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15.08.23Reminiscing on what a wonderful vacation it was. Being on the road, staying in (occasionally dodgy) hotels for 32 days was sometimes tiring, but I’d leave to do it all over again tomorrow if I could. Our initial plan for summer had been to visit China, but when SARS broke out we changed our flight to Bangkok. Unfortunately this meant we would be traveling to South-East Asia in the height of rainy season when temperatures rarely drop below 33-34 degrees Celsius, and can reach much higher. We stocked up on insect repellent, rehydration sachets and brought along our sun hats. I actually only packed one outfit of clothing, with the intention of buying everything on the road.
We spent 4 days in Thailand as we waited to process our visas for Vietnam and Cambodia. We flew into Bangkok, where we spent two nights on Khao San Road, that infamous backpackers’ street. Not really our scene: scantily clad, usually intoxicated ‘farang’ (Thai term for foreigner) and all sorts of street vendors and tour agents set up to service them. Still, it’s the best place from which to arrange onward travel and to shop for supplies, pharmaceuticals, etc.
While waiting to process our visa, we took a trip to Kanchanaburi, Thailand near the Burmese border. The area is most famous for the Oscar-winning 1957 film “Bridge On the River Kwai”. It’s the tale of the Japanese capture of Allied Forces soldiers during WWII and the subsequent treatment they received as POWs under Japanese command. They were forced to work in camps to build a railroad linking Thailand to Burma. It was later named the Death Railway because more than 16, 000 Allied Forces prisoners died building it. The town now commemorates those who died (from England, Australia, Thailand and Holland) with the JEATH Museum, a pretty grim place that outlines the living conditions they faced and provides testimonies from survivors. There is also a private cemetery for Asians who died maintaining the railway once it was built. Over 80,000 Asian labourers perished, but no clear record was kept of the exact numbers.
One story from the museum struck me in a dark humour sort of way. A prisoner had orders to prepare the bath for one of the Japanese soldiers, but he kept receiving complaints that the water was too cold. So one night he added as many coals to the fire as he could carry, and joked with his friends that he would be boiling by the end of this one. However, the Japanese sodier, at the end of the bath, came up to tell the prisoner it was the best bath he’d ever had and would he please be the one to prepare it every night. Memories of roasting in an Onsen, anyone? Anyway, apparently the brutal treatment of the POWs by the Japanese can be somewhat attributed to the samurai mentality of “die before surrendering”. The Japanese could not respect these men who did not kill themselves upon capture…
We spent the night in a raft-hut on the River Kwai. Kanchanaburi town is still located in dense jungle (this lead to a whole slew of diseases during the POW times) and was steaming hot. On our second day there, it began to rain, something that would mark the remainder of our trip. Still, there is nothing quite like the rain of South-East Asia. It appears in an instant, can go on for days or stop after 5 minutes. When the rains are strong, you can’t hear the sound of your own voice. Accommodations sometimes leak, streets often flood, all is green and muddy. Rivers expand; children play on streets. Rain is not regarded as an annoying disturbance to the corporate flow, but as life-giving stuff.
While in Kanchanaburi, we went on an elephant-riding tour. Somehow we were still atop the big guy as he lumbered thigh deep in the river. The following day, we visited the Temple of the Tigers. Basically some monks rescue tigers, and other endangered Thai animals, from poachers, city markets, etc. and keep them in the conservation area. The 4 tigers were down in a ravine, uncaged, with one monk to “watch over” each of them. The game was for us thrill-seeking “farang” to have a go at giving one of the big guys a bit of love. Rod went first and I took the picture; I really didn’t want to get any closer to the sprawling creature, especially with his buddies letting out full jungle wails in the background, but I was finally coerced into it. We went to another area afterwards to hold their offspring, though we all had to clear out in a hurry at one point, so they could bring in the mammas for feeding time.
Back in Bangkok, we picked up all our travel documents and prepared to leave for Cambodia the following day. We’d heard stories about the terrible back-breaking ride from the border at PoiPet to Siem Reap (site of Angkor Wat). Unfortunately for us, it rained on the day of our journey. We had been frantically checking the Internet for weather reports from Kanchanaburi, because we’d heard that the road often floods and it becomes necessary to get out of the vehicle and cross in chest-deep water carrying your pack over your head. A definite source of anxiety for me, as it had been raining torrentially for 3 days already. Luckily, though, the road was no more than littered with puddles (and small ponds in places), and the only time we had to get out of the vehicle was to take dinner and once when a bus ahead of us got stuck on one of the bridges. The grim side to our journey, however, was the fact that we ended up in a pick-up truck for the 8-hour ride (after already completing 5 to get to the border from Bangkok). My gender garnered me a spot in the front cab with the other girls (too bad there were 5 of us and the driver!), while Rod shared the back (uncovered) with 6 other guys. They all wore rain coats but ended up soaked and eating red mud each time another vehicle passed us on the laterite road.
Our time in Angkor was memorable, though I had a cold and a headache most of the stay. We were up before sunrise each morning (no “daylight savings time” in Asia, so 4:30am, my friends), bumping along on little motorcycles towards the ancient ruins, watching Cambodia come to life in much the same way it had been doing for centuries. There is little development in Cambodia—no malls, no office towers, few cars. Most people (with jobs) work in the rice fields. Hot, backbreaking work and unfortunately many still go hungry. We were greeted at the border of the “Kingdom” of Cambodia by scores of begging children, many with their siblings slung across their backs.
Angkor Wat is Cambodia’s legacy from more prosperous times. The Khmer empire once stretched into parts of present-day Vietnam and Thailand. The stone ruins still seem alive with Hindu gods, dancing asparas and the Khmer people who worshipped them almost 1000 years ago. When Cambodia converted to Buddhism, many Buddha figures were placed in the Angkor temples for worship. The complex is so awesomely constructed, it defies words. Many, including myself, thought that Angkor was one temple. In fact there are hundreds of constructions spread out over 70km around Siem Reap, as well as other Khmer constructions throughout Cambodia and Thailand. For more details on the temple complex, please check out: www.angkorwat.org
We spent 4 days in Siem Reap before taking a boat to Phnom Pehn, the capital city of Cambodia. There we stayed in a guest house and visited the Tuol Sleng Museum. Alex, a fellow traveler from Britain, who had visited 4 continents in the past year, told us that going to Tuol Sleng was the most important thing he’d done all year. Tuol Sleng is also known as S-21. The building started out as a school house but was converted into a prison during Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge time. Each “classroom” had been a holding cell/torture chamber. The rooms haven’t been altered or painted since and still contain torture weapons (various rusted tools), and faint streaks of orange blood. The school is surrounded by barb wire, several feet thick, installed to keep the prisoners in. Hung in the central area were the photos taken by the Khmer Rouge of each new inmate upon capture. The captives faces (ranging from babies to grandparents) were so expressive of their fear, anger, desperation, anguish. Some were defiant, others resigned. The museum was simple, more empty than anything, but the evidence hung like a heavy ghost. Horrendous crimes were committed at S-21.
Cambodia’s recent genocidal history is complex and still shrouded in a degree of secrecy and denial. But in an oversimplified nutshell, from things I read and heard while in Cambodia, I offer a brief synopsis:
Cambodia was viewed as a Communist threat by the U.S. during the Vietnam war, so between 1970-73 Cambodia was secretly bombed by Nixon and the United States—150, 000 Cambodians were killed. This created a vacuum for the Khmer Rouge, a small Communist party that grew in popularity overnight in opposition to the American-installed general, Lon Nol. When America withdrew from Cambodia in 1975 (after their defeat in Vietnam), the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot, advanced on Phnom Pehn to begin their genocidal reign.
Vietnam remained involved in attacking Cambodia since they were supported by Russia and Cambodia by China, both countries vying for the top spot in the Communist World. By the late 70s, the Americans saw the Khmer Rouge as an excellent opportunity to resume fighting Vietnam without employing American soldiers so they began funding arms for the Khmer Rouge. Between 1975 and 1979, 2 million Cambodians were killed in an effort to build a communism quicker than Russia, China or any other nation had done.
In the end, through numerous invasions, it was Vietnam that succeeded in overthrowing Pol Pot's regime. Vietnamese soldiers, hardened by the horrors in their own country were the first to uncover the mass graves across Cambodia where executed bodies had been buried. During the "War Against Communism" (otherwise known as the Cold War), 4 million people were killed in South-East Asia. How much of that do Canadians and Americans study in school? Why is it that during "world conflicts" (often started by the paranoid villifying of weaker nations by more powerful ones), fewer Western Europeans and North Americans die, yet still their deaths receive all the space in the media and later in the textbooks of the world?
Read more about Cambodia's history here.
From Cambodia, we went by bus to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) in Vietnam. The ride took about 8 hours and was bumpy, hot and stuffy. Upon crossing the border, we noticed a big difference in the standard of living between Cambodia and Vietnam. We got in a well air-conditined, spacious bus and rode on a highway. Our guide told us that Vietnamese people are currently happy because their economy is booming. Growth rates have been at 7% for the past decade or so and are expected to continue. For the moment, Vietnam is not developed and still retains lovely countryside, traditional methods of farming rice fields, clean water, fresh air. But the goal is big development, so in twenty years the land around Saigon and Hanoi will likely look like the Kanto Plains of Tokyo—overdeveloped and smog-filled.
In Saigon, we visited some museums about the “American War” (the Vietnamese appellation for what is known as the “Vietnam War” in the West); the Unification Palace—symbolic building that was stormed by the VietCong in 1975, marking the end of the war. We also went on a one-day tour of the Mekong Delta, where Rod put a constrictor around his neck and stuck his finger in a bee-filled honeycomb. We ate the best Italian food I’ve had in Asia and shopped for backpacks.
We then flew to Hanoi, the capital city, in northern Vietnam. We spent 2 weeks in the north. Hanoi was large and filled with noisy motorbikes, but lovely nonetheless. We noticed a stronger allegiance to the Communist government and greater pride at having defeated the Americans in the museums, from tour guides, etc. in Hanoi. Men still wear the green VietCong combat helmets while doing their daily work. The late Ho Chi Minh is the people’s hero, as can be seen by the thousands who line up each morning to get a glimpse of his embalmed corpse at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. He is credited for liberating the Vietnamese people from the French colonizers in the 1950s and the American invaders in the 1960s. Many of Vietnam’s folk stories relate to the idea of fighting off invaders. They were also ruled, for 1000 years by the Chinese. Every nation seems eager to discuss the ways it has been wronged by others, but slower to admit its own transgressions.
I enjoyed visiting the Van Mieu Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s first university, modeled on Chinese Confucianism. At a water puppet show we watched in Hanoi, they demonstated how the new graduates would be carried home on a palanquin to be greeted with great honour and feast by their elderly parents and village people.
In Hanoi, we stayed in the Old Quarter, near Hoan Kiem Lake, where most of the buildings are a cross between Eastern and French architecture, leaving an impression similar to the European quarters in Shanghai. There are also a number of day trips that can easily be taken from Hanoi.
One such trip was to the Perfume Pagoda, the first of many caves we entered in Northern Vietnam. We also went on a tour of Halong Bay where we had a chance to do a little snorkeling, kayaking and swimming. We spent the night on a wooden junk (not so pleasant when the roof leaked and raindrops started falling on my bed).
Our final excursion was to Ninh Binh to see a floating village. There, the villagers lead a dual lifestyle. During dry season (December-June), they cultivate rice and live in houses. During wet season when their “land” becomes flooded in 5 metres of water, they move onto boats and take to fishing the flooded area for crabs and scallops. The day we traveled to Ninh Binh was rainy. We donned raincoats and rode a small long-tail boat through the shallow pond. In some of the less flooded parts, we could see rice shoots. Jutting up in the swamp were the same limestone formations that dot the sea at Halong. For this reason, Ninh Binh has been labeled "Halong Bay on Land". Perhaps "Halong Bay in Swamp" would be more fitting. By the end of the tour we were drenched and more than eager to leave. The villagers seeing us off, looked a little wet themselves. Only they didn’t have the choice to scoot off in an air-conditioned car to a swanky hotel room in Hanoi.
And so this marks the end of my "synopsis" of our travels, for on-the-spot coverage, check out my journals from the road:
Thanks for reading. Sue xxx