Cambodia: Siem Reap and Angkor Wat

After an all-day bus ride, we arrived in Siem Reap just in time to take a fantastic sunset quad bike tour.  I didn’t expect to enjoy all of these motorized bike tours so thoroughly, but they allow you to get off the main roads frequented by the big tour buses and instead go down the dusty back roads and out into the countryside to get glimpses regular life away from the touristy hot spots.

As it turned out, the countryside was extremely dry and we kicked up so much dust that face masks were warranted. We drove through fields and around cows and past children playing. Watching the sunset over the rice paddies made for a really beautiful and memorable experience.

Siem Reap is a resort town in northwestern Cambodia- practically everything and everyone in this town caters to tourists in general and backpackers and budget travelers in particular. One of the main streets is called ‘Pub Street,’ if that starts to paint a picture for you. Glamourous it is not, but its prime location just over 3 miles from the Angkor archeological site makes is the default basecamp for anyone wanting to visit these incredible ruins.

The temples at Angkor were built by the Khmer between the 9^th and 14^th centuries as the Earthly representation of the abode of the ancient gods and are a point of pilgrimage for all Cambodians. Because the temples are a UNESCO World Heritage site and are even considered by some to be the ‘eight wonder’ of the ancient world, tourists from all over the world now flood there too.

Angkor Wat is the world’s largest religious building- the outer wall encompasses roughly 200 acres and is surrounded by moat 620ft wide. The temple is built upon a series of terraces that culminate in a central tower that rises 213 above the ground. There are 5 main towers and we, along with literally thousands of other eager tourists, got up nice and early to watch the sun rise over their iconic silhouettes and the reflecting pools below. A 3:30am alarm might seem overzealous for a rendezvous with the sunrise, but we all had to wait in line to get individualized photo IDs before entering the complex and jostling for prime positioning.

The Angkor Wat temple is vast and was never actually completed. Many of the intricate carvings on internal stone pillars are only partially completed. I was enthralled by the monks- the looks of the faces of the people receiving their blessings and the beautiful contrast of their brilliant saffron robes against the gray stonework.  I quickly learned, however, that we were not supposed to take their photographs… We waited in line to climb up the tallest tower, which provided a great, almost-aerial view of the entire complex.  If you don’t want to climb the stairs, you can go up in a tethered hot air balloon to get the same effect!

The temple of Bayon is incredibly unique. It is comprised of 54 towers decorated with 216 enormous faces (4 per tower in case, like me, math isn’t your strong point).  They are the faces of Avolokitesharvara but, at least according to Lonely Planet, they bear more than a passing resemblance to King Jayavarman VII, the person who commissioned them. I loved the fact that you could actually climb up and be ‘face to face’ with these massive carvings- they weren’t barricaded off or towering high overhead.  You could walk around and see a dozen or faces at any given time, staring out in all directions across the kingdom. This would have been a good day to own a FitBit-I don’t know if we covered a lot of distance, but we definitely climbed a lot of super steep stone stairs.

I have a definite soft spot for Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and all of the other pseudo-archaeologist treasure hunters that have graced the big screen so I was particularly excited to see the temple of Ta Prohm. Take Prohm is often referred to as the Tomb Raider temple because Lara Croft did some of her plundering there with film crews in tow. It is also known as the jungle temple and is easily differentiated visually from the other main temples due to the massive tree roots that literally engulf parts of the ruins. It is bittersweet to watch Mother Nature at work; the trees have taken root in the nooks and crannies of stonework placed centuries ago and, as they grow, the stones buckle and give. The temple ruins are slowly but surely crumbling and being reclaimed by the surrounding jungle.

                                                           Can you see the temple amidst the tree roots??

                                                     Did I mention that the whole place was super crowded?

The temples were incredible, don’t get me wrong- but I wish we had seen them earlier in our trip.  Although they regulate visitors by printing photo IDs on each ticket, they don’t actually regulate the NUMBER of visitors that enter the UNESCO site. I’m sort of ashamed to say that, between the oppressive heat (in winter!) and the crowds and the sheer scale of everything, we crossed into the ‘templed out’ zone pretty quickly.  You could easily spend days wandering around here and still not see everything- but a couple of leisurely half-days would make for a more relaxing and enjoyable experience.

(Talking about corruption, which was a common theme during this trip, it is a little unclear who actually pockets the revenue from Angkor Archeological Park, which generated almost $58 million last year in entrance ticket sales. Although the park is now run by the Cambodian government, there is speculation that the money pulled in by Cambodia’s biggest tourist attraction is being funneled to Vietnam as a ‘thank you’ for helping the Cambodian PM regain power.)

After the temples, we did more wandering around Siem Reap, visited a few hundred more market stalls (only a slight exaggeration), negotiated prices for some touristy tank tops and, of course, found more food to eat.  

One of my favorite memories from Siem Reap is a wonderful laughter session at a little tourist trap called Dr. Fish. You’ve probably heard of this gimmick before- you dangle your feet into a large fish tank and the little garra rufa fish obligingly nibble the dead skin off your feet. The efficacy and validity of using these little guys as a spa treatment is widely debated, and the practice is banned in several parts of the US and Canada if that tells you anything. But back to Cambodia… The thing is, to say that a few dozen fish nibbling your feet is a little ticklish- is a massive understatement. Many people find the tickle factor- especially in the first tank with the smallest fish- almost unbearable. (There are even three tanks with progressively larger fish with correspondingly larger mouths resulting in proportionally bigger nibbles). The squeals and shrieks these little fish elicit- absolutely hysterical to witness! My mom had my crying with laughter watching her reactions! For 2 USD, you get a beer, unlimited foot ‘pampering,’ side-splitting laughter, and prime curbside positioning to watch the backpackers in all the various stages of bohemian-ness walking by- bargain!!

                                         Because I know you really wanted a close-up of our feet

Cambodia: Phnom Penh

We had to disembark from our bus and complete the Vietnam-Cambodia border, crossing on foot but it was pretty quick and painless- pay some money, walk in one side of the building, give some fingerprints, get a stamp, and walk out the other side. From there we re-boarded the bus and headed to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

We did a cyclo tour around Phnom Pehn to get ‘the lay of the land’ on our first day.  Cylcos, or cycle rickshaws, can come in a variety of configurations. I am used to a sort of tricycle-style contraption where passengers sit in the back. These, however, were more like giant strollers, and I must admit that I felt quite pretentious being pedaled around in one.

I have never seen so many high-end SUVs- Range Rover, Lexus, etc. The contrast between extreme wealth and extreme poverty was quite startling and the government corruption very evident.

Phnom Pehn also has a Red Light district that Mom, Stephanie, and I managed to miss completely. While some of our male touring companions were being propositioned and offered drugs on the streets below, we were about 6 stories up having a cocktail on the roof of the Foreign Correspondents Club, once THE place for journalists to hang out during the Vietnam War.

                         Inside the Royal Palace compound with a few hundred school children

Our first dinner in Phnom Pehn was quite memorable. During the first, I summoned some bravery and ordered fried tarantulas and red tree ant soup.  The tree ant soup was very manageable. The ants were miniscule and you could basically convince yourself that they were little pieces of dried oregano floating on the surface. The tarantulas, however, were another matter entirely. First, I was expecting one spider- and ended up with a plate of 3. Second, my American brain translated ‘fried’ to mean that they would be deep fried in batter and essentially unrecognizable. No, they just looked like sleeping tarantulas with their legs nicely tucked.  With deep breaths, positive self-talk, and a few gulps of water, I was able to eat one. With some peer pressure, I managed to get my dinner companions to eat the legs of another. I felt pretty guilty about leaving a whole spider sitting untouched on the plate so, we thanked our lucky stars that we were seated at a table in the garden- and discretely through his little body into the bushes!!

                    A live tarantula at a roadside stop- the bowls are filled with insect delicacies

Our next day was quite a somber one. We went to Choeung Eg, also known as The Killing Fields. Mass killings were conducted here and at numerous other sites across Cambodia as part of a state-sponsored genocide during the Khmer Rouge regime. It is estimated that over a million people were executed between 1975 and 1979, while an addition million people starved to death.  Bits of bone and cloth were evident in the dirt underfoot as we walked around and, although they have excavated dozens of mass graves, there are countless remains still in situ.

            Friendship braces adorn the posts around some of the mass graves at The Killing Fields

We also went to Tuol Sleng Museum- a former school that was turned into a prison and place of torture. Prisoners had their photos taken upon arrival, after torture sessions, and upon their deaths. These graphic photos line the walls of some of the buildings are a truly horrific and emotionally overwhelming.  What I also found so mind-blowing- and what I had to keep reminding myself about- was how recently all of this happened. Very few prisoners survived, but a couple of those that did come back to the now-museum every day to talk with tourists and tell their story! The even more uncomfortable realization is that, not only are some of the prisoners still alive, many of their torturers are still alive as well and living in the community with everyone else. In fact, per our tour guide, one of the former prison guards operated a food cart catering to tourists out in front of the museum! Our guide stated that he hadn’t been seen for a couple of weeks and had likely been offered a position in the government. Cambodia’s Prime Minister, Hun Sen, is a former Khmer Rouge commander who, cutting and pasting from Wikipedia, ‘assumed authoritarian power in Cambodia using violence, intimidation and corruption to maintain his power base.’ Cambodians will tell you that they live in a democratic country but, although Hun Sen did not win the majority of seats during the 2013 election, he still remains in the same role he has held since 1985. Our little G Adventures group all agreed that Cambodia does not feel particularly stable and that we won't be particularly surprised if a civil war breaks out at some point in the future.

Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City

Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) was not my favorite city so I’m not going to spend too much time on it.  Over 10 million people live in its greater metropolitan area- and this is projected to increase to almost 14 million by 2025.  While there is much that still appears ‘backwards’ to the Western eye, large parts of HCMC are modernizing, commercializing, and rocketing skyward at a dizzying pace. Stephanie and I spent a few hours doing Lonely Planet’s self-guiding walking tour of Old Saigon- and we were hard-pressed to find anything old!  

 One of the few old buildings we saw: The People's Committee Building, with 'Uncle Ho' out front

A few things stuck out for me during out Ho Chi Minh City wanderings:

Unlike in Hanoi, where many people live in the back of or above their shops- and therefore keep their shops open during all of their waking hours, stores in HCMC operate during ‘business hours’- and many of them close- or at least close early- on the weekends. We ended up doing a lot of window gazing!

For the first time in our Vietnam travels, we encountered fast food restaurants- and lots of them. Burger King, Popeyes, McDonalds, Subway.  It was surprisingly obvious that with more wealth comes higher rates of obesity.  The children here were also the chubbiest that we saw anywhere.  We checked out a recommended iceream parlor known for its exotic flavors- and the prices were equivalent to what you would pay for gourmet icecream in the states- very expensive by Vietnamese standards, but the place was absolutely jumping.  And coffee shops. Every third store was a coffee shop, and that's not even much of an exaggeration.

Whereas in other Vietnamese cities, you can shop for knock-off Coach, Gucci, and Longchamp to your heart’s content, HCMC has clamoring high end shopping streets where you can buy the real deal.  There is a lot of wealth here.  We went to a rooftop bar one evening to see the city lights from up high. Casting my eyes around at the DJ, the drinks menu and the general swankiness of the place- I could have been at a high-end rooftop bar in any major city around the world. Standing at the railing and looking at all the skyscrapers, my mom said, 'You'll be able to say that you visited Ho Chi Minh City right before it launched itself onto the world stage.'

We walked through the large backpacking district and the bustling Ben Thanh Market, and toured through the Jade Emperor Pagoda, the War Remnants Museum, and the Reunification Palace. The Reunification place is a great example of 1960s architecture- and the interior details have been left untouched since the 1st Communist tanks arrived at its gates on April 30^th, 1975. The basement contains a huge bomb shelter with a War Room, map room, and telecommunications center filled with massive old radio transmitters. We read multiple accounts of the lead up to and subsequent fall of Saigon- but there were so many secret allegiances and assassination attempts and hand-offs of power along the way- that we drove out of HCMC still feeling confused about it all.  

                                   Radios in the basement bunker of the Reunification Palace

Next stop, Cambodia!  

Vietnam: Hue and Hoi An

The city of Hue, population 361,000, is yet another UNESCO World Heritage Site- we managed to hit quite a few of them on this trip! It is situated on a bend in the Perfume River and was once the imperial capital of Vietnam. Unfortunately, this city was thoroughly assaulted by American forces when the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong seized control of it back in 1968. Whole neighborhoods were leveled and napalm was dropped on the imperial palace. Much of the Citadel, the heart of the city, remains badly damaged and it is only through foreign aid that renovations of areas like the Imperial Enclosure and the Forbidden Purple City have recently begun.

Our favorite experience in Hue was a motorbike tour that took us to many of Hue’s highlights beyond the Citadel walls. To clarify, we were the passengers, not the drivers. Being on two wheels enabled us to go through all sorts of back alleys, down dirt paths, and along causeways stretching across the rice fields. As we zoomed between sightseeing points, and it allowed us a glimpse into the lives and the living conditions of the locals.  A fantastic experience- we loved it!

From Hue, we headed further south to Hoi An.  Hoi An is probably tied with Hanoi as my favorite city of the trip, but they each have a very different feel. Unlike bustling, polluted, pulsating Hanoi, Hoi An is quaint, relaxed, riverside town that never progressed architecturally beyond colonial times and is now being preserved and cultivated into a tourist’s dream.  Because it was once a port town, a variety of different cultures and exerted their influence, as evidenced by the numerous Chinese temples and Japanese merchant houses. Photo opportunities are endless here- many of the buildings are painted a beautiful burnt ocher, vibrantly colored boats line the river banks, and thousands of jewel-toned lanterns are strung between building façades all up and down the streets.

Hoi An is a culinary hot spot- those who aspire to take a Vietnamese cooking class will be overwhelmed by choices here. It is also known for its silks and tailoring shops abound- for about $200, you can go in, have your measurements taken, and essentially walk away in a custom-made suit 24 hours later. Equally, you can take in a picture from a magazine (your favorite Oscars dress, for example) and have that whipped up within a few days too! A number of people in our group ordered suits and business shirts- and they all seemed quite pleased with their purchases. The coffee roasters and gourmet smoothie stores are moving fast, however, and massage parlors are multiplying as both locals and investors cater to the increasing stream of tourists heading this way.

To see the sights of Hoi An beyond the central old town, we did another truly fantastic bike tour- non-motorized this time. Along the way, we stopped to take a brief ride on a water buffalo and pulled over at a fishing village where we went floating through a water coconut grove in basket boats. We also paused to admire the gardens of one of the cutest old couples I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.  They are local celebrities thanks to photographer Réhahn, whom we also had the pleasure of meeting when we visited his newly opened Precious Heritage Art Gallery Museum in town.  If you enjoy portrait photography, I encourage you to check out some of his work:

http://www.rehahnphotographer.com/portfolio/portraits-vietnam/

Vietnam: Cruising Halong Bay on a Chinese Junk

After a meet-and-greet dinner with our delightful CEO (‘Chief Experience Officer’) PC and the rest of our group the night before, we rose early, boarded a bus to the coast, then hopped aboard a junk boat and sailed out into the emerald waters of Halong Bay.  Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site, contains approximately 2000 islands  or karsts which are basically towering pillars of limestone with large rain forest toupees on top.  It makes for some pretty stunning scenery. 

Approximately 500 junk boats are licensed to operate in Halong Bay. These Lonely Planet stats are about 10 years old but, of the 500 boats, about 300 are cruising the Bay at any given time and about 80 of them do overnight trips. There are only 3 designated spots for overnight boats- which means 20-30 boats per cove. So, while the scenery is stunning, you putt along a boat highway during the day and anchor in a little boat parking lot at night. Because all of the tourists are crammed into a tiny sliver of Halong Bay, there was actually a fair amount of trash in the water- I guess the good news is that hopefully this tactic is keeping other parts of the Bay super pristine?!  We hiked to the top of one of the limestone islands, then watched the sunset from the man-made beach below. The whole group visited a massive limestone cave and Stephanie and I did an ‘add on’ that included kayaking through a limestone cave tunnel into a little cove that is home to a band of wild monkeys!  While the monkeys were definitely a highlight, my favorite moment occurred when I was in my little room changing and suddenly heard rapping on the porthole window. A lady in a little rowboat was pedaling concessions- soda, potato chips, whatever she thought the tourists might want! I didn’t give her any business- although in hindsight I wish I had- but managed to snap a quick pic as she rowed away…

(They sky was always hazy during our time in Halong Bay so this special part of the world wasn’t at its photogenic best- or at least, my photos don’t really do it justice!)

Because we had quite a few long travel days built into our itinerary, G Adventures made sure that our rest stops always had something interesting to offer- on the way to Halong Bay, for example, we stopped at a crafting center that employs victims of Agent Orange. On the return voyage, we stopped by a pearl factory to learn how pearls are cultivated and harvested.  We enjoyed a few brief hours back in Hanoi (long enough for Mom and Stephanie to re-visit their favorite knock-off handbag shop!) before heading to the station to board on overnight train bound for Hue.

Overall, the 15-hour train ride was quite reasonable. Somehow every surface of the bathroom was impressively and unhygienically wet by the end of the trip, but Stephanie assures us that it was nothing like her overnight train experience in India where the ‘toilet’ opened directly onto the tracks below. We noticed that all of the foreigners were clumped together into the same carriage so, while ours was a flushing toilet, I did wonder whether conditions were equally nice throughout the rest of the train. Each compartment contained two sets of bunk beds- a rodent was intermittently gnawing on something between our compartment panel during the night- but I think we all got used to keeping our earplugs easily accessible on this trip and managed to get some sleep nevertheless! 

Vietnam: Hanoi

My mom, my sister, and I are now most of the way through a 17-day tour through Vietnam and Cambodia. The tour started in Hanoi, Vietnam, and will finish in a few days in Bangkok, Thailand.  The trip was Stephanie’s idea- she has travelled with this company, G Adventures, twice before and had really good things to say, so- Voilá! Here we are on a mother-daughter vacation.

We all met up in Hanoi. Stephanie arrived a day early and already had the lay of the land when Mom and I showed up.  There are literally millions of motorcycles and scooters zooming around the narrow streets of the old city and shop wares and tiny plastic chairs from the eateries spill out onto the sidewalks. (By ‘literally’ I mean that there are about 7 million people in Hanoi and approximately 5 million motorbikes). The result is that you are constantly dodging objects both moving and stationary, you are sucking down exhaust fumes all day long, and your senses are generally overloaded in every possible way.

One of our local guides gave us some advice regarding crossing the street (traffic lights don’t seem to exist in the old city): “Close your eyes, think of the Happy Buddha, start walking, and the motorbikes will go around you.”

And, in my experience, he is pretty much right.  If you walk at a constant speed, the drivers can judge your progress and navigate around you. I felt a bit like Moses parting the Red Sea at right angles.

                        

                                                              A street market in Hanoi

Another tour guide said that he only frequents corner coffee shops so that he can chuckle at tourists trying to cross the street while he sips his coffee. He claims that he can tell how many days someone has been in Hanoi purely by how confidently they stride out into the busy streets.

Needless to say, Hanoi is a bit of a shock to the system.  We had roughly a day and a half to see as much as possible before the tour started so we walked around Hoan Kiem Lake and saw people doing their morning calisthenics, visited the Fine Arts Museum and the Temple of Literature, and wandered all around the French Quarter. Stephanie had already visited Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum and told us that, given our time constraints, it wasn’t worth the wait.  Instead, on our second day, we went to the Vietnamese Womens’ Museum and the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology where we stumbled upon a water puppet show already underway.  We had read about shows in our Lonely Planet guidebook- this art form originated with rice farmers in flooded paddy fields. They would stand in waist-deep water behind a bamboo screen and operate the puppets via bamboo poles concealed under the water. After 10 minutes spent listening to the piercing falsetto of the Vietnamese narrator and watching wooden puppets splash around, we felt like we sufficiently grasped the concept and never needed to watch water puppets ever again. Too harsh? Maybe the jetlag was making me a little more judgmental than usual… 

                                                         The actors waiting off-stage

Hanoi, while a little frenetic at times, provided a great introduction to the themes that have continued to pervade this trip: warm and friendly people, rabbit-warren street markets, motorcycle mayhem, rice with every meal, and photo opportunities around every corner.

Having my cake and eating it too in the Bay Area

Well, I enjoyed my time working at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland so much that, since my last blog post, I extended my travel contract yet again. In fact, I extended my contract so many times that I reached my limit. One can only work in a particular geographic area for 12 consecutive months and still retain the title of (and reap the tax benefits of being) a travel therapist. Longer than that, and it looks like you are ‘putting down roots.’  Alta Bates offered to hire me on as permanent staff member and I debated long and hard- agonized, really- over whether to accept.

Pros: I have wonderful co-workers here and the acute rehab setting is my favorite thus far; the Bay Area landscape is beautiful; the arts, music, and food scenes are all flourishing, and outdoor opportunities abound within a 4-5 hour drive.

Cons: the cost of living- and the cost of real estate, in particular- is incredibly high.  Many people with good salaries end up being life-long renters because they cannot afford to buy property; traffic is pretty terrible a lot of the time; it is on the other side of the country and multiple time zones away from my family and many of my friends and, because I would lose the tax benefits of being a travel OT, the pay cut would be significant.

It is more complicated than that, of course but, in the end, I turned down the offer. Although don’t want to accept a permanent position at the present time, I don’t feel ready to leave the Bay Area just yet either.  I basically want to have my cake and eat it too! There are 2 ways to ‘reset the clock,’ so to speak, so that I can resume work as a travel OT.  One is to take a 45 day break from working; the other is to take a contract greater than 45 miles away from Alta Bates, and then return.  Alta Bates would be happy to have me back but it gets tricky because, no matter which option I choose, there is no guarantee that they will have an active need for a traveler when I’m ready to return. And then I would have to find a position somewhere else in the Bay Area- in a potentially less enjoyable setting, and in a potentially less convenient location. It all depends on what is available at time. This is sort of what I imagine high stakes gambling would feel like...

My last day at Alta Bates was December 28^th. I’ve got my recruiter on the lookout in case any convenient short-term contacts pop up but my plan, at present, is to take 45 days off. And a chunk of those days are already accounted for by a trip to Vietnam with my mom and my sister!  In fact, I am writing this long-overdue blog post from my bed in the Lantern Hotel in Hoi An.  It has been a fascinating trip so far with so many sights and smells and sounds to take in.  We fly to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow and I’m hoping I can use the flight time to write a small post about what we’ve been up to so far.