We have enjoyed our trip sofar. Thailand was merely a transit point to get a Vietnam visa. Cambodia was amazing. Really third world country but the drawcard of the Angkor temples (incl Angkor Wat) did not disappoint. An amazing sight - the complex is huge. Angkor Wat is a temple complex bounded by this huge moat. The site is about 1km square and has Hindu temples in really good condition. Then there is AngkorThom, another site. Angkor thom is 3km square with a number of temples contained within. Bayon was fabulous with some great sandstone carvings of battle scenes & everyday life in the 12C. Lots of other temples around & we must have visited most. Most were in ruins or had the jungle growing thru the stonework.
A problem was that an internal component on mums camera broke (for no obvious reason) after our second picture. Woe, woe - a damned nuisance. But we bought a small sony digital camera & are back in action again.
Also spent 2 days in Phnom Penh. A dirty city, highly polluted & poverty in all directions. We visited the Tuol Sleng Museum which was a jail in Pol Pots time (1975 - 1979). B4 that it was a school. Terrible place - what he did to his people defies comprehension. He turned a reasonably advanced country into a virtual social & economic desert inside 3 years. He had killed over 2million people in a population of less than 10 million. All the professional classes were just wiped out. And they are still living with the consequences.
Even though the place is squalid & poor there were lots of interesting sights. Like the Silver Pagoda in the palace complex. This Statue of the Buddha with an untold number of diamonds (actually 2,000) built into it. The floor was laid with 5 tonnes of Silver tiles Superb - as was the Emerald buddha in the same building. Or like the people who hold little birds in cages near the river. It was close to cambodian New Year & people would come along pay lots of money to free the birds. Poor little things - they would have been totally stressed. But the to cap it all off these kids would chase after them, catch them & return them to the cages!! So the birds would be on a merry go round of release, capture, cage, release and ... well you get the idea. And all in the name of supposed good luck for those paying the money. Not such good luck for the birds. Or the sellers of fine cambodian cuisine. Like crickets cooked in oil, beetles, dried worms, snails, small crustaceans, spiders & the piece de resistance - grilled cockroaches. Large grilled cockroaches: complete. There is no accounting for taste. Leah says that they taste like chips but I can assure that comment is NOT based on personal experience. And the roads are not reall great. No traffic lights so crossing the road is a lottery.
HCMC is quite a contrast. There are millions of scooters in all directions but we seem to be able to get across roads OK. We have been to the Re Unification Palace where the tanks came in to drive out the old US backed regime. Enjoyed the tour very much esp the bunkers under the building where they had their war rooms. Then to the War Remnants museum which was a dark depiction of the Vietnam war from the Vietnamese viewpoint. It was an awful eye opener. The US has a lot to answer for but unfortunately some of the worst villians will never be brought to justice.
We are still in HCMC but will be getting on a bus tonight for Nha Trang a city about 10 hours up the coast. We will be wending our way up to Hanoi, the north & then thru to Laos.
HCMC has been good. Very fast paced & exciting & we have seen a lot. Like the Re unification Palace. The old American War Crimes museum Ho Chi Mihn Museum, Notre Dame cathedral , (HCMC style but very nice) & lots of alleys & back streets. Mum has done a day tour to the Cu Chi war tunnels & a Daoist temple. She was one of only a few that went all the way along these tunnels. Me - I hate small tight dark places so I chickened out & went to a BBQ instead. A friend we first met in Chile took me on a scooter ride thru HCMC traffic. I think that I would have preferred the tunnels!! We both went out to the Mekong delta - not too bad as you really see how the delta peasants live. Like Cambodia they eat everything. They had snakes, squirrells, gross looking eels, catfish & all sorts of other things locked up in these dirty cages. Snake meat was VND650,000 ($US 40) per kg. Needless to say we never tried!!
So that us up to date. we are looking forward to getting up north where the weather is supposedly a lot cooler. It has been 39C & 95% Humidity here which is hard to take. The camera is mended so we are now the proud possessors of two Sonys.
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