Almost done in Vietnam.

Well I've seen most main attractions in Vietnam and will head to Laos (22 hours by bus) from Ha Noi next week after a 2 day hike through Sapa.

If you're desperate, you can have a look at Evan's pictures from the trip. They aren't up to my usual high standard... and there are some redundant and embarrassing ones. You've been warned. Click here.

Vietnam is quite interesting. At first I was a little underwhelmed but I have to say that it's a pretty cool place. Every city here has a different flavor. Well, the small fraction of the cities I've seen are different. Aside from tours I rarely venture outside the backpacker friendly places. There's a lot of influence from the French colonial days here.

Vietnam is famous for its traffic. There must be more scooters per capita here than any other place on earth. There's also a strange rhythm to driving. It's not all that different from Seoul but it is different due to the different number of scooters. One tour guide said there are 34 scooter related deaths a day in all of Vietnam: a statistic that is very believable when you watch the way people drive and when you consider the fact that no one wears helmets. It seems like there are only a few rules: honk constantly and be ready for anything. Obstructing another's path here is common and accepted.

Sidewalks are mostly used for scooter parking so you have to walk on the edge of the street with scooters whizzing by so closely that you feel their exhaust blow on you as they pass. Walking through intersections, or just crossing the street seems pretty intimidating at first, but before long it becomes comfortable. There are few breaks in the traffic so you can't really wait for a safe time to cross. Much like the scooter traffic you just go, people will drive around you.

Now in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

In Siem Reap, maybe the last night there, we went to look for a restaurant for dinner but power in the area failed. Some restaurants were prepared for this and brought out candles. We found a restaurant with candles had a seat, were brought menus like everything was normal. We ordered food and it was served pretty quickly. They couldn't do fruit shakes unfortunately.

I left Siem Reap for Phnom Penh where Evan and Dave caught a plane back to Bangkok and where I caught a bus to Ho Chi Minh City. There are a lot of scooters and conical hats here, otherwise it's pretty tame when compared to Cambodia. I had a tour of the Mekong Delta and today I had a tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels. For the Mekong Delta tour we had a couple boat rides (where a sharp plank of wood took a chunk out of one of my toes), ate some coconut candy, ate some fruit... um that's about it. The Cu Chi Tunnels were ok, I crawled through 15m of underground tunnel. I've been doing easy touristy things here. I miss the dirt and grime of Cambodia.

Today hopefully I'll get to see Dremus and tomorrow I'm leaving for Mui Ne to sit on the beach for a while. I'm not really sure what to expect. After that Da Lat, Nga Trang, Hoi An and HaNoi.

Phnom Penh and the Future

Phnom Penh was pretty cool, and while I still remember, I'd like to recount what I did there.

Getting there was no big problem. The bus was 6 dollars or so and it was ridiculously packed. This is partly because it was the cheap bus, I think the more expensive one was 9 dollars. When we left the bus station, which was simply a parking lot, all the seats were full, but that didn't stop the bus from picking up over a dozen or so more passengers along the way. As people kept piling in, they brought small lawn chairs in so people could sit in the aisle.

The bus driver, every 15 seconds or so, sounded the horn that must have been the same kind of horn that trains use. Sleeping on this bus was impossible. Anyway, our bus drove faster than everything else on the road, so we had to overtake motorcycles, scooters and vans constantly. Even if there was oncoming traffic, the bus would pull into the passing lane and force oncoming traffic on the the shoulder as we passed other traffic.

The vans here looked like they might have as many passengers as the bus. Their rear doors were wide open, full of luggage held in by ropes. People were piled inside and out. People regularly sit on the roof rack of these vans while travelling at top speeds. I don't mean one or 2 people, I mean easily a dozen people.

Once we got into Phnom Penh, we were attacked by Tuk Tuk drivers. The sense of anxiety from this sort of thing no longer affects me. We were able to sort it out, find a nice guest house and settle in. The first day we didn't do much, just enjoyed the guesthouse's movies.

Our first day out in Phnom Penh we asked our Tuk Tuk driver to take us to the killing fields and S-21. He informed us that if we wanted to go to the shooting range we should go their too, since they are nearby. We said we wanted to go to the killing fields first and maybe the shooting range after depending on how we were feeling. The Tuk Tuk driver drove us through town, along a beautiful rice field lined by shacks raised 4 meters off the ground by stilts (whole small trees). Pictures will follow.

We eventually found ourselves outside town, on a dirt road, and then in a shooting range, which is of course now illegal. I'd heard you can blow up a cow with an RPG so I was pretty excited to see what this place was like. It turned out to be a pond, and a building where you can shoot paper targets. Boo. They didn't even have chickens. Not that I would blow up a chicken or cow, obviously.

I shot a colt .45 and an M60. Evan shot an AK47 and half of the M60 bullets. At a dollar a bullet, we spent a 100USD dollars pretty quickly. Anyway, it was neat.

Next we went to the killing fields, where thousands of Khmers had been killed and buried. It was quite sullen. The first thing you see is a memorial filled with skulls organized by age. Next you see the excavated mass graves. There are still bones and clothes from the victims sticking out of the earth in some places. There isn't much more to it.

With lots of daylight left we decided to finish our morbid day at S-21, the school turned torture site. Before people were taken to the killing fields they were tortured and locked up at S-21. S-21 had mug shots of all the victims that had gone through it, chairs and mattresses where people had been tied down and tortured and so on. It was pretty gruesome.

After all that we'd worked up quite an appetite so we went for dinner. That sounds awful.

The next day we saw the national museum and the Royal Palace. Snore. The next morning we left for Siem Reap. Angkor Wat is home to the most badass temples I've ever seen. For the most part I find temples boring but this place was quite breath taking. Some people spend a whole week exploring the temples, but 1 day was enough for me.

Today we'll go to the land mine museum and maybe the floating market.

I need to plot out further travel plans and will write them up as I figure it out. Up next will probably be Laos and Vietnam. I might spend a couple days in Bangkok and then enter Laos through the north.