Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

After a terrifying night on the bus, we finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon), our final stop in Vietnam. Saigon is the largest city in Vietnam, with a population of over 7 million people and more than 5 million motorcycles. Like most of Vietnam, the streets are jam-packed with motorcycles, making crossing the street am extreme sport!

Because this was our last stop, we decided to take it easy by relaxing and doing a bit of shopping before we leave for Holland. We did decide to do one tour however, the Cu Chi Tunnels. This was a tour that we felt we couldn't miss, as we haven't really learned too much about the Vietnam war thus far on our trip. The Cu Chi Tunnels are a network of underground tunnels that the Vietnamese used to hide from American bombs during the Vietnam war. The network of over 200km of tunnels, which were built over 25 years beginning in the 1940's, served as functional underground cities for the Vietnamese for 9 years. Inside the tunnels were living quarters, storage facilities, weapons factories, field hospitals, command centres, and kitchens. A number of traps were set up within the tunnels to prevent Americans from crawling inside and homemade land mines we re strategically placed on the surface. The Americans also tried to force the Vietnamese out by pumping water and toxic gases into the tunnels, but this did not have much of an effect.

On our tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels we were shown the different types of traps, a pro-vietnam propaganda video, and the tunnels themselves. We even had the option to fire M-16s, AK-47s, and other rifles at a hefty per bullet rate. Near the end of the tour we were shown the tunnels and were able to crawl through up to 100 meters of the tunnels if you were brave enough. The tunnels are only 1.2 meters high and 80cm wide (this is after they widened them for tourists) and have zero lighting, so you literally have to crouch down really low or crawl on your hands and knees to get through them. I took one look at the tunnels and couldn't convince myself to crawl through 100 meters of pitch black tunnels, it was just too tight for my liking. Jackie made it through 40 meters of the tunnels before emerging at an exit part way through. It is unbelievable to think that people lived in those tunnels for 9 years!

The remainder of our time in Saigon mostly consisted of shopping and eating out at different restaurants. We picked up a few more souvenirs and packed everything up for our 14 hour flight to Holland. It will be nice to have some cooler weather and some western culture once again!

– Neil

 

Hanoi, Hoi An, and Nha Trang, Vietnam

Yes we know, we have been slacking big time on getting these blogs done. So this one is going to be a bit of a catch up.

We began the last leg of our journey in Vietnam's capital, Hanoi. We stayed in the Old Quarter filled with little lane ways and street side pho (noodle soup) and bia hoi (beer) shops on every corner. This city is complete and utter chaos where crossing the street should be considered an extreme sport. There are more motorbikes than people in a city of 6 million and there is no such thing as a stop sign or street light throughout most of the city. Sidewalks are reserved for motorbike parking and restaurants, leaving no space for pedestrians.

While in Hanoi we decided to check out a water puppet show – a traditional art form in Vietnam that is very popular among tourists. We aren't sure why it's so popular, the show was just sort of strange. The man beside us fell asleep during the performance. We also checked out the museum of Ethnology which showcases the 54 different ethnic groups that make up Vietnam. The highlight of Hanoi however was the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. We waited in a line of thousands of people to see the preserved body of the Vietnamese liberator, Ho Chi Minh. We couldn't comprehend the number of people who visit this holy place every single day. Guards in freshly pressed white uniforms guard the body with rifles and bayonets and for a few moments it felt like we took a step backwards in time to WWII. Oddly enough, Ho Chi Minh's dying wish was to be cremated.

From Hanoi we did our tour of Ha Long Bay (that we've already blogged about) so we'll skip that and move on to the next stop – Hoi An.

Hoi An is an old port town that miraculously escaped the Vietnam war and remains intact and full of French charm. For tourists, this is THE place to get tailor-made clothes. Neil got a gorgeous cashmere-wool suit with a silk lining and 7 perfect fitting dress shirts. I got a chestnut brown trench coat and we both got incredibly comfy silk robes. It's going to be perfect for those chilly Canadian mornings – I've been fantasizing about having a hot cup of coffee on the deck all snuggled up in my new robe.

We also took a Vietnamese cooking course. We made spring rolls (yet again), Vietnamese shrimp and pork pancakes (they taste better than they sound), Bun Bo Nam Bo (beef salad with vermicelli noodles), and of course, the classic Pho Bo (beef noodle soup). With all of the cooking courses we've done on our trip, I think we are close to becoming expert Asian chefs. Aside from cooking we also got to take a turn at dehusking the rice using a manual mill and making fresh, organic rice milk.

From Hoi An we took the dreaded overnight bus to Nha Trang. Unfortunately we were the last people to board and so had the worst seats possible – right next to the stinky toilet. It was an awful bouncy ride and neither of us got more than an hour or of sleep. Luckily our hotel in Nha Trang was very accommodating and despite it being 6:30am, they let us have a room to get some much needed sleep. The highlight of Nha Trang was definitely our day at Thap Ba Hot Springs. We soaked in a pool of mineral mud – hair and all. It was super slippery! After a good rinse it was off to the mineral bath before spending some time in the warm waterfalls. All in all, it was really relaxing and a very different way to spend the afternoon. Our hair and skin feel great now too!

Despite our previous bus ride we opted to take the overnight bus once more to reach the final destination of our trip in Asia – Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon). When we climbed onboard we were pleasantly surprised to see that the bus was designed much better than our first bus and it looked like we might actually get a few hours of sleep. The ride was still incredibly bumpy and the driver was swerving around other vehicles most of the time so we weren't sleeping much. Then at 4:00am we woke up to screeching of tires and slamming of breaks as we crashed hard into a 5 tonne truck! It was easily the scariest 10 or so seconds of my life. Thank goodness no one was seriously injured. The front right side of our bus was a crumpled mess and there was shattered glass everywhere. The craziest part of the whole thing was how little the bus company seemed to care about what happened. No one even asked if the passengers were okay. The traffic didn't stop – our bus was skidded to a halt in the middle of the highway and so when we got out of the bus we had to watch for traffic to get across the road. No ambulance, no fire truck and it took at least 20 minutes for a police officer to show up. When the police did arrive, they didn't block off traffic or light flares… It was unbelievable how little regard they have for safety. After about an hour of waiting a large van arrived and loaded everyone in to take us the final 2 hours to Ho Chi Minh City. Neil's elbow is sore and my shins are swollen up and promising to leave me some colourful bruises. Now we are safely in our hotel room and feeling very lucky that we weren't hurt worse.

Five more nights of chaos in Asia and then we are off to meet Toos and her family in Holland. After last night we couldn't be more excited 🙂

– Jackie

 

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Ha Long Bay is considered one of the 7 new wonders of the world and Vietnam's top tourist attraction. So, despite all of the nightmare reviews we've heard about terribly run tours and people not getting what was promised, we decided to book a luxury tour on the Poseidon sail boat (which wasn't actually a true sail boat, as we didn't ever use sails). Our tour was a 3 day 2 night tour that was supposed to cruise around Ha Long Bay while enjoying the sites along with doing some kayaking and swimming. The pictures of our boat (or “junk” as they are referred to here in Vietnam) looked fantastic in the tour brochure. The junk in the photo was a beautiful brown wooden boat with big sails, looking somewhat like an old Chinese sail boat. Take a look at the photo below: the top picture is from their brochure and the bottom is a picture I took. There are at least a few differences that I can spot 🙂

The tour began at 8 am with a 4 hour bus ride from Hanoi to Ha Long City, with a stop at an arts and crafts centre catering to western tourists. The store was filled with overpriced, but nice souvenirs and clothing. We decided that we could get the same stuff sold here at half the price elsewhere in Vietnam so we chose not to buy anything. At noon we arrived at the harbour, ready to board our junk. When we look out over the bay, we saw hundreds of Ha Long Bay cruise boats, all of them painted white and in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint. We quickly found our boat, which was also painted white and looked nothing like the boat promised to us in the brochure. The boat itself was relatively nice and our cabin was small but well decorated, so we were still fairly happy. We were served lunch immediately (the first of many meals consisting of squid, fried fish and plain rice) and set sail (by sail, I mean started the engine and drove) towards the 3000 karst formations of Ha Long Bay.

Unfortunately, the weather was not on our side from the get go as it was quite foggy, cool and the rain fell from time to time. Visibility was not great, so our pictures did not turn out as great as we would have liked. After cruising for only two hours, we anchored in a bay with about 200 other boats to visit the Surprising Cave. The cave was alright, but a bit tacky due to the multi-coloured lights they place throughout it. The surprise at the end of the cave was a rock formation in the shape of an erect male penis. We had a laugh because everywhere throughout Asia we have been shown rock formations in the shape of sex organs. It is some sort of weird thing they have going on here.

After going through the cave we did 30 minutes of kayaking. We were told that we would be kayaking through caves and lagoons, but instead we just ended up paddling in open water around the boat and around a small fishing village. There were people in old wooden row boats full of chips, pop, and beer paddling around selling to people on the kayaks. It was more like little floating variety stores than a fishing village. We got back on our junk expecting to continue cruising to see more of the bay because we had only moved through Ha Long Bay for two hours at this point. Unfortunately, the boat remained anchored where it was for the night. We had a dinner consisting of fish, chicken, squid, rice and other things and Jackie and I decided to split a bottle of wine. We met some great people on the boat as well, so we were having a fairly good time.

The next morning was where the problems really started. We were up for breakfast at 7 am and by 7:25 am the crew was telling us we had to get off the boat and switch to another boat immediately. I still had a half my breakfast on my plate and a full cup of hot coffee! So we were quickly hustled off of the Poseidon and put onto a budget tour boat full of other tourists. This budget boat took us to Cat Ba Island where we were herded onto a bus to a national park for a trek to a look-out point. The problem was it was raining and incredibly foggy and the guide mentioned it was also very slippery. When we were told we couldn't head to our hotel straight away we opted to enjoy a couple of beers instead of hiking up a wet trail to see nothing but fog. Two hours later we were herded back on the bus and dropped us off at a hotel for a lunch of fried fish, fish spring rolls, and plain white rice. We were supposed to head to Monkey Island in the afternoon, but no one showed at the hotel up to bring us there. So Jackie, myself, and a couple from England were left to spend the entire day in a hotel with absolutely nothing to do. The following day we were again placed on a budget boat and quickly cruised back to the mainland where we had yet another meal of squid and fried fish before hopping back on the 4 hour bus the Hanoi.

Did I mention that on our “deluxe” cruise we were not even given water… The water onboard came with Canadian price tags. Our deluxe meals of squid, fish, and rice turned out to be the exact same meal provided on the budget boat we spent so much time on. It was a saving grace that we had another couple along on our tour to moan, complain, and laugh about how terrible of a tour it was.

By the time the trip finally ended, we were all quite upset with the tour and of how little of Ha Long Bay we actually saw on our Ha Long Bay tour. We were fortunate enough to get a good chunk of our money back because of how poorly the tour was run. Apparently it is normally better than our experience was, and the cool, rainy weather certainly didn't help.

Now we are heading down the coast of Vietnam to Hoi An, which is many people's favourite place in Vietnam, so we have high hopes of a more enjoyable experience!

– Neil

 

Chiang Mai, Thailand

After our 21 days in the Philippines we flew back to Bangkok. We mastered the public transit system and successfully made it from the international airport to the central train station where we boarded the overnight train to Chiang Mai. It ended up being a 17 hour train ride and because we booked last minute, we did the trip in a regular seat with an open window instead of air conditioning. Fortunately with the help of a couple anti-nausea pills we were out like a light. The lights on the train, however, stayed on all night – thank goodness for our bandanas (aka do-it-yourself sleep masks)!

Chiang Mai is a city in the northern part of Chiang Mai and is known for trekking, temples, elephants, and of course, delicious Thai cuisine. We stayed at a beautiful hotel complete with a air conditioning and a pool. This was definitely the nicest place we've stayed at thus far on our trip. For $19 per night, we decided it was worth the “splurge”. We spent our 8 days practicing yoga, treating ourselves to fabulous Thai massages, and paying a nightly visit to Mrs Pa's fruit smoothie stand. Our yoga teacher, Remko, was a great teacher and really pushed us to dig deep and get the most out of his classes. One class in particular was really great because there was only one other student in attendance and so, Remko used the class to help us work on some tougher poses – headstands, shoulder stands, handstands, and some serious back bending! We both learned a lot and felt it a lot the next day.

Thai food has been our indisputable favourite and a cooking class was an absolute must! We began our class with a tour of the market learning about various produce and varieties of rice. After that it was time for some serious cheffing. Neil made fried cashew nut chicken, Thai red curry, chicken and coconut soup, and fried spring rolls. All of his dishes turned out great! I made pad Thai, Thai green curry, hot and sour prawn soup, and banana spring rolls. My green curry ended up a tad milder than we wanted and we found out that our teacher toned down the spice in my recipe because most foreigners can't take the heat. Alas, it was still delicious – we just know that next time we toss in a few more hot green chillies. As a bonus, we left class with an authentic Thai cookbook so now we can re-create all the deliciousness at home.

We also spent some time strolling Chiang Mai's famous markets – the Saturday and Sunday Walking Streets. The markets fill the streets and seem to go on forever. Vendors sell anything from art to wooden kitchen wares to clothing and anything in between. Of course, food is a big component of the markets too. We picked up handfuls of souvenirs and would've got more if airlines aren't so particular when it comes to baggage allowance 😛

A trip to Chiang Mai isn't complete without a day of temple spotting (or so our Lonely Planet would have us believe) and so we faced the heat and checked out a few of the popular ones. There were beautiful temples to be sure, and the detail is mind boggling at times, but Neil and I agree that temples just aren't our thing. We cut our tour short and opted instead to drop by the women's prison and enjoy a nice meal before retreating back to our air conditioned room.

We finished our trip to Chiang Mai with an unforgettable day at Baan Chang Elephant Park for mahout (elephant trainer) training. This park was opened in 2004 as a conservation and rescue park for abused elephants in the region. Today it's home to 26 elephants including a 12 year old male named Phu Doi (pronounced Poo-Doy) who became our pet for the day. Our experience began with time to feed the elephants and allow everyone to become comfortable around the elephants and for the elephants to become comfortable with us. One of the baby elephants was so comfortable that he gave us kisses! We learned that elephants eat up to 250kg of food per day, mostly sugarcane and bananas, peel and all. We also learned that elephants poo up to 80kg per day – multiply that by 26 elephants and you get a whole lot of poop! After the feeding we had to learn to control our elephant using Thai and Burmese commands. Then it was time to get on an elephant and try out our new mahout skills – it was a little scary the first time the elephant stands up with you on top of it (without a saddle/seat) but after a few moments the fear transforms into an “I can't believe I'm riding and steering an elephant right now, does life get much more amazing than this?” As it turns out, life DID get more amazing. After Neil and I rode Phu Doi through the jungle we took him for a bath in the pond. Wow. Wow. Wow. We climbed all over him scrubbing him down with a brush trying to avoid the water he was shooting at us from his trunk. He was quite the playful young elephant! It was truly an amazing day and one I will continue to look back on years and years down the road.

Sadly all good things come to an end and now we're back on the night train to Bangkok, this time with a bed! We'll be spending one day in Bangkok and then we fly to Hanoi, Vietnam to begin the last leg of our Southeast Asia trip. Time has been flying by and we are having an incredible time. It won't be long now before we step back onto Canadian soil.

Everyone who is reading this – we miss you 🙂

– Jackie

 

Palawan, Philippines

Our final stop in the Philippines was on the island of Palawan found in the southwestern part of the country. We visited 2 locations on this leg of the journey, El Nido to go island hopping and Puerto Princesa to visit the underground river.

When we arrived in Palawan, we took a 5.5 hour overnight bus ride to El Nido. This was one of the worst bus rides we've had on the trip so far. Normally, overnight bus rides are quiet and dark, making it possible to get at least some sleep. This particular bus ride had the lights on most of the time, music blaring, and local passengers singing along, even though it was well past midnight! It was absolutely brutal but we did eventually arrive at 4 am and managed to find a room for the last few hours of the night.

El Nido was a very hit and miss place for us. It's a small town (about 6500 people) and super touristy. Everything was way over priced compared to the rest of the Philippines (at least double the price of the rest of the country) and we had a few issues with the beachfront cottage that we stayed at. Our main problem with our room was the constant terrible karaoke that the Filipino locals would perform. The karaoke went on late every night, making it impossible to sleep. At first it was funny because the singing was exceptionally bad, but eventually we got a little cranky due to the lack of sleep. The good part about El Nido was the Island Hopping tour we did. We took a small boat out on the ocean to visit some secluded tropical islands and hidden lagoons, as well as do some snorkelling in the crystal clear waters. Our favourite parts of the tour were when we visited the secret lagoon and snorkelled in the big lagoon. To get into the secret lagoon we had to crawl through a tiny hidden hole in a large cliff. On the other side of the hole was a small lagoon, with warm emerald green water surrounded by jagged rocky cliffs. The snorkelling in the big lagoon was probably the best snorkelling we've done in the entire trip. We could see cliffs of coral along the sides of the lagoon and the visibility was extremely good with the water being so clear!

The second part of our stay in Palawan was in Puerto Princesa, the capital city in Palawan. Here we did the underground river tour, which is one of the new 7 natural wonders of the world. After a 2 hour van ride to get to the site, we boarded a small paddle boat and drifted into the cave entrance of the underground river. The underground river in Palawan is the longest known underground rivers in the world, with a length of 8.2 km, although we were only able to navigate 1.5 km of the river. The cave formations carved out by the river were pretty amazing, often replicating various religious figures such as Jesus, Buda, and others. Unfortunately, pictures inside the underground river were difficult to capture because of the poor lighting conditions. Following the underground river, we did the Sabang X Zipline, which is an 800 meter zipline over a deserted beach. The zipline wasn't as fast as we thought it was going to be (it took about 90 seconds to get to the end), but the views were fantastic!

Our adventures in Palawan wrap up the Philippines leg of our journey. Next we are heading to Bangkok and then to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.

– Neil

 

Sagada, Philippines

After our 3 day trek through the Cordillera and the exquisite rice terraces we headed west to a cool mountain town called Sagada. The weather here felt more like summertime back home and when there wasn't a big diesel driving out front of our guesthouse or stray dogs barking it was really peaceful. The town has a 9pm curfew which we welcomed since we were so tired from our last week.

Our first morning we experienced spelunking. We aren't sure the difference between spelunking and caving but we've decided it's spelunking because we had to 'splunk' into water while in the cave. At the mouth of Lumiang Cave (our starting point) we saw piles of wooden coffins from centuries past. The coffins all looked much too small for an adult (which concerned me) but we learned that in Sagada people are laid to rest in fetal position. Throughout our 2 hours inside the caves we had to squeeze in some really tight places and climb up and down some slippery rocks. We saw hundreds of bats who've made this place their home and laughed at the oddly shaped rock formations. The coolest part however was swimming through the cold water in the deepest depths of the cave before exiting at Sumaging Cave.

Sagada had more adventure awaiting us. We hiked through an old cemetery (with some graves below ground and some above) out to Echo Valley where we had a great view of one of Sagada's legacies, hanging coffins. These are literally coffins hanging from a cliff in the valley so that they are closer to heaven. The most recent was laid to rest in 2010. Only descendants of the native Igorot tribe can be laid to rest in this way.

Our last day in Sagada had us scaling a 50ft rock face overlooking Echo Valley. There were some tricky spots but Neil and I both made it to the top 4 times before we decided our arms weren't working anymore. We also both fell a time or two but that can be expected since we were pulling out our Spider-Man and Mission Impossible moves. Our Filipino guides for the day cheffed up a yummy meal of grilled pork, fresh onion and tomatoes, served on a bed of organic rice atop a huge banana leaf! There was no cutlery – we did as the locals did and ate it all with our hands. Rice isnt exactly what comes to mind when I think of finger foods but it worked. The food was decent but the presentation was what made it a really great experience. The whole day was just fantastic and we have a good deal of battle scars to remind us of the fun we had.

When we weren't out exploring Sagada's natural beauties, we spent a lot of time relaxing with a book in the string of local cafes. The mountain tea and homemade yogurt was a favourite – I had both every day. Oddly enough, country is the music genre of choice in these parts and wandering down the street almost guarantees you'll hear some old Tim McGraw or Shania somewhere.

We're now on the bus winding around the mountains (without a guard rail in most places) on our way back to Manila where we will fly to the island of Palawan for some more warm weather fun!

– Jackie

 

Rice Terraces, Northern Luzon, Philippines

It took two gruelling 12 hour bus rides to get to Banaue, the home of the rice terraces, but it was well worth it. We travelled in a group of 7, as Pete and his friends came with us, and we also met a few Germans along the way. We all (with the exception of Pete who had to bus back to Manila to catch a flight home) decided to do a 3 day, 30 km trek through the rice terraces. The trek brought us through 3 remote tiny villages (Pula, Cambulo, and Batad) where people farmed the rice terraces. These villages are only accessible by foot, there are no roads or any other means of transportation here. Many people do not even have electricity here. Some of the villagers have never actually seen the outside world, but have heard stories of the way the rest of us live. These people truly live off the land. They generally only eat rice and sweet potatoes, and they occasionally hunt deer and wild boar.

The rice terraces were carved out of the mountainside 2000 years ago and to this day are all farmed by hand. The majority of our trek had us walking along the edges of the terraces, which meant we had to do a lot of balancing to stay on the trail. There was always at least a 10 foot drop to one side of us as we were walking so we definitely did not want to lose our balance. Our guide Laurence told us that if someone falls off the edge and lands in the rice field, the person who fell would have to pay 3000 pesos to buy 3 chickens. They would then sacrifice the chickens and spread the blood on the field where the person fell to make sure their rice crop would still be plentiful. Laurence was very serious when he told us this. I was a little more concerned about hurting myself from falling, not destroying a few rice plants!

The trek gave us some spectacular views of the region and a chance to see how people in these villages live their day to day lives. We all tried some Filipino chewing tobacco called 'moma' that they chew for energy and warmth and we sampled some of their sugar cane gin. And of course we ate piles of locally grown organic rice, three meals per day, everyday… I don't know how they can live off of pretty much only rice and sweet potatoes but they somehow manage it.

– Neil

 

Donsol, Philippines

It was 52 hours after we checked out of our hotel in Sihanoukville, Cambodia before we arrived at our next stop – the Philippines! We took a 12 hour ride to get to the Bangkok airport where we slept beneath an escalator. We spent 24 hours there waiting for our flight to Clark airport in the Philippines. When we arrived there at midnight we took 2 hour bus + taxi to get to the Manila airport. We spent the night sleeping on the hard uncomfortable chairs. The next morning we flew to Legazpi. It was one heck of a trip with very little sleep and no shower.

The only reason we ventured this way was to have a chance to swim with the ocean's gentle giant, the whale shark! We rested up for a night after our long trip and the next morning we set out at 6:30am for Donsol (home to the whale sharks). Pete and his crew were already there and Pete decided to wait for Neil and I to arrive so we could go on the same boat. Unfortunately we didn't see any whale sharks. A nearby typhoon had caused heavy rain for two weeks straight which isn't great for sightings. It was basically a noisy 3 hour boat ride. Neil and I planned to head back to our hostel in Legazpi but we were talked into staying the night (even though all of our stuff was back in Legazpi).

That afternoon the seven of us went to see some cockfighting. Cockfighting isn't exactly legal in the Philippines but nevertheless it is one of the most popular sports. I didn't really know how I'd feel about it but when you want to learn about Flipino culture, a cockfight is a must-do. It turned out to be a very exciting sport with people betting on which rooster will win. Roosters are naturally very aggressive toward other roosters and will stop at nothing to try to kill their opponent. Each rooster has a razor sharp blade attached to a leg and often times the fights don't last too long. Cockfighting is brutal in all honesty but I felt a bit better knowing that the roosters do not go to waste. The loser's chicken is given to the winner to eat that night.

Later on that night while we were catching up and talking about cockfights over a few beers our tricycle driver got himself a snack. His snack was a half developed duck embryo. Neil and I have seen these before and we both thought we could never try it. Neil never did end up having one but four of us (including me) gave it a shot. Surprisingly I didn't think it was that bad. My biggest complaint would be that there is some really hard and crunchy spots, but luckily no feathers! I'm glad I tried it but I don't anticipate having another one anytime soon.

The following morning we set out to hopefully see a whale shark. To our dismay, we had to wait until 10:30 before another boat would be back. While we waited we heard that there was a whale shark out there. We were trying to be patient but we were all pretty anxious waiting for our turn. Finally it was our turn. Pete, Neil and I were on a boat together again and we had an awesome guide! He had us all sit on the side of the boat with our flippers on so we were ready whenever our moment arrived. Before we knew it, our guide was yelling “NOW!” and we all jumped in. The waves were really big and I was having a hard time keeping up with the crowd but our guide grabbed my hand and told me to just stop and wait. He was right – within a few seconds the whale shark was right in front of me! I was scared but the guide encouraged me to go closer. It was huge… Like the size of a mini van swimming beside me. We got to swim with the shark 3 times and all three of us got close enough to touch it! Sometimes the whale shark would be swimming at you and you would have to try to get out of the way. The experience was absolutely incredible! It was a moment I will remember for the rest of my life.

We had also planned on climbing Mount Mayon – the world's most perfect cone-shaped volcano. It's an active volcano, having erupted 48 times in the last 400 years. Unfortunately weather wasn't on our side and when it wasn't raining, it was too cloudy to even see the top and so we decided it wasn't worth it.

So now we are heading into North Luzon to see the famous rice terraces. It's going to be another long journey but we are pretty certain that it will be worth it!

– Jackie

 

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

Well, our stop in Sihanoukville didn't start off on the right foot. It all started back in Phnom Penh when we arranged to get our Vietnam Visas for later on in our trip. The process to get a visa seemed relatively straight forward. We tell the hotel the dates we plan to enter and exit Vietnam then our hotel takes our passports to the Vietnam Embassy. The Embassy then inserts our visas into our passports and the hotel returns our passports to us the following day. When we recieved our passports with our new visas the next evening, we noticed that they made a mistake on the date that we were entering the country. The dates were one month off of what they should have been! We were leaving Phnom Penh the next morning for Sihanoukville, so there wasn't time for the visas to be fixed before we left town. The hotel promised us that they would fix the problem and then send the visas to us in Sihanoukville, which is a 5 hour drive away. We were very concerned with this solution, as rule number one in travelling is never leave town without your passport. The hotel ensured us that they do this all the time and guaranteed that we would get our passports back as soon as we arrived in Sihanoukville. Reluctantly we agreed and hopped on the bus, hoping we didn't make a stupid mistake. Sure enough, when we arrived at the bus station in Sihanoukville 5 hours later, a man on a motorcycle was waiting there with our passports in hand. What a sigh of relief!

The bus ride itself was quite smooth. It stopped every once in a while for people to have a pee although not at a rest stop. The bus just pulls off on the side of a busy road for people to have a pee in the ditch. This is especially not ideal for the women, as its right out in the open! When we stopped for food, the most popular option seemed to be hard boiled duck eggs containing half-developed embryos (they smell unbelievably terrible by the way!). We also saw a few people buy bags of deep fried crickets and beetles for snacking on the bus. We stuck with mangos and pineapples instead though 🙂

The first full day in Sihanoukville Jackie got a little sick, most likely from food poisoning. We haven't been able to pinpoint what we ate that caused it because we have been eating the same foods and I haven't been sick. Just a bit of bad luck I guess. She rebounded fairly quick though so we decided to book a deep sea fishing trip for the following day.

So just as Jackie is feeling better, we go out to do some fishing, hoping for a big catch. Just our luck, the water is really rough! A couple people on the boat were throwing up over the sides. Jackie was feeling nauseous again but held it together and actually ended up catching more fish than anyone else! We didn't catch anything too big (the biggest was about 1 foot long), but what the fish lacked in size they made up for in numbers. We were pulling fish after fish out of the water!

After spending a few days in Sihanoukville, we started noticing something a little strange. There were a large number of middle aged white men in the area, and a lot of them were with young Cambodian girls, many looked under 20 years old. We quickly realized that we were staying in the area popular for sex tourism. Once we recognized this, we noticed how prevalent the sex tourism was in the area. There were old men everywhere and prostitutes everywhere! It's pretty sad that these men take advantage of how poor people are here and unfortunately, it's a fairly common theme everywhere in Southeast Asia.

On a side note, one thing we forgot to mention thus far about Cambodia is their currency situation. They use the US Dollar here as the dominant currency for everything $1 or more. The Cambodian Riel, which is worth 4000 for every one US Dollar, is used for change. So basically they use two currencies at once, which can be rather confusing at times. For instance if you bought a meal for $2.50, you would pay them 2 US Dollars and 2000 Cambodian Riels. Although it can be confusing, one thing I like about it is there are no coins, only paper money. All of the American money is paper (they don't use any American coins) and all of the Cambodian Riels are paper as well (even the 100 Riel bills, which are only worth 2.5 cents).

– Neil

 

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

We took a bus from Battambang to Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh. Our first order of business was to find somewhere to sleep. It was February 12th – Chinese New Year – and so rooms were scarce. We searched around for about an hour when we stumbled upon a deal – $5 per night! The room was basically a closet but it sufficed.

It was also Neil's 27th birthday on the day we arrived – it's hard for me to believe he is that old! Sometimes it seems like yesterday that we were in high school but I suppose it's been almost a decade now although Neil often claims he is still a 'spring chicken'. We were pretty tired from traveling and so we decided to just have a low key night with some Cambodian pizza and beers. We found Phnom Penh not as friendly as some other places we've traveled. One night it took about 30 minutes to find somewhere to eat that was welcoming to us and that wasn't giving us the tourist menu (a menu with the same dishes but at 3 times the price the locals pay). We did come across a real gem though. Le Rit's is a NGO that provides employment and support to disadvantaged women. It's also a place to get an incredible 3 course meal for $6! We also enjoyed some fresh squeezed sugar cane juice and tried some breakfast porridge… Its not quite the same as at home, this porridge came with chicken, noodles, onion and lots of spice!

Phnom Penh was once called the 'pearl of the orient' but it has had to reinvent itself after the tragic events that occurred during the Khmer Rouge rule from 1975-1979. I hate to bore all of our readers with a history lesson but after learning of Cambodia's dark past I think it's something everyone should know about. In the early 1970s Cambodia was in the middle of a civil war. The monarchy was overthrown in 1975 and the Khmer Rouge came into power posing as a party of peace. The Khmer Rouge began working quickly to sculpt this communist agrarian ideal society that their leader, Pol Pot, envisioned. The party sought to rid Cambodia of all intellectuals. Within 3 days they had the entire city of Phnom Penh evacuated to the country side to work as farmers. Schools were closed. The monetary system was abolished. In the four years of Khmer Rouge rule it is uncertain of how many people were killed – estimates range from 1 to 3.5 million. The entire population in the early 1970s was approximately 7 million. Anyone with an education was executed. People who wore glasses were considered intellectuals and were also killed. Children were also brutally murdered because the Khmer Rouge believed that when pulling out grass you need to take it from the root. In other words, these innocent children born of intellectuals might grow up to seek vengeance. While visiting the Killing Fields, a site containing mass graves of victims of the genocide, we saw a tree named the killing tree. The Khmer Rouge would strike infants and children against this tree and throw them in the pile of already dead women and children. It was horrifying.

Neil and I also visited the most infamous prison at the time, a high school revamped into a place of torture. Tuel Sleng high school was a place where 'traitors' were interrogated and tortured before being sent to the killing fields to be executed. A photo was taken of each prisoner upon arrival and now thousands of photos of victims from the past line the halls of this museum. When Vietnam overthrew the Khmer Rouge there were 7 survivors remaining at Tuel Sleng. It is estimated that 17000 people were killed at the prison and/or at the Killing Fields.

This wasn't our favourite place so far on our trip but I think it's one of the places that will stick with us for a long time.

Now we are headed to Sihanoukville to spend some days fishing and relaxing ocean side!

– Jackie