January 19, 2007 by zankbennett.

From my sweet hotel in Hue, took a 12 1/2-hour bus tour of the demilitarized zone, DMZ in central Vietnam. It was a really heavy day. The tour guide grew up in the first town south of the DMZ and remembered playing ball and spending time with the US soldiers when he was around 10 years old. He told stories about the poverty he experienced with his family when Vietnam was under full communism (now, a free market exists in communist Vietnam.) for a year he had one change of clothing. His family would receive a “coupon” for food: 2 kilos of meat and 7 of rice per month. Things are much improved for him now, but, of course, none of it is due to the war. He guides tours around and through the DMZ and occasionally takes small groups anywhere they desire. Tourism has only been open to Vietnam since around 1990, so things are still rather in the state they were left in 40 years ago. There are crashed planes to see. There are bunkers to go into. There are VC tunnels to explore, complete with maternity rooms and classrooms. Our guide described to the group a recent trip he took to one of the most famous mountain tops north of the DMZ. He went with two returning American veterans who told him stories of the four months they lived in a hole atop that mountain and under intense enemy fire. They requested to spend one last night on that hill together. The guide obliged.
Since 1990 many US veterans have returned.
He told of the 5,000 deaths that have occurrd since the war to Vietnamese due to old, buried munitions or mines. The death rate is slowing, but even last year a small boy stepped on a mine and lost his legs near the DMZ.
I met an older man at lunch who is a veteran and is the CEO of an organization trying to find a way to more efficiently scan for the underground death traps.

There was a lot to see and hear during this tour. It avoided the gory (there’s plenty of it here and doesn’t require searching!).

I found it intreasting that I came for the tunnels at Vinh Moc, but they were hardly the most impressive part of the day. Maybe the crater from a bomb dropped by the US just outside the tunnel entrance was more impressive. Maybe the fighter plane captured by the N Vietnamese and after only six days of trial-and-error training used against the south, including the US troops. Maybe it was the look on our guides face when he smiled after telling us about life during and amidst the war.

On to Hanoi.

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January 19, 2007 by zankbennett.

Flight from HCMC to Hua. People were amazed to be above the city lights and so crowded to the windows for a glimpse. It was a little prop. plane. No thanks, but I suppose I couldn’t really choose!
It’s cold here. Drizzling as I wait for my bag to come out.
Tomorrow I’m off, by bus, to Vinh Moc. It’s where the most impressive Vietnamese tunnels from the war were dug. They exist just north of the ironically named DMZ and have remained reportedly untouched since the war. The tunnels in the south were mostly destroyed and had to be rebuilt and so their authenticity is somewhat limited. What I read anyway…

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January 19, 2007 by zankbennett.

Another crazy, huge city. Mopeds are the rule here. Crossing the street is an experience. The drivers here go slowly. Everywhere. A left turn at an intersection consists of getting into the left lane (yes, directly into oncommung traffic) and turning left while still on the left (wrong) side of the road. Now, the driver is like a salmon swimming upstream, but slowly making his/her way to the right. Believe it or not, that’s just how it’s done. Walking across the street requires a quick shot of adrenaline, enough to push you out into the mayhem. From there, go forward. Don’t stop or change direction and for the sake of safety, don’t dare run! The sea of mopeds and cars part and leave you untouched and with a definite feeling of accomplishment. I googled this q while ago, before I left. It’s just commonly accepted that crossing is like this. Love it.

Where the Cambodians were sagacious, the Vietnamese are both quick to get it and equally hilarious! Everyone’s up for a joke; when I’d nearly cartwheel on one of the ridiculous HCMC curbs there was always someone to point and give an understanding laugh. It was really refreshing. I spent two days meeting lots of Vietnamese and really enjoying the interactions.

Food? Good, not great here. I’m still Thai-spoiled. Fresh is an understatement, and that’s a real plus.

Yesterday, 17 Jan, took the Lonely Planet recommended walking tour. My second such endeavour of this, now five month old trip’ and really enjoyed myself. HCMC has a ton to see and food is never far away.

Visited HCMC museum. Saw some of the Vietnamese war exhibits. These are the mild ones and I was a wreck…so I made a note to skip the War Crimes museum and etc. The re-unification Palace was a great stop. For just under $1 I took a guided tour. Lots of amazing moments transpired in some of those rooms. The highlight was definitely the basement with the war-planning rooms with their original typewriters and rotary phones and secret staircase.

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January 19, 2007 by zankbennett.

Arrived in Siem Reap in one piece. Checked into hotel. Killed the other 12 residents who’d been living in the room before I got there. Promptly bought some Raid mosquito spray to be sure their friends weren’t coming back.
Started taking the doxycycline for malaria. Between that and the Raid lingering in the room I had the craziest dreams! Ha ha.
Spent the next there days exploring the temples of Angkor Wat. The temple area begins about six miles from town. The options are bike, tuk tuk or taxi, in order of expense and general desirability for a proper visit.
Miked it for the first two days. The bike weighed in at about 40 lbs. Like a tank, but it had shocks and worked well enough.
The temples are incredible. The area is huge. It’s possible to bike through back woods areas and explore temples off the beaten track. It’s too much for me to describe, so I will post pictures. Of note: some of the temples have steps leading to upper levels that are quite climbable. They’re steep. Really steep. The ratio, best I could judge using my hands, was 3 to 1. IOW, each step was there times taller than deep. Normal steps are roughly 1 to 1. These were so steep that most people, including me, had trouble looking down them from the top of say 30 of them. At that height, 3 was roughly 15 feet up but only a horizontal distance of 5 feet from the last step. We all crawled up and down these…very carefully.
On way home, met a cool Brit and asked him to snap a couple pictures with my camera of me riding next to some of the local kids. Riding along, talking to the kids, I heard the sick sound that comes from metal crunching together at speed. He had run head-on into a scooter. The girl was alone and riding a new scooter. He flipped over the bars and never dropped my camera. I lifted the scooter off her pinned leg and there we were, in a Cambodian road-show. The girl was ok, the Brit was ok, but nothing was going to stop the crowd from coming. We had 50 people in as many seconds.
I biked home and later ran into the Brit. Turns out, the police wanted him to pay $800, a number they apparently pulled from the air. It was also up for negotiation. Huh? So they kept his passport while he made a decision as to what to pay them. Really nice guy and I wish him the best with this.
The next day, more biking. Visited the temple used in the movie Tomb Raider. Of course, they were selling counterfeit Tomb Raider DVDs right inside the temple. There’s got to be something wrong with that.
Last day was spent on a tuk tuk (here, a tuk tuk is a scooter with a trailer with seating for two people.) went with Ryan from the first day’s taxi ride. We took it 1 1/2 hours north to a waterfall and underwater carvings. The waterfall fell into a nearly-dry pool but it was none the less spectacularly refreshing to stand under. The hike was 45 mins one way. The Lonely Planet described this trip as “frankly not worth it”, but I completely disagree.
The town of Siem Reap is exactly what one would expect of an impoverished tourist center; beggars and children selling everything imaginable are omnipresent. But, the Cambodians are different. I found them to be brilliant. Most of the children (roughly 6-10 yrs old) working the monuments could speak a little of up to six languages! I had a little not rattle off the numbers one to ten in English, Spanish, German, French then a couple more I didn’t know. It wasn’t unusual to see Cambodians acting as tour guides speaking English, French or German. While that’s not particularly unusual, I got the feeling that a fairly large population was capable of doing this, and from the countries I’ve been to, that’s was quite remarkable to me.

On a bus now. Going to Pnom
Pen (sp?), the capital. I’m sitting 3 feet from the only speaker on this stinky bus. It’s blasting the audio from the Cambodian comedy show that’s playing at the front of the bus. This is entertainment and presumably makes the trip go by faster. So, while I search for earplugs, everyone’s laughing and enjoying the show. I always get the screaming baby on flights and seem to now also attract the brain-meltingly loud speaker on bus trips. As I pray for a massive electrical disturbance that knocks out the DVD system, the guy two seats in front of me sounds like he’s about to bark himself to death. I’m actually legitamately concerned.
But the road is paved, the bus has A/C and after 30 minutes I found the button to recline my seat back from its 90 degree angle.

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January 19, 2007 by zankbennett.

Cambodian roadside attraction.
Where to start?
We stopped along the route to allow everyone a lunch/bathroom break.
It’s impossible to describe the scene, but here’re a few details.
Trash everywhere. A couple cows eating at it. A covered restaurant thing with no walls, intrenched in bus exhaust. Went around back to the dried-out pool to find the bathroom. Waited my turn. Went inside.
It was a square room with a giant pool, about 3 feet deep taking up the far half of the 6′ x 6′ room. The pool of water clearly ran between both “bathrooms”. There was a pail balanced on the edge of the pool. The idea is to do one’s business then use the pail to scoop up some water from this massive pool and wash it away; only there’s no drain in the dead-flat, cement floor, just a small hole in the corner and a small opening to the adjoining room. So I’m using the facilities when the person next to me apparently finishes and decides to “flush”. Ahem. So, here comes this river of disgustingness, straight at my shoes! I was slow, too slow to move, but there wasn’t much room anyway. So there I am standing in a swirling, flat lake of someone’s unpleasantness. After I left, a white girl walked in and just stared; she couldn’t figure out what to do and just walked away after a few moments of contemplation.
So, I head over to the bus-fumed eating area. A lady is making meat sandwiches, taking money and using her hands to do it all on a counter that hadn’t seen a cleaning cloth in ages. Same with the lady cutting fresh fruit one stand over. There seemed to be dirt/dust on everything. I give it a hyginic ratin of 2/10. Street food is my favorite thing in the SE Asian countries I’ve visited, but this was a whole different level!

At the end of my stay, the sandwich lady grabs a meat clever and starts mauling a coconut. When she’s done cutting through the thick, fibrous outside and making a hole to the inside, she grabs a plastic bag and flips the coconut up-side down into the little baggie. She handed it to the mom of the child who had been screaming. The mom tied the bag, tossed a straw in it and that was that! Tons of things are served in plastic bags. There’s absolutely nothing wrong or even weird about drinking from a plastic bag, but it sure looks funny at first.

I’m back in the bus. The driver turned the music back up. I went catatonic earlier and asked him to turn it down before I pulled all my hair out. I give myself about another hour before I’m just a drooling vegetable. It’s Cambodian karaoke. I guess it’s cool to follow along as though you were singing, but you’re not.

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