Mar 2007

I have been observing the locals here in Vietnam and have come across some bizarre and odd practices.

Vietnamese people are professional loiters. They casually make it their sole purpose in life to do absoluely nothing at every given chance.

And I like it.

90% of the people pick their nose in public and 100% of them have no problem with it. 9 times out of 10 they will try to sell you something and mostly it's of absolute no interest to you, like a pair of scizzors when you are about to travel through 5 of the most top security airports in the world.
They will sell you lighters, sunglasses, crappy bracelets, earbuds, anything! And if you want something they dont have, they will find someone who does and they will sell it to you. Most often they will try to sell you a trip on their bike and when they are not selling you a trip on their bike they are most likely sitting on it, loitering and picking their nose.

Yeah, they do some odd things, as I´m writting this a women walked into the ocean in her pajamas. I would normally put an exclaimation point at the end of a sentence like that, but this time I didn´t because I´m not really suprised, things like that happen all the time in Vietnam and I am becoming immune to it. Who knows, by the end of this holiday I might be walking into the ocean in my pajamas without even giving it a second thought.

I do love their honesty towards life, I mean, 'who cares if someone is watching, who cares if I have two different shoes on and I´m eating my dinner in a very very tiny plastic chair next to the gutter in a thick cloud of bus smog. Who cares if I sit in the middle of the footpath and I pick my feet, eat my noodles and then try to sell you pineapples, who cares!!!'

just hanging around

Mui Ne beach

We have spent the last two days living on buses (grrrrr)but now we are finally at the lovely Mui Ne. Mui Ne is a long stretch of beach filled with expensive resorts priced right up to $300 per night or even more. We found a cosy little resort further up the beach, it's right on the water and has a restaurant, a pool, and lots of places to laze about. Mui Ne is on the south east tip of Vietnam, it gets quite breezy after 11am and the place swams with wind surfers and kite surfers. There are massive burnt orange sand dunes at either end of the beach that you can fly down on a piece of cardboard

Today I had a banana and condensed milk pancake for breakfast and Sam some noodles with egg. We spent the morning soaking up the sun, jumping in and out of the pool and reading our books under the thatched umbrellas. This is my sorts holiday.
In the middle of the day we went for a walk to the other end of the beach. It didn´t look that long from here. By the time we reached the southern end we were absolutely roasting. Our skin was red raw!
We bumped into another Aussie along the beach who told us the restaurant with the red plastic chairs in the sand was the place to eat. So we gave it a go. The springrolls were so yummy and they have cheap bottled tiger.
By now I was stinging to get back in the pool and we hopped on the back of a couple of motos to take us home. We stopped to buy some Vodka and I burnt my leg on the exhaust pipe. Ouch!

Minh Tam Resort

Now I'm sitting by the pool nursing my full body burns, I´m lobster red from top to bottom, beetroot Shell!

Siem Reap kicks arse on PP. The people are so friendly and there is hardly any garbage on the street. We are staying at the Golden Village Guesthouse. It has nice staff, balconies, wood panelled rooms and a massive budda statue. The main street in Siem Reap is long and is full of restaurants, bars and tourist offices. We found some markets where you could say no and not be hasselled.

We've been sitting on the balcony watching the sun go down, our mission tonight is to find the cheapest restaurant in town cause we spent all our money on those temples! We ate a $2 Panang curry which has been the cheapest and best yet, we had Phat Thai, that's right Phat Thai, not Padd Thai, I guess it's the same thing and a really yummy Cambodian oily fried rice, it had egg, sausage, spinach, shallots, bok choy and cabbage. Yum!

Sam getting agro cause repeats are on the telle, hey, they only got 70 channels! Aparently Cambodians love TV as they can´t afford to do anything else. The skyline is crammed with satilite dishes. We just went for a small walk up the street to get a small snack before dinner (can't walk for too long, Sam has Angkor Wat chefs!) Pork roll for just 100 Reil, which is about 25c! Bargin!

Today we went to Angkor Wat and surrounding temples... 1st of all, it was F#@k'n HOT!! It's way hotter this time of year in Cambodia that in Vietnam.

Lots of kids trying to sell us bangles, you get pretty sick of it. In the end, we offer to sell them some of our belongings and hassel them back, "buy my shoes, but my camera" They get it, have a laugh, we ask why their not at school and they tell us they only go in the mornings. The kids learn very good english and have a lot of knowledge about austalia and other countries.

I can't really do the temples any justice by writting about them. They are just amazing. A couple of things, they are very old, built in the 12th century by the help of elephants, they are massive, they are stone and you can climb and walk all over them. I love the hundreds of smiling faces and lotus buds.

By the end of the day our clothes are covered in sweat and we can't look at any more temples.

Yes, finally a sleep in! We slept from 2 after lunch to 10am this morning with much thanks to our happy pizza, after ordering our small sized pizza with extra happy we were completely stoned out of our minds. F@#k'd! we couldn't hold a converstaion with each other. We had planned on a few manderin vodkas, we even made a special trip to the shop and stocked up on lamonade and plastic cups, had a makeshift table on the balconly, armed with a pack of cards... Nope. Smashed. Plain bread had never tasted so good.

Travelling long days has taken a toll on my sick fluey body. We are doing 12 hour travel days up at 5 in the morning. We opted for the slow travel along the Mekong Delta travelling from Siagon to Phnom Penh, hoping to see some beautiful scenary along the way. The bordẹr crossing a pain in the asshole. Passport in, passport out, long interigating stare from offical, passport in, passport out.... Then bus, boat, bus, boat, another boat, another bus. The boats are deffinately more comfortable than the buses but chug along at zero speed.

The Mekong itself and the floating markets being the main attractions. A short stop-over on an island and rode some pushies then had lunch at a small local kitchen before heading of to see a basa fish farm.

I´m a bit scared of Phnom Phen, the capital of Cambodia. Its a very black and white city. Rich tourists, poor backstreet locals. One side of the street could be filled with garbage, beggers and stench and the other with 5 star hotels, royal palaces, french frestaurants and mod looking bars. PP has the worst roads in the world, they live in shit and dirt, drink pìssy water and have the most beautiful golden temples splattered all over the place. Very different to Vietnam.

We are here staying at the Ankor International where we have a mouldy dirty shower, a crappy view of the stinking markets and road works and extremely rude staff.
A little kid tried to sell us some books and postcards. We told him we didn´t want any, he got very angry and ripped up a postcard and threw it at us and called Sam a fuckhole. Very funny.

So in the end I didn´t take to PP, but I did spend the day in bed from happy pizza being too happy and later very very sick to the point of throwing up in mouth walking through those disgusting stinking markets....so I probably didn't give PP my best shot....but I´m not rushing back!