NagaiKami's trip to Cambodia and Vietnam! | Page 1 | Camwhores | Guild Forums

chinotenshi

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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:53 pm

NagaiKami has given me permission to post his daily e-mails and the pictures he attaches to them so you all can see how his solo trip is going!

Gonna do each new day in a new post. Gonna reserves a bunch of posts, but it probably won't be enough. So, once people start commenting on the photos, I'll link to the new post here as I add new photos/e-mails.

LATEST POSTS are HERE and HERE and HERE!

WARNING: WAY PHOTO HEAVY. NOT FOR PEOPLE WITH SLOW-a** COMPUTERS

Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:56 pm

First day here was a mixed bag. Went to the supermarket to get a bunch of necessities that I'd forgotten (or couldn't get in China.) I thought I was being very frugal, and so I was shocked when my bill came out to $30. Turns out I hadn't checked the price on my most important item: sunscreen. $18 a bottle, but I couldn't survive here without it, and no stores in China had it available before I left (because who needs sunscreen in Mianyang... in February.) In general, I was jealous of the supermarket; there's a very large foreign community here, and so the market obviously caters to them.

After shopping and lunch I went to the "Genocide Center" or "Killing Fields." The site provides an audio tour that was very well done. As you walk through the area they explain both the historical background of everything there, as well as playing the accounts of people who survived the Khmer Rouge regime.

After that I regrouped at my hostel and tried to find an artisan shop the hostel advertised. The proceeds from their handicrafts and artwork go to victims of landmines and polio, so I thought it would be a good place to pick up gifts for people. Unfortunately, their directions weren't clear, and my tuk-tuk driver and I ended up wandering the edge of the city for half an hour. By the time I saw the sign for it, they were already closed. So that was a bit of a waste.

In the evening I walked along the riverfront... and wasn't impressed. I ate a restaurant near the river, which was nice. I had a Cambodian dish: amok. It had grilled fish, curry and coconut milk and was good, and not spicy at all, which surprised me. Mostly, it reminded me of quiche, only with curry instead of cheese.

Picture 1: My tuk-tuk driver, Don. Fans of Asia pop culture will get a kick from his helmet. Also, note that we're stuck behind a garbage truck, which is the worst place to be when riding a tuk-tuk.
Picture 2: Mass graves that have been excavated at the killing field. This is probably the least graphic picture I can show you from the site. IT was... very powerful and emotional.
Picture 3: As if the depression of the killing fields wasn't enough, I also had to run into a snake along the way and be terrified. I know it's small, and it's a constrictor, but it's still surprising to run into along the way.

That's it for today. I gotta get started on today's itinerary.

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chinotenshi

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chinotenshi

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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 2:57 pm

Phnom Penh Day 2 or "Why did you want to go to Cambodia?"

This is why. smile

I hope these stay in the order I'm attaching them rather than ending up in numerical order. If they do, you'll just have to match the descriptions on your own :p

Pic 1: Ticket, describing the days tour.
Pic 2-3: Monkeys. I forget what breed; they were the most common in the area, and were free to roam the sanctuary as they pleased.
Pic 4: Giant yellow squirrel. He puts our Cleveland squirrels to shame
Pic 5: Crocodile
Pic 6-7: Pea-fowl, according to my guide. Not sure if there's a difference from a peacock.
Pic 8: Shaking hands with a gibbon, sorry it's blurry, I have no control over other people's ability to take photos of me.
Pic 9: Fantastic Cambodian meal for lunch. One of our guides, the woman serving the rice, reminded me a lot of Mai in her personality and patterns of speech (minus Watana's frequent use of English profanity)
Pic 10: Sun bears playing. biggrin Much like the way Castor and Pollux play. Phnom Tao Sanctuary is the largest sun bear sanctuary in the world.
Pic 11-12: Otters!
Pic 13-15: Behind the scenes of the leopard enclosure, we were allowed to get much closer to the enclosure than most guests, but still needed to stay 1m away for everyone's safety.
Pic 16-19: Tiger enclosure, same as the leopards, we were allowed in a little closer... but one of the females didn't like men so I couldn't go anywhere near her cage to take pictures without her growling.
Pic 20-21: Lucky, the elephant.
Pic 22-23: Feeding Lucky!
Pic 24: Ride back into Phnom Penh.

I leave for Siem Reap tomorrow morning, so I'll have to resettle there before I'll be in contact.

Take care everyone!

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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:03 pm

Siem Reap Day 1: First impressions...

"How can it possibly be hotter hear than in Phnom Penh?!?!"

Still, once I got past that impression, I really like the city. Maybe it's because Angkor Wat creates a much larger tourist industry, but the city seems a lot cleaner and easier to get around. It also helps that my guesthouse here is much nicer than my hostel in PP.

Once I settled in, it was time for a shopping excursion! My next two days are going to be booked solid with seeing the many temples and other buildings in the city, so I dedicated today to getting some gift shopping done. My main requirement was that anything I bought needed to be handmade in Cambodia. One of the owner's of the guesthouse was very helpful in recommending 4 places where she knew the products were all made by local artisans. I proceeded to visit 3 of them: a silk farm; a craft store where they make woven palm branch boxes as well as making lots of scented products (soaps, candles, incense, etc) using products all grown in Cambodia (including a large herb garden in the back of the facility); and a ceramics shop. All had great products, you could see the various stages of production, and it's good to know all purchases actually support the local economy.

I'm debating going to a night market right now. I've already bought enough that my suitcase is reaching its limit, but I'd also like to see what the market is like.

The computer here is being stubborn and not letting me resize photos, so I'm going to cut back today.

Pic 1: Countryside between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap
Pic 2: Gas stand in Siem Reap. Those bottles? Those are the gas for motorcycle and tuk-tuk drivers to fill up with.
Pic 3: Woman working a silk loom
Pic 4: Palm branches dyed to allow for decorative boxes
Pic 5: The Japanese on this bus ad is wrong. The kanji they used for "rent" is the kanji for "rental housing".

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chinotenshi

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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:07 pm

Siem Reap day 2: Angkor What?

First of all, do you all know that horrible sinking feeling you get when it's 9:30am, you're already out for a long day of activity with no way of going home, and you realize you forgot your sunscreen? Yeah, that feeling sucks. It almost sucks as much as the sunburn I now have on both arms. I'm gonna make sure that doesn't happen again.

Today I visited Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, and Phnom Bakheng Hill. More on each of those later. For this part of the trip, I hired an English speaking tour guide to lead me through the many temples. It's a decision I debated for a while, and after today's outing, I think it was definitely worthwhile. Sothik has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the history of the temples, the religions behind them (he actually lived in Angkor Wat for 6 years as a child), and the practices of the many tour companies in the area. While in Phnom Penh I spoke with another American staying at my hostel and he was very cynical about the merits of having a guide. Then again, he also complained about the bumpiness of the bus ride between Phnom Penh and Siem Reap; and anyone from Pennsylvania who has the audacity to complain about bumpy highways is not to be taken seriously.

So anyway, Angkor Thom is a formerly-Buddhist, formerly-Hindu, back-to-Buddhist set of temples. Apparently as different kings favored different faiths, the "in-crowd" would go in and redecorate as they pleased (meaning there are lots of Buddhist statues that were destroyed/defaced when the Hindus took over.) Nowadays both religions are accepted so the temple has statues from both faiths. We spent the morning there; while it may have just been because it was still cool and I still had lots of energy, I think I may have actually enjoyed Angkor Thom more than Wat.

Lunch at one of the tourist trap restaurants in the area. Couldn't be avoided.

Afternoon at Angkor Wat. Wow. Just wow. It's hard to really capture it in photos or words, because of the scales it exists on simultaneously. On the one hand it's one of the largest religious compounds/structures/whatever? in the world. It's huge; it was built by over 300,000 workers and 6,000 sculptors over more than three decades... and they still didn't have time to finish everything. On the other hand, there's an extraordinary attention to detail. Almost every surface is decorated in one way or another. And not big bulky things... tiny, tiny engravings everywhere. After a while it just overloads your senses trying to keep track of them all.

After spending a couple hours in Angkor Wat, we moved to Phnom Bakheng Hill. There is another temple at the top of the hill, though it is much smaller than the others we visited today. It's most well known for having great views of sunrise and sunset since you can see most of the surrounding area: Angkor Wat, the lake, the jungle and even out to the city and airport. The trick is that after 4:30pm they start limiting the number of visitors allowed at the top of the temple. If you arrive after that time and there are too many people in the temple (300 or so) you have to wait for someone to leave before you can enter. Since the majority of people are waiting for sunset, this means if you're too late, you're not going to see it. To avoid this, Sothik got us there by 3:50. Luckily, I had my nook and was able to kill some of the two hours' time until sunset. I also chatted a bit with a Japanese couple sitting next to me.

That was my day. Tomorrow we depart at 5:00am so we can see the sun rise over Angkor Wat, and continue to see more temples and an entire village on stilts. The day after that, I leave for Ho Chi Minh City.

Oh, and everyone, you have homework this time. Apparently you all need to go watch the first Tomb Raider movie. I'll be visiting the temple that appears in that Lara Croft goes to.

Pics 1-5: Temples within Angkor Thom
Pics 6-7: Monkeys outside the temple area
Pics 8-10: Angkor Wat
Pics 11-12: Phnom Bakheng Hill

Honestly, I'm sure I have some better pictures to send... but I took over 500 photos today and I'm far too exhausted to go through them all right now. You'll notice these are mostly of large structures, because my eyes can't handle sorting through all the photos of smaller statues and other details.

Take care everyone.

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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:09 pm

Siem Reap Day 3: Man vs. Nature

Nature always wins.

It was a weird day of ups and downs. After a night of very fitful sleep, I left for Angkor Wat at 5am in order to get a good spot to watch the sunrise. It's very weird entering the temple in the dark. It definitely made me want to start the world's most epic game of hide and seek. I'm mad at myself because I forgot my Eddie Bauer flashlight when packing that morning, and while Sothik had a flashlight, I was sad to miss the opportunity to put it to use.

I took more than 500 photos again today... though the first 100 were all trying to get good shots of the sunrise. The digital age has created a strange problem. With film cameras you have to work hard to take a good shot so you don't waste film. With a digital camera, you end up with so many shots, it's hard to know which is best.

After sunrise we stopped for a quick breakfast, then continued our tour of the temple park. Lots and lots of pictures of all the places. The most famous was the second one on the itinerary, Ta Prohm. It's the one from the Tomb Raider movie, and it is quite awesome. What's different between the temples I visited yesterday and today is that today's temples are more "ruins" than "temples" at this point. After being abandoned in the 15th century, nature took over and the temples were completely overrun by trees whose roots are capable of splitting apart the stones in walls and ceilings.

Mother nature is scary.

After a couple more temples and lunch, we moved on to the "floating village." It's a community of people who live entirely off of the lake in the center of Cambodia. All their houses, shops, and other buildings are built on floating platforms so they will rise with the water when the lake floods from August to December. While donations from international organizations and extra income from the tourism help, it's still a very poor community and they live very simple lives. Going by all their houses was a very unique window into Cambodian life.

While I was at lunch, my tuk-tuk driver got a call from the guest house for me. Apparently there was a problem with my reservations that while I had originally planned to stay for 3 nights, the system only booked me for 2... and I hadn't read my confirmation emails closely enough to catch that. Luckily one room had opened in the meantime (and with A/C no less) so I asked them to just give me that room for the night.

Upon returning to the guest house, I said farewell to my wonderful tour guide, moved into my new room, and proceeded to pass out. A wonderful nap in the A/C refreshed me, and I got up around 6:30 to shower and head out for the night, only to have the power in the guest house cut off a couple minutes later. I guess there was some major screw-up at the power company, and our entire block was without power for the next 3.5 hours. That's why my email is getting out even later than usual today.

No power meant no lights, no A/C and very limited selections from the hotel's restaurant. So I headed the night market to kill some time. Got back... still no power. Sat and chatted with other guests for a while. They left for a party at one of the bars in town. Still no power. Sat at the bar with the owners and staff for a bit. Just when I'm getting frustrated and want to ask for a discount on my room, power comes on. So here I am writing you all. Of the two computers for guests, the one that actually likes me isn't working right now. I'm stuck on the one that won't let me resize photos and is more difficult to type on. So I'm gonna throw on a 3-4 photos and call it a night.

I'll be in Vietnam early tomorrow evening. Hopefully I can write again from there.

Ok, I lied. There are just too many good pictures to quit at 4.

Pics 1-3: Sunrise at Angkor Wat
Pics 4-6: Ta Prohm
Pics7-8: Floating village.

Again, these are just the tip of the iceberg. I'll have to go through all my photos again once I'm back in China.

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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:14 pm

Safe in Vietnam

It was a long day of traveling, because apparently it takes 3 buses to get to Saigon from Siem Reap. Since everything I've seen here says Saigon and not Ho Chi Minh City, and Saigon is much easy to say/type, I'm just going to use that from now on.

I was supposed to get picked up at 5:50am for a 6:30 bus, but the van didn't arrive until 6:20. The van took us to a bus station where we all piled on ready to go... only to take a 10 minute drive to a central bus station. Unload all the luggage from one bus, load it all up onto another. Drive 5 hours back to Phnom Penh, repeat process (only include an hour of wait time between buses.)

I did take pictures along the way, but my hotel only has the one computer for use (the one at the check-in counter) so while I'm allowed to use it, I really don't want to monopolize it. Photos will have to wait until I'm in Hanoi, unless I go to an internet cafe sometime tomorrow. I'm only spending one day in Saigon; I'll leave on an 11pm bus for Hanoi tomorrow night

Guess that's all for today.

Good night everyone!

This is a collection of photos from Cambodia that I've wanted to send along the way. Some are from my first day, my last day (since Ta Prohm was amazing) and the bus ride on the way to Saigon.

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Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2012 3:16 pm

Saigon Day 2: Impulse buys

Good morning everyone,

While up to now I've been fairly good about keeping to my itinerary, yesterday was a pretty major shift in plans. While trying to book my train ticket to Hanoi, the travel agents finally managed to convince me to just fly there. The plane ticket is actually cheaper than the train would have been (though since I'll have to pay for a place to sleep for two nights, it all comes out about the same. With the prices the same, what it really came down to was: do I want to spend more time in the cities exploring, or do I want to see more of the countryside? Since I already feel like my trip is too short and I'm not getting to see everything I want, I decided to get more time in the cities. So I'm still in Saigon, and after a trip to the art museum here, I'll be flying north to Hanoi.

From the travel agents, I went on a tour to the Cu Chi Tunnels, which is an area just north of Saigon that was most devastated by the war. It's unique for the 200km of tunnels built by the Viet Cong that allowed them to move through the area mostly undetected and wage guerrilla warfare. In general, it was a depressing visit, because I never like hearing about war, and hearing about the US' actions in the war is even worse.

Along with being able to go through a section of the tunnels (I only went through 15-20m of it because it was so hot and cramped) there is also a shooting range on site where you can fire the same models of weapons that were used during the war. I'm not exactly a gun person, and $1 a bullet to fire the rifles ($1.75 for the automatics) seemed a bit steep, but I decided to do it anyway. I saw it more as a learning experience than anything. It's hard to talk about war when you've never even heard gunfire up close.

After we got back to the city, I made my way to Reunification Palace, which was South Vietnam's base of operations during the war. Since I didn't have a tour guide, I kind of wandered a bit, and ended up seeing the palace in the reverse order of most of the other tourists. Oh, well. I still got to see a lot; everything has been left more or less the same for the past three decades. The basement still has all the maps and communications equipment, and the upper levels still have all the fancy amenities. I have to say, even though it's very obviously a palace, and the upper levels are very luxurious, the whole thing still seems to scream, "I was built in the 60's."

From the palace it's a 5 minute walk to Notre Dame Cathedral. Never thought I'd get to hear the bells ring at Notre Dame... technically, I have now. No need to go to Paris anymore. It's a beautiful church with... memorable design features inside. Most of the area is off limits for tourists, but you are allowed to go in to pray, so I was glad to be able to do that.

I made a quick trip to a fair trade shop I read about online and then called it a day.

Pics 1-2: Workshop for families of the victims of agent orange. They're taught various crafts to help support their families.
Pics 3-6: Cu Chi Tunnels, and I'm sure my posture and way of holding the gun are all wrong but they didn't really give any instructions so I had to bluff it.
Pics 7-12: Reunification Palace
Pics 13-16: Notre Dame Cathedral

That's it for the day.

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