Ineka & Nick's Awesome Adventure

Hello Vietnam! What an amazing, amazing country. I have heard many people complain about Ho Chi Minh City but I think it is one of the most amazing and eclectic Asian cities I have ever seen. Compared to Phnom Penh, Ho Chi is a walk in the park. It is much, much cleaner and there are far less beggars which makes it a little easier just to walk down the street. I feel much safer in this city. The Lonely Planet warns against drive-by bag snatchings so we have been very careful to keep our bags close to the body and our camera straps wrapped around our wrists at all times. Anyway, I think we need to be more aware of getting killed by a motorbikes rather than someone stealing our bags. Consider this - there are 10 million people living in this city....and 3 milion motorbikes! Nick and I tried to cross an intersection for about 5 minutes before we just bit the bullet, stepped out, half jogged, half ran across the busiest road I have ever seen. Somehow; I dont know how, we made it and everyone just misses you by an inch. Traffic lights mean nothing here. Everyone just drives through a red light!

Day one in Ho Chi Minh was spent on an 8 hour city tour. We covered off all the big tourist sights such as the War Remants museum (more gut wrenching stuff as there are hundreds of photos of people affected by the war, poverty and Agent Orange), the Reunification Palace, a couple of major temples and pagodas, local markets and the usual tourist drop-offs where they try to get you to buy crap for exhorbitant prices. It was a good day and we saw a lot in a short amount of time. Lots of walking = a nice cold beer as a reward!

Day two was very special. We went to see the Chu Chi tunnels which are located about 70 minutes from the city centre (always takes longer too because of the grid-lock traffic!). We were very lucky to have an ex-GI as our tour guide. 'Jackie' gave us an incredible explanation of the Chu Chi tunnels and first-hand stories of the Vietnam war. At the height of the war, the Chu Chi tunnels stretched from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) all the way to the Cambodian border and more than 200km of tunnels were dug. Thousands of Viet Cong lived underground in these tunnels for 26 years. Now I have to say that the Chu Chi tunnels are not for the faint-hearted. Despite the fact that the tunnels have been widened for tourists, they are still tiny, narrow and stuffy. I thought I would be fine to go down one of the regular entrances that the Viet Cong used and I am telling you, I would be lucky to fit one leg in there!!!

It was explained to us before we went down that there are regular exits on the right hand side. This was good to know because I suffered a mild panic attack before going in and wasn't sure if I could do it. Claustophobia city!!! I have trouble staying calm in a zipped-up sleeping bag so the thought of a hot, narrow tunnel quite simply was not very appealing at all! Try to imagine a hot baking tunnel with very little breathable air, squatting down and trying to waddle your way through a long, narrow clay tube.......I waited until the person in front of me had moved ahead and then I whipped through there like Speedy Gonzalez! My little legs were moving at a crazy speed as I waddled and waddled and waddled at lightening speed! Poor Nick couldn't get one photo of me! We both emerged unscathed and Nick admitted to finding it a bit much too. Even so, we decided to go back one more time because I refused to leave until we had a photo. I would never forgive myself for not being able to share this experience with others. By the way, that's not a smile on my face, that's me trying to cover up terror!

The Viet Cong built elaborate booby traps to incapicitate US soilders. Such horrifying traps included suspended planks on the ground that were covered in grass. These planks could not be detected by the uninitiated and just look like the normal ground cover. Once you step on the plank, it swings out from under you and you fall into a large trap that has about 50 bamboo spikes inserted into the ground. There were many more awful, awful traps that we can tell you about when we see you. Gruesome.

We watched a woman make rice paper too. It is a really interesting process whereby you smother a glue-like rice substance on a hot plate, roll it onto a tube and then flatten it out onto bamboo racks to dry out in the sun.

We also had the opportunity to go a bit "GI" ourselves while at the tunnels. Nick and I paid to shoot some rounds from an AK-47! Shooting a gun is a lot harder than I thought it would be! Nick was in his element and had a great old time banging out some bullets! More OHS issues here as we were not provided with ear muffs until we demanded them. The gun guy begrugingly stomped off to get us our ear muffs muttering something rude at us as he walked away. How inconsiderate of us to ask for something like ear protection! It was too late by then and we both went deaf in one ear for half a day.

We have been eating 'pho' (Vietnamese noodle soup) every day and everywhere we go in the search to find the best pho and rice paper rolls in Vietnam. We are still searching as we believe it is out there somewhere. I also should never had tried Vietnamese coffee (strong brewed black coffee with condensed milk) as now I fear I may be heavily addicted!

Off to Hoi An we go! Another early rise at 4.30am to catch a 6.30am flight to Danang airport. After a brief flight on Jetstar (crap plane), we arrived nice and early and battled once again with the ever-aggressive taxi drivers. These guys must make a lot of money from people who aren't prepared to haggle. We arrived at our awesome resort which is situated right on the beach. We spent our first afternoon lolling by the enormous pool. We played some table tennis and billiards and went to the gym.

Hoi An is quite simply the most beautiful Asian town I have ever seen. We are absolutely in love with this gorgeous little town. The architecture is exquisite with Chinese, Japanese and European influences. It looks particularly stunning at night. There are over 200 tailors in this little town. They shops are very appealing and it makes us want to get some clothes made but nearly everyone we talk to has advised against it if you are fussy about quality. The shops here sell beautiful scarves, asian purses and bags, laquer goods, wooden items and of course, lots of clothes.

Hoi An lays claim to having some of the best food in all of Vietnam. We plan to test this claim and embark on our own little gastronomic adventure!

We are here in Hoi An for 2 more days then we head back to Ho Chi Minh for one night, fly to Kuala Lumpur for one night (transit hotel), then back home to good old Melbourne. What a trip this has been. I would recommend Vietnam and Cambodia to everyone. We will definitely return here one day. We hope that you have enjoyed our blog. We hoped that it would keep you informed and remind you that we are safe while providing us with a good written 'diary' of our adventures. Looking forward to seeing you all soon.

I must say Nick and I were pretty pleased to leave Phnom Penh! Just not our up of tea. We have been to many Asian cities and this one was the most in your face. The heat was oppressively hot and it just semed that everyone we encountered wanted to steal or cheat us out of money. Scams are common and often a tuk-tuk driver would take us to the wrong place and then demand more money from us to take us to the right place. We totally understand why they do it but its grating after a while!

After visiting the Killing Fields, four young kids jumped on the back of our tuk tuk. Two on the rear and one on each side. One of the small boys started to grab at my water bottle and was shouting "water, water"as if he needed a drink. This instantly sparked my intuition and the my antenna jumped to attention! These kids sure dont need water. There is plenty of water to go around in this country. While the little boy was shouting at me, the two girls on the back were reaching over the back of the tuk tuk to try to grab our backpack. Luckily Nick had already clued up as to what was going on and had the backback straps wrapped tightly around his wrist. Despite our shouting at them to get off the tuk tuk, they were not scared of us at all and stayed hanging on to the back of the tuk tuk even when the driver was taking off. The driver tried to tell us that it was a "joke, joke"", we both had the feeling that he was in on the scam as well. After the tuk tuk driver tried to rip us off for another $10 USD to take us to our next destination (despite the fact that we had already agreed on a set price before we left), we had just had it and demanded to be taken back to the city. So, in saying all that, we were VERY pleased to catch our 7.45am bus to the beach side town of Sihanoukville.....

After a reasonable four hour journey, what a relief it was to arrive in this lovely coastal town. It is much cooler here with a refreshing ocean breeze cooling the town down.

We are staying at a great hotel with an awesome pool right next to all the restaurants and bars (but not noisy at all). We are paying about $35 USD a night but you can stay in these excellent beach huts for about $5 USD a night. We will seriously consider returning here and staying in the beach huts. This place is westernised but still an untouched paradise when compared to Phuket, Langkawi and Ko Samiu. I read that every surrounding island has now been bought by investors and is due for development in the next few years. We are lucky to be here now and see it before enormous chain hotels and McDonald's turn this laid-back town into a western nightmare.

We spent a day visiting three islands off the coast of Sihanoukville. We spent a couple of hours snorkelling but the visibility wasn't too crash hot due to a torential downpour that happened about 3am the night before. We paid $15 USD for an entire day that included our boat travel, guide, breakfast and a BBQ seafood lunch. Yes peoples, I ate fish! I know, I know. Shock. Horror. It was barracuda too! I have to say it was quite tasty but maybe I just thought so because I was starving from all the swimming!

So, the highlight of our little island adventure was Bamboo Island. This island is probably what Ko Samui was like years ago before it was overrun with tourists. If you are looking for R & R, then this is the place for you! Most islands are unihabited but Bamboo Island has about 10 small huts located right on the beach. It is such a peaceful environment. No beggars, noise or annoying tuk tuk drivers. Just you, an empty beach and a few friendly chooks and baby goats moseying around. Just awesome. Get here people because it wont look like this in 5 years.

Well I'm signing off for now. We are back in Phnom Penh (joy) and we fly out to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow. I'm not sure when I will be back online as we have a lot to see in Ho Chi before we head off to Hoi An for five days. Mind you, an internet cafe is a welcome relief after hours walking in the sun.

BUS TIME! Yay. Well, we said that we were going to try and do it on the cheap so we did. We paid our $11 a ticket and caught a 6 HOUR BUS from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh. Ouch. Nah, just kidding. It wasn't that bad but we have decided NOT to catch the 9 hour bus to Ho Chi Minh City. We are glad we decided to pay the $11 because we saw the $5 bus and it is $5 for a reason....The bus stopped after about 2 hours and we bought some pineapple for about 50 cents.

We arrived at Phnom Penh at about 2.30pm and The Pavillion hotel is really lovely. Beautiful french provincial style. Just lovely.

Nick and I walked to the Tuol Sleng museum (S-21 genocide museum) and you need guts of steel to handle the environment and the confronting images. Over 20,000 people were detained, tortured and killed here. We were quite disturbed yet intrigued and sympathetic for the Khmer people. You can read all about the history of the country and the people under Khmer Rouge rule here at the museum.

On our second day in Phnom Penh we visisted the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek where thousands of Khmer people were taken to be killed. Again, really hard stuff to stomach. The remains of 8985 people, many of whom were bound and blindfolded were exhumed in 1980 from mass graves. 43 of the 129 communal graves have been left untouched.

Wow! It's temple time. This is what we came for and boy were we impressed! I have wanted to see the temples for 10 years. Many people say that they get templed out within a day or two but I could have easily spent a week here. The history, architecture and artworks are remarkable. I was simply in awe. The only thing with the temples is that you need to break it up. The sun is just S-C-O-R-C-H-I-N-G and we just felt exhausted after about 3-4 hours of walking in the sun.

We visited all the big hitters including Ankor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm, Baphoun, Royal Enclosure, Phimeanakas, Terrace of the Elpehants, Terrace of the Lepar King and Banteay Srei. Just incredible.

Some of you may have seen these temples in the movie 'Tomb Raider' and yes, I did hire the DVD before I left Melbourne! The crowds at the temples are pretty full on. At certain times of the day you will be lucky to get a photo of a temple without someone walking in front of your camera. It can be pretty annoying but this is tourism at its best.

Here we are in Cambodia! After an amazing flight on Air Asia we arrived reasonably refreshed and quite relaxed. Air Asia are an incredible airline. We had prepared for the worst considering how cheap our tickets were but the plane was brand new, lovely and clean and only about half full! We had great seats so we didn't need to move but we could have had three seats to lie down on if we wanted to.

Once we arrived in Malaysia we stayed overnight at an airport hotel. We managed a few hours sleep before rising at 3.45am to catch a flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Arriving at 8.00am, we dropped our stuff and off we went to discover the town. There is nothing unsafe about Siem Reap. In fact, the people are incredibly friendly and helpful. In saying that I was duped out of $2 USD within about 5 minutes as a monk approached me and asked me for money to help rebuild his pagoda that was destroyed by a flood. Sucked in big time. After this first encounter the same thing happened about 3 or 4 times. Small children would try to get us to buy books, bracelets and cold drinks for "only one doll-ah". They all had the same spiel which went something like this..."I know the population of Australia...it's 22 million minus two (meaning us because we were in Cambodia). Very cute the first time you hear it but after the next 5 times........
Best not to respond to the kids because if you start talking to them for too long, they stick like glue and will not leave you alone! We walked for about three hours finding our feet and getting the feel for Siem Reap. Nick was fascinated with the construction sites and lack of safety measures. Most of the major sites had little more than bamboo scaffolding.



Our hotel in Siem Reap was quite nice. The bathroom was a little scary but we didn't expect perfection for $35 USD. I suffered a mild stroke while showering as I noticed an enormous shadow of a spider on the shower curtain. With a blood curdling scream, Nick came running in an attempt to save me and accidently flicked the spider into the shower with me! Not to worry though. Soon enough we were spider-free after Nick killed it with a Haviana. Poor Cambodian spidey

After enjoyng a couple of 0.50 cent beers (Asahi is only 0.50 cents and the local beer 'Ankor' is just as nice!), we hailed a tuk-tuk and headed up to Bakeng to watch the sun set. Despite being 5pm, it was still stinking hot and neither of us had a dry bit of t-shirt left by the time we walked up a long steep track to get there. The photo showing the steps at Bakeng really dont show how steep it really is. The steps are narrow and high. I saw many women trying to climb this in heels!

The views were incredible and the temple itself an amazing feat of architeture.