Phnom Penh again

National Day in Vietnam falls on 2 September and commemorates the day in 1945 when Uncle Ho declared Vietnam to be independent of French rule. This year it fell on Thursday with many companies giving employees Friday off as well to make a long weekend. So ... I also took advantage of it by accompanying Bao and An on a 4-day trip to Phnom Penh.

The border crossing at Moc Bai-Ba Vet was very busy, and as there were a number of foreigners on our bus it also took some time to get Cambodian visas issued. Unfortunately it was so busy that the leader on our bus forgot to submit my passport and fee to the visa office! I thought something was different from the previous experience but it took 20+minutes of queuing to get to the immigration counter before I found out what it was. Luckily I found him straightaway and was in possession of the visa and entry stamp in about 10 minutes!

Expecting Phnom Penh to be very busy with Vietnamese holiday makers we had already booked a hotel, which turned out to be within walking distance of most points of attraction. So essentially we spent a weekend alternating between walking a lot and doing very little. As with my previous visit to Phnom Penh the heavens absolutely bucketed down on two occasions for several hours.

We spent some time on Friday morning at the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. Both are inside a large compound that includes the Throne Room and various other buildings. The actual royal residence is off-limits behind high walls, although visible. This is a peaceful sp0t to go and there are a number of exhibits detailing Cambodian culture and the political career of the King Father Sihanouk.

We also visited the Killing Fields at Choueng Ek which provide the counterpart to Tuol Sleng in commemmorating the terrible impacts of the Pol Pot era on Cambodia's people. While the classic image of Choueng Ek in the past was the wooden structures housing skulls and other bones of the people slaughtered here, they were actually replaced some years ago by a tall, elegant but sombre stupa. To date approximately half of the mass graves of more than 20,000 people have been excavated.

The graves were not dug deeply. With Cambodia's heavy rains bone fragments, teeth and even pieces of cloth continually emerge in the surface of the soil. In the small museum I was surprised to discover that at least one Australian had been killed and buried here - David Lloyd Scott. You can visit a couple of other blogs to learn something more about him: http://informationandaccess.blogspot.com/2007/07/week-6-in-phnom-penh-milestones.html and http://blog.andybrouwer.co.uk/2009/08/aussies-at-s-21.html. The records are a bit hazy on whether he and Ronald Keith Dean died at Tuol Sleng or at Choueng Ek, but they appear to have been at both infamous sites.

The legendary birthplace of Phnom Penh is Wat Phnom perched on the only hill in the city. This is the place to which Madame Penh brought some Buddha images she found floating in the river. There are a lot of cats here!

A little bit of shopping in the Russian Market rounded off our visit. Bao was keen to see the Independence Monument at night and also go to the Nagaland Casino/Hotel to help him recapture memories and photos from his tour in Cambodia last year. Unfortunately he had lost all the photos he took on that tour to Siem Reap, Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh. Gambling wasn't on anyone's list of things to do, but the casino decor is quite impressive. One large room is decorated as though it is actually outdoors, with a 3-storey ceiling painted with sky and clouds and brightly lit. Quite the opposite to the experience of Sydney's Star City or indeed most gambling dens in the average Australian club.

Orphanage school

It's now a year since the school program at the orphanage in Phan Boi Chau Street started. There have been some changes in faces all round - Vietnamese and foreign teachers and children - in that time. A few kids have been adopted and are living happy futures in France. New faces appear in class from time to time as new residents arrive and younger children grow up.

In this photo you can see Ms Trang, one of the current Vietnamese teachers. Bi is now wearing glasses and this seems to have done a lot to improve the general health of his eyes. Next to him is Phuong - a lovely older boy who is keeping his past a secret from everyone at the moment. This is not unusual for kids in his situation. Their past has not been fantastic and they just don't want to talk about it yet.

Some months ago the Sunday Night program on Channel 7 in Australia came to Vietnam to make a story called The Lost Children. It's about children who were adopted out of Vietnam after the American War, and their search for family back in Vietnam. It featured Anne (My Huong) who does so much work with the children's centres in Vung Tau, and is a touchstone for many past adoptees looking for their mothers now. I can't give a direct link to it here but you can find the video in the Sunday Night archive on the Internet.

A brief country-side visit

In unrelated news ... we applied for Bao's tourist visa to come to Australia with me back at the beginning of July. A word to the wise if any gentle reader ever plans to do a similar thing. The information given to you in downloadable forms from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship is just the beginning of it all. I got hold of them several months ago, then thought to visit the Australian Embassy website for Vietnam. Lucky I did because I discovered a checklist of items and additional forms specific to Vietnamese visitors to Australia, and even then discovered that there is yet another form not listed with the checklist (only found that one by accident). Once we got them all filled in and documents translated + all copies and translations certified we went to the International Migration Office in HCMC which handles the Australian and Canadian Visa Application Offices, only to be told that in fact we were submitting the bare minimum of supporting letters and documents!

So it was a slightly anxious 4-week wait before the SMS came requesting Bao to return to the office and collect his passport. No hint as to the outcome, and the staff don't open the sealed envelopes returned to the office from the Consulate. Fortuitously the message came when I had already planned to take a weekend off classes and go up to HCMC. The outcome was a happy one ... and we'll be arriving in Sydney on 10 October!

Which brings me to ... A brief country-side visit :)

Friday afternoon and Saturday were pretty much a round of coffee shops and catching up with some of Bao's friends. However, on Sunday we made a trip down Highway 1 to Long An province and the familial home of Bao's sister-in-law. Remarkably this has been almost my first opportunity in 2 years to go into the country-side and get up close and personal with rice fields.

When we arrived in mid-morning there was a big party going on because one of the other relatives had just bought some land in the area. Many male acquaintances of the family gathered to eat and drink. This was effectively breakfast for us - drinking bia 333 is not the type of breakfast I really envisaged, and Bao and I eventually took the opportunity to walk around a little and indulge my love of ducks. I can't explain this ... they are dirty animals, but I just like seeing them swim and waddle around, or even experience the ignominy of being tied by the dozen to bicycles and motor bikes for transportation to market and back.

We also still had the trip back to Vung Tau to make, so noticing that the clouds looked threatening we made our thanks and excuses and left a little after midday. Unfortunately we didn't get very far down the road before the heavens opened and we experienced a drenching return all the way back to HCMC, a trip of approximately 50km.

Tempus Fugit

The minutes seem to go so slow ... yet the months have accumulated so much.

On Wednesday evening I joined Bao and his former colleague, Huyen, at a coffee shop. While we were sitting and talking I kept wondering how long it had been since I last saw her? And where?

Eventually it dawned on me that I last saw her just before she left STX. We had an evening picnic on Ha Long road just below the statue of Jesus. I rode there after class - on my bicycle, which means I was then living at Vo Thi Sau street. I moved house to Phan Chu Trinh street at the beginning of May last year!!

Could it really have been more than 15 months since then? Could it really be 12 months since I came back to Australia for a visit? (August last year)

Bao and I are coming to Australia to visit everyone this October. When that visit commences it will have been two years, almost to the day, since I first left Sydney to start this life in Vietnam!

Time slips away so fast ...

Kien Giang

Rach Gia
So the Huong Kings' Anniversary holiday has just passed again. This year it was on a Friday, so we planned another short trip (with a few working days off as well) and headed for the province of Kien Giang. Kien Giang is most well-known amongst travellers for Phu Quoc Island, but it's expensive to fly there and very popular at holiday times.

Instead we decided to go by bus to Rach Gia and Ha Tien. Foreign travellers usually only go to Rach Gia if they are planning to take the high-speed boat to Phu Quoc. However, during the time we were there I saw a number of people who looked a bit more settled in, perhaps staying for a day or two. Rach Gia is Bao's hometown. To understand this concept a bit more, especially as Bao was born and grew up in Can Tho, I asked why he says this. I learned that Vietnamese count their home town as the one where their father was born and raised. I knew that Bao's grandfather lived in Rach Gia, and that Bao used to regularly travel (alone) from Can Tho to visit during holidays. He still has uncles and aunts and cousins there, and it was to his aunt’s house that we headed on arrival off the overnight, sleeping bus from Vung Tau. (Interestingly, we discovered that a number of companies travel directly to the south, meaning that we didn’t have to transfer and spend some time waiting for a connection in HCM City.)

Bao found that the city had changed and grown a lot. Previously the area behind his family’s home was sand and mangroves. It is now extensively filled-in and built on with houses, shops, hotels and boulevards, and the mangroves have been replaced with a seawall. The guesthouse we stayed in was in this area, and we borrowed a motorbike to take a look around the city.

Other than visiting family, our purpose in coming to Rach Gia was to use it as a staging post to get to Ha Tien (rather than continue directly there on the bus from Vung Tau).

Ha Tien
Much of Kien Giang province has been disputed territory with Cambodia over the years, even as recently as the Pol Pot regime when the army of that government regularly invaded, attacked and massacred Vietnamese. Traditionally, the Khmers have regarded any area in which a particular type of tree, similar to a coconut palm but with a different type of fruit, grows as being Khmer territory. This is the case for the land around Ha Tien and further north at Chau Doc. It is from this tree – actually from the flowers – that palm sugar is manufactured.

In the 1700s Ha Tien was protected from the Khmers by a Chinese warlord named Mac Cuu. The tombs of his family are now a principal attraction in Ha Tien. Ha Tien, itself is a very very popular destination for Vietnamese tourists, and a scattering of foreigners. This is because it is also close to some beautiful beaches, and limestone outcroppings and mountains, riddled with caves and turned into temples.

So these attractions are what we travelled from Rach Gia to come and see. We offloaded from the bus and transferred into the town only to discover cup dien – no electricity, a familiar story in the south at this “sunny” time of year. It also took some doing to find a suitable place to stay – facility and price-wise. We discovered why later in the afternoon after returning from touring around the surrounding countryside. Every hotel was absolutely booked out, there were tour buses everywhere, and masses of people were setting up for the night on sleeping mats in the foyers and landings of hotels and guest houses – ours included.

We had lunch in the market and enquired about finding two xe om drivers to take us around for the afternoon, settling on a price of 150,000 dong for each of us. For this, we were taken around the district to Mac Cuu family tombs and pagodas - one to Mac Cuu and his wife, the other to Phu Dung, the daughter-in-law of Mac Cuu and wife of Mac Tinh Tich (Mac Cuu's son and successor in power). This pagoda was first built in the late 1700s, and although it has been rebuilt several times, it still has some original structural posts and the personal altar of Phu Dung.

Afterwards we travelled west to Thach Dong mountain cave pagoda and Nui Da Dung mountain and extensive limestone caves. Here we were very close to the Cambodia border, and looked across the fields from the Vietnamese side to see a typical Khmer style temple on an adjacent hill, as well as some traders avoiding paying duty by travelling through the fields to the Vietnam side! Nui Da Dung was not an easy climb for me - age? unfit? - yet Bao and one of our drivers pushed ahead without effort over the many steps and into dark caves. I was very grateful for our pitstop at the end and drank and drank! 7-up and then a drink made from the local coconut.









There was still no power back in Ha Tien until midnight, so the most comfortable place to be was outdoors along with everyone else drinking coffee along the river-bank. Sadly there was no breeze blowing across the water :(

The next morning we decided to engage the same drivers to pick us up early and travel to Hon Chong to walk through the Chua Hang Grotto and the temple there. Along the road to the grotto there are many beachside resorts, and we were among thousands of visitors with the same intention. Returning to Ba Hon to pick up the boat service, scheduled to leave at 11.30am, we were able to visit an interesting limestone outcrop that Bao had long heard of but never located. It is reputed to have been the home of a crocodile in the past. Now this huge rock sits in a field, showing unique water-worn channels and tunnels at head-height. The rock must have been several feet lower into a water source in the past.

Finally, we visited another very large outcrop, through which we could walk to a central open area. This site, yet again, has various grottoes and caves in which people pray. It was also a Viet Cong base in the past, where artillery were manufactured and where there was a hospital area under cover in a cave.

Hon Nghe
Bao had read and seen information about this small island on the Internet in Vietnamese tourism sites, and was moved to visit because it is a natural and mostly undeveloped place to go. It also rates a mention - alone out of all the small islands in this area - in Lonely Planet. Unlike the Lonely Planet travel suggestions, though, we used the daily regular transport/passenger boat service from Ba Hon. This boat, among one or two others, brings the day's fishing catch to the mainland and returns with all manner of supplies. On our trip the main cargoes were ice and cement. Women from Hon Nghe make the journey each day to buy vegetables for reselling to the rest of the island's population.

During the trip across we were mainly treated to a lightly developed land and seascape. We could see settlements on many islands, and presumed that each had a boat service to support the local fishing industries. Looking back at the mainland, though, was a different story. Cement works are everywhere in this area, taking advantage of the abundant limestone, and the bay near Ba Hon will soon change shape with landfill works extending far out into the water. Bao noted that the shore past Ha Tien has also greatly changed from the past.

Hon Nghe is not an island you go to for a wild time. We had been told, even at the point of embarkation, that there was a guest house to stay in. Lonely Planet, contrarily, advises that tourists are not allowed to stay on the island. During the trip Bao learned the truth from the boat driver: there are no guest houses, but the family that runs the cafe at the jetty sometimes take in overnight visitors. So that is where we stayed, in the front room of someone's house. The cafe owners also took care of our meals. We were well looked after, and not seen as an inconvenience at all.

Of course, though, we were asked why we had come to Hon Nghe instead of going to Phu Quoc, which is where tourists to this province usually head to. There isn't in fact much to do on Hon Nghe, other than to visit the temple on a high rocky headland. We did this three times!

The first time was with a man we met at the cafe. He showed us through the caves and took us down some rocky paths around the headland, before showing us the way to access the road that goes (almost) all the way around the island, a route of about 7 km. A rather hot and thirsty walk as it turned out, passing through numerous tiny settlements, with heads constantly turning to take in the amazing sight of this sweaty, red-faced foreigner!

Late in the afternoon I took a swim off the only, tiny and rocky beach on the island amongst the fishing boats, while Bao took in the sunset. After dinner it was suggested that we take a walk - up to the temple, which we did, catching the stiff breeze and taking the chance to cool down a bit. After that it was an early night, as life on the island really needs to move with nature and follow the sun.









The boat back to Ba Hon was scheduled to leave at 8.30am, though on this occasion people needed to be aboard before the cargo of seafood. So our actual departure time after boarding was about an hour later. During this time we watched baskets of prawns, barrels of squid and bags of fish being packed down in ice and hoisted aboard our boat from various fishing vessels.

Another excellent adventure!

Tet Holiday - Tiger Year

I was very privileged to again spend Tet with Bao's family. They are always so welcoming of me. When I discussed this with Bao, he told me that even though they have now lived in HCM City for so long, their most significant friends are elsewhere, and they do not have close family to visit. At Tet I am their honoured guest. So much so that this year I've been included in the family portrait which now sits on the wall in their home.

Bao and I returned to HCM City on the last day of the Buffalo Year. We again visited the Flower Festival in Nguyen Hue Street in District 1 and waited for the fireworks at midnight before tackling the traffic to drive back to Binh Thanh District. In Bao's view the quality of the flower festival has gone down over the last couple of years. Major storms and typhoons in the months leading up to Tet destroyed many of the flower crops, and increased demand in the market by both city authorities and private consumers.

We spent part of first day at home, but also took a ride around a much quieter city, and stopped to watch one of the most famous dragon dance troupes in HCM City perform.


After exchanging li xi we headed out to visit some pagodas in the late afternoon. However, the big mission of visiting pagodas was scheduled to start at 4am the next morning. We joined a cavalcade of buses (at least 15) to travel to 10 pagodas. A few were in HCM City but most were outside the city on the road back to - guess where?! Vung Tau, hahaha. We came as far as Long Hai, where we had lunch and could look across the sea to see Small Mountain in the distance.

The temples were all very different. Some very large and well-endowed. One which is a major learning centre, not just for monks in Vietnam, but from around the Buddhist world. Some were very poor but still active in community work and supporting children without families. These children live and study at the pagoda as novices and have the option of joining the fraternity when they are 18 or going out into the larger world to work. During the trip money was raised for these pagodas.

It was a very long day, and although I am grateful for the experience - plus have now completed the Nguyen family commitment of visiting 10 temples each Tet - I don't think I will do it again, or at least not until I have become more competent in speaking Vietnamese. During the day in which we encountered thousands of visitors - we were not the only cavalcade involved in this significant pursuit - I saw just one other foreigner!

Bao Loc
For the remainder of the Tet holiday, before I had to return to work, we planned a motor cycle trip to go to Cat Tien National Park in the foothills towards Dalat. We were discouraged, though, when we arrived at the park headquarters to find that there are two price scales for accommodation and just about everything else, and that because he was with me Bao would be subjected to the same exorbitant prices as I would be forced to pay as a foreigner. In most places I've been to in Vietnam over the last 18 months this practice has been abandoned, but the management here were insistent. Bao was so disgusted that he refused to look at any part of the park.

So we came up with a plan B, of continuing on the highway towards Dalat and staying at Bao Loc, the tea and coffee growing town which is on the first plateau of the mountain range (see blog about Michele, Chaska and Killki visit). The main tourist attraction here is Dambri Falls,which Bao remembers from a previous visit as being a natural and quiet place, but which is now so heavily developed, beautified and concreted over that we were very disappointed. We also took a bit of a sidetrip to a minority village and interesting pagoda community. We also stopped off a large temple, before returning to taste and buy some excellent local coffee in the town.

Arriving in Bao Loc we had no knowledge of where to stay, though we could see plenty of hotels and guest houses. We decided to ride into the market area where we saw a number of nha nghi, guest houses. We chose one and discovered that in an equally random way it had been selected by another Australian visitor, who was on his way south but had stopped in Bao Loc to meet a girl (and her boyfriend) with whom he had been communicating over the Internet for some months. What a small world!

During this trip we arranged to meet up with one of the guys we had shared the ardours of climbing Nui Ba Den with. He works in the area and was on his way back from his family home to the town he was currently working in, and stopped off to spend the night with us, before sharing part of the journey back to HCM City. During the journey back I also finally got the chance to look more closely at something that has caught my attention every time I've passed through the town of Dinh Quan - the Buddha built on one of the massive granite boulders around which the town is built.

Tet Holiday - Hoi An and My Son

Hoi An
Hoi An is generally regarded as the must-see town in the centre of Vietnam, even ahead of Hue. This is because of the historical record that the town forms, and for more consumer-driven reasons: Hoi An has built a reputation for 24 hour tailoring. This was not an attraction for us. We were there to take in the ambience, visit the nearby beach, and make the trip to My Son, the most intact vestige of the Cham civilisation.

In fact, we elected not to even spend much time in the museums, temples (visited one) and old houses, but just to walk and cycle around, and relax! So the record I have of Hoi An on this occasion is not the typical tourist experience, but enjoyable none-the-less, and informed by the advice of Tiep, a friend we made one night at the restaurant he manages. So here are some pictures of our time in the town, with a focus on food and lights! We also managed to find the Ba Le well, the water from which is an essential ingredient in cao lau noodles. Without this water, the noodle is not considered to be authentic. We also enjoyed black sesame porridge (a dessert) which left the watery substance I've eaten at yum cha in Sydney for dead. It was so good I had two bowls, and we tried in vain to convince another foreigner to eat it.
We cycled out to a pottery village, and during the boat trip back from My Son, visited some high quality wood carving shops. We did make it to the beach, one we were taken to by Tiep, where we enjoyed some local seafood for an early lunch. I was the only one to go in the water, though. The beach was almost deserted, though in a few days time it was likely to be crowded with holiday-makers.

My Son
Bao and I have both been to Angkor Wat and knew that My Son would not be on the same scale as that site. It's older and smaller, and suffered extensive damage during the American War. There is still unexploded ordnance in the vicinity, and it is very important to stick to the trails. Parts of temples have been obliterated by bomb craters.

These things aside the visit was still interesting. The temples are located inside a verdant valley overlooked by Cat's Tooth Mountain (Hon Quap) and other high peaks. Unlike Angkor Thom next to Angkor Wat, My Son was not a major residential centre. The Hindu priests lived here, and the king would visit to conduct annual important ceremonies. The kings were also buried here, but eventually the site was abandoned as the Cham people were forced to move south by Vietnamese, Chinese and Khmer invaders.

We had booked to go and return to Hoi An by bus, but took the opportunity to switch to a boat trip back that brought us down the river and around some of the islands that make up the greater Hoi An town.