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.