Looking back, the last updates were from Hanoi. Since then we have done a lot of things in and around Hanoi, then Ho Chi Minh City (let’s just keep it simple and call it Saigon, shall we?), before crossing the border into Cambodia on 9 April to visit Phnom Penh then Siem Reap. Now, we are on board an Air Asia Airbus320 bound for Kuala Lumpur, having just flown out of Siem Reap 15 minutes early….again, Air Asia proves to be a perfectly good airline to fly with. Today’s trip takes us to KL for a stopover of about 4 hours, before we take a short flight to Penang for a week, hopefully to be spent on the beach.

There is so much to tell you about – but I’ll try to keep the summary as brief as possible.

Along with our friends Jeannie and Jonathan Clough with whom we’ve spent 12 wonderful days (and also Anna Hamill who joined us for 48 hours in Saigon) we have seen some great places and done some great things…starting with an overnight trip on Halong Bay which was exactly as everyone who’d been previously told us it would be – spectacular scenery, fantastic hospitality on board our “junk” which was more like a 5 star hotel as far as the cabin and the service went, excellent karaoke (well, from the incredibly talented singers amongst the crew that is!), very good (and very substantial) meals etc. It’s difficult to describe the slightly eerie sensation of slipping through the early morning mist and between just some of the thousands of islands jutting up into the bay, but hopefully the photos help tell the story. All we can say is this: everyone was right – if you go to Vietnam, you MUST take a cruise on Halong Bay. By the way, Deanna, yes most of the junks have been painted white apparently after some local govenment decree to do so. No one knows why!

Among other things in Hanoi, we experienced a visit to Hoa Lo Prison….experienced being a much better word than enjoyed in this case. It was very interesting, but quite sobering as we considered the Vietnam War from a new perspective (as well gaining a better understanding of the previous Viet Minh-French conflict, not to mention the impact on the people of Vietnam over many years as various factions fought for internal control). Hoa Lo (the Hanoi Hilton) wasn’t just where captured US airman were imprisoned though….over the years it has housed many many more Vietnamese people who in one way or another had dared to defy the authorities, and they were housed in incredibly inhumane conditions for the most part as well. And Hoa Lo was just a sample – since then we have been to places like Cu Chi near Saigon where the Viet Minh went underground to live and fight against the French, the Americans, the South Vietnamese, us I suppose, for many years from a 250km long network of tunnels up to 8m deep that stretched from the city almost to the Cambodian border….they lived down there for years whilst I spent just a few minutes in a short 120m stretch of a tunnel they’ve actually enlarged a bit for tourists to experience and THAT was more than enough thank you; we’ve been to the War Remnants Museum in Saigon which literally brings people to tears as they view the photographs of atrocities carried out in the name of war, and not just by the so-called enemy either I might add….”our” side didn’t fight a blame-free war by any stretch of the imagination that’s for sure; and most recently we’ve been to the Killing Fields near Phnom Penh. That one was really sobering – we’ve been to places like Auschwitz and recoiled in horror at what happened there, yet in Pol Pot’s day the most dreadful things were done to their own people – men, women and children – for no better reason than the Khmer Rouge wanted things their way. To commit genocide is obviously bad enough, but to almost exclusively direct your hatred against your own people is just unbelievable. Killing fields existed all over Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 – the authorities ousted 1million people (i.e. almost everyone) from Phnom Penh for example so they could populate it with around 50,000 ‘Party people’, and far too many of the 1 million were never heard from again. Today, of course, all the killing fields have been erased from the landscape, but to ensure the memories and the lessons are never forgotten, the one at Choeung Ek that we visited has been retained and a Buddhist memorial has been erected (somewhat ghoulishly containing over 8000 exhumed skulls on display). It was a “tourist attraction” that we almost didn’t go to, but in the end we did and we are glad that we did so….it’s a visit that everyone with an inappropriate agenda for power in this world needs to make.

As you can probably tell, I’m struggling a bit to put our feelings into words as we try to understand these things…so maybe I should finish now with a much happier subject….FOOD! (there’s much more to tell you, especially about the Angkor area around Siem Reap and our visit to a floating village and its school, but I’ll save that for the next update).

We have eaten our way through SE Asia for 3 weeks now – we’ve eaten frogs, snakes, crocodiles as well as all the ‘normal’ stuff and we’ve tried Khmer, Malaysian, Thai, Indian, Chinese, Western, Vietnamese (and yes, McDonalds just once because it was the only recognisable food available at 5am at KL Airport). Food is so incredibly cheap and most of it tastes so good! And even food has its highlights – for us it was the Back of the Bike tour of Saigon last Sunday morning which was organised by Anna on our behalf. BOTB is a new company founded just last year by Chad from Pennsylvania and his wife Thuy from Saigon, and justifiably it’s already rated #2 on TripAdvisor. They picked us up at 9 on 5 motorbikes, and dropped us back at our hotel 3 hours later after a really fun, informative and stomach satisfying pillion ride around the city visiting a variety of small local restaurants, probably none of which we would have entered had we been making the decisions. The food and drinks were 99% delicious (there were a couple of things I wouldn’t try again), the insights into local Vietnamese life were very interesting, and the ride in Saigon traffic (even on a ‘quiet’ Sunday morning) was a heap of fun. Top marks to Chad and the team – we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and like Halong Bay, we would recommend a tour with them to anyone out there heading for Vietnam.

I think that will do for now – have you had enough? Have a look at the photos….more added to the Vietnam album, and now there’s a new album for Cambodia. Here they are:

Vietnam

Cambodia

Cheers

A&P