I just got back to Kunming, China from three weeks in Southeast Asia. It was a whirlwind trip incorporating four different countries (not counting China), five border crossings, three visas, dozens of bumpy bus rides, in all traversing over 5000 km (3000 miles) of territory. Southeast Asia is well connected to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, and Australia by budget airlines, but that didn't help me at all, based as I was in China. China's air links to Southeast Asia are severely overpriced given the short distances they cover. Hopefully once the new airport opens next year, competition will drive down prices. But in the mean time, I was traveling by land, seeing more, and enduring the bumps along the way.
I'd been to Southeast Asia three times before. Once in 2006, a week in Thailand, my very first trip to Asia. And twice last fall, brief trips not far across the Chinese border, mainly visa runs, to northern Laos and northern Vietnam. This time would be more extensive, covering a lot more ground. The initial impetus was the same as last fall: I needed to make another visa run across the border. The next goal was to get to Angkor Wat. It's quite a ways south of China, and necessitated traveling across large swaths of Laos and Thailand to get there (and then Vietnam to get back to China).
Laos
Made it to the Chinese-Lao border at Mohan/Boten an hour before closing time. No public transportation on the Laos side. Some taxi drivers wanted to charge me a highly inflated fair to the junction 20 km away where I could catch a public bus. Just then a French tourist showed up. He had come to the border "sightseeing". He gave me a ride (for free) on the back of his bike to the junction. 20 minutes later the public bus rolled along and picked me up. It had one available seat. I felt like things were going my way that day.
Oudamxay
Three hours later arrived in Oudamxay, a dusty little town at the intersection of two highways. A third of the population there is Chinese: business people, construction workers, prostitutes. I first looked at a Chinese guest house since I could speak the language, but the place was filthier than anything I had ever seen in China, unswept floors, a stained mattress, no sheets. The Lao guesthouse next door cost a dollar more but was spotless and welcoming (and the proprietor fluent in English, as I would find almost everyone who interacts with tourists in Southeast Asia is). Most Lao guesthouses, and even shops, all ask guests to remove their shoes at the door.
Even though Oudamxay is not much of a destination, the place was full of backpackers, mostly traveling to and from other places in Northern Laos. This is quite a striking difference from the kind of places I'd been traveling in during the last few months: small Chinese towns with nary a tourist in sight. I would posit that the tourist:local ratio is considerably higher in Laos than in China, likewise with the tourist:land area saturation rate. I went to a restaurant recommended to me by a British man I met on the street. I had the tofu larb (a minced dish with fragrant spices served in a banana leaf) and green papaya salad. Upon receiving the salad I noticed an ant crawling across the surface. Figuring one ant wasn't going to kill me I brushed it off and proceeded to eat. Then I realized the salad was crawling with ants - hundreds, maybe thousands of them. It's a testament to my attempt to "go with the flow" that I actually contemplated just shrugging it off ("some people in Asia like eating ants", "they're probably nutritious", "maybe this is considered a delicacy"), but in the end I sent it back. The poor old woman preparing all the food herself didn't seem to see what the problem was. I found the source of the ants was her jar of peanuts. Her eyesight must not have been good enough to see what I saw. I'm afraid my ant complaint caused the rest of her business that evening - two German fellows - to evaporate.
Next morning there was one and only one bus scheduled for the place I needed to get to: Nong Khieu. I woke up bright and early at 7 to make sure I had a ticket for the 9 am bus. Turns out it was more a minivan than a bus, and the 9 am departure was interpreted liberally. We didn't leave until 10:30. Along the way, passing homes made of bamboo thatch, our vehicle was flagged down by a woman holding a furry creature by the tail. I never did figure out what the creature was. It looked like a cross between a bobcat and a raccoon. Money exchanged hands, and the creature was thrown onto the floor of the minivan, apparently to be someone's dinner that night.
Nong Khieu
In Nong Khieu I wandered down the single dusty road looking for the boat dock, where I was hoping I hadn't missed the last boat of the day to Muong Ngoi, my real destination for the day. I found the docks deserted and went asking about the boat. I was pointed up to a landing, where I discovered about 10 other backpackers waiting in the shade. I knew then I was on time. Half an hour later, we all loaded onto a narrow outboard motor-equipped keel boat, and up the Nam Ou River we went. Passing bathing bovine and villagers washing clothes, we pulled up on the docks of Muong Ngoi an hour later. Muong Ngoi is a popular backpacker destination: a roadless, carless riverside village on the edge of the jungle, with spectacular karst mountains all around.
A quick disclaimer. I've done a lot of "off the beaten path" travel in China because I can. Being able to speak Chinese opens up a lot of places to potential exploration. But on this trip I had no pretensions to anything of the sort. Crossing the border, I was instantly transformed from a knowledgeable resident of China capable of communicating with the local populace, to just another ignorant American bumbling my way from backpacker enclave to backpacker enclave with nothing more than "hello" and maybe "thank you" in the local language (if that).
Muong Ngoi
Muong Ngoi consists of a single dirt road lined with guesthouse/cafes, the nicer of which had large wooden decks overlooking the Nam Ou. Every evening they turned on the generators for three hours of electricity. A few of the cafes had all-you-can-eat buffet for two dollars. My favorite part was the coconut stick rice with mango.
I made several friends in Muong Ngoi - Polish, German, Israeli. When, on day two, the two groups merged together for a day trek I was a little curious to see how the Germans and Israelis would get along. Turned out to be a non-event. We followed a creek through a wooded area, explored some caves, and then emerged into an open area of rice fields. The trail crossed several streams without bridges. Not wearing sandals, I had to take off my shoes to ford each stream. Midday we reached a village of bamboo thatch homes, palm trees, and barefoot children. Following lunch in the village, hiked further up into the jungle amid tall rainforest trees and waterfalls. Returned to Muong Ngoi early because the sun set incredibly early in these parts - around 4:00.
Luang Prabang
After two days in Muong Ngoi, caught the boat back to Nong Khiew, and then bought a "bus" ticket to Luang Prabang. This "bus" turned out to be a pickup truck with benches in the back. This is what passes for scheduled public transportation in northern Laos. Actually, I thought it was very comfortable - in the open air back of the truck, the wind blowing made for a refreshing ride. I sat in the back, with a great view of all the scenery slipping into the distance behind us.
Luang Prabang was as far as I'd gotten when I went to Laos the previous year. The UNESCO world heritage city is a charming collection of French colonial houses on the tropical shores of the Mekong River. Having spent several days there last time around, I only stuck around for one day, enjoying the fruit shakes, cheap food, and pastel houses.
Vang Vieng
After the cheap, breezy truck ride of the previous day, I was a little disappointed to learn that the tour companies seemed to have the next segment of the journey cornered. I had to buy a ticket on a "VIP bus" to Vang Vieng, a place renown among backpackers in the Lonely Planet. I went because it broke the ten hour trip to the capital Vientiane into two. Vang Vieng's big draw is tubing on the Nam Song River. What I didn't know until I got there was that the river is lined with makeshift bars and that the backpackers tubing down the river stop at each bar, getting drunker and drunker as they float downriver. They jump off cliffs and ride down zip lines, some spraining ankles and breaking bones. The drunken masses in Vang Vieng that evening had words scribbled across their bodies in magic marker ink. A half naked British man told me instead of renting a tube for $5, you should just steal someone else's tube at one of the bars where they're piled up nameless. Never mind that the renter of that tube would then lost not just $5 but their $10 deposit. I decided at that point that this was not the place for me. That, and the fact that every bar and restaurant in town played Friends and the Family Guy on an endless loop. I mean, come on!
On the bright side, the landscape of Vang Vieng was truly gorgeous. The outline of the craggy karst mountains in the dusk and dawn light resembling a paper cut. The mist settling on the river at night and gradually burning off as the morning heated up. Since my goals seemed to be different from the drunken backpackers of Vang Vieng, I went to bed early, and woke up early for a pre-dawn walk, before bidding farewell to Vang Vieng and moving onto the capital.
Vientiane
Rumor has it, it was once a wild town, but the Vientiane I found was staid and sober. To say that it was the busiest place I'd seen thus far in Laos was not saying much. Vientiane has to be one of the least pretentious national capitals in the world, a lazy little city on the shore of the wide Mekong with a compact street grid and a handful of French buildings. The food was decent, though. Vientiane is famous for its sidewalk cafes. They're actually quite nice, with comfortable rugs and furniture all laid out on the sidewalk. There was a wide range of international cuisine, a Swedish bakery, and sidewalk cafes. I had my last Lao larb, this time a chicken one, and a green papaya salad, this time no ants.
From Vientiane, I could have continued south through Laos and crossed directly into Cambodia. But the Lao-Cambodian border was out of the way of my destination of Angkor Wat. And transportation in Laos, as I had discovered, is slow and in poor condition. It had taken me several days and countless hours just to travel a couple hundred kilometers from the Chinese border to Vientiane, along narrow, winding, potholed mountain roads. Rather than find more of the same in southern Laos, I decided instead to detour through Thailand. The route I would take through Thailand would be longer, but more efficient because Thailand has railways. Plus, Americans can enter Thailand without a visa.
Thailand
Laos has one kilometer of railroad to its name. It opened up last year, and it is a spur that connects the outer edge of the capital to the Thai national rail network. The train is a two-car affair, looking more like a streetcar than a train, that runs across the Lao-Thai "Friendship Bridge", an automobile bridge most of the time that converts into a rail bridge twice a day. On the Thai side, in Nong Khai, passed through immigration in minutes, with enough time for a quick plate of Pad Thai before catching the night train to Bangkok. Thai trains are more comfortable than Chinese trains. Instead of squeezing three bunks on top of each other, there are only two. The reading lamps actually work. Unfortunately, Thai trains don't turn off the corridor lights at night as the Chinese trains do, making a good night's sleep difficult for sensitive sleepers like me.
Bangkok
I arrived at Bangkok at 7 am, and I would have exactly 23 hours to explore the city before heading out on a train to the Cambodian border the next morning at 6. Bangkok was the very first destination of my very first trip to Asia back in 2006, and I was curious to see it again, see how my impression had changed now that I've spent so much time in Asia (not just China but India) in the intervening years. My theory was that Bangkok might seem far less "exotic" than it had seemed that first time around.
My theory was proved wrong. My impressions of Bangkok in 2006 had been of contrast, between the old city and the new, the poverty and the wealth, the maze-like lanes and canals, and the skyscrapers and luxury shopping malls. Well, that's turned out to be a pretty universal theme throughout Asia. And the Bangkok of 2010 looked more or less the same to me as the Bangkok of 2006. The difference was that the dollar had depreciated quite a bit since last time, when $1 exchanged for 40 Thai Baht. Now it only exchanged for 30. The political crisis and near shutdown of the city that occurred just months ago might not have even happened from the look of things in November 2010. The "red shirts", I was told, are currently "regrouping" up north and Bangkok may not have seen the end of political turmoil.
I returned to several of the same sights I'd seen before, rode the same multifarious public transportation: ferry boats, canal boats, subway, elevated rail. I spent several hours in bookstores. And since it was Saturday night I partook in some nightlife. Makeshift bars open up on the sidewalks after midnight, where aging expats mingle with go go dancers, prostitutes, and ladyboys.
Cambodia
The train to Aranyaprathet on the Cambodian border was not an express. The only tickets available were third class, but as they cost only $1.50 I wasn't complaining. With the windows rolled down, the breeze kept things comfortable enough. We rolled across flat rice fields, the mountains of Laos by this point far behind, stopping at every single little station on the route, most of them serving what appeared to be tiny villages of a few dozen households. At the border, having been warned by the travel literature about the scams that plague Aranyaprathet, fended off the touts who tried to sell me fake "visas" to Cambodia at twice the price at the fake "immigration office" on the Thai side. Waited an hour in line at the real border, then crossed into the no-man's land filled with Cambodian casinos for the Thai tourists who come by day and never leave the gambling no-man's land, thus never officially entering into Cambodia. After getting the Cambodian visa-on-arrival, a free shuttle bus took us to a bus station where there were no buses but instead "shared taxes" for $12 a person to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat. I shared the taxi with a young Dutch couple. The three of us all crammed into the back seats because the driver wanted an extra $5 for the privilege of riding in the front passenger's seat. Instead, the passenger's seat went empty.
Siem Reap
I'd made it to a new country, and to the main destination of the trip: Angkor Wat, and the town of Siem Reap that serves it. It was by far the most developed tourist destination I would visit on the trip. No one goes to Cambodia without going to Angkor. As far as the Ministry of Tourism is concerned, Angkor is Cambodia. Even the national airline is called Angkor Air. And Siem Reap International Airport sees more traffic than the airport in the capital Phnom Penh. In Siem Reap I was rubbing shoulders with tourists from around the world. Whereas Laos had been primarily European, Australian, and North American backpackers, in Siem Reap they were joined by Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, South American, Middle Eastern, African. And they weren't just backpackers. Siem Reap is host to dozens of 5 star resort hotels.
But none of that took away from the charm of Siem Reap itself. Cosmopolitan by nature of the international tourism is supports, yet still very affordable, Siem Reap was a colorful, comfortable town in which to spend four nights as I thoroughly explored Angkor (tickets are sold for 1, 3, and 7 days, for $20, 40, and 60, respectively. Nearly everyone buys the 3 day ticket, since the guidebooks all warn that 1 day is simply not enough). While Siem Reap is a sizable city in itself, the downtown area is compact and walkable, framed by a triangle grid of streets along the Siem Reap River. Dining options are abundant, with plenty of french food, bakeries, and coffee shops, and 50 cent draft beer at most restaurants by evening.
The US Dollar is the de facto currency of Cambodia. Everything is marked in dollars. ATMs dispense dollars. But if your bill includes fractions of a dollar, they give you Cambodian Riel for change. Most places accept the easy conversion of 4000 riel to the dollar, but the grocery stores are a pain in the neck and demand 4100 per dollar, which is just a ploy to round up the bill, because most places don't even stock 100 Riel notes.
A number of bookstores in Siem Reap sold illegal copies of exactly the kind of books that westerners and backpackers like to read, for $5 each. It was like a kid in a candy store. I got a copy of The Accidental Billionaires, the story of Mark Zuckerburg that was turned into the movie The Social Network. Also Paul Theroux's 2008 follow-up to his 1973 The Great Railway Bazaar, his trip across Eurasia by rail. Called Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, he retraces his steps as closely as he can, with certain areas he traversed in 1973 off-limits now (Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan) and certain areas that were off-limits in 1973 (Cambodia, north Vietnam) open now. Of particular interest to me was that a large chunk of my itinerary on this very trip were following his very footsteps. He was writing about the exact same trains I took in Thailand, the same borders I crossed, the same museums and temples. Talk about relevant.
Angkor
"Angkor Wat" is how it's known around the world, but what tourists discover upon arrival is that Angkor Wat is actually just one (albeit the main) temple in a complex of hundreds of temples that covers dozens of square kilometers. Angkor Wat is the biggest and most famous of the temples, and it has the biggest crowds, but it wasn't my favorite, not by a long shot.
Because the temples are too spread apart to walk to, most people hire a motor rickshaw for about $15 a day to ferry them around to all the different sites. Those with more money on their hands also hire an interpreter, who are available in 12 different languages. I opted for the cheaper, do-it-yourself bicycle rental, which cost 25 cents a day (!) It was hot and tiring riding that one-speed bike around Angkor for two days, but it was doable. I bought a hat to protect me from the sun, and drank lots of water. I saw almost all the main temples over the course of three days.
I won't go into terrible detail describing the temples of Angkor. You've all seen photographs and probably have some picture in your head. Of course, you should go to my flickr website and look at my photos there. You may think that after three days one would feel "templed out". Well, its true to some extent. Frankly, I think 2 days might have been enough. But there's no 2-day ticket, and the 3-day ticket is the same price as buying 2 1-day tickets. Since the temples represent a span of several hundred years of the Khmer Empire, there is a great deal of range in their architectural styles and features. Although there are several motifs and themes that are prevalent throughout Angkor, it can also be said that each temple boasts its own individual feel.
They are in various states of repair and disrepair. Personally, my favorite temples were the ones that are well into a state of ruin, toppled bricks, crumbling ramparts, stones stained every shade of green by moss and lichen, otherworldly trees, their tentacle-like roots devouring the stone structures. These are the images that we are used to in Hollywood depictions of ancient mystical temples - the stuff of Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider (the later of which was filmed on location here). While its all very "orientalist", it's also really there. Smiling faces starring out of stone gates hidden in the jungle, demons, headless soldiers, stone elephants, snakes, tigers, and then the temples themselves, those iconic towers pointed towards the heavens.
Of course the logistics and the engineering behind the construction of these monuments is a story in itself. As is the historical intrigue surrounding them, the undoubted egomaniacal nature of the emperors who ordered their construction. Angkor was the heart of the Khmer Empire which at one point was the dominant empire in South East Asia, controlling parts of present-day Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam.
New to me was the fact that Cambodia, and the Khmer Empire before it, had strong links to India. Two thousand years ago, Indian seafarers reached present-day Cambodia on trading voyages. They ended up strongly influencing Cambodia's culture, religion (the temples at Angkor were originally Hindu temples devoted to Krishna and Vishnu among others), music, language, writing, architecture, and art. To this day, this Indian influence is apparent. Cambodian writing and language are more closely related to Hindu than to Thai or Vietnamese or Chinese. Cambodian people too look more like South Asians than East Asians. If Southeast Asia is "Indochina", then Cambodia is the "Indo" part and Vietnam is the "Chinese" part.
Although tens of thousands of tourists visit Angkor every day, it is not difficult to feel like you have the place all to yourself. The temples are so numerous, so vast, and so full of convoluted corridors and pathways that call out to the amateur explorer to wander through their hidden corners. Apart from a handful of places sealed off because of dangerous falling rocks, almost everything is open to the visitor to explore, duck under, climb over. You can get very up close and personal with these ancient monuments. Needless to say, photographic opportunities are boundless. The place is crawling with amateur, and professional, photographers.
It's also crawling with small-time businesspeople, mostly in the form of adorable young children. They sell ice-cold water, coconuts, musical instruments, artwork, engravings, t-shirts, postcards, and every other imaginable souvenir. Some have stationary vendor booths along the walkways to the temples. Others, freelancers if you will, simply wander the grounds, searching for customers. Their English levels are impressive, to say the least. Having come from China, where middle and upper class college kids struggle so hard to speak fluent English, here are these poor Cambodian kids, who surely do not go to school, who can speak fluent English. Of course, their daily contact with international tourists helps. And they probably make more money selling souvenirs than they would in any job earned with a college degree (assuming they're not controlled by bosses who take whatever profits they earn, which may very well be the case).
There seemed to be a standard script that many of the child vendors followed:
"Hello Sir, which country are you from?
"The United States"
"Oh, beautiful country. Capital Washington, DC. Population 330 million. Major cities Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco."
"San Francisco, that's where I'm from"
"Beautiful city, sir. Golden Gate bridge. Stanford University."
Wow, I thought! These kids ore walking Encyclopedia Britannica’s.
"Would you like to buy some postcards sir?"
"No thanks, not right now"
"No problem sir. You first tour the temple. Then on your way out you can have another look."
"Would you like to buy a painting sir?"
"They're very nice, but I'm afraid carrying it around with me all day wouldn't be very convenient."
"Don't worry sir, We can deliver to your guesthouse tonight."
They had every possible permutation of the conversation planned out in advance. I actually did end up buying a few articles, from a hardworking, kind 18 year girl named Anina. I bought a rubbing/etching image of the Buddha on rice paper, a Jew's harp carved from bamboo, and some local style hemp shirts. I also drank a lot of coconuts, which they kept cool in ice boxes.
After two days on the bicycle, I'd seen almost everything there was to see in the main temple area. There were just a few temples left in the more outlying areas, one group 15 km in one direction and another more than 30 km in the opposite direction. I decided it was time for me to hire a motor rickshaw. Because of the extra distance, it cost $20. Also fit in a visit to the Landmine museum. In addition to Angkor, the other big tourist attraction (it seems kind of morbid to call them "attractions") of Cambodia are related to the country's tragic recent history: The Vietnam War, Nixon's secret bombing campaign, landmines, the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, and the genocide. The Siem Reap Landmine Museum was founded by a former Khmer Rouge soldier who'd once laid landmines, and later became an anti-landmine activist. The museum clearly demonstrated that the United States was as much to blame as the dictator Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge for the landmines, which continue to plague Cambodia and maim and kill dozens of people every year.
The UN has sponsored a major anti-landmine treaty, which has so far been ratified by hundreds of countries. But the United States remains a major hold-out, giving cover to other holdouts like China and Russia.
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh. What a name! Definitely one of the most memorable place names in the world. Other than that, I really didn't know what to expect in the capital of Cambodia. Images of poverty, child prostitution crossed my mind. Actually, Phnom Penh was a fairly pleasant city, with numerous elegant temples and government buildings, and a cafe-lined riverfront promenade along the Mekong River (I seem to have been following the course of the Mekong River for the better part of this trip). Phnom Penh also has the genocide museum, housed in a former schoolhouse converted to torture center by the Khmer Rouge. Once again, fingers are pointed not just at the murderous Pol Pot, but at the United States. New to me was the fact that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge actually received political and material support from the United States, both during and after their fanatical reign. At first, I couldn't quite believe this, but I later did some research on the internet and it seems it is largely factual. The United States supported Pol Pot on the reasoning that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." In 1975, the US was smarting from its humiliating loss in Vietnam. We supported Pol Pot because we thought that might hurt the Vietnamese. For the record, China was doing the same thing. One theory is as follows: this was the time of Nixon's visit to China, the beginning of the thawing of Sino-US relations. China supported Pol Pot. In order to get on China's good side, the US also supported Pol Pot. In 1979, but not before the Khmer Rouge had murdered one-third of the population of Cambodia, the Vietnamese finally stepped in to end the madness. In retaliation, China invaded Vietnam. The war only lasted a few days, and China relinquished the territory it gained. They just wanted to make a point: we're still stronger than you. China and Vietnam have a long history of mutual antagonism stemming from Vietnam's 1000 years under Chinese tutelage. But I'm getting ahead of myself. This is still supposed to be about Phnom Penh.
The genocide museum is haunting. In addition to the usual historical displays, maps, and the jail cells and torture chambers preserved as they were during the genocide, there are thousands and thousands of black and white photographs of the men, women, boys, and girls murdered. In a particularly gruesome display, there is also a pile of skulls. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge kept meticulous records of every person they tortured and murdered. In order to save money and bullets, the preferred weapons of choice were farmer's tools - blunt iron instruments. Like Auschwitz, the museum is haunting and disturbing, even more so when one stops to consider that like horrors like the ones that played out here 30 years ago are still playing out across the world today.
Vietnam
From Phnom Penh hopped on a "VIP bus" six hours to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Buses in Cambodia area incredibly cheap. The bus from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh cost only $5, and to Ho Chi Minh City only $8. We crossed the Mekong River on a ferry boat just before it split into a million channels that are the Mekong Delta, the rice belt of Vietnam. Everyone calls Ho Chi Minh City Saigon, so from now on I will too.
Saigon
I'd been to northern Vietnam last year, but this was my first time in southern Vietnam, the part where my country's military spent 20 fruitless years trying to battle communism, not realizing they were really on the wrong side of an anti-colonial war. The ironic thing is that democracy never had anything to do with it. Following the Paris Accords ending the French-Vietnamese war of independence, there were supposed to be nationwide elections. Ho Chi Minh in all likelihood would have won that election democratically, fair and square, with the support of the peasantry of both north and south Vietnam. But the CIA prevented that election from taking place in the south, keeping the south under the rule of corrupt capitalist dictatorship. No wonder we lost the war for people's hearts and minds.
Apart from the overt war-related propaganda on display at numerous museums around Saigon, you'd never know that this city was dominated for decades by the Vietnam War. Paul Theroux made the astute observation that while the French and the Americans were both hated by the Vietnamese, at least the French left behind lots of nice buildings, railroads, universities, not to mention baguettes, croissants, and coffee. The Americans left behind no infrastructure whatsoever. And as far as America's culinary contribution? I'm not sure TGI Fridays and Outback Steakhouse deserve much mention in the annals of Vietnamese cuisine.
Saigon itself is not as charming as Hanoi. It is more modern, more spread out, with not as much old colonial architecture. But its a pleasant enough city, with lots of restaurants and cafes. The War Remnants Museum is a must-see. Four floors of material on the Vietnam War: the history, the battles, agent orange, My Lai. Lots of great photographs. Most of them by western photojournalists. A whole floor dedicated to anti-Vietnam protest movements around the world. The courtyard surrounding the museum is full of American warplanes, tanks, and helicopters.
In the museums you might get the impression that the Vietnamese think about the war often. But the visitors there were all foreigners. Paul Theroux wrote that the Vietnamese were amazing for their inability to hold a grudge. He said they anyone who remembered the war hated the war, but they don't blame the American people. They blame the politicians. That's a health attitude. Of course, half the Vietnamese population today is too young to remember the war. They're more focused on taking advantage of Vietnam's booming economy. But Paul Theroux and I both found that nearly every Vietnamese person we talked to (at least, in southern Vietnam) had a relative living in the United States, because that relative had cooperated with the United States, and sought asylum after reunification.
Speeding Up the Vietnamese Coast
In retrospect I should have followed Theroux's footsteps exactly and taken the train. I always prefer trains to buses. But the bus just seemed to good a deal to pass up when I saw it advertised in travel agencies in Saigon. Vietnam is a narrow but very long country, nearly 2000 km between Saigon in the south and Hanoi in the north. That distance is traversed by railway, costing about $75 and taking about 45 hours. The same distance is also covered by a network of "open buses", stopping at various points along the way. You can buy one ticket and get on and off whenever you feel like it. It costs half the price of the train, and is about a third faster. I bought the bus ticket, thinking it would be nice to get off at points along the way, and that a single bus ticket would be less hassle than buying several different train tickets. Turns out I made a big mistake. I was under the mistaken assumption that the bus would be a relatively smooth ride on relatively modern highways. Boy was I wrong. The single national highway linking north and south Vietnam is in terrible shape, a two lane road riddled in potholes. Needless to say, I got very little sleep on those 2000 kilometers of sleeper bus journeys. On top of the bumpiness is the general uncomfortableness of a bus. A train is always better than a bus. You can stretch you legs, go for a walk, use the toilet. The berths in the Vietnamese sleeper bus were angled so that you couldn't lay completely down, and you had to contort your feet to fit into the compartment underneath your front-neighbor's inclined head, leaving very few options for sleeping positions.
The first stop up the coast was Nha Trang, a beach resort town. I went swimming in the ocean, and went to some mud baths. There wasn't much else to do but read my book and wait for the next bus out of town. I didn't spend the night.
Next stop was Hoi An, a historical city in the center of Vietnam. I strolled around its cobblestone streets, past old buildings and souvenir shops. It was all perfectly nice, but to be honest not too different from a lot of the historical cities I've seen in China. That would be a result of the 1000 years that Vietnam spent as a vassal of the Chinese empire. I met a Canadian the same age as me who is the principal of the Singapore International School there. Although he'd lived there 6 years, didn't speak very much Vietnamese, and he pronounced the "nam" in "Vietnam" as if it rhymed with "ham" (reminding me of a goofy parody song in the Hasty Pudding Production 161 of which I was a part titled "Green Eggs and Nam")
The next stop was Hue, another historical city. I have to admit at this point I was feeling a bit of travel fatigue. I missed my home and friends in Kunming. I was growing tired of Southeast Asia, of the heat, of traveling alone, of being unable to speak the local language, of spending money while my apartment in China went uninhabited. I wanted to speed this trip up and get home, so I skipped Hue altogether and took the next bus out of town to Hanoi. This meant three sleeper buses three nights in a row, three nights of poor sleep, three nights not in a real bed.
Next stop was Hanoi, where I'd spent several days last year. Last time I was there I met a really cool girl from Taiwan and we spent a week together. She wasn't there this time around, and the weather was suddenly cool and dreary, and as nice as Hanoi is, I moved on after 12 hours. This time I would sleep on the train bound for Lao Cai on the Chinese border. It being a sleeper train and not a sleeper bus, I actually did get a decent night's sleep.
At Lao Cai, most of the disembarking tourists pile into minivans and head an hour up the mountain to the old French hill station town of Sapa, today known for its beautiful scenery, rice terraces, trekking, and Hmong minority people. Since I had some time to kill before I needed to cross the border to China, I made the trip to Sapa too, and spent the morning there. The place was totally fogged in and I couldn't see any of the famous scenery, but I did get a taste for the place - its colonial architecture, the Hmong in their minority dress selling postcards and knock off North Face trekking gear. Then back down the mountain, across the border to Hekou and back in China at last.
Ran into some Americans from Vermont who'd ridden across the border on their bikes. They'd been riding across Southeast Asia by bicycle and were planning to take the same rugged road through southern Yunnan, skirting the borders of Vietnam and Laos, that I'd traveled by bus a month before. This was their first day in China, and they didn't know any Chinese, so I helped them out finding a hotel room, a map, an ATM, and giving them some helpful Chinese phrases. Needless to say they were grateful. I would have been happy just with their impressed reactions to my knowledge of Chinese, but they also took me out to dinner, at a restaurant on a boat, bobbing in the current of the Red River.
It was another sleeper bus from Hekou to Kunming, my fifth night in a row sleeping on a moving vehicle. Never before had I been more happy to sleep in a bed the next night. It was a good trip. The main goal of seeing Angkor Wat was a complete success. It was a bit rushed. I covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. Two weeks from now I go home to California for Christmas. When I come back to China in January I look forward to being more stationary, getting a job, and not traveling for a while. Since finishing my job three months ago, I've been on five trips, spent 8 our of 12 weeks on the road. I guess you could say I got some of the wanderlust out of my system. I'm sure more travel still lies in store for me in the future, but I think its time to slow down for a while.
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