Vietnam by Rail, Micki's 2nd 29th Birthday

Hoi An, Vietnam

We apologize for the delay, but we've been having some difficulty accessing our blog here. We can't tell whether this is due to inadequate technology or inadequate civil liberties, but no matter because today we somehow got it to work. Here's the summary: We left Cambodia on an all-day bus ride and arrived in Saigon (Technically Ho Chi Minh City) late in the evening of the 16th. Pretty much the first thing we did was head out for Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) to remind us of one of our favorite Harvard Square haunts. The comfort food hit the spot, but somehow a huge steaming bowl of soup seems better suited to Boston in February than swealtering Saigon.

Our next stop was the War Remnants Museum (tactfully renamed from the American War Crimes Museum) where all the atrocities of the war, disfiguring napalm injuries and agent orange birth defects are catalouged (icluding a collection of preserved fetuses). Despite the strong note of propagada in the exhibits, this was a sobering window into another perspective on the history of American Imperialism. They had a bunch of war planes and tanks too.

Everyone in Vietnam rides scooters, or 'motorbikes' as they call them. Cars are in the minority and most of Saigon had separate roads for the motorbikes. Score one for efficiency, but take two points away for the choking fumes resulting from all the two-stroke engines. I wonder what they do when it rains?

Day two in Saigon (the 18th) we wandered into some kind of flower fair on our way to Reunification Palace. The fair was pretty entertaining, with ribbons for the best orchids, bonzai trees, and tropical fish. The palace was interesting as well, pretty much untouched since the tanks rolled over the gate in '75. A "classic example of 1960's architecture" they said. It sure reminded me of the engineering quad at Cornell.

We decided the best way to get around the country was by train, and the sleeper trains are a good option to minimize the amount of time "wasted" in transit. Our first leg was from Saigon to the beach town of Nha Trang. We got on one of the plush "traveller" trains where Micki read up on our next destination.

Nha Trang is a busy touristy beach town filled with Vietnamese sojourners ejoying their new-years holiday. One very generous woman on the train gave those of us sharing her berth red envelopes wen we arrived in Nha Trang. Karma for her, breakfast for me, everyone wins! The the surf was high, our first couple days and we were a bit nervous to swim. We did have a great time sitting on the beach though, enjoying the nice breeze off the water. The third day was a bit calmer and Micki got to bob in the waves on her birthday!

The evening of the 21st we boarded another overnight train, but this time we got the express (a step down from the travellers coach). It wasn't quite as comfy, but we made it this morning to Hoi An, a cute town that served as a major international port before the harbor silted up. Now it's a tourist draw that features a bustling market and many historical buildings, including a Japanese covered bridge from the 16th century.

We explored around the town for a while and then rented bikes and rode out through a few rice patties to the beach (China Beach as it happens). It's a lot less crowded than Nha Trang, and has a lot less garbage as well. We may head back that way tomorrow.

Say Waaaat?!

Siem Reap, Cambodia

We arrived yesterday evening in Seim Reap, Capital of the ancient Khmer Empire and host to a huge number of wats, or temples. These were built by various kings to glorify themselves, the empire and the gods. There are dozens of them, most close to a thousand years old clustered together in the jungle outside of town. We got an early start, and had a power-packed day, visiting 5 mega-wats and a handful of smaller ones before dinner. The first was the famous Angkor Wat, an enormous structure, claimed to be the largest religious building in the world. It is surrounded by a moat 100 yards across that is over 2 miles long. The walls and buildings were made out of sandstone, so many of the intricate carvings that once covered them have suffered from exposure, but it's amazing how much is still intact.
Our second stop was the Bayon, centrally located in the ancient walled and moated city of Angkor Thom. This one was built by a particularly powerful king, Jayavarman VII, who reminded people he was watching them big-brother style, using 216 giant heads carved into the towers of the temple, said to resemble the great king himself. The Bayon also featured carvings on the outer walls depicting various military events.


The nearby Baphuon is a slightly older relic, disassembled for renovation prior to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who subsequently destroyed all the documentation, leaving a giant jigsaw puzzle. It looked like it is still unfinished. The next stop was Ta Keo, a tall and steep but unadorned temple that gave us a bit of a workout. Then we moved on to Tevoda, a temple where giant trees have grown over the aisles and sent roots into the cracks between stones, threatening to tear a wat, or even kill a wat by destabilizing its buildings. We are told that this temple was featured in the Tomb Raider movie, so I guess we'll have to check that out.

Some Rotten Eggs

Vientiane, Laos

Yesterday was an up and down day for us. We rode off in the morning to a site where a school is being built in the hopes of volunteering, unfortunately the hippies running the show were completely disorganized and could not figure out anything for us to do. Luckily for us, the site was only 1/4 mile from a cave and blue lagoon so we enjoyed that for half the day.

There were so many butterflies during our ride, and they seemed to be playing tag. Here is a big group we saw by the river.


As we rode back into town, Noah started feeling sick so we headed to our guest house (image below from our balcony). We think it was really bad food poisoning from a hard-boiled egg sandwich, which ironically we bought at the cleanest place in town. I felt a little guilty as Noah had a double portion since I was expecting a scrambled egg sandwich as we have been eating the past few days and have an aversion to hard-boiled eggs (and of course Noah ate both). We were worried he wouldn't be able to handle the bus ride to Vientiane to catch our flight tomorrow to Cambodia. Fortunately I was able to convince them to let us take a later bus and got here just fine. Looking forward to Angkor Wat in a couple of days.

Second Waterfall's the Charm

Vang Vieng, Loas

the street our guest house was on in Luang Prabang

Our second attempt at finding a waterfall was a bit more successful than the first. This one had water, ropeswings and bears! oh my! Check out the pics:



In the evening we picked up some Lao Kip and became millionaires (1MK=$114). We spent the whole million in one evening though, booking tours and paying for our room. Oh well, easy come easy go.


Today we hopped a bus south on a windy road through stunning mountains to Vang Vieng, and I discovered the magic of dramamine! This place features a tube ride down stream past bars blasting pop music. We're still deciding whether that sounds like fun or not.

We worked really hard, so use your imagination...

For our first day in Luang Prabeng, we decided to rent bicycles and ride to one of the three waterfalls nearby. After passing over some cruisers, we decided to rent "mountian" bikes so that we would be able to change gears for the hills. We rode 15km out of town to the closest waterfalls with a lot of hard work as the ride was almost all uphill, and our back gears did not really work. Noah also had a seat that could not be raised, so his legs had extra work.

With all that, the ride was not nearly as bad as we thought, it was made fun by all the kids waving to us from along the road. We made it to the village where we thought the waterfall was, and they had us pay to park our bikes ($0.20 each) and then we went up the river in a boat for about 5min. When we did make it to the waterfall, we were a little disappointed to see it was almost completely dry, so use your imagination when looking at the photos.

Today we will go to the other waterfall (that most of our travel buddies went to yesterday), so hopefully we will have better pictures tomorrow.

Taking Thailand by Scooter, the Mekong by Boat

Louang Prabang, Laos

Ok, ok. It's been a week. And we know we are behind, but we were so busy having fun, you have to forgive us. So much has happened, I'll try to remember..

At Phuket, we had only one full day, so we rented a scooter to see some more of the island since Patong Beach was quite a crazy scene. We rode up the coast and stopped at Laem Singh (another beach) for the afternoon. We got back to Patong in time to watch the sunset and the paragliders in the air. Although Patong Beach was not ideal from the crowding perspective, it did have the finest white sand of all the beaches we went to.


The whole reason we went to Phuket was to fly north to Chiang Mai, which we loved. The old city (although it did not look so old to me) has a moat around it with some crumbling remnamts of the ramparts and a reconstructed section of wall at one of the gates. The area is very well maintained, with trees and flowers planted along the moat and fountains in the moat itself. They keep the water super clean (unlike some other waterways we've seen) so it was really pleasant to walk around. Our first day in town we rented a scooter and visted two Wats and two waterfalls. We also went to the zoo which was extremely impressive, especially since the admission is only $3 even for tourists (most places, especially India, have the tourist admission 10 times the nationals admission). We ended the day with a night safari at a resort just outside town. Although it was pricey, it was a really interesting way to observe animals, especially the predators since the big cats hunt at night. As we went by on our tram, you could tell they were trying so hard to devise a plan to eat us.



Our second day in Chiang Mai we split up for the first time all trip. Noah went downhill mountain biking and I did a day tour of the area. I got to go to an orchid farm, a local village, a nice waterfall, an elephant ride, a short white water rafting excursion, and a bamboo raft ride. The main highlights for me were feeding the elephants. I learned that elephants can eat bananas faster than you can hold them out and that baby elephant cannot eat bananas and need watermelon cut up for them. The white-water rafting and bamboo rafting was also fun mostly because we had a great group and the guides were hysterical. Although you could have gotten through the entire trip without getting wet, it was their goal (of course) to get us as wet as possible which included putting all 12 of us on one bamboo raft which only had enough boyancy so that it floated 6 inches underwater. If we had done the trip at 2pm as intended it wouldn't have been an issue, but since we waited 2 hours for our rafts (since they did not have any where near enough for the amount of tours they booked) it was getting a little chilly by the time we finished.
From Chiang Mai we took a mini-bus to the Laos border which was pretty uneventful except that we stopped at a modern temple which we found to be the most impressive one we have been to yet. The temple is all white with reflective metal embedded into it so that it sparkles in the sunlight. Even more impressive i the mural inside the temple. It was the creator's view of good and evil. The back wall had dark scary eyes, monsters, and a lot of negative images. There were also specific political references such as a vision of the twin towers on fire with two serpents coming out of them. Then if you followed the tail of the serpents they became petrol pumps which dripped into the mouths of the masses. I think it may have been suggesting that the people's hunger for petrol is fueling terrorism. There were other images that we didn't quite understand, like why they decided to include several movie images such as the Alien, Predator, Batman, Superman, and most surprisingly Neo (from the Matrix). On the side walls there were people floating on clouds away from the bad toward the front wall which depicted Buddist Shangri-la with glittering temples and flowers, and of course a giant Buddah image. It was really beatiful, and it was only the first temple of several that they are builing in the complex.


Crossing the border was different, we went to the water and got in a boat and went across the Mekong. That was pretty much it. We've spent the past two days on the slow boat floating down the Mekong which was very relaxing and quite pleasant, although they crammed a few too many of us onboard, and with the wooden benches and people on the floor it looked a little like a refugee ship. There were a lot of nice people to talk to, great scenery, and really truly perfect weather. Today we arrived in Luang Prabang, which is my favorite town so far. It has a lot of french influence so many of the buildings are french colonial, and a really great night market.