O. Gets a Massage. By Fish!

After another six-hour bus ride, we arrive in Siem Reap, the city closest to Angkor Wat. As a major tourist destination, Siem Reap has upscale hotels and great restaurants, aggressive hawkers and beggars.

We found a nice, inexpensive hotel (the white building in the
center background) just off the main street.

O. had wanted to try the fish massage for a while, and
with a pitch like this, who could resist?
(Click to enlarge the compelling copy.)


You put your feet in the pool and the fish swarm to eat all the dead skin. It tickles.

The happy customer sports baby-soft, practically callus-free feet.
Definitely a unique experience.

Click here for more photos of Saigon and Cambodia.

P.

Exploring Phnom Penh.

The main way to get around as a tourist is by tuk-tuk. Though it is quite warm, there's a cool breeze in the open passenger compartment, so no air-con is needed. The view's better than from a cab, too.

Some tuk-tuks are decorated and have their names painted on the side.

O is ready for a tour of the capitol.

Wat Penh dominates a hill in the middle of town.

Near the wat, there are lots of stands where you can buy floral offerings.

And birds.

Also, there are monkeys.

The wat itself is a Buddhist shrine, but there are many subsidiary shrines
to various deities. Many are crowned with vivid LED halos and auras.

Sunset from the balcony of our hotel.

Later we went to dinner at a restaurant overlooking the river,
where we were treated to a performance of apsara dancing.
We would see the carved representations of previous
performances on the walls of the various palaces and
temples in the Angkor Wat complex.

P.

S-21. Genocide and Fraternity Pranks.

Beautiful, tranquil, horrific.
This former high school was the site of many of the worst tortures of
the Cambodian genocide: S-21 prison. Saloth Sar (aka Pol Pot) was a
former school teacher who decided that the entire Cambodian nation
needed to be re-educated. By torturing, then murdering anyone
who was educated in the old ways. Just wearing glasses was enough
to mark you as an intellectual to be liquidated. S-21 is now a museum
dedicated to educating the Cambodian people about this ugly episode.

The rules and regulations by which S-21 was run. (Click to enlarge.)
The classroom/torture chambers have been left pretty well they way they were
when the prison was shut down. There are many graphic photos of the victims in
death, as well as walls of mugs shots of those arrested and condemned.
After a stay at S-21, the inmates were taken to the killing fields just
outside town and executed by bludgeoning. There's a museum there
as well, but we were too depressed after this tour to go there.

The waterboarding exhibit is part of the display of the tortures the
Khmer Rouge used to force false confessions from their victims.
This evil practice is torture when employed by evildoers like the
Khmer Rouge, but enhanced interrogation, or even the equivalent
of a harmless fraternity prank when duly authorized by
our freedom-loving government.

Here's the actual board and water can used. The display calls the practice
torture, but what does a primitive third-world country know, lacking
as they do the sophisticated legal expertise of John Woo and Dick Cheney.
As part of the political settlement designed to reconcile the country,
many of the worst actors of the Khmer Rouge were brought into
the government, where they remain today. Very few were ever tried
or punished. Pol Pot died in exile, unpunished and unrepentant.
I believe this is called looking forward, not backward.

The sign forbids laughing on the premises.
It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to.

P.

Up the Mekong to Phnom Penh.

The next morning, we get ready to embark on the express boat up the Mekong into Cambodia.

We are met at our hotel by a band of bicycle rickshaw drivers ready to shuttle us to the boat.

It's a mad rush through the morning traffic. My driver had
to screech to a halt to avoid some pedestrians, then after berating them,
had to pedal hard to catch up.

The streets are bedecked with Tet decorations.

Chickens are being bought and killed.

The river is busy with people going about their daily routines.

As we proceed upriver, we see evidence of a more traditional, slower-paced way of life.

After about two and a half hours, we reached the border crossing into Cambodia.

It looks and feels very different from Vietnam. More like a cross between Thailand and India.

And suddenly we can't even read the writing, much less understand the language.

The farms we can see from the river seem more primitive and poorer than those in Vietnam.

We can see the roofs of many temples and wats from the boat.

And people washing their cows.

After six hours, we at last see the spires of Phnom Penh.


As we get off the boat, we are greeted by a horde of insistent hawkers
and beggars, as well as what turns out to be the first of many, many
sculptures depicting gods and demons in a tug-of-war with a
seven- or five-headed naga. Renditions of this scene from the Vedic
episode known as the Churning of the Sea of Milk can be found
all over Cambodia.

So, unfortunately, can the hawkers and beggars.

P.

To The Mekong (Where We Encounter a Scary Amusement Park).

Leaving HCMC at about 8:45, we are the sole passengers in a 12-passenger Toyota van speeding toward Chau Doc on the Mekong river. It's a six-hour journey with a wild driver who speaks no English. Around noon, he pulls into a rest stop/food court, rubs his stomach and says: "Hungry. 30 minute." So we have lunch, then continue our mad dash through the countryside. Many small villages. All look much the same. Then we hit traffic at a dead stop. After 45 minutes of inching slowly foward, we realize that we're waiting for a ferry. We've reached the Mekong!

The river is over a half mile wide at this point. There a five ferries
constantly shuttling back and forth, but there's still a back-up. It takes
over an hour before we can continue on our way to Chau Doc.

Our hotel in Chau Doc is reasonably nice. The room is quite large and clean. We decide to take a walk, though what we saw of the town coming in was dirty, and it's very hot and humid. But we're tired of sitting in an bouncing air-conditioned box, so we venture forth.

To find the creepiest amusement park ever.

Utterly deserted.

Except for these figures from a child's nightmare.
We found the nearest cafe, had a couple beers, and went straight back to our hotel.

P.

Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh City!

Flew in from Phu Quoc with a bunch of big dead fish as checked baggage:

Ho Chi Minh City seems much more cosmopolitan than Hanoi. It's 9 million people as opposed to Hanoi's 6 million. The streets are wider and cleaner, the traffic slightly more law-abiding, and the energy of the city seems lighter and more relaxed. Also the air is far cleaner. Once night fell, we actually saw stars. It's also far less oppressively hot than we had expected. Yes, the temp. is in the low to mid 90s year-round, but this time of year there's little humidity, and there's a cool breeze that keeps things quite pleasant in the shade.

The streets were being decorated for Tet, the lunar new year festival.

We stayed with our friends Colin and Natalie, who just moved from Hanoi
to this beautiful house in District 2.

We had a wonderful lunch at a little cafe right on the Saigon River.

We went to another very lovely restaurant on the river for sunset cocktails and dinner.

We sat on the deck and watched the river traffic as the stars slowly appeared overhead.

Geckos congregated on the ceiling.

We had an absolutely delicious meal. Expensive by VN standards, but worth it.
Fresh seafood spring rolls, crab ceviche, and perfectly grilled Aussie beef and lamb.

Colin introduced us to the Lychee Gimlet. A refreshing mix of
fresh lychee fruit, gin, lemon, and chopped cilantro. The cilantro and the lychee
are a truly inspired combination.

As a Jamaican, Colin knows his cigars, so I followed his lead.

P.