Bangkok to Rio

Saigon was similar to Bangkok in that we ate, did tourist stuff, ate again, hung out at the guesthouse, and then ate. Here are some photos:

These photos are from Ben Thanh market, near our guesthouse:

This was part of our lunch at the market - translucent rice paper rolls with pork and mushrooms:

Lunch the next day - crispy fried cakes with shrimp and sweet potato, and bun cha -- one of Vietnam's great dishes, consisting of charcoal-grilled pork, rice vermicelli, lots of fresh herbs, and a dipping sauce:

This is a street restaurant specializing in banh xeo -- rice flour crepes filled with shrimp, pork, and bean sprouts. You wrap in in lettuce, stuff it with fresh herbs, and dip in in fish sauce.

Rules in Communist Vietnam are very strict.

The big tourist thing to do in the Mekong Delta is to take a boat trip of the floating markets. For six hours, we were rowed around in a shaky little boat by a very tough Mekong lady. Here are some photos of the market:

Each boat advertises what is has by hanging a sample from a tall pole. This boat was a veritable supermarket.

Jesse is making fun of my use of the phrase "veritable supermarket," so I'll just continue with photos:

This woman had a banh mi (Vietnamese sandwich on a baguette, for those who have never been to Vietnam or Oakland Chinatown) operation on her boat:

The fruit on this boat is called dragonfruit, which sounds really cool, looks really cool, and tastes totally boring.

Here is the lovely lady who rowed us around all day:

After the market, we spent a few hours boating along the network of canals that runs through the city and surrounding rural areas.

Finally, a few more photos of Can Tho (the Delta town):

Incense in the Chinese pagoda in town center:

And, it wouldn't be a post without a photo of what we ate. Our first sample of Vietnamese pho came from this cart:

Up next: SAIGON.

Actually, that title is a bit of a misnomer. We were quite happy to finally leave hot, dusty, dirty Phnom Penh and head down the river to Vietnam. Actually, first we got in a hot, dusty, dirty bus and bumped along dirt roads for about an hour and a half alongside the river before getting onto the river itself. Why the boat doesn't actually leave from Phnom Penh is still a mystery, but probably has something to do with making sure your journey gets spread over as many different modes of transportation as possible, which seems to be a theme of this trip so far.

The boat ride was nice, though -- we headed down the Mekong for several hours, which is easily a mile wide at most points, then crossed the border into Vietnam and turned off into the network smaller waterways and canals that criscross the Mekong Delta region. We spent the last few hours drifting by houses on stilts, people casting and pulling in fishing nets, women in conical hats, people wading up to their waists in rice paddies -- pretty much what vietnam is supposed to look like.

Sadly, the light was pretty terrible for most of the trip, but here's one photo of the boat:

We floated into Chau Doc, the sleepy Vietnamese border town late in the afternoon, checked into our hotel, and headed out for one of the best meals of the trip so far:

This is a Mekong Delta specialty, river fish in a sweet/sour/salty broth with lots of vegetables, fresh herbs, and fried shallots on the top. Yum.

Chau Doc was pleasant and charming, but tiny with very little to do, so we headed the next morning for Can Tho, the largest town in the Delta.

We took the local bus there, rather than the air-conditioned tourist bus ($1.50 for the three hour trip, rather than $5). On this bus we saw one of the more interesting sights we've seen...pretty much anywhere.

Let me paint a picture here: this guy gets on the bus, which is already full, so he sits in the middle aisle right next to us on an upturned milk crate. He then drops his baggy sweatpants -- turns out he has shorts on underneath. He opens up his duffel bag, which contains dozens of cigarette cartons and a lot of rubber bands.

He starts taking cartons, two or three at a time, and strapping them to his upper thighs with the rubber bands. We figure, okay, I guess there's a quota on how many cigarettes you can transport by bus from one town to another? He must be hiding some of them so that he's within the legal limit. But no, the strapping continues for a good 20 minutes (meanwhile, two little kids on the other side of him keep glancing over and giggling -- we're not the only ones amused). Finally, his entire bag is empty -- he's managed to attach an entire medium-sized duffel bag of cigarette cartons to his legs. He then puts the sweatpants back on, his legs have now more or less tripled in circumference, and he's now walking with a pronounced bow-legged gait, like you see on people who have spent too much time on a horse.

Anyhow, over the course of the bus ride, at least two women with similar leg-girth waddle onto the bus. We began to wonder if we should be strapping things to our legs as well, but unfortunately I was wearing shorts and Beth's pants have a nice tailored fit; she only managed to strap on her iPod and a couple lychee fruits before we gave it up and settled in for the ride.

We headed from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, where we waited two days for our Vietnam visa to come through.

Other than some French colonial-style buildings along the river, Phnom Penh is mostly gray, concrete block-style buildings. Neither of us were too enamored by the city, but we managed to do a few interesting things -- the most interesting being a visit to Tuol Sleng, a former school in the city that became the Khmer Rouge's torture and detention center. The buildings have been left exactly as they were found, including chains, shackles, and torture equipment in the cells. On the wall of each cell is a photo of the last victim found in each room when it was liberated by the Vietnamese army. We took photos but decided they were a little too disturbing to put up here.

Mostly, we were excited to leave Phnom Penh and head down the Mekong to Vietnam, which we'll write about shortly. In the meantime, a few remaining pictures from Cambodia that didn't make it into the last post:

Fish Amok, the national dish of Cambodia: freshwater fish, cocunut milk, and other stuff, baked in a banana leaf. A bit bony but very tasty.

Some snacks for sale along the road from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. I believe those are deep-fried spiders on the right, some sort of roasted bird in the middle, and on the left, who knows? We didn't partake, but those spiders looked good and crispy.

Siem Reap, Cambodia is only about 300 km from Bangkok, but it took us a full 12 hours to make the trip, which involved seven different motorized vehicles - subway to taxi to bus to tuk-tuk to golf cart to bus to taxi.

Siem Reap is a dusty, poor Cambodian city with the same population as San Francisco, but people come there for only one reason -- the surrounding jungle is filled with ruins of the great Khmer cities and temples of the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries.

Ignore the green scaffolding and this is pretty much what it looked like a thousand years ago:

For $12 a day, we hired a driver to take us around the ruins.

Not a bad ride.

I don't know why American tourists have such a bad reputation; really, I don't.