Pink in Phnom Penh

Rented a bike today and cycled around PP forgetting to put suncream on so face and shoulders have gone a nice rosy red... That aside, renting a bike was just perfect for seeing the city - it's quite compact and there isn't as much traffic as in Saigon meaning you even get to survive the experience - but barely. Was all proud of myself for doing as the Romans do but, as was trying to cross wide busy boulevards using the zig-zagging and ducking method, it occurred to me that Romans threw people to the lions...


Sunset over lake in Phnom Penh
Not cut out for the Viet Cong
Really really enjoyed Saigon... Went to the Mekong Delta down in the SOuth on a day tour (a v canned one involving photos with pythons around one's neck), visited the Cu Chi tunnels where I had a slightly embarrassing episode... We were looking at the entrance into one of the tunnels which was framed by a metal border. It was TINY and a couple of the skinny wans got in, everyone else hovering around... After doing a couple of mental measurements and mathematics I decided I'd just fit in so popped off my flipflops and slid in... Pas de probleme... However, when getting out, I realised I'd been optimistic in my measurements - making the hole bigger and my

hips smaller... But you can't argue with physics so I couldn't get out!!! Erm, I said to a couple of lads standing above me, it would appear I am stuck... Could you give me a helping hand? So three guys pulled me out. Funnily enough, it wasn't embarrassing at all - i think the relief of finally getting out without destroying a historical relic superseded any other emotions i could feel. It's clear that the Viet Cong didn't have any Western hips in it...

A very Irish corner in Saigon
Visited the Christina Noble Children's Foundation where Trich and her housemates work... Set in a beautiful building (built for the charity by an Irish builder), it has a school for socially disadvantaged kids to help them catch up with schooling before going onto mainstream schools. Then there's the centre providing long term care for kids who are malnurished, disabled or have other medical problems - it has nurses, physiotherapists and other medical staff. Trich showed me around and the kids were all just gorgeous - wide-eyed, friendly, warm - there was just a gorgeous vibe about the place despite the background of the kids... Kudos to the Centre and all its staff! The administration centre was bizarre in that it had these photos of very Irish things - Bertie Ahern, the O'Brien's Sandwich shop logo, a photo of a vietnamese girl's bedroom with a poster of Westlife in the background... Also a lot of the volunteers and staff are Irish so there's a lot of 'oh my god you know so and so?' and 'really you lived there? i used to live just around the corner...?'...
Went to an Irish pub called Sheridans - was looking around thinking that the vietnamese had done a great job with it as it was really authentic when I noticed a dark solitary figure on the other side of the bar - a big bearded man reminiscent of Connemara fishermen in dark West of Ireland pubs... I then noticed a photo of a similar-looking man with Bertie Ahern on the wall behind him so asked if it was him... He nodded slowly... 'Are you the owner?'.. Another nod... Ah that would explain the authencity of the pub...
Something else that's quite bizarre in Vietnam: all over the country, when you say you're from ireland (or Aie-lann) people say 'oh you know Roy Keane/Robbie Keane?'....!! In fact, when Fiona Keane (a friend of Trich's who arrived when I was there) was going through passport check at the airport, she was asked if she was Roy Keane's sister! Poor girl was perplexed until Trich explained that Vietnamese men think of Roy when they hear Ireland.

Arriving in Cambodia
I think a result of living in the EU is astonishment at how hard it can be to go from one country to another. I should be used to it by now but I still get a surprise when I find a country requires a visa (and how much said visa might cost!) and that getting into a country isn't as straightforward as it might be getting from france to Germany on an EU passport. Getting to Cambodia from Vietnam is probably the most complicated border crossing I've experienced... Got a coach to the Vietnamese border where we had to show our passports and leave the country going into a sorta no-man's land resembling a construction site (in fact,a big temple was being built in it..) Arriving at the Cambodian border, we were given forms to fill out and told to wait while passports being checked. ONe by one, the others frm my bus received their passports but nothing for me... So I went up to ask... They didn't have it! I was like, bu... but... I gave it to you, in high pitched voice. Turned out that it'd got mixed up with a whole load of passports that were, as we were speaking, on a coach about to go into Cambodia... Quickly, one of the officials went and retrieved it. But can you imagine losing your passport there? In a no-man's land...???!!! Not in vietnam but not in Cambodia either!

Double decker buses
We'd gone to vietnam on a big air-con coach. But in Cambodia, our bus was a lot smaller. We also had new passengers... So getting onto the bus was an exercise in physics - how to fit into a container of certain volume something of larger volume... I am proud to say that I was part of the first ever experiment to prove that this is indeed possible. This was mainly due to a very creative bus driver. When faced with the possibiltity that he was not going to fit the last two lads (Irish country ones from Leitrim and Cavan) in, he went down to the back of the bus, got someone to open the window and took a box that'd been on the back seat out. As the passage down to this seat was choc-a-bloc, he got one of the lads to... climb through the window...! Up to this point, all Westerners on the bus had been sitting in a stunned silence but watching this poor guy try and squeeze through a tiny window (think Cu CHi tunnel-size) we all just cracked up.. The second guy was invited to share the driver's seat with the driver and a few boxes and suitcases up in the front.
But when I saw the average Cambodian bus, I realised we were on a luxury bus... Driving through the countryside, we saw that bus roofs are considered extra seating - several buses going around with roofs packed full of people... I've also been told that sometimes when the roof is full, some people will sit on the bumper!

Right i think this blog is long enough without me going into Phnom Penh... so will save that for another day!

xxxx

Hoi An - Mui Ne - Saigon

Two local girls by the lotus lake at the sand dunes, Mui Ne



Have just discovered that computers in most internet cafes here have no CD drives so while I have 2 CDs bursting with photos, I can't look at them nor can I post them on this website.but will try and do so whenever I do find a computer with CD drive..........

Anyway! Am in Saigon - not the capital city of Vietnam but certainly where it's all at. Arriving in Saigon from Mui Ne (quiet beach resort) I could feel the buzz of the place even in the confines of an air conditioned bus. It's a proper Asian metropolis with all kinds from trendy blond-highlighted camp characters to conical hatted, pyjamaed fruit sellers, from rich businessmen to impoverished newly arrived migrants, from fashionable locals to sweaty backpackers... This city has it all. Add on the thousands of motorbikes. I thought the roads of Hanoi were busy... Pah, children could play on them.... It's in Saigon that you see what busy really means. As Trich approaches roundabouts on her moped, she negotiates mopeds coming from her right, her left, from in front of us and behind us... Thousands of them. Throw in the odd bus and a handful of cars. Not forgetting having to deal with her wide-eyed petrified friend clutching onto her for dear life.... However, you do relax after a while because, as I said about Hanoi, the moped system does somehow work....
Staying with Trich in the gorgeous house she shares with 2 fellow Christina Noble workers and taking advantage of the domestic comforts while I can - crashed out on the sofa watching Sex and the City all night. I would have watched a movie but all the ones I tried had the most atrocious English subtitles - you know the kind you get on Asian pirated DVDs... 'I go shop out with for food alien walk invasion killign home goode'... In other words, completely indecipherable. In fact, that'd be a good gameshow question. Put on a DVD with these subtitles and ask people to guess what’s really happening.

The Clothes-holic Nirvana
Rewinding a few days, Trich and I went from Hue to Hoi An, an absolutely delightful town a few hours south. A former port, its architecture shows Chinese, Japanese, French and Buddhist influences… It has several good restaurants, including the Café des Amis overlooking the river, where the former South Vietnamese army chef cooks two set menus a day depending on what he feels like cooking and what’s in season… The options are ‘seafood’ and ‘vegetarian’ and you get 5 different dishes of the most delicious Vietnamese fare… Wontons (some kind of dumpling using rice flour, I think) with shrimp, fish cakes, Cau Lao (local noodle dish…?) with lots of leafy herbs, rice cakes, spring rolls and so on…
But, for a clothes-holic, the best thing about Hoi An is its tailor shops…………… oh my god…… Everywhere you go, shops full of all kinds of fabrics just waiting to be moulded into fabulous outfits… After initial shock at the realisation of what this town had to offer, I was like a child at Christmas… Pulling out all kinds of fabrics in different colours and patterns and dreaming up outfits. Trich wasn’t much better – she tried to restrain me, but being as excited as I was, failed completely. But, as we sat down to discuss prices with the tailor, our come down hit, and did it hit big… We realized we’d both been robbed – I had nearly 80 euro in Dong (the local currency) taken while Trich was missing dollars… We were furious both at being robbed but also at being so stupid at allowing it to happen. However, after the shock subsided, we realised it wasn’t as bad as it initially seemed – the cash was taken from our wallets so still had our bags and cards. Also, the experience gave us an insight into how things are done in Vietnam. We asked that the police be contacted but the police said they couldn’t come if it was just a robbery(!) but that we could search the shop and its staff… Erm, maybe not… So we sat down and negotiated a deal in which they made our clothes more cheaply than first agreed on. All very informal… We then went and cheered ourselves up with good food and cocktails.

Tropical beaches and tropical storms
After Hoi An, Trich headed back to Saigon and I went down to Mui Ne, a beach resort for a couple days on the beach. Relaxing isn’t the word to describe my first evening… A huge tropical hurricane hit just after dusk - it was really spectacular with flashes of lightening highlighting the outlines of thatched roofs and tall palm trees. But the electricity in the place I was staying in went out rendering the place into complete pitch, and I mean pitch, black darkness… Tropical storms, I can deal with (and enjoy), but pitch black darkness, now that's asking too much. I was just like ‘fuuuuuuuuuck’ and started groping around my bag looking for my torch which, on discovery, provided a small dim but very very very comforting beam of light. After panicked demands under the dim glare of said torch, the proprietor assured me that he’d have the electricity back up and running ‘in a minute’. As a Vietnamese minute can be anything from a minute to an hour, I hotfooted it to the bar in a resort run by an Italian couple and attended by a German couple. Never have I been so so happy to see English speaking Westerners. Had a couple cocktails and found out how the Italians came to open the bar (they came to Mui Ne from London, loved the peace and quiet etc etc) and discovered that doing a BA in psychology in Germany takes up to 6 years (Fi, you’ll be happy to hear…!!) The storm subsided and I gingerly made my way back to my room but the following day moved to the resort with the bar – it had a swimming pool and direct access to the beach. Went on a tour of the sand dunes, red canyons and trekked up a stream for 4 km that day but Mui Ne, despite its recommendations from several people, was boring… It was completely dead and doesn't have much to do apart from sunbathe... Rather than having a town with a definite 'centre', it's just a long road with resorts so its hard to see where one can meet people. The beach, while nice and tropical with its palm trees and white sand, is actually quite dirty… In short, Mui Ne wasn't for me so I cut my stay there a day short and came down to Saigon.

Typing up this blog has been an interesting task. The keyboard keeps switching and producing Chinese or Vietnamese characters on absolutely no encouragement from me. In addition, it keeps changing to the ‘Dvorak’ keyboard layout – Google tells me that this is a new layout, so developed because the one we use (called the ‘QWERTY’ layout in an almost sneering manner) is not a 'comfortable' layout. Well, let me tell you, Dvorak, whoever you are, that I am comfortable with it and would appreciate being left to type in it in peace…

Adios for now! xxx