51)VIETNAM: in pictures: Daily Life

This is a collection of all sorts of photos from Vietnam, mostly dealing with the daily life of the people who live in the Southern part of the country. The locations range from Saigon to the East coast to the Western boarder. As you can see the children often got very excited to see our boat go by.

50)VIETNAM: in pictures: On The Water

While in Vietnam Chip and I stayed primarily on the Mekong Delta. We entered in through Saigon, but really only spent a day and a night there. The delta is really an interesting place to visit- a lot of the woman were the typical hats one would think of when they envision Vietnam, and a lot of their daily life revolves around the water. People are constantly on boats, and there are several “floating markets” on the delta. The floating markets are basically a collection of boats in one area selling and buying a huge variety of goods, but mostly fresh fruits, vegis, and fish (as far as I could tell).

49)“The Wild East”

I just got back from a trip to Sen Monorom, which is sometimes called “the Wild East”. According to some sources “Provincial capitals don’t get more remote or inaccessible than Sen Monorom”. This is a land where tigers still roam, and tribal villages exist much the same way they have for hundreds of years. So, naturally I loved the idea of traveling there. I really had no plan going into this side trip, and actually I had not planed on going to Sen Monorom at all. I started out by traveling to Kratie, and intending to just stay there (the sunset pictures are from Kratie). But one thing led to another, and eventually I met some Ausies who turned out to be great people, and offered for me to come along on their elephant trekking trip. I agreed to their offer and the next thing I knew I was in the jungle on the back of an elephant. The elephant proved to be extremely uncomfortable so I eventually decided to just walk, which was a lot nicer for me. The trip was great, this area of the country is full of beautiful rolling hills with prairie on top, and jungle in the valleys. The sound of the cicadas, crickets, birds and river mixed in with views of the lush green life of the jungle to create a great stimulous for the senses. The other nice part about this area was it was a lot cooler. The nights and early mornings were pretty cool, and the days were hot, but nothing like in other areas of Cambodia.

48) Vietnam

Chip and I are on a short Vietnam trip. We are basically just taking a 4 day tour of the Mekong Delta. We spent our first night in Saigon- we stayed in a room for $5 a night (that was for both of us). In the downstairs when you walk into the house the family was carrying on as usual- as if strangers were not walking through to get to their upstairs rooms. When we left early the next morning two of the people who lived there were sleeping downstairs- one on the floor and one on the couch.

Last night and today we had the day to ourselves, so last night we wandered around the town a bit. The first of the notable events of that night was when a group of nine boys spotted us on the street. They were 12 years old. They were asking us questions and wanted to slap our hands and things of that nature. Then one of them asked us if we could "hip hop"- they wanted us to do some brake dancing. We asked them to show us and one of the kids showed us in the street (mind you this is a pretty busy street, and we are standing on the median, so heavy traffic is flowing on both sides, and this is at night). Then Chip decides to join in and does a hand-stand in the street. This urged one of the boys to try again. He does the handstand then tries to do some sort of move on just one hand- that is when he fell on his head! We all started to crack up laughing- and so did the boy who fell on his head in the street.

After that we figured out we were a pretty big hit in this area of town. People were giving us some pretty good looks while we walked along side the road. A little later we spotted some sort of mall and decided to go in. Once in the mall we really felt like celebrities. Teenage girls would follow us around giggling, both men and woman would give us full body check-outs, and girls our age would stop and pretend to look at stuff in order to keep the distance between us very short. A saw a mom pointing us out to her children as we were on the escalator. The best part about the mall was when we stopped to check out some cameras. First a couple people followed us into the electronics area to see what we would look at. Then when Chip started to do long devision to figure out the conversion and the price of a camera the crowd started to form. By the time Chip figure out the camera was not a good price a crowd of about 20 people had gathered around us. We both walked away from that scene with big smiles on our faces.

Today we took a trip up one of the rivers to a floating market. There are a lot of people offering all sorts of tours to the market- but they seemed extremely over priced. So Chip and I went down to the riverside to check things out for ourselves. After about one minute we found an old lady who was willing to take us both to the market and back for $4. The market is pretty cool because people pull up to your boat in a boat and offer you whatever their specialty is- drinks, fruit, etc. After we turned down some pineapple the old lady who was driving us around bought it for us anyway! Then later she bought us some fresh watermelon! She was very sweet, and showed us pictures of her friends and family along the way too. After the market she offered to take us down a side river- and having nothing better to do we accepted her offer. It was a pretty cool trip. Giant Sago Palms grew on the rivers edge, people were fishing, and we just got to see a very interesting side of the country that I have wanted to see.

I cannot put any pictures on just yet, but once I get back to Cambodia in a couple of days I may be able to start posting pics again.

47) CAMBODIA: in pictures: The Markets

The markets of Cambodia are absolutely crazy, and filled with things that seem pretty bizarre and or disgusting to me. There are so many things in these markets worth mentioning I don’t even know where to begin. A top few would be: the live skinned frogs (mentioned in entry #43), giant baskets full of dead snakes, a huge variety of animal organs, people clubbing fish to death when someone buys it, and the ground- probably the most disgusting ground I have ever walked on. The first couple times I visited some of the markets that are not popular with foreigners I made the mistake of wearing sandals, and there is just no avoiding getting the filth of who know what on your feet when you do that.

There are two markets that are pretty popular with foreigners in Phnom Penh, and they are still pretty chaotic, but offer a lot more crafts, silks, shoes and clothes. It is pretty cool what can be found in these markets, because a lot of the popular companies in the US have factories here. That means you can get brand new shoes (such as Nike Shocks) for about $10-$15, and all sorts of clothes and backpacks for super cheap.

46) Around Phnom Penh

Chip arrived in Cambodia a couple days ago. Since then we have been hanging around Phnom Penh the entire time, and checking out some of the markets and some of the sites. Yesterday we visited the Royal Palace, which is quite beautiful. We also walked by and Independence Monument, which is a beautiful structure in the middle of a round about. Pictures of both the Monument and the Palace can be seen below.

The one thing I think I am regretting from yesterday was going out to lunch with the housekeeper. She is Cambodian, and agreed to take us to lunch with her- which I suspect is causing some stomach problems with me. I had fish-head soup and rice, while Chip had rice and whole salted fish. Both of them were actually pretty good, but the germs I suspect were not so good. The entire meal for the three of us cost $1.25- pretty amazing in my opinion.