Saigon, the Mekong Delta and Phnom Penh - with some sobering sightseeing along the way

So... it has been a while since the last post, and we've traveled around quite a bit.

First, we spent three days in Saigon: the centre of town was quite nice and the town is very much geared up for tourists or backpackers depending on the area you stay in. The scorching heat and the tremendous traffic of scooters, motorbikes and bicycles (hardly any cars there; it takes 10 minutes to cross the road whatever the time of day) were hard work - I found myself being a little homesick there. London or Paris are havens of peace in comparison with Saigon!
Having read and very much enjoyed The Quiet American by Graham Greene and River of Time by Jon Swain, we took a "pilgrimage" to what was the Rue Catinat until 1954, before the fall of Indochina, and to the Hotel Continental and Hotel Le Majestic - where Graham Greene (and the characters from his famous novel) as well as, 20 years later, Jon Swain and his fellow journalists, used to meet up for drinks before moving on to the opium house a few streets down.
We also visited the War Remnants Museum - before we went there we thought the name was odd and wondered half jokingly if we would be presented with bits of limbs from both soldiers and civilians wounded during the war. We were spot on... I took just one picture there, because I thought it summed up the museum well and it left a rather strong impression:After Saigon, we were ready for somewhere a bit quieter, and we found the perfect place: Ben Tre, in the Mekong Delta. It was a beautiful little town on the side of the river. We spent a couple of nights there and hired some bikes to go wandering in the countryside. It was all small tracks leading from one village to the other, lined up with bright green banana and palm trees, regularly crossing small bits of river which were all part of the delta - one of the most enjoyable rides we have had so far.
Ben Tre was also very interesting because it is not touristy at all - we hardly saw any westerners there. It was a challenge when it came to finding places to eat (although I am now very efficient at asking for a veggie meal in Vietnamese!), but the great thing about this place (and, I think, the South of Vietnam in general) is that people were incredibly friendly. Children and adults alike shout out "Hello!" as you walk/cycle past and they all smile at you. Much nicer than the experience we had up North in Vinh a few weeks ago.

From Ben Tre, we took a bus to Chau Doc and boarded a boat which took us across the border to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, over the Mekong river. Definitely the best way to travel, and a real treat particularly if you have just spent a lot of time crammed up in minibuses for days at a time to get from A to B.

I am now writing from Phnom Penh, where we have been for the past couple of days. I really like it here - although a capital, it is a lot less suffocating than Saigon. We have also had the opportunity to have a couple of nice western meals (the FCC and Happy Herb Pizza, as recommended by Clive and Nicky... by the way, at Happy Herb Pizza we were asked if we wanted a "Happy" version of the pizzas we'd ordered (!). Clive/Nicky - is this why you called it "The best pizzeria in Cambodia"?!) . We also did some serious site seeing, particularly the old torture camp S21 in the city and the Killing Fields, located 15 kms outside of Phnom Penh.

S21 used to be a high school, and when the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975 it was turned into a prison where people suspected of being "enemies of Communism" (as well as their family) were taken into for "reeducation" and interrogation. When they liberated Phnom Penh in 1979, the Vietnamese troops left the site as they had found it and it is now a museum. Looking at the buildings, you can still see the school through the old classrooms, the playground, etc. However, in the courtyard there are 14 plain, white, inscription-less tombs: those of the people whose tortured bodies were found by the Vietnamese in the "interrogation rooms", who were basically the very last people to have died there. It is all very bare and speaks for itself: no big sophisticated torture instruments, just a few photos on the walls of the 14 tortured bodies that left a testimony of what tens of thousands of people went through over a period of four years. In one of the buildings, there are big boards with hundreds and hundreds of pictures - those of all the men, women and children who went through the camp (they were apparently registered quite thoroughly) as well as pictures of their torturers - Khmer Rouge "soldiers", indoctrinated boys and girls, none of them older than 25.

The Killing Fields we visited one day later. It is basically the site where the prisoners above were taken to to be killed (if they hadn't died during torture). There is nothing left of the old structure (eg the building where they used to hold the prisoners overnight when so many of them arrived in one day that they didn't have the means to kill them all on that same day), but the field is full of big holes where people were murdered and buried en masse, some of them while they were still alive. So many people died there - 8985, apparently -, there are bones stacked up next to some of the "graves", and looking at some of the teeth exhibited in a glass case I recognised quite a few rootless baby teeth.
In the middle of the field, a pagoda has been erected as a tribute to the victims. It is about 20 metres tall and inside, skulls that were found on-site are stacked up on glass shelves all the way up - hundreds and hundreds of them. Looking at the skulls, I thought that the majority of them belong to the people on the pictures we had seen the day before on the big board at the S21 museum. Very sad and sickening, makes us realise how incredibly lucky we are to have never experienced even a fraction of the sufferings the Cambodian people went through.

C.

(Over to Gary now for his weekly French written homework ;)

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En arrivant à Saigon, nous avons été frappés par la quantité de motos dans les rues - il y avait peu de voitures, je ne sais pas pourquoi. Par conséquent, c'est presque impossible de traverser la rue, en fait c'est plus facile de marcher tout droit sans regarder le trafic, et faire confiance qu'ils vous évitent. En revanche, le centre-ville était très sympa, il y avait des bâtiments historiques, et des grands magasins et hôtels. Nous sommes allés faire un tour le long de la rue 'Dong Khoi', qui était connue auparavant comme 'Rue Catinat', le lieu central du livre classique de Graham Greene 'Un americain bien tranquille'.

Après trois jours à Saigon, nous avions envie d'aller ailleurs, quelque part plus tranquille. C'est pour ça que nous sommes partis pour Ben Tre, une petite ville dans la région du Delta du Mekong. Ce n'est pas très loin de Saigon, peut-être trois heures par bus, mais c'est un monde différent. Quand vous marchez dans les rues, les gens disent 'Hello', mais pas pour vous vendre quelque chose, c'est parce que ce n'est pas un fait quotidien à voir des étrangers. Nous avons loué des bicyclettes, et nous avons passé le matin en allant en vélo par des champs et villages autour de la ville. C'était une très bonne façon de voir la campagne et un aspect de la vie vietnamienne qui est normalement caché aux yeux de touristes.

Il y avait une autre raison pour laquelle nous avons visité le Delta du Mekong....pour atteindre Phnom Penh, la capitale de Cambodge par bateau. C'est un voyage de 5 heures, sur le fleuve Mekong, et c'était très reposant (beaucoup plus génial que le même voyage par bus...).

Phnom Penh est très intéressant. Nous avions déjà lu beaucoup au sujet des évènements des années soixante-dix, lorsque plus d'un million de Cambodgiens (un tiers de la population) ont été tués par le Khmer Rouge, le groupe qui a gagné la guerre civile à 1975, et a essayé de créer une société vraiment communiste, gérée par des paysans et ouvriers sans éducation. Après avoir envahi Phnom Penh en Avril 1975, ils ont fait quitter la ville à tous les résidents, et ils les ont forcés à marcher vers les villages de la campagne. Quelqu'un qui était instruit (même les gens dont le seul crime était de porter des lunettes) était torturé et tué.

Quatre ans plus tard, le Cambodge a été envahi par les vietnamiens, qui ont découvert le réseau de centres d'interrogation et de torture, et tous les sites à la campagne où les corps des victimes ont été enterrés. Ils ont préservé certains de ces sites, dans la même condition dans laquelle ils les ont trouvés, comme musées qui existent encore aujourd'hui. Il y en a deux dans Phnom Penh même.

Le premier était le centre d'interrogation principal qui s'appelait 'S21/Toul Sleng'. Auparavant il avait été une école, mais pendant les années de Khmer Rouge, il était la prison dans laquelle des milliers de Cambodgiens ont été pris pour être torturés et pour confesser d'être 'contre la révolution'. Le deuxième est un site a 15 km de Phnom Penh, et consiste en plusieurs trous dans un champ où presque 9000 corps ont été enterrés. C'est connu maintenant comme 'The Killing Fields' d'après le film du même nom.

A voir ces deux sites, c'est incroyable de penser que ça a existé pendant ma vie. Ce qui était le plus choquant pour moi était de découvrir que la communauté internationale avait continué de reconnaître le régime du Khmer Rouge pendant les années 80, en donnant leur dirigeants un siège au Cambodge dans le conseil général des Nations Unies. Or, c'est seulement maintenant, trente ans plus tard, que le procès des dirigeants Khmer Rouge a enfin commencé.

Alors, je pense que c'est assez d'informations sur le génocide pour une journée... il faut dire que Phnom Penh est une ville très sympa, beaucoup plus calme que Saigon par exemple, et que nous restons à un hôtel très joli où il y a un très bon restaurant. Demain nous partons pour les îles du sud du Cambodge. A la prochaine...

Gary

Hue and Hoi-An

[English version follows below...]
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Nous venons de passer une semaine reposante entre Hue et Hoi-An, deux villes tranquilles sur la côte est du Vietnam.

Hue était la capital de l'empire "Cham", qui est apparu il y a 200 ans. Ils ont construit une grande citadelle, entourée par un grand mur d'une hauteur de 5 mètres, qui s'étend sur 1 km dans la forme d'un carré. À l'origine, il y avait dedans plus de 200 bâtiments, mais aujourd'hui il n'en reste que 20. Nous avons passé quelques heures en explorant la citadelle, puis, après avoir fini notre 'journée de la culture', nous sommes retournés à la ville pour regarder le match de football entre Liverpool et Manchester United. Après tout, c'est important de vivre la culture en toutes ses formes...

Mardi, nous sommes partis de l'hôtel à Hue (où tout le monde était super sympa), pour aller en train à Hoi-An. C'est un voyage de trois heures, traversant des paysages impressionnants - il faut dire que c'est beaucoup moins stressant de voyager en train ici qu'en bus.

Hoi-An est une petite ville sur la côte, avec beaucoup de vieilles maisons et magasins construits au style Chinois. C'est très touristique, avec beaucoup de voyages organisés, mais c'est tranquille et plaisant (si vous ignorez les gens qui vous abordent constamment pour vous vendre des jouets, de la nourriture, des cartes postales etc).

Hier, nous avons loué des bicyclettes pour aller à la plage (elles nous ont coûté moins d'un euro pour les deux). Quand on 'conduit' au Vietnam, il faut le faire comme font les Vietnamiens. Ils ne regardent jamais, ils ne freinent jamais...au contraire il faut doubler et klaxonner continuellement sans regard pour d'autres. C'est de la folie, mais c'est aussi très amusant.

Demain, nous volons à Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City est le nom officiel, mais tout le monde l'appelle Saigon, peut-être c'est une petite rébellion contre le gouvernement communiste?). Nous avions voulu prendre le train, mais y aller en avion n'est pas beaucoup plus cher, et le voyage dure une heure seulement, contrairement à seize heures en train.

A bientôt, Gary

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OK, Carine's finally allowed me to write something in English in this blog, apparently my apprenticeship studying her literary style has lasted long enough...

Have spent the last week doing not a great deal really between two very nice, and very touristy, towns on the east coast of Vietnam, roughly half way up. Both Hue and Hoi-An are firmly on the package tourism circuit (I'm vaguely bemused as to how a group of pensioners from the UK or France ends up on a coach trip round Vietnam, as opposed to, say, Rome), so it's a bit of a change from Laos which was firmly backpacker territory.

Hue had the honour of having by far the nicest hotel we've stayed in so far, all for $10 a night, which was a nice relief after spending two days trekking down from Laos via the hole that is Vinh. When eventually we got off our backsides to actually go and see something, we checked out the ancient citadel which actually isn't really that ancient (just 200 yrs old, ancient by american standards I suppose). Having said that, it was very impressive, especially with the big square with the communist vietnamese flag flying over it and all that kind of stuff. It was also slightly unusual in that to get into the citadel, you had to cross over a moat via a narrow bridge with no pavements, fighting for your space side by side with the thousands of motorbikes coming from all directions. It's not quite stratford-upon-avon here yet, give it another 10 yrs or so.

Highlight of the few days in Hue was obviously taking Carine out for our 5 years anniversary...we celebrated by watching Liverpool demolish Man U 4-1 in a bar called DMZ (the old 'demilitarized zone' from the Vietnam war is nearby).

Moving on from Hue, we're now in Hoi-An, which is a very pretty, and VERY touristy little town a few hours further down the coast. Full of tailors shops, art galleries, restaurants, and more tailors shops. Looks really nice especially at night when it's all lit up by chinese lanterns. It also has to be the place which has the most, if not aggressive, then persistent street sellers in the world (at least in my experience). It starts 0.3 seconds after leaving your hotel ("HELLO, YOU WANT MOTORBIKE?"), continues approximately every 10 seconds after that for the rest of the day ("HELLO YOU BUY POSTCARDS? HELLO YOU BUY PEANUTS? HELLO YOU BUY SHOES? HELLO YOU BUY 3 BEDROOM CONDO SITUATED IN CONVENIENT DOWNTOWN LOCATION?") until you make it back to your hotel. It's not actually that bad, but can wear you down occasionally. I've also found that if I happen to be walking on my own, without the protection of Carine to take care of me, the nature of the goods on sale changes somewhat ("HELLO YOU BUY WEED? HELLO YOU WANT WOMAN?"). Currently I get offered women to drugs on about a 2 to 1 ration, I suspect that a 20 yr old would find this reversed, and if I were to return here in 20 yrs time, I doubt they'd bother with the drugs at all and just go straight for the women option. Just to clarify, my consumerism hasn't stretched further than a baseball cap and a couple of t-shirts so far (hi Mum).

Anyway, off tomorrow to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City), flying Jetstar, costs only $10 more than the train, takes 15 hours less, and doesn't arrive at 4am...so not a difficult decision really.

Gary

Good morning (from) Vietnam

You can probably tell we have left Thailand and are now in slightly less developed countries by the frequency at which we are posting. It is a lot harder to find Internet cafes in Laos and Vietnam!

So, since last time, we did the two days boat trip on the Mekong river from Chiang Khong (Thailand) to Louang Phabang (Laos) - that's about 300 kms. It was quite an experience: not exactly on the comfy side (two eight-hour days sitting on wooden benches = sore backsides) but well worth it for the landscapes. The water was camel brown with huge, sharp rocks coming out of it, and there was thick jungle along the sandy banks of the river. Every now and then you could see groups of four or five bamboo huts and people fishing in the river. Seeing that people live there in the middle of nowhere and in such basic conditions really made me think about the life we all have back in Europe. The landscape was like this all along:Louang Phabang was a little jewel: a very clean, quiet and peaceful colonial looking town full of posh looking shops and cafes (all decorated in that "tropical chic" style) and dotted with stunning temples (Wat Xiang Thong is the oldest one and dates back to 1560). We spend a whole day visting them and, although we were very far from having seen them all, we were pretty "templed out" by the end of it! We also spend a day cycling around the neighbouring hills with a guide. We went through small villages and along the Nam Khan river (where we saw French explorer Henri Mouhot's tomb - he was the guy who discovered Angkor Wat).

From Louang Phabang we took a bus through the mountains to Phonsavan. We spent one day there visiting the Plain of Jars, an archaeological site where massive jars carved out of stone are scattered. They are thought to be about 2,000 years old - though no one is really sure what their use was (maybe funerary urns). It was quite eery looking at these ancient "kitchen implements" and seeing right next to them the front line from the time of the Vietnam war and quite a few enormous craters left by bombs. Amazingly enough hundreds of jars are still standing. Here's what they look like:
In Phonsavan shops and guest houses, deactivated bombs are stacked up on display and some Lao people use them as flower beds or pillars for their huts. Even the spoons you eat with are made up of scrape metal from bombshells. We learnt that an estimated 1.2 million tonnes of bombs were dropped on Laos by the Americans as part of the "Vietnam War" between 1964 and 1973. Although there are organisations working at defusing them, there still are a lot of unexploded ordonance on Laos ground (30% of the 1.2 million!). Nowadays still, peasants either get injured when working on their land and hitting a bomb they haven't seen, or they find a bomb and, wanting to sell the scrape metal from the shell, try to handle it and it ends in disaster. We all know about it but well, it's so sad...

The day before yesterday, we got up bright and early to get the 6.30am bus from Phonsavan to Vinh (Vietnam). We waited for about half an hour and were told that the bus would not be going and we would have to come back the next day. Since there isn't much to do in Phonsavan once you have seen the jars etc. (I certainly wouldn't risk going for a stroll in the countryside!), a group of 10 of us who were waiting for that bus decided to go for Plan B (which we made up as we went along!) and hired a minivan and a driver to take us to the Vietnamese border. So we dropped off there, and it was a bit of an adventure to cross the border between Vietnam and Laos on foot with our big backpacks! We then found a way to make it to the nearest town and caught a local bus to Vinh. It was great fun to sort it all out ourselves, and amazingly enough it didn't cost more than the initial bus ticket.

A word about Vietnamese driving... it's mad! There are so many bikes, scooters, motorbikes and buffalo-drawn carts on the side of the road that cars, buses and trucks are constantly overtaking and therefore sit mostly in the left hand lane (I know you Brits will think this is not unusual, but they supposedly drive on the right hand side of the road in Vietnam...). This means that very often, you find yourself on a bus which is overtaking another bus, and there is a truck coming up right in front of you from the opposite lane (which your bus is sitting on!). Given that apparently here it is the biggest vehicle that has priority, it's best to pick a VERY BIG bus. The other thing is, they use their horn incessantly to tell other vehicles to get off the road. Our guidebook sums it up perfectly when it says that the Vietnamese "use their horns as a surrogate brake".

Vinh was very hard work, we stayed there for only one night and it was a struggle to get food as we could find nowhere with an English menu or an English (or French) speaking waiter. We were glad to leave yesterday (although sad to leave Eric, a really nice French guy we had been travelling with since we left Louang Phabang. Gary and him spoke French for 4 days solid) and to arrive in Hue, where we are now.

Although we have not seen much of it yet, we are happy to be in Hue after the past few days (two solid days of 12 hour bus journeys... I think we deserve a rest!) and we are going to spend a couple of days relaxing here. There is a little bit of town where all the backpackers stay and where it's easy to find food and information - a breath of fresh air after Vinh! I know this sounds like it defies the point of travelling around and trying to discover foreign cultures, but when you are in a place where you are unable to communicate with anyone and people look and laugh at you because you are white (that was strange! I suppose it's more racism than anything else, as they must have seen white people before), it is nice to get a break. So far, the people in Hue have been really friendly and helpful by comparison.

Until next time, then...

C.

P.S.: Gary's post in French below for the froggies... enjoy! (makes it look like an alarminly long post today!)
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Ça fait presque deux semaines depuis que j'ai écrit 'le blog français' - ce n'est pas que je suis paresseux, mais c'est juste que nous nous sommes déplacés beaucoup, et que nous avons passés par quelques endroits sans y demeurer longtemps.

D'abord, nous avons fait une randonnée à pied pendant trois jours, dans les collines près de Chiang Mai. Il y avait une groupe de dix personnes, très sympa, compris trois suisses avec lesquels nous avons parlé français. Ils habitent à Rolle et Nyon, pas loin de nos amis Mark et Beatrice. La randonnée était intéressante, pas trop difficile, mais il faisait très chaud. Nous avons dormi dans cabines de bambou, avec une bonne ambiance. Pendant le soir, nous pouvions voir beaucoup de feus dans la jungle, qui nous approchaient à une vitesse alarmante. Cependant, il n'y avait pas de raison d'être inquiet, les feus était tous contrôlés - apparemment ils ne se répandent jamais, au contraire de ceux de l'Australie par exemple.

Après avoir quitte Chiang Mai, et après avoir passé deux nuits à Chiang Rai, nous nous sommes arrivés à la frontière avec Laos, où nous avons pris le bateau-touristique pour Luang Prabang. Le voyage a duré deux jours, sans beaucoup de confort, mais le paysage était impressionnent avec le fleuve d'une couleur marron, et collines couverts en jungle, dans lesquels on pouvait voir des petits villages de cabanes de bambou. Le voyage de bateau était impressionnent, même si plutôt inconfortable, bien que parfois il fallait imaginer qu'il n y avait pas autant de touristes autour de nous.

Au fin de deux jours dans le bateau, nous étions très heureux de nous trouver a Luang Prabang, une vieille ville qui a l'air colonial, avec un mélange d'influences françaises et asiatiques. C'est très jolie, plein de restaurants et magasins, où nous avons passés deux jours.

Afin de arriver en Vietnam, il faut se diriger vers l'est de Laos, où il y a quelques endroits pour traverser le frontière. Nous avons décidé d'y aller par Phonsavan, une décision que j'ai regretté, après avoir passé huit heures dans un petit minibus sur des routes très montagneux. Apparemment il y avait un paysage spectaculaire...

Phonsavan a l'air d'une ville de 'Far West', où tous les hôtels et restaurants ont une grande collection de bombes, mortiers, missiles et autres armes de "la grande guerre américaine", comme ils appellent la guerre du "Vietnam". Aujourd'hui le Laos est encore couvert par des bombes qui n'ont pas explosé - par conséquent c'est important de s'en tenir aux chemins marqués, pendant qu'on est dans la campagne. C'est pour ça que nous nous sommes joints à une groupe organisée, pour voir la 'Plaine des Jarres', qui est un site archeologique où il y a des centaines de grands pots de pierre, de taille entre un et deux metres. Personne sait pour quelle raison ils y se trouvent, peut-être ils s'étaient employés à entreposer des restes humaines.

Le lendemain, nous sommes partis pour Vinh, en Vietnam. Malheureusement le bus était en panne, et à la gare routière ils nous ont dit de revenir le lendemain. Cependant il y avait une groupe de dix 'farangs' (comme ils appellent les routard ici), c'est à dire beaucoup de dollars, alors nous sommes retournés au centre de Phonsavan, avons trouvé un minibus et chauffeur, avons négocié un prix, et, en bref, nous sommes arrivés au frontière trois heures plus tard. Un autre minibus loué et une voyage de bus de cinq heures plus tard, nous sommes arrivés finalement à Vinh à six heures du soir.

Je ne recommanderais pas Vinh pour destination de vacances; c'est laide, il n y a pas de restaurants, l'hôtel avait un air sombre, et les gens n'étaient pas amicaux - dans la rue une jeune fille a meme montré Carine du doigt et a ri!

Finalement, après une voyage de huit heures hier en bus, nous nous trouvons maintenant à Hue. C'est très touristique ici, parce qu'il y a une ancienne citadelle et beaucoup de temples et autres sites d'intérêt. Pourtant nous allons profiter de tous les bars et restaurants pendant quelques jours, avant que nous partions pour le sud de Vietnam.

Gary

Trekking and making new friends (oh, and football!)

We had a day to let our backsides recover from the mountain biking and went off on a three days' trek in the hills about 75 kms away from Chiang Mai on Sunday.

We had such a great time! Firstly, the group of people we were with were all really nice, and it was good to meet and talk with other people. There were travellers from England (John the Jordy!), Australia, Canada, Germany and Switzerland. Gary spent a lot of time speaking French with our new Swiss friends Erika, Nathalie and Marc (Bea & Mark, if you are reading this: Nathalie and Marc live in Rolle, and Erika in Nyons. Small world, eh!).

The walking was mostly through a jungley forest, sometimes the slope was steep but the advantage of being with a group was that we were taking regular breaks etc. We spent both nights in communal/dormitory type bamboo houses, and the spirit was really that of a summer camp (les jolies colonies de vacanceuuh...). On the last afternoon, we went "white water" rafting (I put this in inverted commas because it is the dry season, so the water isn't exactly gushing down violently! But for a first timer, the rapids were fast enough to make it really fun). When the water became literally too thin on the ground, we switched to a bamboo raft and ended up jumping in the water fully clothed and having a refreshing swim.

Here's a new scary thing we met along the way... I had never seen so many scary animals/insects before this trip! Apparently this was a real tarentula, and a venemous one at that!We said goodbye to our Swiss friends yesterday (by the way, check out their blog, it's really, really good! I put a link on the right-hand side, in the "Blogs we love" section) and took a bus up to Chiang Rai, where we are spending a day before making our way up to Laos in the two days slow boat trip on the Mekong river. We spent the whole of lunchtime drawing up an itinerary which we may now have to follow like clockwork if we want to visit Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia and be in the Philippines before the Easter rush.

I am listening to the French radio as I write this and have just heard that the Rodez football team beat Paris Saint Germain yesterday! I am no football fan but feeling very happy for all my family down in Rodez, especially my cousin Jocelyn who is passionate about football and played for Rodez for a while. Christian, you have to tell us all about the atmosphere down in Aveyron when you get the chance!

I will try to add more pics etc. to liven up the blog (I am embarrassed now I have seen how nice Nathalie and Marc's is!) as soon as I find a decent Internet connection... watch this space :)

C x