Ha Noi

 

I've been in Ha Noi for almost a week now. It certainly isn't as friendly as Sai Gon. It sounds like a Vietnamese city, yet there are so many signs of China...which is hardly surprising since China is quite literally only 300 km away to the north and the east.

As the photo says, they eat dog here. I have no problems with this. I happen to think that it's incredibly rude to enter a country and tell them what to eat.

Ha Noi is different from the south. The people aren't as friendly for a start. Ha Noi has been cool to cold. The sites are interesting. Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum is frighteningly similar to a shrine. For a crowd that have so shit canned religion, the Communists have built themselves a holy place. We visited the Temple of Literature yesterday which is walking distance from our hotel. The locals use it. And yesterday it was full of 8 year olds receiving awards. I like a people who build temples to learning.

Today we visited the Ha Noi Military Museum...and it was worth the price of entry. 

Lunch cost $4.50...90 000d.

There is a very good reason why you never run across the road in Viet Nam...the traffic can smell fear.

Am tired and in need of genuine solitude. Ariel is charming some gorgeous locals.

Vietnam

Been here a week & a half. It is eerily familiar. I'm not sure whether this is because I've spent most of my adult life reading about the place or because there are genuine echoes from the previous life.

If I was here in 1964 I wasn't doing nice things. I think I was based in Vietnam, but operated in Cambodia and Laos. Feel more at home there. Could be that I was solely in Vietnam and because of  my dying here I don't feel as relaxed as I other wise might.

It is clearly a culture with Chinese finger prints. It is also an incredibly confident one. The future is here. The West has lost the edge and these people know it. Mind you, I am in a place that has beaten not one but two Superpowers...US & China. It is incredibly scenic. The mountains are close and the combination of them and paddy is very pretty.

Have imperial tombs to explore.

Saigon2

A week in Saigon!
It's incredibly noisy, busy and polluted.
It's also posessed of an energy that I liked.
Hoi An is nicer..damp and cool versus Saigons hot & sticky.

Saigon

Saigon is a genuine eye opener. It is noisy, polluted, crowded and wonderful. It has a range of extremes that will ring you like a bell. There is poverty in The Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The Vietnamese are wonderfully self assured, but then the current generations grandparents beat the Americans and that has to enhance your sense of "can do". I wouldn't like to be an American here...the Vietnamese aren't in the business of apologising for winning.

They adore children here. It is nice to be able to be nice to kids and not be treated like a paedophile.

It would be a mistake to judge all of Vietnam by Tay Ninh Province and Saigon. But, so long as I could find a place of quiet occasionally, I would live here. The Communist propaganda is quite interesting, there is a vigour to the statues in particular that I find very refreshing. The traffic obeys the laws of the oceans...all the scooters/mopeds are sardines and they flow around the bigger fish of buses and trucks. The other night I was watching a bus...a big one, turning at a round-a-bout and was amazed that no one was killed...the traffic just flowed around it.

The Vietnamese do not whisper and the streets are places for shouting. I/we am/are changing as a person/people and often wonder just how I/ we will fit in back home on our return.

Tuol Sleng, the Killing Fields & Pnom Penh

I've been in Pnom Penh for 5 days now. Been to the almost obligatory places...Tuol Sleng Execution Centre & Choung Ek Killing Fields. The former is tough because it looks like almost any other secondary school you would find in Pnom Penh. It's an ordinary place.
The seond is tough because they didn't spare anyone...the bones of children, the krama still in the pits. I thought it would be a great place for meditation. It's very quiet.
Pnom Penh itself is an odd place. Like many in the 3rd World there is a mixture of the super rich and the super poor. So beggars beside BMW's. Some of the beggars are very hard to deal with. One had a facial deformity that started above his right eye and hung down his face....nearly lost lunch over that one.
The Khmer are a beautiful people. There is such life here. I think I will find it very hard to return home. So many things here just cut to the heart of life.
It is the perfect place for me to close one chapter of this life and to begin another on my return.Many of you I will keep as friends. It has more to do with people I knew during my first marriage. More to do with exploring things mentioned in my other blog. I'm also tired and there is kack in my lungs.
Pnom Penh can be cheap. Street food is very good and cheap. The fruits are wonderful. The local donut which must use sticky rice flour is delicious...and at 25 cents a pop, is a steal.
Tickets to Saigon by bus $10 each. Ariel is free.
Vietnamese visas $45 each...we were expecting $30 and Ariel possibly free. So this weeks budget is blown.
Will go. Need coffee.

Cambodia

I've been here for a week.
Been to and climbed more temples than I had ever thought I might want to.
Been rung like a bell emotionaly.
Cambodia is utterly in your face, it doesn't take any prisoners and doesn't ever give a thought about making apologies for the way it is.

In short, in a very short space of time Cambodia will lift you up with the beauties of its imperial past, and then give you an emotional kick in the face with a hydrocephalic 4 year old on the way out.
Or the man without arms who sells you a book...and then cheerfully greets you with a loud "G'day Mate!" upon learning that you are Australian...and then shakes your hand with his stump.

The country is beautiful, The Monsoon which has flooded so much also means that the next rice crop is already in the ground whilst the current one is being harvested. The place is still amazingly wet.

There is poverty here, but it doesn't seem to be a poverty of the heart, well not in the Khmer. The Westerners are often the poor in heart. The Khmer are too busy being alive. There is a gentleness to them that makes the Khmer Rouge even harder to understand and most Khmer will tell you that the Khmer Rouge had a sickness that made them not Khmer, The Khmer are gentle, love kids (Ariel is a rock star here), surprisingly honest and will very rarely push things. Learn some Khmer and the beggars in Pnom Penh tend to leave you alone.

Today we are going to buy some shoes for me...the other ones gave up. Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields are for tomorrow. Then Monday is the visa for Vietnam.

Not really missing anyone.
Russell

Singapore/Malaysia

Met Ajahn Dhammarato for breakfast yesterday at Wat Palelai.
Then proceeded to take the long, slow, hot, sticky way to Malaysia.
It's pretty obvious who runs the show in MALAYsia. Mind you at at 1 to 2.9 exchange rate I'm not complaining.
Pasar Larkin is much as I remember it to be.
Bought lunch...RM 15
A Quran, a recipe book and prayer beads for RM 90. Also 2 dresses for Selina for RM 80.
Ariel continues to love Asia. He is getting rock star type treatment. Loves the food. roti canai, chicken sate` all vanish.
Slept like logs last night.
Today we had more roti for breakfast. I had sardine martabak as well. The iced tea is to die for. Breakfast $S 18.
Dhammarato for lunch....$S10.
Then home for a nap.
Bought and recharged MRT cards...$S50.
Am about to post book etc., home
Deeply happy here. Selina is absolutely the best person to travel with.
Things are more expensive than I would like, but we knew Singapore would be.