Southeast Asia (addendum)

A few things I forgot to mention in the previous blog entry.
And because I can only access my blog through a proxy server because of the stupid censors, I can't go back and edit it. I can only post new content here.

Because Cambodia is a poor country, and its politics rife with corruption, many foreign governments donate money directly to the Angkor association under the auspices of UNESCO, bypassing the Cambodian government altogether. Most of the temples have displays explaining which country has "sponsored" restoration efforts at this temple. I was surprised by how many countries sponsor temples at Angkor. Not just Western countries, but China, Brazil, Korea, also.

Cambodia may be corrupt but it is nominally a multiparty democracy, and that was apparent in the preponderance of signs advertising different political parties (including the "Human Rights Party"). Interestingly, many of these political party signs were mounted on stores. I imagine if American stores did the same, publicizing their political preferences, they might lose a lot of business.

Riding the bus from Phnom Penh to Saigon I sat next to a Vietnamese man who lives in—San Jose, California. He's in import-export and returns home to Vietnam (and Cambodia, it seems) several times a year.

In Saigon I showed up in a nice-looking bar because they had $1 beer happy hour. I was dressed casually in my traveler clothes - t shirt and shorts, and most of the patrons looked more well-heeled, expat businessmen. I had a long conversation with a Chinese man who was originally from Singapore, but grew up in Australia, and has lived in Saigon for the last 11 years. He treated me to several shots of Johnnie Walker, duck meat crepes, and imported New Zealand lamb sausages. Turns out he was the owner of the bar!

In Nha Trang, the Vietnamese beach resort, a motorcycle tout called out to me in perfect colloquial English:
"Hey man, you don't really like this place do you? "
"Too touristy, right?"
"Don't you want to see the real Vietnam?"
"Come with me I'll take you to the countryside"
He certainly had studied the tourist-traveler dichotomy discourse well!

On the streets of Vietnamese cities children roam with tall stacks of books to sell to tourists. It's kind of nice. In other countries vendors hawk tacky souvenirs, drugs, sex, but in Vietnam they hawk books. How literate!