to the hotel and Matthew's cousin, Nicole, who has been doing some extensive traveling since graduating from university, met us there. I think it is great that Matthew got to see his cousin for the first time in a while. I think it's the first family member that he's seen in-person in the past two years.
The next day, Maria had scheduled a city tour with an organization called Hanoi Kids. It gives kids in Hanoi the chance to practice their English by giving free tours to people. We had to pay our own entrance fees, transportation fees, and food costs, but we were happy to help out some kids who wanted to practice English. We met with our guides at our hotel, and we were expecting younger kids. We found out that most of the people in the organization are actually in college. Our guides were very nice though. We had a boy named Nam and a girl named Thuy. Nicole came with us on our tour as well. It was raining again, but we expected it to be more like it was the previous day, which we dealt with by wearing rain jackets and using umbrellas. Our first stop on the tour was the
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| This was supposed to be Ho Chi Minh's house |
Ho Chi Minh complex. The complex is where he used to live and where he is now entombed. Communist leaders, for some reason, have their bodies preserved to look like wax figures for eternity. They did this with Mao in China and Lenin in Russia too. It sounds a little creepy to me, and we didn't feel like waiting in line to see it. Apparently, Ho Chi Minh didn't really want his body to be preserved like that, but higher ups in the government decided they had to because they wanted Vietnamese people to be able to see him and unite behind him since he died before the Vietnamese could oust the French. We stopped to see the Yellow
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| Ho Chi Minh's Tomb |
House, where Ho Chi Minh was supposed to live. It was a really grand-looking structure, but Ho Chi Minh thought the house was too good for him, so he decided to live in a more modest house on the property instead. Actually, the house he ended up living in was built for his gardener! We saw his three cars, all given to him by various other Communist leaders. Thuy extolled the virtues of Ho Chi Minh a bit, so we got the feeling that the Vietnamese people still really admire him. We saw his very sparsely-decorated bedroom and office as well as another building he used as his house at another time. If the buildings were really preserved the way they were when he lived there, it seems as though Ho Chi Minh lived quite modestly for the leader of a country. Somewhere around the time when we were seeing his house, the rain started to come down in sheets! Matthew didn't have an umbrella and got soaking wet. The stairs up to the museum area of the complex where we sought shelter were virtually waterfalls. All our shoes got drenched! After that, we decided to get a taxi back to the hotel to change and dry off before going to our next activity. The Ho Chi Minh Complex made us think about the Vietnam War, and we asked Thuy and Nam what the public sentiment towards Americans was in Vietnam. To our surprise, they said that Vietnamese people, even older people who were alive during the war, do not hold grudges. They tell their kids not to hate Americans for the actions of our government. I'm really happy that there is no hatred towards Americans from Vietnamese people, even though the entire world acknowledges that the Vietnam War was atrocious. We had to change our schedule a bit and miss seeing the Temple of Literature because we'd have to do more walking outside, and we didn't want to get rained on again. Before going to our next stop, Thuy and Nam wanted to take us out to try a Vietnamese drink: egg coffee.
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| Yummy egg coffee! |
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| Hao Lo Prison |
Thuy lead the way, and we ended up at a tiny cafe with small, plastic tables and chairs on the second floor of a random building. It was a VERY local place because no foreigners would even think to find a coffee shop up there. In order to get to the second floor, we had to walk past a tiny stall selling bags, go into a decrepit-looking cement area in the back, and up a dangerously steep set of metal stairs. It looked really sketchy, and the inside of the coffee shop itself wasn't that nice, but the view over the lake across the street was beautiful. Vietnamese coffee tends to be quite bitter and much stronger than Korean coffee. They like to put condensed milk in it. It was kind of too strong for me, so I mostly didn't drink it, but egg coffee was amazing! They put a tiny bit of strong coffee at the bottom of a teacup. On top is a huge amount of sweet, thick foam--kind of like something that is almost a meringue. You mix the foam and coffee together, and it's a really tasty drink. After our egg coffee experience, we went to Hao Lo Prison. Hao Lo Prison was built by the French to house Vietnamese prisoners who protested their colonization of the country. We walked through different areas of the prison, and the exhibits talked about the horrible daily life of the prisoners. There was a guillotine on display, and we could see into some of the tiny cells. One interesting thing was that the French put glass shards into the top of the cement walls of the prison to prevent escape--pretty scary stuff. After walking through the exhibits about Vietnamese prisoners, there was a whole section about the American POWs there. John McCain was there as a POW during the Vietnam War and has been back since to see it. There were a lot of
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| St. Joseph's Cathedral |
signs about how well the American soldiers were treated and everything, but we took it with a grain of salt. I'm sure sometimes they were treated okay, but I'm sure it wasn't all that fun for the soldiers at that time. Hao Lo Prison was very interesting. After that, we walked through the city a bit and saw St. Joseph's Cathedral. The Cathedral was built in 1886 by the French to resemble Notre Dame. It was one of the first structures the French built after they colonized Vietnam, and it is the oldest church in Hanoi. Vietnam's dominant religion is Buddhism, but I guess there are some Christians as well now. We grabbed a delicious lunch of Vietnam's most iconic dish, Pho (pronounced Fuh, as though you are about to say the F word). We went to a local place that was about to close to get ready for dinner. It is nice to have local guides to bring you to places you might otherwise not go. Thuy ordered some of these delicious bread sticks to drunk in our pho. After lunch, our tour was over. We decided to just hang out in the area and not go back to our hotel since we had tickets to see the water puppet show in that area later on. Thuy recommended a coffee shop where we could try coconut coffee, so we went there for a bit.
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| Pho with bread sticks |
We ordered some delicious croissants that came with condensed milk, and the coconut coffee was delicious and more like a coconut coffee slush! We did some shopping and stopped to look at the interesting old buildings on the edge of the nearby lake. There was a small, red bridge connecting to another old building on a tiny island in the lake, but you had to pay to go inside it. Instead, we took pictures on the bridge and from the outside of the building. We still had a lot of time, so we decided to get some much-needed foot massages. Gianni and Nicole opted out. After getting massages in both Vietnam and Cambodia, I am convinced that Thai massages are the best! Vietnam and Cambodia offer massages for just as cheap, but they are not as nice. I recommend that you pay a little bit extra (like $20 for an hour-long body massage) to go to a nicer place. The cheaper massages are not as good. Vietnamese massages can be very strong, and they use way less oil than they need to. In Thailand, even if they didn't use much oil, it was more about stretching you to massage you, so it didn't matter as much. They did get on top of us and use their whole body in the same way that they did in Thailand though. Also, the boys got irritation on their legs when they got massages because their leg hairs were being pulled. Gianni didn't have this problem in Thailand, so they must do something differently. Even though they weren't as good as in Thailand, Maria and I really enjoyed most of the massages we got. That being said, the only problem I had that I couldn't overlook was how chatty the people massaging us were. In both countries, the masseuses would not shut up. They talked to each other constantly, really breaking to relaxation of the massage. I really hated that. They were much more relaxing in Thailand. Our first massages in Hanoi were from a place that was kind of down a small alley, so maybe not the best place to have gone. We wandered in to one shop first, and the girls who worked there took one look at us and pointed us across the street where we ended up going. I think that massage place was "only for men" if you know what I mean. Anyway, after our half hour massages, we parted ways with Nicole and headed to the Water Puppet Theater.
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| Fairy water puppets |
Water Puppet Theater is the oldest art form in Vietnam. It began in the 11th century as a way to entertain farmers working in rice paddies. The stage in the theater is a waist-deep pool of water. The puppeteers stand in the water behind a certain and control wooden puppets that are held up on long poles. The puppeteers have to have so much coordination because they are moving their puppets back and forth around one another a lot. On the sides the stage, two groups of musicians and singers sit. The performance was entirely in Vietnamese, but it was more singing than talking. And it wasn't like a play. There were various sketches with different puppets, human and animal, performed to music. Each sketch told a different story about the daily lives of Vietnamese people. I really loved getting to see a performance of a traditional Vietnamese art form. Some of the puppets were made to jump high into the air, and even fire was used during a few sketches. It was beautiful to watch. After the performance, we had just enough time to get back to the hotel and finish packing. A van took us to the train station to catch our overnight sleeper train to Sapa to begin our tour. The overnight train was comfortable, especially because the 4 of us took up an entire sleeper car, so we didn't have to share with strangers. It was basically the same as the sleeper train we took in China.
I slept alright on the train, but we arrived really early in the morning at the train station in Lao Cai. Sapa and Lao Cai are located in the north-west part of Vietnam. From Lao Cai, you have to drive for about an hour through the windy mountain roads to get to Sapa. Our driver met us at the train station, and we waited for him to collect other people to go in our van up to Sapa. The musical selection was quite eclectic in the van. We heard Rickey Martin, some disco, Vietnamese music, and that song that goes "boom boom boom boom, I want you in my room." The drive was beautiful, but I slept for part of it. I was awakened by a huge group of ladies and girls all dressed in the traditional dress of the native Black H'mong people of Vietnam. They were all yelling greetings. It was a bit overwhelming to wake up to, and I didn't say much to them because I didn't know if they were trying to sell me something or not. We walked up a small hill to get to the hotel and meet our tour guide. Our tour guide for our 2-day stay in Sapa was a Black H'mong woman named Maya. She was a fantastic tour guide, and a really funny woman. She was the same age as Maria and Matthew and had two kids at home. She really gave us insights throughout the tour about what the lifestyle of a Black H'mong person is like. She told us that we had time to eat breakfast at our hotel (a delicious buffet--they like eggs, noodles, and rice for breakfast in Vietnam), located just a bit further up the hill, and to take showers at the private stalls in the lobby of another hotel. We stored our bags, took showers, and packed our day bags for our hike through the mountains of Sapa. They really had things in this hotel laid out perfectly. It felt great to be able to shower and get clean after our night on the train. They even had a small shop by the showers where you could buy any necessary items for hiking. Matthew got a new rain jacket (since his really didn't stand up to the rain in Hanoi), and I got a small backpack with a rain cover to protect my stuff and to hike with. The hotel even had shoe and rain boot rentals in the lobby, which we utilized the next day. It rained throughout our time in Hanoi and Sapa, but we didn't let the rain get us down. Maya told us that we would be doing the first, and easier, of two hikes that day. This hike was along paved roads, so not a lot of mud to deal with. Our hiking group was just 8 people, so a really good number for a tour. We hiked to Cat Cat Village as well as to a Black
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| Black Hmong and Red Dzao people |
H'mong village. Black H'mong are the largest group of native people living in Vietnam. They live in Cat Cat, Y Len Ho, and Lao Cai. There are several other groups as well in the area. The Green Dzay people live in Ta Van, and the Red Dzao people live in the area as well. All the tribes are marked by the different colors and patterns of clothing they wear. We learned most about the Black H'mong people because they are the largest group and Maya is Black H'mong herself. Maya took us in to a traditional Black H'mong home. It was a wooden structure with cement floors. There was almost no furniture at all. There wasn't much to divide rooms, so most of it was just a big living space. There was a large pot over a fire pit for cooking and an attic upstairs for drying hemp, which is used to make all the Black H'mong clothing. They don't have running water in the house and electricity is very limited. They use communal toilets outside, and there is no wifi. Maya had a phone but could only use the wifi when she was near the hotels in Sapa. It's definitely a completely different lifestyle than I am used to. Throughout our hike, we saw chickens and ducks wandering around the mountains as well as water buffalo being directed by farmers. Maya told us that most people are farmers, but the way to make the best living is by being a tour guide. The tour guides were mostly females, so I assume their husbands farmed. All the mountains in Sapa were terraced for growing rice. Along the
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| Waterfalls and rough water in Sapa |
way, small children kept coming up to us with sad faces, trying to get us to buy some little bracelets. The tourists are discouraged from buying from children because if the kids make money at it then they won't go to school. We stopped at a waterfall in the valley, and another, muddy waterfall had opened up on its own because of all the recent rain. I guess Vietnam hasn't experienced that much rain in 30 years. We are so lucky...not! At the waterfall, Maya had us try some dried water buffalo jerky. It was a bit spicy, but good. We began to make our way back up the mountain from the waterfall for lunch. We stopped at a tiny restaurant that said "Drink or Die!" on it. Over our lunch of chicken pho, Maya told us a bit more about the Black H'mong people. We learned about their practice of "catching" wives. It's basically kidnapping. Black H'mong men and women sometimes date and sometimes don't date before getting married. If they do, they date for less than a month. They meet at the markets, usually. Either way, the men will then catch the women. They may catch someone they have dated or someone they haven't. The women might just be walking along when someone grabs them! Sometimes the person that grabs them is someone they have been dating, but sometimes it isn't. Some women are caught by their boyfriend's friend on their behalf or for
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| beautiful views in Sapa |
themselves. So the women have no idea if this person catching them will be someone they like or even know! When a women is caught, she is taken to the man's family house for 3 days. They sleep together, but don't have sex or anything. She can't leave the house the whole time! After the time is up, the man's family goes to the woman's family, and they eat together. The woman can then say whether they want to marry the man or not. If she accepts, she goes back to live with he and his family, and the marriage ceremony happens later. At least she has some ability to choose. Maya said she cried when she got caught because 1. It's scary, and 2. She, like the other women, had no idea who was really catching her! Black H'mong people usually marry before they are 18. It was an incredible thing to hear about. After a steep walk back up the mountain to Sapa, we checked in to our hotel rooms. They were lovely, and the view was nice albeit a bit foggy. The only problem was that construction was happening on the floor directly above us so it was loud until construction was over for the night. Somehow Maria got a sun burn in the 10 minutes that the sun was shining a little brighter behind the clouds! We had free dinner at the hotel (all our meals on the tour were included!) and got massages at a place nearby. Again, the boys were not happy about their leg hair being pulled, and I was not happy with the fact that they were chatting with each other through the room dividers. They also had to call over their friends or family members to come to deal with such a large group all at once. That was kind of funny. Still, it was nice to get a massage to fix our body aches before our long hike the next day.
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| The Black Hmong women waiting to accompany tourists |
Maya met us the next morning for our second hike. This time we would be getting quite muddy and taking some off-road trails. Because of that, Gianni and I decided to rent some shoes since we didn't want to ruin our own. They were already smelly and still wet from our rainy day in Hanoi, so there was no need to make them worse. I got some rubber rain boots that worked perfectly all day. Gianni couldn't find boots that fit his feet, so he had to go with some crappy sneakers instead. We found out the next day why all those women and girls were waiting for us on the path up to the hotel. They have some sort of system
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| The boys getting helped down by our guides |
where they decide who goes with which tour group. They didn't fight or talk or anything around us, but one Black H'mong person for each member of our group came along with us for the hike. They have a really great system worked out where each woman choose one tourist to help for the day. They don't accompany you for the easier hikes along the paved roads. They only come for the harder hikes, and they help you the whole time so that you don't slip and fall. Some of these people were old ladies, some just young girls. No matter their age, they were so helpful! Maria and I did okay. I only slipped once. But the
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| muddy shoes on our hike in Sapa |
boys needed some serious help, and they were hanging on to their guides for dear life as we hiked in the mud. Most of the day was just hiking to look at the beautiful views of the mountains. When we got to the valley and small village where we would eat lunch, the women and girls who helped us down the mountain began to sell us handmade items. It kind of feels right to give them money or buy something from them because of how much they help you throughout the hike. Not to mention the fact that what they were selling us was really beautiful. Maya verified that the bag and pillow case we bought were made with real hemp, the way Black H'mong people do it. I feel like we got some really authentic souvenirs. You are supposed to buy something from the person who was helping you down the mountain, so Gianni and I talked to our main person. It's a good system they have worked out to make sure each of them gets some money at the end, and I actually really enjoyed interacting with the native people during our
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| Beautiful views of Sapa |
hike. They make that hike up and down the mountain all the time! I couldn't imagine doing it multiple times a day. Actually, Maya told us that she used to do this. She said she learned 100% of her English by guiding tourists as these women did. So I guess it's really important because it gives the Black H'mong people a chance to learn English and better themselves by becoming tour guides. Maya was such an impressive lady. I can't believe she learned so much just from interacting with tourists. She never even studied English in school! They left us when it was time for lunch. Maya got us some traditional Vietnamese rice wine to try and man did it pack a punch. It takes the same as soju, sake, and all the other rice wines to me: gross! But then again, I don't really like alcohol. As soon as we finished with lunch, we were joined by members of the Red Dzao tribe who live on another part of the mountain. They began talking to us in the same way the Black H'mong people did, but by then, we were already on paved roads, so they weren't really helping us with anything. They were also making much harder sells. The Black H'mong women didn't mention anything about buying stuff until the very end when they left us. These women were talking about us buying something the entire time we walked with them. It was really annoying. We walked through rice paddies and into a nearby village of Ta Van. The best part of our second day of hiking was that we only had to hike DOWN! We got a van to drive us back up to Sapa from Ta Van! As we were cleaning off our shoes to get in the van, the Red Dzao people pushed their goods on us. In my opinion, their products weren't as nice, and I don't think they were handmade. Still, we bought a few gifts to give our co-teachers as thank you gifts. When we returned from the hike, we had enough time to take a shower and repack our belongings before getting the van back down to Lao Cai to get the sleeper train to Hanoi. Our train wasn't until later at night, so we got drinks in a nearby restaurant and chatted with a few people who were in our Sapa tour group. Unfortunately, the sleeper train back to Hanoi was malfunctioning or something. It was hot and stuffy in our sleeper car the entire way back to Hanoi, making it really hard to sleep. That was probably the only bad time we had on our vacation. On the train we played a game of spades that had been going on for a few days. Matthew and I were playing awesome defense, but we lost in the end.
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| Cruising in Halong Bay |
When we got back to Hanoi, we were taken back to our hotel for a shower and a rest until the van to Halong Bay arrived to take us on the second part of our tour. Gianni and I were given a really crappy little room that was no where near as nice as the one we actually stayed in when we first arrived in Vietnam. It was on the "third" floor, but then you had to climb up three sets of spiral stairs to get to it, and it had no elevator access. It was really inconvenient with our big bag. It would have been fine for a quick shower and rest, but there was a small lizard on the wall in the bathroom. After that, we saw them all over the place in Vietnam and Cambodia, but that was the first and only time they were actually in the room. It really freaked me out. We dropped off our smelly shoes that were still wet from our first day in Hanoi as well as some other laundry to be cleaned for us while we were in Halong Bay. The bus came, and an English-speaking guide started to talk to us about Vietnam as we drove towards the Bay. Not having slept on the train because it was so hot did not put me in any sort of mood to list, so I just fell right to sleep. We stopped at a rest area about half way through the drive and what a racket it was! They drop you off at one side of the rest area and pick you up on the other side. You have to walk through a building where they sell all kinds of expensive souvenirs and such. We got some snacks but that
was all. The drive was only about 4 hours, and we boarded our boat, Imperial Cruises, and met our tour guide, Thomas. Our ship was really nice. We had a nice dining room on the second floor and a
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| cave in Halong Bay |
top deck for lounging. All the guest rooms were on the first floor of the ship, and only about 24 people could fit on the boat at one time. Our room was spacious with a huge bed and private bathroom. Everything was very comfortable. We had lunch when we first arrived. This boat had some amazing food! They kept bringing out plate after plate of all kinds of things. It was a little overwhelming how much food we had. We got all kinds of meat during our meals on the boat, including fish, shrimp, and oysters--all very delicious and fresh. The boat cruised for a short distance, and we got into a smaller
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| hole in the cave in Halong Bay |
boat to take us to the shore of one of the over 1,600 limestone islands in Halong Bay. We were going to check out a limestone cave there. The cave was lit up with all kinds of colorful lights. The formations were really interesting, and some looked like sheets or tarps covered in glue that had just stuck in that position. There was a hole in the top of part of the cave where the light shone in, and that was really beautiful. At one point, all the electricity just got cut in the whole cave, so we were in there in the pitch dark for a second until they came back on. Thomas took us around the cave explaining what different formations looked like. He also
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| View of Halong Bay from the Cave exit |
gave us a brief history of Halong Bay. First of all, the name "Halong Bay" was given to it by the French when they controlled Vietnam. The name means "descending dragon." Before the French changed the name, it was called something that meant "the bay where 6 rivers meet." After the cave, we had a little bit of relaxing time, which we spent on the top deck taking beautiful pictures of all the rocky yet green islands in the bay as our boat cruised along. We stopped in part of the bay near some other boats. We kayaked around the area for about an hour, stopping to look at the tiny floating village nearby. Once we got back on the boat, Maria and I changed into bathing suits and jumped into the ocean from the side of our boat a few times. Despite all the rain in Hanoi and Sapa, our trip in Halong Bay was nearly rain-free! We got to enjoy ourselves fully on the boat and get some great pictures. After our delicious dinner, Maria and Gianni tried to catch some squid with wooden fishing poles Thomas had set out for people to try. No luck unfortunately.
The next day, our only stop was at an oyster farm where we learned how they cultivate pearls. They put a piece of meat from another oyster along with a ball made of crushed up fresh water pearls into the oyster to encourage it to make pearls and to allow it to make the pearl faster. Only something like 30% of oysters actually produce pearls though. While we were in the hut of the oyster farm, it down poured for about 5 minutes and then cleared right up again. Again, we got really lucky with the weather. We had some time to read on the top deck while the boat cruised back into harbor. When we got there, we waited around for a while for the van to arrive and bring us back to Hanoi for our last night there. We arrived around dinner time, and we still hadn't tried another popular food of Vietnam, Bahn Mi, so we went in search of it. Bahn Mi is basically a sandwich. Meat, traditionally pate, and veggies are served in a crusty bread roll. Many street food vendors sell it. We ended up eating two bahn mi sandwiches from two different restaurants. We shopped at some of the souvenir places in the Old Quarter and tried durian ice cream at a shop near the lake in Hanoi. Durian is a type of fruit. It is yellow and the outside "peel" of it is brown and spiky. It is banned at a lot of hotels because it smells really bad. It doesn't taste so good either, but we had to try it at least once, and I think ice cream form probably tastes a bit better than the real thing. Asia Star Hotel hooked us up with a couple really nice rooms for our last night before flying to Hue. I highly recommend Asia Charm Tours to anyone who is visiting northern Vietnam. They put together an excellent tour package for us. We didn't have to worry about anything at all, and the tour was run very smoothly. Practically the only things we paid for on the whole tour were beverages and tips. The accommodations were very nice and comfortable, and the tour anticipates when people will want to shower or eat. It was well-timed. Thank you Linda and Asia Charm Tours!
We got lucky with the weather. Even though Hanoi and Sapa were rainy, Halong Bay (except for that strange 10 minute storm), Hue, and Siem Reap were not! We got through all the rain during the first part of our trip. Hue, located in central Vietnam, was the imperial capital between 1802 and 1945. Asia Star Hotel organized a free van back to the tiny airport in Hanoi for us the following morning. Hue is only about an hour flight away from Hanoi. We took the most unnecessarily hilarious bus ride to get to our plane on the tarmac in Hanoi and then again to the Hue airport when we arrived. The plane was only about 100 yards away from the airport in either case, and we could easily have walked. We arrived in Hue in the late afternoon, about an hour later than anticipated. We arranged for a car to pick us up and bring us to the hotel for $20, so we felt bad that he had to wait for us for so
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| View from our hotel room in Hue |
long. When we got to the hotel, we unanimously agreed that Asia Hotel Hue was/would be the BEST hotel of the trip. They greeted us with passion fruit juice and a wet towel. Maria and I booked it, so we gloated about our amazing choice for a while. The hotel had an open-air pool on the 7th floor, a free breakfast buffet that even had a dessert table, and a spa on the ground floor. And all of this was only about $30 per night! If you ever go to Hue, stay at Asia Hotel. Our hotel room was on the 9th floor, and we had a great view over Hue. The room had a large bed and even a chaise. The best feature is that there was a large window into the bathroom! It was so funny. You could put a screen down when you were going to the bathroom or showering if you wanted, but you could also leave it up and watch TV while you showered. What a hilarious feature. After arranging a tour of some of the historic sights in Hue with the front desk for the following day, we headed out to explore the area, go to a night market, and get some dinner. The hotel was right at the heart of the city's downtown area, so there were a lot of hotels, hostels, and other tourists in the area. We went to a nice-looking, tourist-friendly restaurant for dinner. I ate a street food that the restaurant served as a meal: ground pork balls skewered on lemongrass. To eat it, you wrap the pork with rice paper and remove the lemongrass. Then you dip it in peanut sauce. It was pretty tasty. We found the night market after dinner, and it was more of an upscale, tourist souvenir market along the Perfume River. Not what I would consider a traditional Asian market. We ate some tasty Vietnamese peanut brittle and looked at all the souvenirs to buy. We went back to the hotel to make our 9pm massage reservations. Despite our not so good experiences in Hanoi and Sapa, we thought this would be much better because the spa at our hotel looked really fancy. I had a much better experience. I was in my own room with my masseuse, so she didn't have anyone to chat with. I was very relaxed, and most of the massage felt really good. I think the boys would have enjoyed the massage more if they didn't already have irritation on their legs from the previous two. They said this massage didn't hurt their legs too much. Maria and Matthew were in a room together, so their masseuses did chat still I think. Mine was lovely though, and I think everyone agreed that it was our best massage of the trip.
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| The very ornate Khai Dinh Tomb |
I was so happy that we booked a private car to take us around Hue the next day because it was really hot and really humid and the sun was shining like crazy. For $45 total, the car took us to a tomb, the citadel, and the pagoda, and we got a short cruise in a dragon boat down the Perfume River and back to our hotel. We started our little tour at 10am and got lunch when it was finished. We first stopped at Khai Dinh Tomb, the newest of the 3 Imperial Tombs of the Nguyen Dynasty in Hue. The tomb was built from 1920 to 1931. Outside the main building of the tomb were stone statues of people and animals. There were some beautifully carved stone buildings as well. The most impressive part was the main building, housing the Emperor's actual tomb. Ceramic mosaics cover every wall. It is all so beautifully ornate and detailed that it is hard to know where to look. Over the tomb itself is a life-sized, gold statue of the
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| Entrance to the Citadel |
Emperor sitting on a throne of the same mosaics. The ceiling is painted with black dragons. It was amazing in there. Our second stop took the longest because the complex that the Citadel is in is very large. The Citadel is the Imperial fortress and palace, and there were so many buildings and gardens to see in the huge complex. The Citadel was the site of a large battle during the Vietnam War in 1968 as a part of the Tet Offensive. Allied forces were first ordered not to bomb or shell the city because of Hue's important cultural status. They didn't want to destroy the historic sites. Eventually, restrictions had to be lifted because fighting continued, and the Citadel took a lot of
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| one of the partially ruined walls at the citadel |
damage during the battle. Only 10 major buildings exist of the 160 that were once there, and the Citadel is undergoing huge restorations. In Korea, most of the historic buildings were destroyed by the Japanese. So you go around and read the signs and all the buildings are reproductions. Not that they are bad, but it was awe-inspiring to walk around a place and know that it is the original version. It was very strange to come from the country that is responsible for destroying it though. I understand now how Japanese people must feel going to Korean landmarks. Anyway, the Citadel, ruined or not, was a beautiful,
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| Thien Mu Pagoda |
incredible place. Our last stop on the tour was Thien Mu Pagoda. The Pagoda had 7 stories, and it is the tallest religious building in Vietnam. It was built in 1601. I thought I would see a lot more pagodas like that in my Asian travels, but I really haven't. I'm glad I at least got to see one. We met our dragon boat at the base of the pagoda. It drove us along the Perfume River and back to our hotel. We were all kind of excited about the Perfume River ride, but there wasn't much to see along the banks, so it wasn't a very interesting ride. The lady running the boat encouraged us to buy things from her little souvenir booth at the front, which was a little annoying because we just wanted to enjoy the ride. We did get some much-needed waters though. After we got off the boat, we stopped at a Western place for lunch, and I got my first good sandwich in two years! I got tuna on a crusty baguette. We were all sweaty and gross, so Maria, Matthew, and I went swimming in the hotel pool
while Gianni took a nap in the AC. For dinner, we planned to go to Dongba Market, just across the river. Even though it is supposed to be open around dinner time, most of the food stalls seemed to have closed up. We walked around the market for a
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| Da Bang Market |
bit. Dongba did seem like the kind of traditional market you can find in Asia. It was a market primarily for local people, that was clear. It was like Seomun Market but even more crammed. It also smelled a little and was kind of dirty. I think we all got a little overwhelmed there. Instead, we went back to a place near our hotel for dinner. A lot of locals seemed to be eating there. We saw little lizards all over the walls, basking in the heat of the lights. We ate Bun Bo, another kind of soup that is a specialty of Hue. The soup has rice noodles and beef. After dinner, Maria got a facial, and I got a disappointing manicure. I did a really good job growing my nails out for a few weeks, so I wanted to get them painted to keep myself from biting. This manicure involved no paint! The woman cut my cuticles and cut the sides of my nails to make them look oddly thinner and pointier. It was very strange. Whatever, I'll try again and get a proper manicure at home.
The hotel arranged a car for us to get back to the tiny Hue airport the following morning. We were flying to Siem Reap but stopping for a long layover in Ho Chi Minh City. Each of those flights was only about an hour, but the layover in Ho Chi Minh was about 8 hours. We decided that we had time to go out into the city and see one thing. Most of our trip was focused on Vietnamese culture and history, so we decided to see one site that was dedicated specifically to Vietnam War history. We checked our bags in early for our Siem Reap flight and headed downtown in a taxi to the War Remnants Museum. From what we saw of Ho Chi Minh City, southern Vietnam is way more built up and modern than northern Vietnam. I'm kind of glad we didn't spend a whole lot of time there because it just felt like any other city. Outside the museum were all kinds of planes and tanks that
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| "Aggression War Crimes" was a really disturbing exhibit |
were left or found in Vietnam after the war. It was really strange because inside the museum gift shops they sold some cartoon movie posters...why they sold movie posters at a war museum is beyond me! The museum itself wasn't very big: three floors, each with two rooms. The rooms mostly contained photographs. They had a whole room about the use of agent orange. I decided I could imagine how terrible it was without seeing the pictures. Other rooms were named things like "Historic Truths" and "American War Crimes." Some of the photographs were very graphic and hard to look at. It's really hard to know that it was the USA and American soldiers that did those vile things. I wouldn't say I felt guilty, personally, but I did feel bad. Everyone knows that the US was terrible during the Vietnam War, but I found it really difficult to be confronted with it. I don't think I have ever felt more hated, even though the Vietnamese people themselves don't dislike Americans. I had trouble at the time, and I still have trouble now, verbalizing how the museum made me feel. The best way I can describe it is that if I ever studied propaganda directed against the US in history class, we were always made to see it as stupid or comical. Some of the language used at this museum did border on propaganda, but it is true. It's not comical. It is not to be mocked. I guess that's why I found the museum upsetting and disturbing. I think it's an important place for Americans to visit, but I really had a hard time understanding my feelings about it.
A few notes about Vietnam that I didn't know where to put elsewhere: Vietnamese money (Dong) does not use any coins. They only have bills in dong, no change at all. 20,000 dong is about $1. Traditional Vietnamese clothing for women is high-waisted, wide-legged pants and a long shirt that goes to mid-thy. The shirt has a slit on either side up to the waist, so some skin is usually exposed between the shirt and pants. Those stereotypical hats that you imagine people wearing when you think of Vietnam (cone-shaped straw hats) are not stereotypical at all. People actually wore those a lot. Through all the rain that we experienced in Vietnam, we realized that Vietnamese people are totally fine with wearing ponchos, and they even have big ones to cover them on their motor bikes. Lastly, they don't seem to bow in Vietnam, which is strange for an Asian country. They do bow in Cambodia, which is kind of like the Thai style of bowing with your hands together.
So after our long layover, we finally got on the plane to Siem Reap. It was just a little plane with 4 seats across, and there were even propellers on the wings! I'd never been in a plane with propellers before. Cambodia requires visas for US citizens, but you can get them at the airport, just like in Vietnam. Actually, the process of getting a visa is even easier because we didn't have to do anything online for it before we arrived. They have an assembly-line of visa printing going on at the airport in Siem Reap, and it took very little time for us to all get our visas in our passports and get out of the airport. We arrived there late in the evening, and we were all exhausted. The hotel arranged for two tuk tuks to come and take us to the hotel. It wasn't very far away at all. The tuk tuks in Cambodia seat four people instead of just two, like in Thailand. When we arrived at the hotel, I think someone went to turn on our air conditioning and the concierge at the front desk started talking to us. He spoke broken English, was talking quietly, and I was way too tired. I did not pay attention to him at all. Honestly, all I wanted was for him to stop talking and let us go in our rooms to sleep. Our hotel in Siem Reap, Dyna Boutique Hotel, was also pretty nice, though not as nice as in Hue. The hotel had three sides and three floors. Each hotel room faced out to the pool at the center. The pool was outside and surrounded by plants. The hotel also had a free breakfast at the dining area by the pool. The rooms themselves were big and echoed. We had a special room at the back that just contained a stone tub. I didn't use it, but I really should have. I went right to bed on that first night, and the next morning we had a full day tour with Sareth, a co-owner of Q-Travel.
Matthew arranged a tour for us with Q-Travel because it was one of the only companies he could find that stops at an animal reserve located about an hour outside the main city. Matthew really wanted to go there, so we booked a tour. Q-Travel advertises itself as a queer-friendly tour company in Cambodia. There was also a brochure at queer-friendly companies that I saw at one point. I'm not sure exactly how extensive the need for queer-friendly companies is in Cambodia, but it is nice to know that is available to people. Anyway, the tour company is owned by a young guy a little older than us named Sareth. He used to work for another tour company, but then opened his own place. His English is fantastic and very easy to understand. He told us that you can actually make more money if you're a good tour guide than doing what he was trained at university to do, which is accounting. Sareth picked us up from our hotel in the morning and kindly took us to an ATM and to buy our 3-day temple passes that allow you to get into every temple in the area. They are very official passes with your picture on them and everything. ATMs in Cambodia give you USD, interestingly. Cambodian money is called riel, and, like Vietnam, there are only bills, no coins. All the prices of things are listed in USD, so you pay for most things in USD. If you need to get change that is less than $1, you will be given change in riel. 4,000 riel is about $1. Also, people will only accept new-looking, unworn USD. Apparently, they have to pay a fee at banks to exchange old USD, so they just don't take it. They will take both old and new riel, but no one would accept my $20 bill with the face slightly worn off at the center. What was really difficult though was that the ATMs give you huge
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| 9th century carvings! |
bills in USD, but no one can make change! Even our hotel didn't have enough change for $100. Anyway, enough about money and back to the tour we did. So after taking care of a few of our logistic things, we drove an hour outside Siem Reap to our first stop: Kbal Spean. Kbal Spean or "Bridge Head" is a site located inside the Cambodian jungle. We hiked for about 40 minutes to get there, but it was actually a really nice hike. The vegetation is so different from what I am used to, so it was great to see all the different plants and trees. It wasn't too stressful of a hike. Kbal Spean itself features a series of stone carvings made in the 9th century! Many of the carvings are of Hindu Gods or fertility symbols. The male part of the fertility symbols are circles called "linga." Linga is a representation of the Hindu God, Shiva. The female part of the fertility symbols are called "yoni" for the Goddess Shakti, and they are boxes with an opening at one end. Sareth told us that in 1189, the king changed the religion of the country from Hindu to Buddhist, and since then, the religion has switched back and forth a few times. Today, 90% of people are Buddhist in Cambodia. It was amazing that these carvings have been preserved for so long, especially since they are in the river and some are covered in water. Sareth told us that archaeologists expect that there are more carvings and temples further into the jungle, but those who have tried to go in search of them have gotten lost and not been found. In addition to the beautiful carvings, we also stopped to check out a waterfall before hiking back to the van. As we were getting back in the car to go eat lunch at a restaurant nearby, some ladies selling souvenirs at the shops in the area started coming up to us to get us to buy their stuff. We got a little bit of this in Vietnam, but not quite as much as in Cambodia. People, especially ladies, constantly try to get you to buy souvenirs outside the temples. It was the same as the tuk tuk/taxi drivers in Thailand trying to get you to go with them. We didn't need anything from them
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| Amok fish served in a coconut |
though because Sareth had prepared everything for us, including cold water and, even better, cold, wet wipes for our faces after our hike! The van drove us over to a nice restaurant with a covered, wooden deck next to a river. We sat on the deck and tried a few Cambodian dishes that Sareth recommended, including "amok fish." They have "amok" of all different kinds of meat. Amok is kind of like a Cambodia curry. The amok fish was served inside a coconut, so some of the coconut milk was mixed in. It was really delicious. In general, the food was more expensive than in Vietnam, but only by a few dollars. You could still eat a good meal for less than $10 for 2 people. After lunch, we went on a tour of the Angkor Center for Conservation of Biodiversity (ACCB). A girl who spoke really good English took us around. She lives and works with the animals daily, so she could tell us
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| a gibbon at the ACCB |
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| monkeys at the ACCB |
a lot about them. The ACCB is a relatively new organization that breeds, rehabilitates, and protects native Cambodian animals. They also provide education to school children. I guess it is common in Cambodia for regular people to try to capture animals and try to use them to make money. Keeping a cool animal around probably draws tourists and other Cambodians to your shop more I would think. A few of the animals we saw on the tour were rescued from people who had done this. A lot of animals are also killed and parts are either used as good luck charms or in traditional medicines. They try to return as many animals as possible to the wild. We saw a lot of different animals on our tour, including gibbons, langurs, adjutants, raptors, and turtles. Matthew and Maria know a lot about animals because Matthew used to work at a zoo, but I learned a lot of new things from the guide, and I saw a lot of animals that I hadn't seen before. From there, our tour started heading back into town with a few stops on the way. During the drive, Sareth was telling us that he is half Vietnamese and that Cambodia and Vietnam don't really get along politically. The Khmer Rouge was the Communist party in Cambodia that controlled the government from 1975 to 1979. The Khmer Rouge were responsible for the Cambodian Genocide that took place during that time. After Vietnam helped Cambodia to get rid of the horrible and violent government that was the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia now has to pay reparations to Vietnam for the next 100 years! He said it was a faux-pas to wear one of the Vietnamese hats at the temples in Cambodia. It's disrespectful to Cambodia in a way. Sareth even gave us all Cambodia's version of the straw hat as a gift! It was so thoughtful. Cambodia's version is boxy at the top with a wide brim. The current government of Cambodia is a monarchy, with the king as a figurehead, and a prime minister.
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| Wearing our Cambodian hats at Pre Rup |
The current king is 64 with no wife or children. He used to be a belly dancer in France! It is also thought that he might be gay. So after our interesting discussion about Cambodian government, we all wore our Cambodian hats into Pre Rup Temple. Pre Rup is where the cremation of the king would take place. It is older than Angkor Wat. Hindu temples, like most of the ones in Siem Reap, are built tall. Hindus felt their places of worship should go up to the Gods. Buddhist temples are flat, like in Korea, because they believe that no regular human can reach the gods. Pre Rup featured several smaller stone towers on top where the ashes of the kings were placed. This was the first of Siem Reap's many ruined temples that we saw, so we were all really impressed by it and excited to see the even larger ones the following day. On the way to our next stop, the palm sugar factory, Sareth told us a little
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| freshly made palm sugar candies |
bit about traditional Cambodian houses. Most houses are made of wood and built on stilts to avoid flood waters and snakes. The palm sugar factory wasn't like a bit building producing sugar. We pulled over on the side of the road where lots of little wooden stalls were lined up on the side of the road. Behind the stalls, there were many palm trees. Sareth told us that people climb up ladders to get the fruit at the top of the palm tree. Round fruit comes from a female tree, and banana-shaped fruit comes from a male tree. The male trees are better because the fruit will grow back once you cut it down. The male and female fruits don't taste and different. They are both juiced, and then the juice is slowly heated over a fire and stirred continuously to make palm sugar. People were making sugar over fires at each of the small stalls along the road. You can get granulated sugar or sugar candies made into circular shapes with palm leaf holders. Matthew and I bought some of the candies to try, and they tasted a lot like maple sugar candies. My favorite! I also bought some palm tree chop sticks and some palm tree leaf coasters. That was the last scheduled stop on the tour, but Sareth was nice enough to take us on a special stop to a local market by the side of the road because we had a few things we wanted to try while in Cambodia. One of those things was bugs. We stopped at a women selling all kinds of roasted and seasoned bugs, including grasshoppers, crickets, and cockroaches, all of which we tried. I actually really like the grasshoppers and crickets! Not bad at all. Not nearly as bad as bondaeggi (silk worm pods) in
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| Eating grasshoppers and crickets! |
Korea. We also got mangosteen, a fruit I had never heard of before. It has a purple outer peel and white fruit inside. It was tasty as well. After we had already eaten a few of the mangosteens, Sareth warned us not to eat sugar immediately after the fruits. He said that it is a superstition in Cambodia that you can die if you do. He wasn't sure if it was true or not, but he didn't want us to chance it! It's so interesting and fun to learn about other cultures. Sareth took us to a travel agency to buy discounted tickets to the Cambodian circus, Phare, the following evening. Back at the hotel, we arranged a tuk tuk to take us around to different temples the next day and made reservations for some in-room massages later that night. It felt very luxurious to have masseuses come to our rooms, but the massages were only okay. The boys didn't want their leg hairs pulled, so they just got their heads and backs done. Again though, the masseuses chatted a lot with us and with each other throughout the massage. My lady also used the bathroom during my massage! I don't think that's very professional. The style of Cambodian massages is a little more like Thailand. They stretched me a lot in different ways to relax my muscles better. We didn't have to take our clothes off for these massages. Instead, they didn't use any oil and just massaged over our clothing.
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| Angkor Wat...sunrise didn't work out :( |
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| The gang at Angkor Wat |
The next morning we got up an an ungodly hour: 4:45am! I should never be allowed to wake up that early, but Angkor Wat is
the place to watch the sunrise. So we got up early, and the hotel arranged a picnic breakfast for us to take the Angkor Wat for free. We also had our own tuk tuk driver for the day, which only cost $20. There were a lot of other tuk tuks making their way to the temple in the morning as well, and the tuk tuk drivers just slept in hammoks they fashioned to their tuk tuks while they waited for their clients to come out. Angkor Wat is really a beautiful place. It is the largest religious structure in the world and was built in the 12th century. It began as a Hindu temple but was later changed to a Buddhist one. We found a spot at another structure in the complex to watch the sunrise from. While eating our breakfast, we came to the realization that it was simply too cloudy to get a good sunrise. It was really too bad because it would have been stunning. Still, we planned to stay out all morning to avoid the noon sun and heat. We explored Angkor Wat for a few hours first. The carvings and details inside are amazing. You are allowed to walk and climb all over the majority of the structure at the temples, which was fun. The stairs are treacherously steep though! Angkor Wat, and most of the temples we saw, featured a series of stone towers that were triangular at the top. Some things had been remade with new stone, and you can tell because it's a different color, and you can see all the small details. That being said, I think the restoration at all of the temples is well done. Visitors are allowed to see the ruined areas of the original temples, but things are rebuilt just enough to allow them to get the full effect of the temples in all their glory. That's the problem I have with a lot of Korean buildings. Most were completely destroyed and completely rebuilt, so you don't get a feeling of the age of the structures, so it isn't as impressive as the temples in Siem Reap were. After walking around Angkor Wat, we found our tuk tuk driver, who we could not fully see in the morning light. His name (written on the side of his tuk tuk) was Mr. Korona! He drove us just a short distance to a very large temple complex called Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom has several smaller temples within it. He dropped us off at one end, and we walked around the complex to meet him on the other side, stopping to see about four temples on the way. The first temple in Angkor Thom was called Bayon, and it was probably my favorite of all the temples we saw. Bayon is famous because each
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| Bayon temple faces |
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| Ta Prohm |
of the four triangular tops of all the towers has a large, stone face of a king carved into it. They are all the same face with closed eyes and large lips. They are really beautiful, and there are so many of them that it is impossible not to be impressed. We climbed around that temple for a little while, checking out the faces from all angles. Then, we walked to see a few smaller temples in the complex, including Baphuon with a long, stone walkway leading up to it, the remains of the royal palace area and Phimeanakas, and the Terrace of the Elephants and the Terrace of the Leper King, both telling different stories through carvings on the walls next to winding, stone pathways. Our last stop of the day, and the last temple we saw in Siem Reap, was Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is the most over-grown and jungle-y of the temples that we saw, and it is famous because it was featured in the film
Tomb Raider. We got a little lost inside of it because there wasn't one set building to see, like the other temples, and no one way to walk around. Moss grew on the rooftops of all the buildings, and we had to walk around piles of fallen stones all over the place. There were also some wonderful trees that seemed to be growing out of the tops of the temple buildings themselves with massive
roots growing into the ground underneath them. Ta Prohm is being restored but hasn't been restored as much as the other temples, so it made me feel a bit like I was the archaeologist discovering it for
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Holding himself perpendicular to the pole
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the first time. Bayon and Ta Prohm were definitely my favorite temples. So we finished seeing all the important temples that we wanted to see by 11am, just before the sun started to shine brightly and right as the heat of the day was starting to set in. We also avoided a couple huge Chinese tour groups and got to see the temples with less people. We didn't even have to put on sun screen! We went back to the hotel to shower, eat lunch, and nap for a few hours before dinner and our visit to the Cambodian circus. Matthew and I woke ourselves up a bit with a trip to a coffee shop down the street from our hotel, and then we all grabbed a tuk tuk to take us to the night market downtown. I use "downtown" very loosely here. Downtown Siem Reap does not have tall buildings or anything like that, and you will hardly see a car at all. It's just the place where a lot of shops and restaurants are. We didn't realize that the tuk tuk driver didn't really drop us off at the night market itself. He dropped us off near a street called pub street where there is another small market and a lot of restaurants. We did some souvenir shopping and decided on a place for dinner. We then decided to go to the circus and come back to the real night market afterwards. We had first-come, first-serve seats at the circus, so we wanted to get there early to get good seats. The performance space was a closed-in, half-circle tent with wooden, stadium bench seating along the circular wall. As I mentioned before, the Cambodia Circus is called Phare. The circus was formed after the Cambodian Genocide left many children orphaned. The Ministry of Arts and Culture under the new government, with foreign aid and educators, set up a school for the
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| the boy and the woman he becomes in the Phare performance |
fine arts and recruited performers, especially boys, to join the school and learn acrobatics for the circus. The circus has continued since then, training young boys (and girls) from difficult backgrounds and giving them gainful employment. The school, called Phare Ponleu Selpak (PPS) provides education in a range of art forms to orphans, at-risk children, and struggling families. PPS was formed 20 years ago, after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, with just 9 students, but today, it has more than 1,200 students who attend the public school daily and another 500 who attend the
alternative schools. Phare the circus was only formed in Siem Reap in 2013, but it gives graduates of the art school a place to work and earn a living. It is not a circus with animals or anything like that. It is more Cambodia's version of Cirque d'Soleil. Phare does not do the exact same performance each night. They have different stories that they tell on a two or three night rotation. The performance that we saw was about a boy who is bullied and ostracized by a group of boys because he walks with a limp and has a facial deformity
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| The girls in Phare doing a trick |
(they painted a red and black scab-looking thing on one side of his face). He prays to the Gods for help, and they decide to turn him into a beautiful woman. After they do that though, a sickness kills some of the people in the village. The townspeople think it is the boy who was turned into a woman that brought a curse to them, so they kill him. The Gods bring him back to life, and fix his face, explaining to the townspeople that it was not the boy who caused the sickness. There were lots of amazing acrobatics. At one point, one of the guys climbed up a pole on the side of the stage to retrieve palm fruits for his friends. He climbed the pole effortlessly and "fell" down it by somersaulting all the way and catching himself at the last second. He also held himself perpendicular to the pole as though it weren't even a challenge! It was insane. They did a lot of balancing tricks, juggling (sometimes with fire!) and flips. I do wish I could have seen more big tricks done by the two girls in the show, but I guess the guys are more important in the Cambodian circus. The girls did tricks, but always less-impressive ones than the guys. For example, the whole group did a back flip at one point, but the girl on stage just did a back somersault. Still, it was one of the most fun activities we did on our whole vacation! We all loved it!
The whole audience could give donations afterwards and take pictures with the performers. If you go to Cambodia, don't miss the circus in Siem Reap! We couldn't stop talking about how amazing the performance was as we headed in our tuk tuk to the night market. We did a little bit of shopping (I
found a silver, Angkor Wat charm for my bracelet) and grabbed some amazing Cambodian-style crepes. We weren't out too long because we were all still really tired after our long day. I can't believe how much we crammed in to one day, but we never felt rushed at all. I guess that's what you can do when you wake up at 4:45am. Still not something I want to do on a daily basis.
The next morning, two tuk tuks were ready to take us back to the tiny airport in Siem Reap. We didn't go too early because we knew how small the airport was. I had finished a book I was reading, so I decided to buy a few new ones at the bookstore in the airport. I ended up with
Paper Towns and
A Thousand Splendid Suns. We played some cards in the airport before our flight to Bangkok took off. We had an 8-hour layover in Bangkok, and we actually had to change from one airport to another in the city. Bangkok does provide a free shuttle service between the two airports though, and it was really easy and convenient to take. We transferred from the small airport, Don Mueang, to the larger one, Subarnabhumi. Unfortunately, we couldn't check in for our flight since we were super early, so we had to find chairs in the arrival section of the airport to hang out at for a while. We played cards, read, and got some disappointing airport Thai food while we waited. Our flight boarded at 1am, and we flew all night to get to Busan. We haven't done it a lot, but it is always nice to land in Busan instead of Seoul because Busan is closer to Daegu and the airport is smaller. It was really strange when we were looking for flights back to Korea from vacation because none of the flights seemed to leave and arrive on the same day. We didn't want to leave our vacation earlier than planned, so we took a chance and bought a flight leaving on August 12th and arriving in Korea on August 13th even though we only had enough vacation days to go until the 12th. My school knew I wouldn't be in, but Gianni had to call in and tell them his flight was delayed, and he was tired. School wasn't in session yet, so I don't think he minded lying a little. We all arrived safely back in Daegu after our very fun and successful trip. Maria and Matthew have similar ideas about what is important on vacations, so that made our trip really easy and enjoyable. I'm so glad we got to use our last vacation in Korea as a last hoorah (at least for a while) with two of our very best friends here. Both Vietnam and Cambodia were so much fun and have such rich cultures and histories. One of the best trips we've done here in Asia.
