Cambodia (other than Angkor)

I didn't tell you much about Siem Reap in the other post. The photos were getting unwieldy, but you can't begin to convey Angkor without photos. I'm not sure you can convey it with photos; part of what's mind-blowing about it is the scale. I can show you the details, but the awesome is in the whole--in how many details there are. It's a big city of awesome details. Actually, it's multiple cities of awesome details. Let me quote my Insight Guide earlier than intended: "Angkor must be seen to be believed."

Now let me quote the guidebook again:

The Vietnamese, with their long-established Sinitic traditions, were natural bureaucrats, while the Lao--in common with their Indicised Thai brethren to the west and the Cambodians to the south--most decidedly were not.

This was very noticeable to us in Cambodia (it might have been more noticeable in Laos had we ventured outside Luang Prabang or tried to do anything complicated there without the help of the guesthouse).

Also, I wasn't talking out of my @$$ in the prior post about the anti-Vietnamese sentiment. It's much stronger, at least according to the (ten-year old) guidebook in Cambodia than Laos, but it "runs deep in the psyche of most Lao" as well (though has dulled over the years). Nonetheless, Laos has opted for 'forgive and forget.' In Cambodia, according to Insight, hostility toward Vietnam still represents an undercurrent in Cambodian society.

I won't write about the genocide; there's nothing I can say here that you can't or shouldn't read in  more detail elsewhere. I'll merely say that it's still felt in the country. It wasn't that long ago, and it destroyed a lot.

More about Angkor: you'll have noticed both Buddhist and Hindu imagery. Indochina is the land of syncretism. Chinese and Vietnamese Buddhism--Mahayana Buddhism, younger at around 1,900 to the Lao and Cambodian Theravada Buddhism, which has existed for over 2,400 years--is part of a "triple religion."

...Mahayana Buddhism is closely associated with Khong Giao, or Confucianism, an ethical system [that] originated in China...

Similarly linked is Taoism... a system of speculative philosophy centering on the concept of man's oneness with the universe. As the basic tenets of the three teachings are not in conflict they have practically fused, and are known as Tam Giao, or the Triple Religion.

***
As I mentioned, Angkor blew our minds. Siem Reap, not so much, but I didn't mind it. Rick liked it; Jay didn't. He found it gritty, dirty. I kind of liked the grittiness, but I didn't like crossing the streets (Luang Prabang had been a lovely respite from all that).

Rick was done with Angkor after a day and opted to explore the city instead--specifically, a silk farm. I enjoyed the second day at Angkor, more. First of all, we were there earlier so we got to see Bantay Kdei without the crowds, which makes a huge difference. I didn't need more than two full days at Angkor, but if I had it, I wouldn't see more temples; I'd merely see the same temples first thing in the morning, before the crowds descended upon them. Bantay Srei was crowded by the time we got there (you have to leave the main Angkor complex and ride north, through some villages) but still amazing.

Our lunch outside of Neak Pean was gross, and just made us angry. It was probably the most expensive meal we'd had in Indochina ($7 a plate!) but we'd not have minded if there'd been value to it. It was just a nasty mess of ramen with something like ketchup on it. This was our frustration with the following morning (before we left for Snooky, which is what the Eurotrash call Sihanoukville). Jay and I agreed that the Angkor complex should charge more for admission. We were willing to pay it (our three-day ticket, of which we used two days, was $40 per person). But we were livid when the $25-per-person boat tour of Tonle Sap turned out to be an epic tourist trap. It was just a shameless case of fleece-the-tourist. We shelled out the money expecting something, but got nothing (but a slow fast-boat ride to a tourist-trappy float with an alligator farm), and then our guide tried to hit us up for money for orphans (after he told us that our ticket money went to money for orphans). I'm all for helping the local economy and supporting local causes, but we had no idea where that money would go, and we were honestly just bitter about the patheticness of the "tour." Which cost more than one day's admission to Angkor Wat. That said, the ride out there (priced separately) was beautiful.

Floating school

Tonle Sap from the air

Tonle Sap actually *reverses itself.* During the November-May dry season, the lake drains into the Mekong at Phnom Penh. At the start of rainy season in June, it backs up to form an enormous lake as the Mekong swells and its waters back into the Tonle Sap River and change its flow, which in turn floods the lake. Once the monsoon rains recede in November, the Mekong returns to normal and the lake's waters drain into the Tonle Sap River once again, causing the river to flow downstream.

Fed up, we returned to Siem Reap and had some coffee, and then a delicious lunch at the vegetarian Joe to Go. Afterward, we caught a short flight to Snooky.

We were actually at different hotels in Snooky, because as Jay and I booked them--we were on the phone--one of us wasn't paying attention for a second and we settled on different hotels. They were a block or two apart, and both really nice, so it was fine. I was happy to have my own room because I spent the whole night hacking up a lung.

There was something awfully neo-Colonial about Snooky; a lot of establishments were owned and operated by foreigners (Russians ran the very good vegetarian restaurant where we'd have dinner; various Europeans, the ferry we'd take to Koh Rong Samloem; French, the place we'd rent our snorkels and have lunch on the island). You could also see the sex tourism, in the form of random creepy white guys sitting around at the bars (and the underage locals often associating with them). Had we planned better--and had we known how done we'd be with Siem Reap--we'd have gotten to Snooky early enough to catch a ferry to the island that day, and would have stayed there overnight, but alas, we hadn't and we didn't. So we had a chill night in Snooky--we hit the beach, and the sea water did wonders for my sore nose--and spent the next day on the island.

And the island was idyllic. We lounged, swam, snorkeled. I didn't let my cold stop me. I'd go in the water, and then get out and hack up a lung. You didn't expect me to *not* snorkel? There were all kinds of fish: striped, wavy-striped, checkered, polka-dotted, fluorescent, etc. It was amazing.

We snorkeled, sunned, took in the paradise. And then we had no choice but to get back to town, from which we'd move on. After that night, we'd have two full days before our return flight.

We were concerned about getting to Kampot, where we'd decided just the day before to go next. This was the unplanned part of our trip--we were going to take our time through the Mekong Delta, but we had little time left. We opted for a stopover in Kampot because it was close to Snooky--less than a two-hour cab, now that the road was built--and because after Siem Reap, the guys were hell-bent on nicer places. And a lot of the places in the Delta were homestays. So I booked a night in Kampot and another in Ben Tre (just an hour from Saigon). We'd read that it was super-easy to get to Kampot--buses, minibuses, relatively inexpensive cabs--but we discovered in the morning that maybe the cabs charge more "after hours," and our ferry docked in Snooky at 5pm if not later. The good news was, it wasn't a problem to get a cab. The bad news was, Rick left his camera on the island, and there'd be no way to get it before the next day. So he stayed back. I heard him, but I wouldn't stay back. Snooky was making me crazy (the city itself was load, aggressive). And we'd already committed to paying for our rooms in Kampot. Jay was torn, but ultimately went with me. I told him he didn't have to, but I was glad he did when the cab driver essentially picked up a hitchhiker on the way. I was glad I wasn't in that cab alone.

We got to Kampot not too late and settled into our lovely guesthouse. I had a bungalow, Jay had a full room. The (Dutch) owners tried to convince us to see the countryside--the mountains, the pepper farms--the next day, but we sort of had to hang back and figure out how to get across the Delta. The staff warned us that if we wanted a car, we'd have to book it first thing; it was tourist season. But we didn't know what time Rick would join us. When we knew what time he left Snooky--his camera was not on the first boat, as promised--we booked bus tickets to My Tho (near Ben Tre). We explored Kampot a bit, but mostly chilled and lunched at the veg-friendly Rikitikitavi.

Their vegan amok (Cambodian curry, named for the leaf that lends its flavor) was out of this world.

At this point, there was no good way to get to Vietnam. We'd have paid for a cab, but we doubted a driver would have taken us the five hours, and we didn't want to mess with having to find multiple cabs along the way, especially once it got dark. The bus was the way to go. It was supposed to get us to My Tho around 10pm.

It didn't; actually, it wasn't an it. We were on a series of buses. First of all, we breathed a huge sigh of relief when Rick showed up in Kampot in time for the bus. And the ride to and through the Vietnamese border was lovely and unproblematic. We passed Kep, the other town of note in the area.

The driver sherpaed us through the emigration on the Cambodian side and the immigration on the Vietnamese side. The Cambodian side was a $hit show; the guy demanded my departure card, and I had to point out and then have the driver translate that his coworker had taken it. As we walked over to the Vietnamese desk, Jay urged me not to cough; they were checking temperatures (except, mercifully, they weren't). We went through without incident.

Then we got on a different bus, and the driver dropped us off at a local travel agency in Ha Thien. 

They put us on a bus... which took us to the main bus station. Where we got an another bus, hereafter referred to as the bus from hell.

That was the lighting. There was also bad music and incessant honking, because that's how vehicles in Indochina tell other vehicles to get the f* out of their way. That bus honked the whole way to My Tho (and probably the whole way to Saigon). But there was wifi.

Since we're in Vietnam, I'll continue this in the next post.