Category: travel

Having made the executive decision and a group choice of taking the sunrise tour we all woke up at 4am. Dad officially spoiled me rotten by waking me up with coffee. (my internal clock is still all fucked up – I woke up at 3am convinced its 4 and it’s time to get up) no packing or showers (those would be after the tour), just a quick getting ready we met our tuktuk driver at the gate.
It was pitch black, the roads were empty, only a few people riding bicycles. The motorcycle light lit the road with no other lighting coming our way.
A sleepy security guard checked our passed at some entrance to Angkor Wat and we made our way to the temple which stood in total, pitch blackness. It really was surreal – the driver just waved at a dark hole on the side of the road and we went forward with mom and dad welding tout fully prepared flashlights.
We were the first and the only people to enter the temple – dark walls revealed under the lights, no girls posing for photos in the arches, no sound except for some quiet bird squawks, just three of us and two beams of light. It was magic, absolutely unique and unforgettably special.
The entry had a wooden path that goes through three arches/rooms, and then you climb up massive stone steps upwards. All in pitch black. The climb is about 200 meters, with a platform halfway.
The top part has a centrally raised temple, and 4 smaller pillars on the 4 corners. The feeling of being alone, perceiving trees and other statues in the distance and massive stone structures around you, but the sky being full of stars, a glint of a horizontally hung crescent moon…. And then the roosters started to wake up and you could hear them crowing one by one, and all of that is just YOURS. Magic.
Of course eventually others showed up. First a couple (Italy and Norway) who after figuring out with us (using an iPhone, natch, since how else can you tell orientation in a 1000 year old temple?) which way was east (the way we came from which I guess makes sense as most temples face east, the side of birth and beginning, only those places that associate with death face west) left us mostly alone.
We took photos, we meditated in silence, we chatted quietly about how incredible it all is, and by the time sunrise came there were only 10-14 people including us. By 6:30 we came down and asked to go back to “Lara croft” temple (yes I shudder that I’m so damn ignorant) to try and actually enjoy it.
The decision to go back was almost the best one of the day, right after the decision to come for sunrise. We covered all the spots we saw the day before…but again, there were only a few people and because it’s a much bigger territory with many, many tunnels and doors and turns it was just the 3 of us the majority of the time in any given area. To stand in front of THOSE ruins and to be alone… Ah, it is priceless, it is the experience of a lifetime.
We got back with almost enough time for a rushed breakfast, showers, packing and check out – only 10 min late for our 8:30 pick up time.

Woke up early and full of energy (6:30 am!) and after downloading some exercise plans that looked close to what Maha does (my mantra for gym classes at this point) I went to gym and spent 30 minutes (timed!) kicking my own butt and feeling good about it.
Parents were awake by the time I got back, so after showers and packing we had another amazing!!,!,!!! Breakfast and went to the airport to fly to Cambodia.
The cleverest thing we have done on thisndy was at the duty free – we bought 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of prosecco ensuring we have decent relaxation.
Our trip to Cambodia was organized to have a tour guide pick us up and essentially baby sit us the entire time that we are there. The guys name is Sumbat, and he is a middle aged dad of 3 kids. After a quick break at the hotel we went to a lunch (really nothing amazing, ok curry but wouldn’t have that again). Annoyingly/entertainingly Sumbat kept trying to convince us to buy tickets to “smile of Angor” for the following night – so definitely we were not going to do that. Anyway, after lunch we went to a beautifully done museum (Sumbat did not impress with his knowledge of different sculptures – he definitely turned out to know more about Hindu stories and all the gods that he did about different period of carvings and their style). The museum was nice but honestly a bit boring and by the end of it I felt the jet lag kick in.
Instead of dinner we asked to stop by the fruit market where we got a bunch of lychee, “hurma” – cant recall English name – and pomegranate.
I honestly felt awful for the contrast. Buying fruits to eat with alcohol amidst such poverty…. It’s insane. Everything and everyone are so obviously poor, and this was even before we made it out to more rural areas we saw the following days.
The evening was spent eating the fruits left in our rooms, drinking prosecco and wine, discussing the eastern narrative versus western narrative and how could the difference have been caused.
The short summary of that – all the tales within the museum of the Hindungods make absolutely no narrative sense. It’s on the level of a 4 year old describing a fantasy/story:
There were two wives who were fighting for who is more beautiful, one one and kicked the other one out but then changed her mind but the first one asked gods to have her kids eat/kill the kids of the “bad”one and then gave birth to a bird boy whom she tasked to (no, not kill kids) bring her some potion from some lake. The boy brough back the potion but a god stopped him and fought him but the boy bird almost won so the god told the woman that the boy is now his and then the god asked the boy to kill kids of the first wife from the start. And thsts how the god is shown riding a bird.
Uh…. What?
So, how is it possible that books upon books and a whole religions is founded on stories that just don’t make sense.. There is no moral. There is no rhyme – in others things change into other things just cuz. It’s weird.
The best solution we came up with was that eastern society is more strongly built on respect towards elders, and therefore words of mouth stories are passed on more reverently than European ones. (which have to follow a logic/moral to be interesting and “win” for being passed on).
And then we dove into comparing and contrasting east and west civilization birth path. and then we somehow ended up tslking about the difference between “manipulation” and “relationship building” and I started zoning out shortly after we agreed that manipulation is evil and shirt term, where as relationhsip bulding is more ensuring long term rsse of working together.
Fell asleep instantly, and woke up with no alarm by 5:30, regretting not booking a sunrise trip.

Breakfast:
Decided to sleepin (sort of, till 7:30) and went for the hotel breakfast with parents. It deserves a special mention because it was ridiculously good. A buffet with pastries, fruits, spreads, cereals, ham and cheeses and salami, juices, milks,a hot buffet (bacon, sausage, hash risks). And on too of that you could order a few specialties – Korean Kim chi, eggs, or Vietnamese soup which we know is pho but was called just soup.
The soup was a. M. A. Z I. N. g. Really. It was the quintessential example of what pho is. But more importantly it came with this paste that before I only tried as part of “crack noodles” that we used to have all the time as students. (after asking them to write it down – it’s ground up soya beans. Not soya sauce tough. Weird. )

Tour guide:
For day 2 we had hired a tour guide – my parents already had him during their Mekong delta part of the trip. A young student, 24 years old, looks 35. Apparently he asked dad my age and even he commented in the visual age difference. It’s insane. I guess that’s what beeping raised in a developing country does….

Ricksha:
The tour started off awesome! we all got got a ricksha (bike with a thing in front – why does it bother me in Toronto but looks and feels so natural here?) – and had a small tour of nearby big streets and important areas, including the intersection where the monk burned himself in order to get attention from the international press for the Vietnamese struggled. The monument is superbly elegant and appropriate (no eternal flame), and while looking st it a huge butterfly landed right in front of us. It felt very symbolic.
It was interesting to be driven around in a method of transport so fragile in an place where the traffic is so crazy. At least twice I think we took a street and a roundabout just so that we get the kick of being in crazy rush hour traffic in a ricksha.

Markets:
They dropped us off at the flower market which was fun (mostly because everything is pretty but you can’t buy anything because what are you going to do with flowers? so no one pushes at you), and then the wholesale market, which was fascinating – 100s of all the things. We bought a few souvenirs. (not of the “here are 200 toothbrushes, you never have to buy one again” type although the idea crossed my mind and that would be the place to do it). after that we were pretty tired (and it was after 1) so we went to lunch.

Lunch:
In a word: epic. A restaurant where all Vietnamese cuisines are represented by s little stall that’s cooking fresh food, but not buffet style – you can walk around and look at how they are cooking – but you order from a menu. Each stall seemed to collect notes – maye they compete for who has most?
He ordered for us, everything in the stalls looked crazy delicious and everything tht we got was crazy delicious. Many kinds of rolls, many kinds of do it yourself rolls, soups, amazingness.

In case it’s not clear I am I love with Vietnamese food. Seriously.
And i still haven’t got to try fried banana which I KNOW will be amazing and I will just never leave.

Shopping:
So options were shopping or museums and mom and I just couldn’t work up appetite for war museums. And we had big hopes of shopping based on parents experience with kuala lumpur, and mine in HK. Unfortunately it was all a big disappointment – we went to two places (aided by our helpful hired van that picked us up in a prearranged time and dropped us off in a prearranged area – things like “2km down this street past those two roundabouts” are impossible to explain using gestures and broken English, so that worked out very well). I got a blouse and a jacket, neither amazing(good and necessary but … Not amazing) and really a lot of effort to find even those two.
Highlights:
– Zara basic jacket for $400? Like what. It’s $50 in store
– laboutin knock offs for $400. Real ones are $600. Again what? (knock off should be $50-150… Not more!)
– lots of brand label knock offs but labels like mango, h&m, forever 21, banana republic – random and weird
– not many local boutique stores (let it be said my things are from local stores)

Coffee shop:
Exhausted and with my jet lag kicking in we went to s dry clean and posh coffee store where they even had wifi (I checked in!). After a coffee and a break for chat we felt MUCH better and went home earlier of our 5pm deadline (dadline) and decided to go for a massage instead of waiting.

Massage:
The evening wrapped up well. Massage fr an hour (delightful for me, too weak for mom, but I realllllly enjoyed it), mani for me and pedicure for mom.. Total is $30 pp. ugh. This developing country cost is really easy to get acclimatized to for things that I cinder major spoilers in Canada.
We got home kind of late – 7pm and dad was worried. After a bottle of wine I started passing out and parents decided to go to dinner.

So the day wrapped up with me having a peaceful read with my last sips of wine before totally falling sleep by 10.

Arrival to Vietnam was a two step process – first I landed in Hanoi, but had to catch a flight to Ho chi Minh right away. I slept most of the way to Hanoi with no issues – despite a happy/crying/sleeping/tossing things at me/stealing my cutlery/grinning at me 9 month old baby who was in the little bassinet right in front if me (exit row). I knowingly signed up for that because I wanted a window seat and that was the last one left. Thankfully noise canceling headphones plus the ability to sleep on planes (nt gonna say like a baby, haha) meant that I slept for 7-8 hours out of the 11.5 hour flight. So upon landing I was very lucid and figured out all the checkin steps ( and passed immigration with zero words spoken).

A nice girl from “the agency” (the travel agency dad booked, but I like ,y way more – way more ominous!) met me at landing with a sign of my name, a first for me.
A shirt bus (large van/bud which was all mine) ride later I met parents in the hotel. After figuring out that our day is essentially free, we came up with a nice plan. I went to the gym (I swear I’m not crazy, movement sounded REALLY good after all those planes!) and swimming pool, and then we all headed for lunch and shopping in city center. Lunch was simple but good in an eatery that was fast food style but still tasty. Shopping was disappointing – central places are too commercialized (big brands tht are the same), and the market was too cheap (shitty quality tourist tshirts). Around 5pm (after 3 hours of walking!) I started fading so I headed to hotel (taxi ride: $1.50 USD) for a nap.

After reading/falling asleep I woke up at 7, ready for more exploring. This being Christmas eve the city was ready for celebrations, which is crazy – they don’t get 25th off.
Sidebar: everyone in Vietnam are super friendly and smiley. Random people wave at me when I smile out of a taxi window. And generally the atmosphere is really safe and calm, despite huge amounts of poverty and dirt – normal levels for Asia- cant say I had culture shock…

However, the massive amounts of scooters are a mandatory mention. And crazy traffic! Omg the traffic is ridiculous. Like its totally normal to head in exactly opposite direction when you want to make a right turn out of a left hand lane, crossing all the lanes of traffic and ending up facing into cars. Somehow everyone works it out, although there is a LOT of honking it’s considered normal. Crossing the street with this in mind is fun. There is never a full stop. You just dive in and weave around scooters while going forward and making sure to have reasonable eye contact with people who are driving AT you but are swerving around you in last moment because it’s normal. It’s like a roller coaster ride and I think I could do that for fun for st least a day. Not sure how much death risk there really is but feels significant.

Anyway but that’s not fear of being kidnapped or robbed. We went straight into the ridiculously busy city center which became pedestrian for Xmas eve. It was insanely busy, shoulders to shoulder people for at least an hour. I got photos and enjoyed it all immensely. After walking for about an hour we headed back while pricing out spa services (cheap! $25 for an hour Swedish massage). With an early day next day we got some snacks, wine and went home to drink, talk and relax. I manged to stay awake until 12 with my book.