Koh Rong Sanloem

I'm on Koh Rong Samloem for a few days. It's an island just off the Cambodian coast. Not sure if I'll have wifi. I know they only have electricity at night. If I don't update for a few days, you can be assured that there will be swimming, snorkeling, and trekking through the jungle--but mostly this:

Temples of Angkor

Siem Reap, like Hoi An, felt overrun by tourists in much of the town, and an older crowd than in many places. The popularity of Siem Reap is not surprising, as it is surrounded by incredible temples, Angkor Wat being the most iconic. Everyone has seen pictures of Angkor Wat. But there are quite a few other temples in the near vicinity.

We booked a tuk tuk (a motorbike with a bunch of extra seating on the back) to take us around and see the majority of them. 

Angkor was once the seat of the Khmer Empire, it's height being the 9th-15th centuries. 

We started our tour with sunrise at Angkor Wat. It was beautiful, though immensely crowded:

But I did really enjoy entering the temple in the dark and watching it slowly materialize around me. 

The temples were all quite interesting. There was one, Ta Keo, which was much less decorated and unfinished. It is uncertain why this is the case, with stories ranging from it being struck by lightning during construction (a bad omen) to it simply being too hard to carve the sandstone they'd chosen for this temple. 

Ta Prohm is a temple that has been partially reclaimed by the jungle. Much of the plantlife has been cleared from the ruin, but many stately trees were left growing atop the walls. 

Again, much of this was terribly crowded. But some of the less popular, but still quite stunning, temples actually had a bit of peace in them. They were a few moments where we were alone in these ruins. 

Being connected

This is by far the most connected I've been on a trip. It's different, but good. Due to the time difference, every morning I wake up to a bunch of messages and whatnot that have come through while I was asleep. In Saigon I was retiring to the hostel during the hottest part of the day to write in the air conditioning and nap to get ready for the evening. With my phone and computer here, during that time I was able to check email, text friends back home, blog. It feels a little bit like I haven't left (in a good sense). Dan mentioned that we are communicating via text and email roughly the same amount that we do when I'm in Boulder. Though, at the time that I am writing this it is about 01:00 in Boulder, so that gets in the way.

Having my phone here has been really handy even though I have not unlocked it and bought a Vietnamese SIM card.

I got an app (citymaps2go) that allows you to download entire city (or country) maps for use offline. Your phone can use the GPS to find your location even if your data is turned off, which has made wandering the city incredibly easy. I don't typically plan much where I'm going, I just head off in the general direction I think I need to go and figure it out along the way, which is also a good way to see things off the beaten track. With googlemaps, if you load the map ahead of time, you can do most of this. But I think the GPS works better with this app for some reason, and you don't have to think about loading the map ahead of time.

The other app I've been getting a lot of use out of is Tinder. It is technically a dating app, but it has been really handy to find people living in the city to talk to. I've gotten a lot of advice about where to go and what to see, and I've met up for meals and drinks with a number expats and other travelers.

Xmas in Cambodia

As mentioned previously, I spent xmas in Cambodia with Emily and a handful of her Kiwi friends. The culture here in Siem Reap is certainly different from Vietnam. It's also much easier to travel here. All of the signs have English translations, they use the USD, and this is a very tourist-heavy town. Not that traveling in Vietnam was particularly difficult.

Christmas was lovely. We met the Kiwis for lunch and drinks, did a bit of last-minute shopping for one another, then spent the evening sitting poolside listening to Christmas music on my phone and drinking cocktails. For dinner, we went out for a fantastic Australian ribeye that only ran $13. And the rest of the night was spent drinking cocktails and dancing at an absurd bar. Not a typical Christmas celebration, but we did decorate a bamboo plant with festive bits of garbage:

Hoi An Part 2

The rest of my time in Hoi An is blurred for various reasons. That night, Fabio and I went to dinner at this restaurant called Morning Glory, which came highly recommended and was excellent. Afterwards we went out trying to find a bit of nightlife in Hoi An. Apparently we’d started too early, so we went to a DK’s hostel, which is sort of renowned for being a party hostel. They have a little bar in there, so we had a beer and met a British girl and a couple Swedes that were looking to go out.

Hoi An is mostly quiet at night, but just across the bridge is an island called An Hoi, which is full of a ridiculous number of bars targeted at backpackers. There are absurd happy hours and drink specials. We ended up at one of these places drinking literal buckets of vodka and red bull.

You can see where this night is going. Eventually we found our way to the Why Not bar, where for $5 you get unlimited mixed drinks. So, the vodka red bull continued to flow.

The next day I didn’t wake up until noon. Apparently Fabio was banging on my door around 9:00 in an attempt to wake me for breakfast, but to no avail. But the day was not wholly wasted. I went in for my second fitting and picked up my clothes and bought some gifts for the girls that I am going to be spending Xmas with (despite actually knowing only one of them).

The second night we decided to take it a bit easier. Fabio and I went out for dinner at a place called 4U Restaurant or somesuch. It was right on the river and we sat on the second floor terrace. I ate stuffed crab, apparently a local specialty.

Fabio runs his own digital media company, and is really into photography. We spent a while after dinner walking around while he took some long-exposure pictures of Hoi An at night. Neither of us were feeling another night like the previous, so we had a few more beers and then walked back to the hotel.

The rest of Hoi An was pretty awful. I’d planned to wake up relatively early the next day and check out some of the temples and things I didn’t manage to do the day before. But, instead, I woke up at 04:00 to the worst food poisoning I’ve had.

I managed to get it mostly under control in time to make my 17:00 flight to Siem Reap, but it was not a pleasant day. Crashed early that night (Xmas eve).

As I write this it is Xmas morning here in Siem Reap. I am feeling back up to snuff. I had a nice breakfast in the courtyard of the guesthouse, facetimed with Mom, and am going out in a little while to meet up with these Kiwis.

Hoi An Part 1

Hoi An was an experience. Another place that I had not heard of, nor had any intention to visit prior to arriving in Vietnam. But it is gorgeous. The architecture is beautiful, it is right on a river, lanterns seem to be everywhere, and there is a practice of sending paper lanterns down the river at night. It is also the taior capital of Vietnam. And, it would seem, the tourist capital as well. The number of tourists in the old town area was pretty outrageous. Hordes of them. Da Nang is just down the road and is an actual city, but Hoi An appears to belong to the tourists.

Bus ride in. From leaving my hotel in Da Lat to arriving in the bus station in Da Nang took around 17 hours. I took a sleeper bus, which ended up not being too bad. I was in the center row on the top bunk, which is probably about as bad as seats get, but I managed to sleep through the majority of it, despite constant swerving and occasional bumps that made me feel as if I might be tossed out of my seat into the aisle.

When I arrived in Da Nang I was swamped by taxi drivers, as happens every time a westerner gets off a bus in Vietnam. I was going to try to find someone to share a taxi with (Da Nang is about 30 minutes north of Hoi An), but had no luck. I did however meet a girl from Malaysia who directed me to the public bus that she had seen.

Buses apparently work differently in Vietnam. First, the bus was pulling out of the station when I saw it. I resigned myself to waiting, but it slowed and some guy jumped out and pushed me on, where I was then overcharged for my ticket (I’d read just a few minutes prior that this was going to happen, but the difference was only $1). There were two employees on the bus whose jobs were to lean out the window and yell at motorbikes that got too close to the bus, query people waiting at bus stops about whether they wanted that bus, collect goods to be transported by the bus, and hustle folks on and off.

There were two things about this bus that I hadn’t seen before: First, people were just tossing things on to be transported to Hoi An. There were bundles of flowers, a huge bucket of some sort of food, and a giant piece of pork that at one point fell off the bus and got run over a bit. Second: The bus at no point came to a stop. For elderly folks it would get very close to stop, but mostly these two guys were there to push folks onto and off of the rolling bus. It was a very aggressive operation.

When we arrived at what seemed to be the last stop and everyone was getting off, I noticed that there was another westerner on the bus. As we were getting off the bus he looked at me and asked, “So, I guess this is Hoi An?”

There’s an interesting camaraderie between western folks in situations like this. Neither of us had any idea where we were, really. Nor where the center of town was. I’d received a suggestion for a place to stay, but he didn’t have that either. We figured out the direction to walk and, after brushing off the horde of motorbike taxis, starting walking. People in Vietnam don’t seem to enjoy walking very much, so the idea of walking 6k to our hotel seems outrageous to them (and they wanted our money), but I like walking.

We checked into the Sunflower hotel and went for a bit of lunch next door at a place advertising fresh beer at 3.000 VND per glass (about $0.14). While we were eating we were approached by a local who was very friendly and spoke good english, and was trying to sell us on his family’s tailor shop.

Hoi An has an absurd number of tailors. Downtown, every street is occupied by exclusively restaurants, gift shops, bars, and tailors. There are entire streets of tailors. Many of them. One of the things you are supposed to do while you are in Hoi An is get some clothing made. So, after lunch, we let this guy lead us to his family’s shop. I usually think that it’s a bad idea to follow these people, rewarding the pushiest folks rather than trying to research the best place to go, but I only had two days, and I wouldn’t even know where to start with my research.

We talked to the folks there for a while. The way it seems to work is that these little tailor shops take measurements, pick fabrics, and specify the design, and send it off to a factory. These factories can throw together a custom suit in an afternoon. You go back to the tailor the following day for a second fitting, and the tailor at the shop does any alterations that you request, or just the second stitching if it looks good.

So, I picked out a black suit and a wool coat, got measured, and paid. Fabio went all out--three coats, three shirts, two pairs of pants, and a vest. I talked the lady down in price a fair amount. Afterward she was speaking in Vietnamese to one of the other people at the shop, but chose to throw in the words "bottom dollar," which amused me.

With that out of the way, we went back to the hotel and napped.

Xmas in Vietnam

At first glance it would seem that Christmas is quite popular in Vietnam. The above picture was taken at a bus terminal. I was not expecting there to be shops selling Christmas decorations all over. It seems like every coffeeshop in Da Lat (at least those that are catering somewhat to westerners) had a Christmas tree up. 

According to a 2009 census, this is the breakdown of religion in Vietnam:

• Non religious, 80.8%
• Buddhism, 9.3%
• Christianity, 7.2%
• Roman Catholic, 6.7%
• Protestant, 0.5%
• Hòa Hảo, 1.5%
• Cao Đài, 1.1%

With a population of around ninety million, that's ~6.5 million Christians. 

According to an expat that I spoke to, very few people here are actually interested in the holiday. There is a lot of decoration, and they enjoy the commercial aspect and fun of it, but the day itself is not celebrated. As it grows closer to Christmas I am seeing more and more. On my way into Hoi An I even saw a couple of guys dressed up as Santa Claus outside of toy shops.

This one is from a nice little coffeeshop in Da Lat:

I won't be in the country to see it myself. When this posts I will be in Siem Reap in Cambodia. Emily invited me to join her and a few of her kiwi friends there for the holiday. The weather in Central and Northern Vietnam is not great right now. Fairly cold, but more importantly, lots and lots of rain. So, I'm rerouting to see Cambodia and some beautiful beaches. It would be a shame to come back from this trip without a tan, right?

Canyoning

Canyoning seems to be the top adventure attraction in Da Lat. There's one particular canyon that all the groups go to where there is a good series of waterfalls. Canyoning consists of rappelling (sometimes through a waterfall), watersliding, cliff jumping, and floating your way down the canyon.

I went through the same tour group that did my countryside tour, Groovy Gecko. And one of our guides was the same that I had for my countryside tour, Tam. He's super friendly and was an excellent guide for this as well. If any of you ever end up in Da Lat, this is the tour group to book through. We paid a tiny bit more than the other folks I talked to out there, but we were a group of six, and many of the other groups were around twenty, so we did a lot less waiting around at the top of rappels.

It was a lot of fun. I was good at the rappelling. Emily was one of the only folks to do the eleven-meter cliff jump (I stuck to the seven-meter). Unfortunately, no one was taking pictures at that event. But here she is rappelling down a waterfall:

Jon and Ian often bring up a time when I was younger and wouldn't ride some ride at the waterpark--it was too much for me. But, within that same week, I was having a blast whitewater rafting, even when we wrapped our raft around a rock at the top of a rapid and had to bail to the side of the river, a much more dangerous situation. It's not that I mind the risk, it's that I don't like feeling out of control. So long as I am controlling my descent, I can be very bold--I did a fifteen-meter rappel in just over one jump. But I still hate cliff jumping.

The last waterfall they call the washing machine--you rappel straight down into it until you run out of rope, and then it churns you around and spits you out. I swallowed a fair amount of water on this one.

Truc Lam Pagoda

I ended up staying in Da Lat a bit longer than expected, but it was great. I like the town a lot, and on the day I was originally thinking of leaving, a friend from home showed up. I've been meeting plenty of people, but it is nice to see friends from home as well.

The first place we went was the Truc Lam pagoda. On the edge of town, right near the bus station, you can jump on a cable car which takes you to the pagoda. This ride was the first time since landing in Saigon (aside from one very late-night walk in Da Lat) that I have been away from the noise of streets. It was incredibly peaceful to ride through the forest and hear the birds sing.

Truc Lam is a working pagoda. I didn't meet the dress code (I was in shorts), but that only prohibited me from entering a few of the buildings. And, for the most part, I was entranced by the gardens and nerding out over all of the interesting plants. It is fun to go to a place where I hardly recognize anything. This one was the first to catch my eye, the yellow shrimp plant:

But there were all sorts of neat plants around:

We spent a while walking the gardens and around the lake and pagoda before taking the cable car back. There were also all sorts of burn scars around, some of them covering a large area. I thought that the burning nearby may have been exclusively related to agriculture, but it would seem that this area might be prone to wildfire in a different season. The forest reminds me a bit of loblolly pine forests back home that have been burned regularly.

Flashpacking

I met up a few days ago with a pretty hardcore traveler named Lindsey. She's been in Asia a while and is super broke. We hung out for a while, and during this time she referred in a negative light to "flashpacking." I'd never heard of flashpacking, but she defined it as being those people who pretend to be backpackers, but are carrying lots of expensive stuff, staying in nice hotels, etc. Not the life she's living. I've been in the middle. I've been staying at relatively cheap hostels, but not like hers, and allowing myself a lot of luxuries. For my last couple days in Da Lat I decided to step it up a notch.

It may be a strange reaction the day after having someone question my backpacker credentials, but I decided to check into a nice hotel with a private room (which sounds like an "of course," but feels like the most luxurious part), a king-size bed, and a hot tub on the roof. This set me back $22 per night.

The next indulgence was an excellent dinner at a place called Trong Dong. I had fresh spring rolls centered around shrimp paste grilled on sugar cane, and a claypot dish of eel steamed in coconut milk. One of the best meals I've had here for sure. With a beer, this cost around $10.

The other day I was going out to meet some new folks, but I had waited too long to do my laundry. All my clothes were dirty and because of the rain it was going to take a full twenty four hours to dry them. So, on my way, I stopped in the market and bought a pair of jeans and a sweater for about $20. The jeans could fit better--I'm right on the edge of what it is possible to fit into Vietnamese men's clothing, but I didn't smell bad.

It's not a bad life here. You can live like a king for very little money. And I'm not upset about my backpacking credentials being called into question because I can have mornings like today. I woke up around six thirty, went for a five-mile run around the lake, and came back to the hotel for breakfast. The breakfast at this hotel is a communal table groaning under the weight of the plates of food. I sat for an entire hour drinking coffee and eating eggs, bacon, ham, fresh baguettes, cheese, mango, papaya, pineapple, passion fruit, and strawberries. Then went upstairs and crawled back into bed for a while. Essentially my ideal morning.

Hằng Nga Guesthouse

It is more often referred to as the Crazy House. Originally built as a personal project by architect Dang Viet Nga, it is inspired by the natural landscape surrounding Da Lat--also very heavily influenced by Gaudi. It was opened to the public in 1990, but there are areas that are still under construction.

It was a really cool place with lots of tiny, tiny walkways between structures. It sits on a hilltop and is pretty tall, so there were also some excellent views out over Da Lat.

You can stay in the Crazy House, which seems like it would be really cool when the gates close at 19:00. During the day, though, the bombardment of busloads of Russian tourists trying to peek in your windows would likely be tiring. As long as you are comfortable being out twelve hours of the day, probably very neat.

This will be mostly a picture post--it is a stunning place, but there is not a whole lot to write about it.