Big Headed Shrimp in the Mekong Delta

So, Friday night was the last one spent in Cambodia - we met up with two Dutch girls in front of the FCC (Foreign Correspondent's Club - nice view, good HH drinks!) an hour later than planned because they had mistaken FCC for the French Cultural Centre! Stupid acronyms. LOL, we then crashed the 2nd anniversary party of the "Ginger Monkey" bar close to the riverfront. Tasty cocktails (mudslide, orgasm!) and cheap US$0.50 local Angkor draft.

Saturday morning....7am early ride to HCM city! Ho Chi Minh is EVERYWHERE in Vietnam right now - National Day, their 60th anniversary is 2-9. The bus ride was pretty uneventful, except for the place where I bought some custard buns...and while eating them...found out ants were also sharing my breakfast! eeeep!! The Vietnam border post took a ridiculous amount of time too. Bureaucracy my a$$! The "Happy Tour" guide was very nice, and she sang us a song to ease the pain of the mid-day sun on our bus. We arrived in Saigon at 3pm, and took a 10.000 dong (expensive?! I think so...) moto ride to the blue gecko to meet Thibault, the 2nd member of the Left Handed Trio. LOL, that's the name of the jazz band Romain is in. The ladies at the Blue Gecko bar welcomed us to Vietnam with some pretty strong house vodka & chocolate milk shooters.

Yesterday was the first of a three day Mekong Delta tour. The first leg of the trip was extremely well-touristed, to the point that it was just downright hilarious. The "authentic" villagers we visited looked so drained from performing the same thing over and over! Ha ha, doesn't help that it was a cheesy Vietnamese version of "old lang syne". After a gruelling 4 hour bus trip that involved ferrying across the 3km wide (wow!) Mekong River, we arrived in Can Tho, the unofficial capital of the Mekong Delta. It was a buzzing city, with lots of patrons at the roadside restaurants and pool bars. Two other girls from Montreal joined me in the "homestay" option.

It was definitely a unique experience! Phuong was the only member of his family of 10 that spoke English. They were so hospitable! We were served tea in little shooter glasses. The best part is that they use a hollow coconut shell as a tea cozy!!! Dinner was served on the floor; a nice hot-pot of fish soup, and get this: Shrimp chips with stir fried tofu and green beans! So awesome! We washed everything down with some "you can't taste anything but the alcohol" rice wine and "YO"ed (Vietnamese version of cheers) our way through dinner. Bedtime was at 10pm, and mosquitos nets transformed the living room into our bedroom! There were some strange noises (hopefully just the pigs in the back, and not rats!) but I managed to get a good nights rest.

So...I am the big headed shrimp in the Mekong Delta - argh, I think I forgot my cap at Phuong's house!!! Ha ha, the worst part is that the cap cost more than this 3-day tour (a steal of a deal - only US$26)...gaaaa!

Today, we hit up some of the more authentic spots in the delta. TWO floating markets, with nobody selling souvenirs (vis a vis the tourist trap in Thailand!). The first one was a wholesale market, the second was retail. The canals and small rivers that connect all parts of the delta make up one huge river system, in a very fertile valley.

Next stop....Chau Doc, right back at the Cambodian border! Ha ha...we climbed Sam Mountain, and visited a Chinese Pagoda which some chill views of some rice paddy fields. That night, I stayed with a couple of French gals in the stuffiest room ever ("free" accomdation is like that) and had a really nice hot pot soup at Bay Bong restaurant.

hooked on s'ville

This was me, about 3 weeks ago...gone fishing in Singapore, near the rustic island of Pulau Ubin. You can see Malaysia from it's shores!

FFWD>>
A week of fruit shakes, fresh coconuts and swimming was super relaxing!! And very easy on the pocket :) A night in the Mealy Chenda guesthouse in Sihanoukville (named after King Sihanouk of Cambodia) was only US$2! The beaches were not as nice as in Mauritius, but the water was much warmer - almost hot! I think it is about 29 degrees.


I took a boat trip out to some of the neighbouring islands (including Kos O'Russey - but there were no bamboos on bamboo island...only a military base!) and we went snorkelling. My broken snorkelling tube confirms that yep, the gulf of Thailand has really salty water. Such colourful fish and coral! For lunch, our guide Borey grilled up some fresh Baracouda fish (from the dirtiest market I've seen to date!) with tasty French baguettes and salad. He was studying for an economics exam later that day too. Many young Cambodians work very hard, making ends meet with day-jobs and studying at university in the evenings. Ooh, and scary, a girl I met on the trip had dengue fever! DEET, here I come!

I don't know what it was, maybe the local water, but my tummy wasn't feeling too well the first few days in S'ville. So I went to the "best" restaurant in town for a mediocre meal that cost 5 times the price of my room. Ha ha...hanging out at the Sokha Beach Resort's swimming pool was nice too - met these two high-flying American travellers, Diane and Susan, and they were nice enough to take me in their private A/Ced taxi back to Phnom Penh. Amazingly, our taxi driver had survived Pol Pot's regime & the reign of terror under the Khmer Rouge between 1975 and 1979. He recounted the harrowing story of his life as a teenager working on the railways for the KR. I also read "Stay Alive, My Son" by a Montreal-trained Cambodian engineer that managed to escape to Thailand during the same era. It's frightening to think that this mass genocide happened under everybody's noses less than 30 years ago...and we haven't really learned from history, have we?

*Michelle!* I drowned my free Robots watch too... as I was diving into the pool, I remembered! oops...the US$1 replacement I've got isn't entirely ugly.

Phnom Penh is a pretty condensed capital. There are wide boulevards, but cars, motorbike drivers and tuk-tuks line the streets and weave in-and-out spontaneously. Traffic lights don't mean too much, and I feel like a deer every time I have to cross the street. A couple of Norwegian girls taught me a good trick. Anytime someone offers, "MOTO?", you say, "That's not my name!" Good stuff!!

Cool things about Phnom Penh:

• the Royal Palace is beautiful
• cheap internet...but slow (US$0.5/hour)
• awesome people (kids diving into the tonle sap river that is a murky brown), friendly moto drivers
• great view of the Boeung-Kak lake from the lakeside guesthouse
• nice bars on the riverfront
• random people singing...and it sounds pretty good!

The not so cool things about Phnom Penh:

• Boeung-Kak lake is probably toxic! so dirty!
• The Lazyfish guesthouse made me want to leave Phnom Penh! US$3 or not, eep, mosquitos aren't worth it!
• HOT HOT HOT. I think it must be 35 degrees out! and wind doesn't really tunnel through these streets...lol
• garbage everywhere! I don't think it is in the Cambodian culture quite yet to use rubbish bins.
• the seedy sex-tourist business rears its ugly head now and then

Currently, I am waiting to meet my new French friend (Romain!) and we're going to Vietnam by bus this Saturday. Can't wait for...pho...

I had the TOMB RAIDER cocktail!

I think I'm all WAT-TED out. Just spent the last 3 days exploring some of the temples Angkor has to offer. Cambodia is an amazing country - the story behind these gorgeous, massive, and majestic ruins is so rich! Many kings reigned this forgotten corner of the world... the temples are located in a rural setting, rainforest like, with many parts close to rice farms. There are lots of children selling souvenirs and it is a really big reality check to see the living conditions of some of the locals. Siem Reap is such a booming place though, I think quality of life has really improved in the past few years.

Don't have time right now to upload any pics...but check out this gallery that I saw at a store here...the temples are amazing!!

http://www.asiaphotos.net/gallery/Angkor/


I'm staying at nice (AIR CONDITIONED!) Red Piano guesthouse ...the restaurant by the same name was superb. Awesome atmosphere, tasty food, and best of all, the tomb raider cocktail! LOL. Angelina and gang were filming some sequences at Ta Promh, one of the most amazing sites with trees growing out of the ruins all over the place. We spent our first and last day exploring the temples by Tuk-tuk (3 wheeled carts)...but the second day, we rode bikes!! Man, these things were rented for US$2 (everything is in US dollars!) and they were sketch. LOL, Doi's bike got a flat right in the morning, and my back tire also busted by the late afternoon. After toughing it out, we deserved some khmer massages, no? Ya...the massage was pretty relaxing.

Getting here was another story. The bus ride from Bangkok to Siem Reap was utterly RIDICULOUS. After being herded around like sheep for an hour, we finally boarded a bus, then were taken near the Cambodian/Thai border. Then we waited 2 hours for our visas at this pre-designated restaurant, and crammed in the back of a service truck to get to the border. Next, it was a HOT affair lining up at the Thai and Cambodian border crossing. Then, a tuk-tuk to a bus waiting area, which was another hour... the worst was yet to come. A 10 hour CRAZY bumpy ride on the worst roads that SE asia has to offer in the wet season. And the A/C minibus. Ya, nope...it was broken. Open windows! Argh. Ha ha, then we were shipped off to this guesthouse in Siem Reap. It was dirt cheap, but the rooms that DIDN'T smell like mold, had no A/C. doh!

But all of this didn't come as a surprise since I was staying on Khao San Rd in Bangkok, which incidently, is where I bought the bus ticket. Eep, for like 7.5 Canadian. Can't expect more than what I paid for!

Bangkok was a pretty dazzling, glitzy place compared to the clean serenity of Singapore. I was there for about a week - Doi and I visited lots of awesome temples (world's largest gold buddha, reclining buddah 45 meters long, etc...), the floating market (touristy, but they sell fruit/veggies/meat/anything...on these teeny boats!), the weekend market (largest in Thailand, 300 000 people every weekend...WHOA), and I also took a trip to Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand. Staying on Khao San (yep, from "The Beach" with Leonardo DiCaprio) was pretty cheap, but loud, and only mildly sketchy. No bugs! Horray! But no A/C either. :)

Yikes...Singapore was amazing too. But i'll recount that later...my hour of cheapo internet is almost up. :)