Cambodia
Of all the countries that we planned to visit over the following year Cambodia was one that we probably knew the least about. An experienced and wise traveller friend of ours (the ever insightful H) once said that travelling was all about expectations and how right he has turned out to be. You can be really expecting a place to be amazing and then it falls a bit short or you can know nothing about it and its turns out to be fantastic. Cambodia is a country with such an compelling recent history, people, landscapes, coastline and architecture that were way above our expectations.
Border Crossing to Cambodia on our boat via the Mekong Delta
We arrived in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, by boat along the Mekong River from Chau Doc (the sleepy coastal village of Vietnam) which is the only way to arrive in Phnom Penh we think (after experiencing its horrid bus station a few days later!). As the boat approaches the shores of Phnom Penh you feast on an impressive skyline, at least compared to Vietnam’s, and a City that looks more modern but still has bags of authenticity and character that make it Cambodian. As soon as the boat arrived we were ambushed by around 50 moto tuk tuk drivers literally climbing through the windows to encourage us to choose them to take us to our hotels. With all 50 constantly asking ‘ You want tuk tuk?, You want tuk tuk?, only 1 dollar’. After a stressful 5 minutes we rescued our bags, found a nice tuk tuk driver and he took us to a nice cheap guesthouse (AKA Guesthouse $15 / night) right next to the Royal Palace. Quite a location.
Phnom Penh – ‘Moto Tuk-Tuk, only 1 dollar’
First things we noticed about Phnom Penh – the moto tuk tuks are great and there is nothing equivalent to this in Vietnam as its either motorbike or taxi so we enjoyed the experience. Our second thought was how much quieter and laid back Phnom Penh was than the Vietnamese big cities we visited – we might actually be able to cross the road! The third thing we noticed that whereas 
Vietnam was technicolor Cambodia was all about golds, oranges and yellows. The fourth thing we noticed was the amount of SUVs and more precisely ‘Lexi’ SUVs – not what we were expecting from what we thought was the poorest country in SE Asia. But an interesting side effect of its recent history as we would later learn…
A nice stroll along the river showed us loads of western bars and ex-pats, English pubs and the like. A major difference to the Vietnam cities. Our first day there we took a tuk-tuk out to Cheung Ek. We organised this through our original tuk-tuk driver for an inflated price of $22, the reason they only charge 1 dollar originally is so that they can try to organise all of these extra tours and take commission from the hotels.
Cheung Ek is the site of the killing fields museum and also where 17,000 men women and children were killed by the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979. The field has been made into a memorial for those that were killed and there are similar memorials all over the country in memory of the 2 million people (out of a population of 9 million) that lost their lives during this short and bizarre period. Its only in the last 10 years that Cambodia has seen peace; even though the Khmer Rouge lost control of power in 1979, there was much civil unrest and rebel clashes across a lot of the country until 1998. The memorial features thousands of skulls all looking outwards sombrely; taking pictures somehow did not feel right. And the killing tree where they used to swing babies into head first to kill them. Some of the Khmer Rouge leaders are currently facing a very long trial in Phnom Penh for their role in the killings and we read this week that the trial is likely to last until 2015.
It’s difficult to understand the clear reasoning behind the extreme purges of the Khmer Rouge, I but in essence they wanted to bring Cambodia back to its simple and basic state that has no influence from the western world and kill any one that opposed them or theoretically could oppose them. This meant killing all intellectuals, destroying all systems and records, getting rid of the currency system and generally doing whatever they liked to destroy a modern society.
Other sights in Phnom Penh included the Wat Phnom and Royal Palace as well as generally wandering around the city and eating some very good food – yummy amok has definitely become our favourite asian dish!
Kep
Our original plan was to head straight to Siem Reap to visit the temples of Angkor and then straight to Thailand. However as we hadn’t had much sun and we were in need of a good break from cities and crowds we decided to spend some time on the south coast. We headed first to a very sleepy little town called Kep which was wonderful and has become one of our favourite places. As soon as we arrived we just relaxed. We stayed in a bungalow (Vanna Bungalows) set on the base of a jungle type mountain overlooking the seas and facing west so we could watch the sunset in the hammock!
Kep used to be a resort for wealthy French colonists and claims that it used to be the first resort n South East Asia. The town was formerly full of old colonial villas which have now been left to ruin which means that there are just lots of old burnt out buildings. As we were told, after the Khmer Rouge lost power there was no currency in Cambodia for 5 years. This meant that the people had to trade items in order to live and the villas were stripped bare for this purpose. During the 1990’s the derelict villas were handed out to government officials and senior Khmer Rouge officers as a type of peace agreement. A law in Cambodia means that if a building is not gated you lose right to the building and therefore Kep is full of derelict buildings surrounded by modern walls and gates. Creating an amazing but strange experience to walk around the Town.
Although Kep is getting more touristy we had still had every bar and restaurant we went to all to ourselves. This included an amazing crab market where we feasted on freshly caught crab with black pepper (the black pepper is also local) and some of the best pizza we have ever had cooked in a wood fired stove at Eldorado’s. Although the chef is a bit crazy!
Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island)
We also took a day trip over to Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island) which was just stunning and beautiful. So much better than we thought it would be, with no hawkers, few tourists and a beautiful strip of sea and sand. Kep and Rabbit Island, we both agreed, were our favourite places we had been to so far on the trip and neither of us wanted to leave. There are bungalows on the beach at Rabbit Island for $5 a night and some travellers had set up home there – we were quite tempted to do the same. We heard some scary plans that a Korean company were going to build a 600 room hotel and casino on the Island and build a 4 lane bridge over to the island – crazy! It even had David almost turning eco-warrior at the thought of it.
Kampot
We reluctantly left the sleepy and friendly town of Kep; for the first time on our trip, neither of us wanted to move on. We travelled by moto tuk tuk to Kampot which is a riverside city just down the coast from Kep. We only stayed the night though as we realised we were in need of yet more relaxation and so headed for Sihnoukville, Cambodia’s most well known and popular beach resort.
Sihnoukville
We were expecting a rowdy kind of Benidorm by all accounts, but it wasn’t like this at all and was actually a very nice laid back resort. We walked over to the quiet beach of Otres during the day and walked back along the deserted end of the main beach during sunset. This was mostly free from westerners but had loads of Cambodian families swimming and having bbqs on the beach. This was much more interesting than watch westerners drinking happy hour sunset vodka buckets!
We had 3 days here, enjoying the sun, sand and sea. We had become so accustomed to the relaxed coastal way of live that we had to convince ourselves to go back inland and head north to the temple viewing sights of ancient Angkor, as opposed to following the coastal route around to Thailand. We so nearly didn’t; but not going to Angkor, would be like going to Egypt and not seeing the pyramids. So we headed north by bus (lots of them which took about 12 hours in total and meant staying over again in Phnom Pehn) and prepared ourselves for the hordes of tourists we had been warned about by everyone.
Angkor
Built between the 8th and 13th centuries by the Khmer civilisation to celebrate the God of their time, the temples of Angkor were rediscovered deep in the jungle by the western world in the late 19th century and mostly renovated. And it takes quite a lot of planning to decide exactly what you are going to do with your time. As there are many temples, not just Angkor Wat, spread out over many miles.
Initially on arriving that day, we went to see the sunset at Phnom Bakheng, which you can for free after 4.30. On doing so we also caught a glimpse for the first time of Angkor Wat peeking through the forest, looking menacing and imposing. Truthfully the sunset was disappointing as we thought it would set over Angkor Wat, not the forest. And the thousands of slow and inept package tourist groups tramping on every ancient rock they could find grinded on us slightly. We then decided to do the opposite of what the guide book suggested, and go the places at different times of the day to what they recommended, which is a great plan to avoid the crowds.
So we bought our tickets for the next day ($20 each) and arranged for our moto tuk-tuk driver to take us round all day ($15). So we were all set for the following day for our Angkor experience, or so we thought. This was until Laura woke at 5 and ran to the toilet, never a good sign based on previous experience! Several minutes and some strange noises later she emerged with the news she is not feeling very well. Oh dear. So instead of Angkor, we spent the next 3 days in the same smelly room with Laura eating very little and doing not much more than waiting for Laura’s stomach to get better. At least they had the HBO movie channel!
We finally made it to Angkor 3 days later, after re buying the tickets and a getting ourselves a good deal with a tuk-tuk driver. First we went to the main attraction, Angkor Wat itself. Pictures describe it better than words, but its intricate detail and massive scope make it something very special, and worth all the effort. Next we headed to the Bayon which is a more of a spiritual temple, and has eerie carved faces looking out at you everywhere. Next we went to the temple famous for where Tomb Raider was filmed, Ta Phrom. No reconstruction has been done at Ta Phrom so you can see the jungle still entangled in the temple as they lived side by side for the last 1000 years untouched. We enjoyed Ta Phrom as it was cool to see how the jungle had taken over when the temples have been deserted.
We finished off our tour with a couple of the smaller sites which were also amazing and surprisingly peaceful. There are however a LOT of hawkers all around Angkor shouting sir ‘you wanna buy water’ sir..you wanna buy coke?’ ‘sir you wanna buy guide book? You wanna buy fruit? Painting? Icecream? Handbag? Strange frog thing that makes a noise when you scrape it? We managed to get away with only being forced into buying some postcards from the best salesperson in the whole of SE Asia an 11 year old girl. You shouldn’t really buy from the kids but they are relentless and very very good and what they do – they’d definitely give the winner of the Apprentice a run for their money!
So after seeing Angkor we could finally get on our way to Thailand on a very slow ‘express’ bus…… as with Vietnam we were sad to leave Cambodia as even with the various food poisonings and stomach ailments and the continuous hounding of the hawkers cries of ‘you wanna buy something?’ we really enjoyed our time there. Maybe the Cambodians are not as entrepreneurial, confident or dare I say it ‘clever’ as there Vietnam neighbours. But they certainly are as friendly, welcoming and maybe even more laid back. It’s got a crazy history and it will be really interesting to see how it develops over the next few years…. we’re hoping it won’t too much though as we like it just the way it is!
Right… this is a long one as we’ve got a bit behind on the old blogging so there’s a lot to catch up on.
8th January – Vietnam Border Crossing
We arrived in Vietnam 3 weeks ago – on the 8th January and we knew from the moment we reached the border that good times were ahead. We’ve found border crossings to be very strange experiences – you would think there would be more of a slow transition between landscapes and cultures etc between borders but in our experience the change is pretty sudden. For example we left China which was cold, a bit grey, had lots of chicken feet for food and had a very organised and official passport and visa control to exit where everybody queued in a very efficient and overly controlled way.
We were then put into yellow golf buggies and whisked away to the colourful Vietnam side (all of 5 mins away from the Chinese office). Here the temperature was about 10 degrees warmer, the passport control office had no queues, no rules and a lot of waving and smiley faces. It is more a case of pushing to the front and shouting the loudest to get your passport and visa stamped. You could have easily just walked through without anybody checking! After we worked out how to get our passport stamped we stepped into the Vietnam sun and were surrounded by jungle covered hills and vendors wearing traditional Vietnamese hats and asking us ‘buy something!’.
8th January – Hanoi
Our bus journey to Hanoi was beautiful. With palm trees, wide open landscapes of green lush lands and children waving to us at every chance that could get. We were dropped off in the very authentic cit of Hanoi and it was an extreme culture shock as neither of us had ever seen so many motorbikes, mopeds and electric bikes in one place before – the many estimates we were given ranged from 4-6 million bikes in the city. We got a taxi to our hotel and realised that we were one of only about 5 cars in the city and everyone else was on a motorbike. There were whole families on motorbikes, mom , dad and 2 kids, babies on bikes, a couple with a live cow on the back of their bike (no joke!). Our hotel was in the old quarter which is an area in the centre of Hanoi made up of narrow old streets. These were full of bikes and you could also not use the pavements as they were full of parked motorbikes! So you ended up walking down the road with thousands of motorbikes whizzing past you at either side, with no rules. Well actually there is one rule. The bikes never look behind them when they pull out or turn anywhere, they just keep moving forward. So if a bike or car sees that somebody else might pull out in front of them, they beep them. This in turn leads to a sea of beeping that gives you a headache after a couple of hours, but is truly astonishing to witness. It certainly is the craziest city we have ever been.
This meant that walking anywhere was a mission and required a lot psyching ourselves up. Crossing the road took some getting used to as any official crossings are ignored and vehicles tend to use both sides of the road to travel in both directions! Anyway apart from the crazy traffic we realised that Hanoi had very good food and we soon gorged ourselves. You must try the I-Box restaurant if you go there. Hanoi also had gorgeous lakes and coffee shops, nice botanical gardens and old colonial buildings and we spent a good few days there walking around and avoiding bikes! Would recommend everybody go to Truc Bach lake (next to the west lake) for some relaxing and great food with a sunset. Many people we met didn’t like Hanoi, but personally we loved the authentic but hectic non-western City, it is like nowhere else.
Halong Bay
From Hanoi we took the obligatory trip to Halong Bay – a protected world heritage area in north Vietnam with 3000 limestone kursts out at sea. We took an organised tour which meant we had one night on a boat and a nights stay on Cat Ba Island. Arriving at Halong bay was certainly a spectacular sight – thousands and thousands of tourists all being led around in an organised chaos to their boats. There were also loads of boats, more than we ever expected to see – 700 tourist boats apparently as well as the tender boats. Our boat was the Phoenix and although the weather was pretty grey it was good timing for us as there were only 20 of us on a boat for 48 which meant loads of space and access to the sun loungers on top deck. We sailed out into the bay feasting on a seafood lunch (great), we then went sea-kayaking (fantastic fun even if we always end up paddling the opposite way to each other!) and then to the surprise caves (um.. ok but not so great! – they were caves). We spent the night docked out in the bay with more food, many drinks and some rather bad karaoke!
The next day we took a smaller boat out further into the bay to Monkey Island and then Cat Ba Island where we spent the night. Our guide ‘King’ (highly recommended guide from South Pacific Travel) organised a tour to the VIP cave hospital. Where hundreds of injured VIPS were treated during the Vietnam (Or American as they call it) war. And then a guided tour from a war veteran up to one of the peaks in Cat Ba national park which ended in his house (which was given to him after the war by the government) in the national park. The Vietnamese housed war veterans were housed in a beautiful and isolated village at the bottom of the park. However, not so nice was our accommodation on the island which was in Cat Ba Town – a place a bit like Torremolinos though (except without the sunburnt drunk brits!).
Sleeper Train to Danang
After the Halong Bay tour we headed back to Hanoi were we went straight to the rail station – this involved a very amusing peak hour walk along the busiest streets in Hanoi with our many bags and no map. It was so bad we even gave up trying to cross one road and went a different way instead! At the station we bought what we (or more precisely Laura!) thought were 2 sleeper tickets to Danang. The train set off about 6.30 pm and once on the train we realised that we would be travelling for 16 hours on a very rickety old seat with a very loud TV above our heads playing a strange Vietnamese version of teletubbies. Using Laura’s best miming of sleeper cabin she tried to ask the guard if we could quickly go and change our tickets to which the guard mimed back to Laura that she would sort this out later for us – (good miming!)
So anyway about 30 minutes into our trip one of the train staff comes over to us with a picture of the special posh tourist train sleeper cabins saying that he can get us beds in these for $15 each – we grabbed at the chance – Laura’s research and geeky train knowledge knowing those tickets cost $59 each. Our Austrian cabin mates were not so happy about our arrival however as 1) they thought they had the place to themselves and 2) had paid at least twice what we had and 3) not impressed that the guard had just pocketed $30 on the side by filling the empty cabin himself. Oh well we got a very nice sleep and they got off at 8 am so we were on our own until Danang at 11am. The journey was beautiful – the thing about any journey Vietnam is you cannot take your eyes off the view out the window for even a second – there is always something to see whether its the landscape, the buildings or the people and this is also changing and always beautiful. The Vietnamese have a knack of even making rubbish look arty and every single scene looks as though it has been purposely put that way for a postcard shot.
Hoi An
We arrived in Danang and got a share-taxi to Hoi An for $3. Hoi An is this amazingly lovely little town on the coast. It’s very quaint and soooo laid back. Here we did some shopping where you could pick up real silk tie sets , tailor-made outfits, bags and purses for very cheap. You are supposed to barter with them but often the initial price they ask is lower than what you were thinking anyway. As long as you think it is fair price then that’s all that matters, rather than trying to barter it down another few pence and taking money from the hard working sellers. We also had some of the best and cheapest food we have ever had at the local food market – outstanding. Where Mrs Quyaun amongst others cooked you a massive fish in a banana leave for 50,000 Dong. About £1.60, and tasted better than any fish you have ever had. Hoi An also has a close stretch of beach and the town is a heritage site (You can instantly see why) so it is protected from development. We really loved the authentic town of Hoi An and would recommend it to everyone for a great place to unwind and even casually party to the early hours. We stayed there for 4 nights and after headed on south to the beach resort Nha Trang.
The dreaded sleeper bus to Nha Trang.
We decided to take the bus instead of the train for this stretch as it was a lot cheaper and more convenient as it saved us going back to Danang. Big mistake. The ‘luxury’ sleeper bus that we were booked on was possibly the worst example of ergonomic design we had ever experienced. The ‘beds’ had a plastic encasing for which to put your legs in except they were obviously made for people with very small pencil thin rubber legs. There was no room for your bags so these also had to fit in this compartment. The seat lowered back but only far enough to give you severe back ache all night long. On top of this was blaring loud Vietnamese pop (which the driver refused to turn down despite being asked several times by everyone). A blue tv screen that lit up the whole coach and was pointlessly kept on all night, a toilet that didn’t work and a driver that though it necessary to stop every 30 minutes to do something we could not work out. Plus beep his horn constantly when driving and a random assistant (non of whom spoke English at all despite most people on the bus being westerners) who kept on walking up and down the aisles looking very shifty. You would think that the purpose of a sleeper bus was to sleep, and for the company to create a sleepy atmosphere. But instead they did everything possible to keep you awake and feel like cattle being herded on and off. We initially thought that $12 each was cheap, but soon changed our minds to being over priced for the service. We managed a few hours sleep but can safely say that where possible it’s back to trains from now on!
Nha Trang
We were thankful to arrive early (6.00 am) in Nha Trang where we went straight to our hotel and they very kindly let us check in so we could get some sleep. However, Nha Trang really was a big disappointment. Partly because it was raining but also because we were led to believe it was a pretty beach resort, but really it was a desperately built up city next to the sea with an average strip of sand- not really what we were expecting. They are building more and more hotels here, and the restaurants are serving more and more lacklustre meals that were over priced for Vietnam and gave Laura food poising. Probably the weather effected it but the City seemed to be over developed without the tourists to fill it, and the staff seemed to be less friendly as they came from other places rather than local enthusiastic waiters that love their City (like so many other places in Vietnam). It does have one nice stretch of restaurants and bars however and I am sure it would be better in the sun.
After looking at the weather forecast – (rain for the next 5 days!) we decided to head on to Saigon and treat ourselves to a nice posh hotel with a pool, as the forecast in Saigon was a hot and sunny 30 a degrees. Nice.
Saigon
We took a very lovely long train journey to Saigon, with amazing coastal and landscape views.We quickly got ourselves checked into Hotel Equitorial, but a bit disappointed it was raining there as well! Not long after checking into our very posh hotel Laura got very bad food poisoning (from cuttlefish in nha trang) and David got a horrid cold – not the best few days of our trip! Luckily the next day the weather changed and we got some sun so we lazed around the pool and had little trips into busy Saigon.
Saigon is in stark contrast to Hanoi and is truly a built up western city. A bit of a letdown after the unusualness of Hanoi, but at least you could cross the road. And actually have a pavement that you could use to stop and look at things. Our last night in Saigon we decided to properly hit the town and ended up at 17 saloon a crazy place full of very stunning women and not so stunning Chinese business men! It had a great local band playing all our fave tunes like Shakira (for Laura) and Woman in Love by Barbara Straisend (for David!)
Chau Doc
Our next journey took us to Chau doc, on the border to Cambodia which involved a 7 hour journey in a very small minibus. The journey was well worth it though as it took you through stunning Vietnam jungle backdrops through to pretty and inviting villages that were lit up wonderfully at night. With rivers dotting through the villages and many of the houses protruding out of the water on stilts. Vietnam is all about colours. Everywhere you look there is colour – in the landscape, every house is painted a different colour, and even when it rains all the motorcyclist wear different coloured ponchos.
Chau Doc is a quaint little riverside town on the Mekong Delta full of the friendliest people and no pushy vendors or moto drivers like the rest of Vietnam. The highlight was getting a boat out on the river with one of the locals who took us around a real floating village (seemed a lot more authentic than the Halong Bay one) and to a riverside Cham village. Many of the children ran up to us to practice their English when the boat reached the village.
We also sat and watched the local children take tae Kwando and dance lessons along the riverside which is when met the smartest 10 year old kid possibly in the world. He just finished his tae Kwando lesson and came over to us to enquire ‘Do you mind if I talk with you for 10 minutes or so?’ – he learns English at school and his English was amazing – we had the most comprehensive conversation we had had in the whole of Vietnam and he was only 10 – we asked if he was the cleverest in his class and he replied ‘yes – sometimes the other children even call me master’ – genius!
We sadly left Chau doc and Vietnam on a speed boat to Cambodia a very pleasant (if not slightly noisy) way to cross the border.
Our lasting impressions of Vietnam is of a nation full of proud, together, friendly and happy people that seemed to have found the secret of a good life. The poverty gap appeared to be a lot less than in other countries we had been to and we experienced very little begging. Everybody seems to want for nothing, and the children are exceptionally bright , content and confident in talking to anyone. They do try to sell to you, but not in a desperate way and you get used to it after a while. We thought it is one of the most together nations we have ever visited and all our initial thoughts of a war torn nation have certainly been eradicated.
We love you Vietnam and we will be back!
