Good Morning, Vietnam

Hoi An was fabulous, and we had a lovely time strolling the streets, enjoying yummy cuisine, and even had a date with the tailors to have wool coats made!! It was a cute little town, still intact throughout all the turmoil over the years, and though it was bloody hot, we had a blast. After Hoi An, we headed up to Hue, where we lounged for a few days, and viewed the amazing citadel in the center of the city, the purple forbidden palace, and more! So freakin hot though,.... we are getting a bit tired of this eternal summer we have been experiencing.



We arrived in Hanoi after a grueling 14hr bus ride,and have basically had a blast. We went to see the traditional water puppets and had our view blocked by some kids with huge foot long lenses and no concept of being polite, saw "the proposal" in the theatres and laughed about the visa/immigration/marriage problems that so reminded us of our issues, ate at Bobby Chinn's Restaurant, a fabulous place owned and run by an old friend of the family, and had a fabulous chat with him while we were there. We took a boat trip around Halong Bay and I came down with food poisoning for the second time in 2 weeks and saw more of the boats bathroom than the limestone cliffs in the bay. Such is my luck.

We have loved bia hoi junction, a crossing with a bunch of little shops with freshly brewed beer, at 3,000 dong per glass. Yes, that's 6 beers for a buck. Not too shabby! Never thought I would find a place even cheaper than Chico for a night out.

We are laying low today to make sure my tummy is decent, and planning on heading to the Moscow Circus tonight. Off to China in the morning!!!

Also- we have officially decided to work for SNWMF '10, so we will be temporarily relocating to Northern California when we return from our travels.

Love you looooooong time

Hello!

We are still loving it here in Vietnam, the people are great, the food is awesome and the beer is cheap!! We have moved on from Saigon now, but 1st some piccies, unfortunatly our memory card has been corrupted and we have lost some of our photos from the last week or so..... hence the lack in quantity :(

Here are the pics of the kids from NFO:




Next, our pics from Saigon, an awesome, crazy busy city with more scooters than an Asda car park near you! We finished our days here at the War Remnants Museum and the Independence Palace. Both interesting places with a lot of history to tell..... even if most of it is quite depressing and somber. Also extremely anti-US!



We left Saigon on a horrid bus to head for the highlands. It took us a while but, despite breaking down just 5km short, we did make it in time to check into our very nice hotel and grab another great meal before bed.

The hotel was renowned for its brekky and they did not disappoint..... bacon, eggs, bread, fruit and marmite!! Even avocados for Jenny too! So, full to the brim, we set out to explore this wonderfully weathered town - finally it was both sunny and cool and there was no need to bring a sweat-bucket with you for your day out! We headed straight for just about the only attraction here, other than the faux Eiffel Tower cell-phone antenna, "The Crazy House" - a guest house that is basically a giant, adult jungle-gym! Fun times. We spent our afternoon doing not much else other than hanging out dreading the bus ride the following day.



From here a long-ass bus took us to Nha Trang, a beach town with lots of promise. We had been recommended a Angel Dive here (Thx Alec & Kate) so got right on it and booked in for 3 dives the next day. And for $47 each including rental and lunch, how could we not?! Without any further a-do we got out of the sun for a beer and a treat - sushi!! And it was good!

Despite the early wake up we were excited to dive and on our way before 730am. With just a short(ish) boat trip we were in the water in no time and enjoying a very nice and different dive on a rock pinnacle. And another change from the last time we dove, we could see our hand in front of our face! The next 2 dives were also very nice, with good visabiliy and lots of coral and marine life. So much so that when we returned we booked in for more diving today!! Last night I decided to treat Jen and we went out to Le Petit Bistro, where we dined fabulously on steak tartare (for me), pasta for Jen and an amazing cheese plate for dessert (mmmmm, cheeeeeese). It was still only 25 bucks! But it was only half way through that I had a 2nd thought about the fact that I was eating raw beef in Vietnam.... no repercussions yet....



As mentioned, we went out on the boat again today and had 2 very satisfying dives, even if one was a little cold despite the full wet suit.



Unfortunately we must leave here tomorrow (no doubt on another shitty bus - we pre-booked them all from Saigon with the same company, cheap, but it shows) and head further north to Hoi An. Thanks to the Vietnamese border folks it looks like we will have to skip Laos as I have no room in my current passport for the visa & we have no time to back-track So we will go straight from Hanoi into China with a brand-spanking new one!

More soon....

New Futures

We headed to Takeo and grabbed a tuktuk to the orphanages guest house. No one was around so we kinda just hung out with no real clue what to do! Around dinnertime everyone surfaced and we got the gist of how things were run. The next morning we has lovely egg sanwiches and then headed over to the New Futures orphanage. Upon arrival we were inundated with 52 kids shaking our hands, hugging us, and asking our names. So incredibly friendly and happy! We got a bit of a tour of the facilities, and then it was play time. We spent the next few days playing hardcore vollyball and football with kids who were about 4ft tall, and chatting about our lives. The kids are so incredibly amazing and driven, all want to learn English so they can get good jobs. The orphanage takes great care of them, they all attend school and take English lessons, everyone helps cook and clean, and the kids all look after each other. Ages 6-19, the kids look remarkably younger than their western counterparts, but can eat at least twice as much rice as the hungriest westerner in one sitting. They want cuddles and to hold hands, are interested in politics, and all have such a positive outlook on life. It was so heartwarming and incredible for us to experience this part of Cambodian culture, and it was absolutely one of the highlights of our entire trip thus far. We handed our camera over to the kids and they froliked around and took pictures of the orphanage in their eyes. Just amazing. We plan on staying involved with the orphanage in the future, and are in the process of setting up penpals in NJ at my mom's elementary school, and will also be setting up some sort of non-profit booth or something at SNWMF10. If you are interested in getting involved, have the lucky opportunity to be in the area and want to visit, or just want to make a donation, get in contact with us and we will help sort you out. $20 will feed the kids 3 meals a day for 2 days- a 100lb bag of rice. Oli's mate Andy is currently making a new website for the organization and we will post the link when it is completed.

With heavy hearts, and after postponing our departure for 2 days, we took a bus back to Phnom Penh and then to HCMC, Vietnam. Riding on the bus from 8am to 4pm, we arrived and grabbed a room at Madam Cucs in the backpacker district, $13/night for ac, fridge, hot water, and cable tv. Also includes breakfast and dinner! Not bad. We settled in that evening excited to explore a new country in the month ahead.

The next morning we headed over to the British Embassy to sort out a new passport for Oli since his old one has been filled. It was pretty time consuming, but on the upside, during the embassys lunch break, we headed over to the zoo to say whats up to the animals. We were walking along, and saw a deformed bunny hopping around in a cage that was entirely too large for it. Then we noticed a huge lion napping in the background. THEY HAD POPPED THE LIVE BUNNY INTO THE CAGE FOR THE LION'S LUNCH! We were horrified. Well, I was. Oli was excited to see the outcome. The lion was lazy and didn't really stir, so eventually we headed on without witnessing the carnage.

After finishing the passport process, most of the museums were closing within the hour, so we headed back to the hotel to chill. We had been laying low for the past 4 nights as I had gotten some sort of violent allergy/food poisoning to some delicious fish and chips whilst in Takeo and was still not feeling tip top.

This morning we headed over to the Co Chi tunnels, in which the Viet Cong has hidden out during the war. The whole thing was a bit less authentic than we wanted it to be, but it was kinda cool anyhow. We did end up climbing through the tiny tunnels, on our knees, which was pretty interesting. The tour took a long time, and we ended up grabbing some Indian food when we arrived back in the city. Yum!

We will be in HCMC for a few more days to check out the museums, then heading to Dalat in the north. Pix from the orphanage up soon!

Happy birthday to me!

We wrapped things up at our little hut on the hill and grabbed a saengthaew to Lonely Beach, where we waited at the Treehouse restaurant for another truck to cart us to the other side of the island to Long Beach. After a few hours crammed into the back of the truck like sardines, 10 other farang and the two of us arrived at the new Treehouse resort. So cool! For $5 a night, we had a stilted hut with a balcony overlooking the ocean in the only isolated part of Koh Chang left. We spent the next 4 days, including my 25th birthday, reading classic novels, eating thai food, drinking beers, and swinging on treeswings. It was lovely, and a perfect way to relax and get back into the backpacker vibe after living in the lap of luxury with the fam!




Once we had recovered from an overdose of serenity, we hopped on the ferry and headed to Trat, where we took a minivan to the Cambodian border. We were screwed out of less money than expected for the visa, but were still bribed to pay 30% more than it should have cost. That border crossing is notorious for screwing over tourists!

Because we arrived in the afternoon, there were no more buses leaving for Phnom Penh, so we had to spend the night in the shady border town of Koh Krong. To get there, we had to hop on the back of a motorcycle for 15km. Both of us, one motorcycle, 2 backpacks, and one driver. It made for an interesting journey and surprisingly we were not injured! We bunked up at the Apex hotel, and enjoyed having hot water, cable tv, and ac/ It was a good thing that we got a nice room too, because there was a torrential downpour for most of the afternoon! In the evening we ventured over to Bob's Bar for magical chicken parm and english sausages with mash and veg. MMMMmmm.

In the morning we hopped on a VIP AC bus to Phnom Penh, napping and reading until our arrival at 2pm. We found a hotel right by the river, with the same amenities as the night before but lacking a window. We threw our bags down and took a moto to the UK Embassy where we were informed that Oli needed a new passport and could not just get pages added in, as his was almost full. Awesome. We decided to take care of it in Vietnam, then headed over to the backpacker slum for some awesome sandwiches and to be comforted in the fact that we went for nicer accommodation than usual- the $2 rooms in this neck of the woods were not anything you would put your worst enemy in! We headed back to our hotel, watched tv and napped, then headed over to Happy Herb's pizza for some yummy pizza minus the happy herbs, and then retired for the night.

The next morning we rose early, took a moto to the Vietnam embassy to drop off our visa applications, then wandered over to the Russian Market to peruse the stalls and knock off clothing. We then walked up to the S-21 genocide museum. Over 17,000 men, women and children were imprisoned there during the Khmer Rouge reign. The history of Pol Pot and the atrocities that his underlings caused it horrendous, and worth a much closer look than I could describe. The genocide museum is in the former high school that was occupied in 1975 by the "revolution"and became a prison for intellectuals, nonconformists, "enemies" of the revolution, and anyone in their families. Cruel torture and barbaric living conditions were prevalent for 4 years, and the prison was a sort of holding place before the victims were moved over to the killing fields. The museum contained the original jail-like structures, the torture beds, and photos of many of the former inmates. Almost every single person who was jailed there was put to death.

After S-21, we had a quick lunch before hopping in a tuktuk to the killing fields. About 15km south of Phnom Penh, the fields once contained a sort of holding cell where the prisoners were kept blindfolded and handcuffed before they were led one by one to the edge of hundreds of mass graves, bashed over the head with one of many cruel weapons, then had their throats slashed and their bodies thrown in on top of hundreds of other lost souls. The small children were taken care of in a different way- taken by the feet and slammed into a tree until dead. The idea was that all children, regardless of age, must be taken care of to ensure no revenge or retaliation attempts once grown.

Pol Pot had a grand communist plan to form the nation into a self sufficient agricultural based country, with a huge export of rice as their only priority. He wanted to exterminate all city people and focus on the villagers, enforcing almost slavelike labor and abolishing hospitals, schools, money, and personal property. Though the reign of the Khmer Rouge lasted only 4 years, until Vietnam envaded and took over, they killed hundreds of thousands of people, and every single person living here not over the age of 30 was affected in some way during that cruel time.



After the killing fields, we had a somber drive back to the Vietnam Embassy to pick up our visas, then met up with Oli's old roomie Andy for a few drinks and dinner. Andy was on his way out of town after volunteering for an orphanage down south, and as he told us about it we realized that we really wanted to go help. He gave us all the information, and we formulated a plan to do a bit of time down south and enter by the southern border to Vietnam in a week or so.

This morning we woke up and visited the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, then headed to a real genuine supermarket and drooled over all the cheeses and other imports. We had lunch at fatboy subs- YUM, and now are killing time in an internet cafe until our 2pm bus to Takeo. Love to all, we will update again soon! :)