My Poorly Titled Cambodia Post

Cambodia is an absolutely fascinating country, and three days was far too short a visit. I doubt it's possible to see all of Angkor Wat in three days, let alone get a good taste of Khmer culture, and right now a part of me yearns to cancel my flight home, rent a bike, and explore every last nook and cranny of the place. Of course I can't, and I won't. But Cambodia really had that much of an impact on me.

When I say I'd like to bike the country, I mean that very specifically. Unlike Vietnam, Cambodia is a very rural society: about 60% of the country's 14 million people live as rice farmers. There are two major cities: the capital, Phnom Penh (pop. 2 million, in comparison to Saigon's 10 million), and Siem Reap, which is not even 200,000. Everyone else lives in the countryside, which looks like this:





Only most of the time, there aren't nearly that many trees.

So basically, Cambodia is a giant rice field, with a couple cities and some palm trees tossed in. And a lot of temples. Not just ancient ones, but beautiful, enormous modern ones as well. They stick out like a sore thumb. You'll be driving along through a tiny farming village of stilted corrugated iron huts, and suddenly this will pop up out of nowhere:



Or this:



It's surreal.

So anyway, Cambodia is basically a giant rice field with a couple cities, a few palm trees, and a bunch of spectacular temples thrown in. And that's what I love about it. It was so much more relaxed than Vietnam. Even Siem Reap, where I spent most of my time, felt like a relief from Siagon's constant hustle and bustle. Of course, if I were to go back to Cambodia, I would spent as little time in Siem Reap as possible. It's a tourist town through and through, having exploded in recent years due to its close proximity to Angkor Wat. Walking down the street, it's not uncommon to see more Westerners than Cambodians. Which is not to say that all the tourists are Westerners; Angkor Wat attracts a very international crowd. There were also a big number of Japanese and Korean tourists, and a few Indian tourists as well. But anyway, while Siem Reap was a pleasant place to stay for a couple days--safe, clean, relatively quiet--it's not a great place to learn about Khmer culture, and tourism has inflated prices all over town.

Phnom Penh, which I explored for a couple hours waiting for my next bus, is a completely different world. Siem Reap paints a picture of Cambodia as a third world nation climbing into newfound prosperity. Phnom Penh paints a much more accurate picture of the country as a whole: the prosperity certainly isn't being spread around. Although I didn't get much time in Phnom Penh, I heard stories of rampant drug trafficking, prostition, and robbery at knifepoint. The traffic was not nearly as bad as Saigon, but the city felt a great deal less safe.

So why do I love Cambodia again? Mostly for the countryside, and there's just so much of it! That's why I'd love to take a bike trip through the country. It would be a good way to see all the temples as well; we passed at least ten on the way from Phnomh Penh to Siem Reap, which was about a six hour drive.

Our bus stopped a few times along the way, and I got to talk with some of the locals. I was stunned by their level of English-speaking ability. Granted, the people I talked to are probably not representative of the country as a whole (they probably had had a lot of experience speaking to tourists, since I'm assuming the bus stops in those places every trip), but I was uniformly impressed. I was able to carry on a relatively sophisticated conversation with almost everyone I talked to. The people were incredibly friendly. They sold fried beetles and spiders. I ate a whole beetle, but could only eat one spider leg. Even I have to draw the line somewhere.





The bathrooms were interesting. They were all non-flush, "squat" toilets. In each stall there was a tank of water and a bucket. I'm guessing it was probably not very sanitary.



Hmmm . . . What do you think?

The Mekong Delta Adventure - Day Two

Only good news this time: I got my pictures back. It's a good thing, too, because I was really hitting a brick wall trying to describe the second day without them. I'm still not sure exactly what the problem was, but I had a hunch that my computer's SD slot might have been the source, so I bought a little USB SD card reader. It reads my card just fine.

We woke up early the next day and set off for the Can Tho river market. I'm not quite sure what was going on the whole time, but it seemed as though we drove into someone's back yard, asked if they could give us a tour with their boat, and they agreed. I'm not sure how my friends knew which house to go to, but it seemed to work out.

Here's the back yard:





And here's a row of houses from the front:



And a few shots of the market in action:







The market is basically like a giant game of bumper cars. Only in the water. And instead of bumping into you for the fun of it, people bump into you so they can sell you things. Usually they'll wave at you from a distance, and you can respond by waving them over or refusing them, but some of the bolder ones will actually ram your boat and start tossing fruit at you. Well, okay, they don't toss the fruit. But boat ramming does occur quite a lot, and it's a big part of what makes the river market such an incredible experience. I also enjoyed ducking to avoid giant poles and motors and whatnot. It adds a whole new dimension to the shopping experience.

If you look closely at the first picture you'll see a pole sticking up with some fruit tied to it. Most of the boats have poles like this; they're like billboards, advertising what each boat sells. Most boats sell fruit, but there are boats selling cigarettes and water bottles and things like that. One boat served us coffee, and another boat made us breakfast.



I'm not quite sure what was in it, but it was good.





In these two pictures you can see the "fruit pole" more clearly. The second picture also provides a nice broad view of the whole thing. And I'll close with this nice view of the living conditions in the area:



After the river market, we went to a park where we fed crocodiles. Or, well, where we were supposed to feed crocodiles, I think. Most people tried to keep from feeding the crocodiles as long as possible. This is how it works: you pay a little money, and they give you a long fishing pole with a piece of meat on the end. You get to keep the pole as long as the meat is still on there. So naturally, everyone tries to keep the meat from the crocodiles as long as possible. In this way it's evolved from simply feeding the crocodiles to an elaborate crocodile teasing game, in which you dangle the meat in them, wait for one to lunge, and then pull it away as fast as you can (preferably while jumping high in the air and shrieking; everyone else will do this with you). It's a great time. I was terrible at it. Those crocodiles are just too fast for me. They're also incredibly creepy.



I mean, look at that guy! The really creepy thing is that they just sit like that, heads poking out of the water, jaws agape, for minutes at a time. You can tell he was looking right at me when I took the picture, too. He's smiling for the camera! I'm going to have nightmares over this.

After feeding the crocodiles, we watched a pig race. The pig race was about as lame as it sounds. It didn't even have the dignity of being anticlimactic; an anticlimax requires the expectation of a climax, and I had set my expectations pretty low. It was also hilarious and incredibly fun, despite the complete lack of tension and the fact that it was over within a couple minutes. I practiced my Vietnamese by shouting out the number of the pig I wanted to win (everyone else did this as well). Then we all stampeded down to the finish line to cheer them on from there. My pig didn't win.



Finally, we went to an old house which apparently has featured in several films (I gather a French film, L'Amante was shot entirely in and around it).





And that's the trip. Next is the trip to Angkor Wat.

The Mekong Delta Adventure - Day One (Now with pictures!)

Well, I have some good news and some bad news.


The good news is that my weekend trip to the Mekong Delta was absolutely mind-blowingly fantastic, and a definite highlight of my trip so far. The bad news is . . . I don't have pictures.

Well, that's not quite right. I do have pictures, an absolute wealth of them. And I must say a lot of them are pretty darn beautiful. But for some reason (Karma? Fate? The wrath of God?) the SD card on which they reside is no longer functioning. Or maybe it's the computer; I'm not quite sure. See, the problem is that when I stick the SD card into the little slot, the computer doesn't recognize that it's been inserted. Nothing happens. The card doesn't appear on the "My Computer" screen. I'm currently researching ways to fix this, but haven't found much. Some sources suggest that heat can warp SD cards, which leaves the data intact but renders the card itself useless, because it can't be detected. I certainly hope that isn't the case.

I still have to test the card on another computer, which I should be able to do tomorrow. If it works, I'll make a new entry full of pictures for you guys. If it doesn't, I guess you'll have to wait until I get home . . . to look at them on my tiny camera screen. Believe me, I'm as disappointed as you are. I'm really proud of these pictures; I think some of them are some of the finest I've ever taken, and I really wanted to share them with you, my wonderful readership, especially since I've left you so picture-deprived. But this is life, I suppose.

So enough bad news. Now onto the Mekong Delta trip itself, which is very good news indeed.

I woke up at 5 o'clock on Saturday morning. I took a shower, put together a bag of necessities, and met my three friends outside the house at 6. The rest of the morning was spent traveling to the city of Can Tho, which is the main hub of the Mekong Delta region. Now, I had been informed beforehand that this trip would take about three hours. I am fairly certain it was at least five. It felt twice as long. Let's just say traveling by motorbike is basically like traveling in a car, only slower, a lot windier, and not nearly as comfortable.

Thankfully the weather was glorious, and by glorious, I mean mid-sixties and overcast the whole day, with no rain. There was also some fascinating scenery along the way. It's easy to forget, living in the city, that the country of Vietnam is basically a big jungle. After all, the only signs of this in Saigon are a few palm trees here and there and the heat. It's remarkable, then, when leaving the city, how quickly you find find yourself in what is basically . . . a big jungle. A wall of palm trees lines either side of the road, punctuated by the occasional tiny village or lotus field. We stopped at what I suppose you could call a roadside cafe (a roof made of palm branches propped up with big sticks, with hammocks underneath to sit on) and ordered coconuts. The woman took us out back, grabbed a long stick with a hook on the end, and yanked them right out of the tree. Then she cut off the tops, stuck in straws, and handed them over. Coconuts are really pretty good.



Unfortunately I wasn't able to get many good pictures of the country, since we were moving and didn't really have time to stop.

Poverty is rampant in the city; in the country, it is omnipresent. The most common building materials are corrugated iron, scrapwood, and bedsheets. You see whole villages like this, propped up over the rice fields on little stilts. Whenever the highway crosses a river, there's a little fishing community built right on the water's edge. The houses all have porches jutting out over the water, where the boats come to load and unload.

The city of Can Tho itself is more or less indistinguishable from Saigon, to the point where if you took a picture of each place and asked a Vietnamese native which was which, I doubt they'd be able to answer. We found a hotel and rented one room for the night. There was another guy in the group, so we shared a bed; the two girls shared the other one.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It was only about noon by the time we arrived in Can Tho. We had lunch immediately, and then set off for a nearby temple, which is apparently one of the oldest in Vietnam. It had some really neat architecture, and the Buddhist iconography inside was spectacular. Unfortunately I can't really describe any of it, and even if I could, it would hardly be an adequate substitute for actually seeing the stuff. This is where a functional SD card would come in handy.

Aha! Indeed it would.













The next stop was the Bang Lang Stork Sanctuary. It was about an hour's drive away from Can Tho, so we arrived around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, which it turns out is the best time to visit because dusk is when the storks all fly back to roost. To get to the sanctuary we had to drive deep into the jungle on a tiny, incredibly bumpy dirt path, and cross these terrifyingly skinny little stone bridges with no railing whatsoever. It was definitely worth it. It was astounding.

You can hear the storks from a long way off, but it isn't until you get there and kill the motor that you get the full impact. It's overwhelming. The air is filled with squawking. The trees are white with . . . well, you know. We went up a rickety spiral staircase to an observation deck, from which you could see out over the tops of the trees. The trees were completely covered in a layer of flapping, squawking stork.

Trust me, this is a lot cooler when you actually see it.

And now you can!





Anyway, since it was getting dark, many of my pictures of the stork sanctuary didn't turn out particularly well. But there are still a couple good ones, and I did manage to get a video. We came down the staircase and had dinner right at the sanctuary, which was probably my coolest dining experience in Vietnam so far. You'll never guess what they serve there. That's right, stork! A woman brought out a little grill and a plate of various stork, uh, pieces, including the heat and feet. At one point the power went out, so she set a few candles out on the table. There are few things more romantic than a candlelit meal of stork feet in the middle of the jungle, with a cloud of insects buzzing around your head.



After that we drove home and went to bed, because we were tired. I am also tired right now, so I think I'll go to bed, and save the next installment for tomorrow. No, this is not a pathetic device to raise my number of entries for November. Okay, it is. But I truly am tired. I think if I continued to write, the rest of my story would take a noticeable dip in quality, and I don't want to shortchange you guys like that. But before I sign off, I'd like to close with another bit of good news:

Tonight I bought my bus ticket to Angkor Wat!

One more month

With a whole month left, it might seem a bit premature to say my trip is drawing to a close. But in a way it’s the truth. It seems like yesterday that my trip was at its halfway point. That was when I first began to have this feeling—a vague sense that my time in Vietnam was finite, and that it would eventually draw to a close. Now the halfway point is long past, and the feeling is much more tangible. In a month, I will be back home. Before I left for Vietnam, I had difficulty imagining what life in Vietnam would be like. Now, after only three months here, I am having difficulty remembering what life was like before.

Some big changes will soon be occurring in my life here, contributing to this overwhelming sense that I am nearing the “last leg” of my journey. Tomorrow I will receive my paycheck for the month of October and will subsequently be quitting my side job at Aston. This was a difficult decision to make: I truly love my job at Aston, the children and the staff. But it’s necessary. I have to see at least something of Vietnam outside of Saigon, and traveling is impossible with two jobs. The month’s paycheck should be plenty to support any traveling I do within the country. Even airfare.

With this major change there will be an accompanying shift of focus from work to . . . everything else. I have to finish my papers for the ELTAP program, begin planning weekend trips (the first of which I think will be to the Mekong Delta region, but more about that later), make a souvenir shopping list, and begin planning my BIG trip, which I will be taking over the last twelve days of my stay. The current plan is to fly to Hanoi (the capital city of Vietnam, located in the far north) and take buses back down to Saigon, effectively touring the length of the country, and hopefully arriving back in the city in time for my flight on December 12th. Preparing for this will take up a lot of additional time.

The bright side is that with all of this travel, I think we will start to see blog entries coming in greater frequency, and with a lot of pictures. The main problem I have been having for the past couple months is that, while I am enjoying my life here enormously, it has not been exactly what you would call “exciting.” This is not a criticism. It simply means that I have been living more or less as a working class citizen of Vietnam might live. I love Vietnam, and at this stage in my life I’d much rather be a working class citizen here than in the US, but still, I think there is a limit to the amount of excitement you can experience with such a lifestyle. Now, as my role changes from full-time teacher to part-time traveler and eventually full-time traveler, I should have a lot more to write about.

I’ve received requests to talk more about Vietnamese culture in my blog. These requests were eye-opening. First of all, I apologize for the self-centered nature of my blog; here I am in a foreign country and all I can talk about is myself! But the requests were eye-opening in another way too: before receiving them, I truly felt like I had integrated into Vietnamese society. I had made lots of friends, was able to get around the city, even learned a bit of the language. But when pressed to write about Vietnamese culture, I struck a brick wall. How much have I really learned about this culture, anyway? Just because I can function within the culture doesn’t mean I’ve even begun to understand its subtleties. I’m sure there are hundreds of tiny cultural details I miss on a daily basis.

One major difference that I have noticed between Vietnamese and American societies is that Vietnamese society is much more collectivist. Now when I say “collectivist,” I don’t mean it in the sense that Vietnam is a communist country. The fact that it’s a communist country has very little to do with it. In fact, I wouldn’t classify the country as communist at all in the theoretical sense; business here is more or less free market, with probably fewer regulations than in the US. The government is rigid and controlling, but in a social rather than an economic sense. It’s probably closer to fascism than communism.

The collectivism I refer to in Vietnamese society is a characteristic I suspect has been around for a very long time. It’s not a national unity but rather a very powerful unity among small groups. These are usually family groups, but can also be groups of coworkers or plain old friends. The ties within these groups are far more binding than ties between coworkers and friends in the US. With a job in America, it is understood that you will probably, at some point, have to move on, and any friendships you have made up to that point could very easily be severed, or at least will fall to the wayside. In Vietnam this is not always the case. Often people will have the same job for their entire lives. Coworkers become part of the extended family.

The importance of family is immediately apparent. Each home has a shrine to dead relatives. The death day, rather than birthday, of a relative is celebrated as a holy day. Family ties go back generations. The New Year holiday, Tet, is celebrated over several weeks, during which I am told Saigon becomes an empty shell. Everyone floods to the countryside to visit their “family.” Think about that. 8 million people live in Saigon; most of those people live in what we would consider an extended family, with grandparents, aunts, and uncles often living in the same house. And this “family” goes to visit more “family” in the country. How far do these family ties reach? I’m just sorry I have to miss the holiday; I really would’ve liked to be around to experience it.

Anyway, I’ve taken quite a few more pictures of Saigon, but the more I take, the more I realize pictures aren’t the best way to give you a sense of the place. One of the city’s intrinsic characteristics is that it’s always moving, and without that sense of movement, the feeling of the city is lost. So instead I’ve composed a brief video tour of the streets at night. I think unfortunately the video gives off a bit of a creepy stalker vibe, which was certainly not my intention, but I was trying to be as discreet as possible with the camera. Still, this is probably about as close as you can get to actually experiencing the city, so it’s a compromise I’m willing to make. The lights have a funny effect on my camera, but overall I think the video turned out well.



I mentioned earlier that I plan on going to the Mekong Delta region, the southernmost region of Vietnam. I’ve arranged to go this weekend with a friend, so hopefully I’ll have lots of pictures for you next time.

A Masterpiece

I really, truly promise I will write a proper blog entry in the very near future. I've been keeping you all waiting for too long. But take this as a sort of prelude, if you will:

WARNING: Contains a graphic scene of childbirth.

This video says a lot of things that I can't really convey in writing. It displays the Vietnamese accent, which is very distinctive but difficult to describe in writing. It also takes some getting used to; you may not be able to understand much of what they say at first. But more importantly, the video displays how much fun these kids are. My supervising teacher did warn the kids that they might end up appearing on Youtube, so I don't feel too bad about posting this. And most likely they won't find out.



Here's another one. I didn't have time to do all the fancy editing I did with the first, but it's also quite a bit more organized, so editing wasn't really necessary.