Sage on sail

From the west side of the Pacific may you have a great holiday season.

An unsettling feeling. However, it’s on everyone’s mind here 100km from the border with Thailand. Bombs are falling on both sides of the border, people are being evacuated, and here in Siam Reap, tourism is way down.

We are affected. We see the resettlement camps, and this morning, we headed up to the temple a few blocks away to see the art project underway to increase the international awareness of the conflict – see picture below

Sunrise at Angkor Wat. It seems to be the focus of everyone’s visit and we’re not alone.

Up at 0430hrs and out with the parade to Angkor Wat for the sunrise. Despite what they say is a lack of tourists, there’s certainly enough of them to crowd the walkways, jam the perfect locations for sunrise photos, and narrow down what are already crowded passageways. However, one can’t miss the grandeur of the moment.

Angkor Wat silhouetted agains the rising sun was spectacular providing a 40 minute exposure of increasing morning light highlighted by the towers of Angkor Wat.

Not a cloud in the sky and an unobstrutured view of Angkor Wat from across the causeway. This doesn’t stop people from carrying high-powered flashlights as they navigate the roough stone walkways, but it can’t take away the magic of the moment.

After that, it’s mayhem! It’s 0615hrs, and people stream into the interior of Angkor Wat to view the ruins. It’s hardly ruins, but of course, it’s not original. Over the years, reconstructive work has come and gone, and slowly, reconstruction is making progress. Originally, the area housed over 2 million people, but now, of course, the area is closed at 1800hrs and remains silent, giving all the ghosts an opportunity to wander around their old homes with abandon.

Here are a few pictures:

I’ll try not to be too verboise but rather leave you with more pictures than text. The title of the blog incorporates the three temples visited yesterday!

Out the door by 0830hrs with Mr Met and his trusty tuk-tuk. It’s a solid tuk-tuk but on rough roads I feel more like a mango shake than a human ie not much in the way of suspension. However, we go slowly, we get to the planned locations and he’s punctual which all makes the day run smoothly.

Plans were to be finished by 1300hrs but we didn’t finish till 1600hrs. Dusty, exhausted and heat spent we made it back to our hotel for a cooling shower, a quick break and then a walk to find somewhere for dinner. That’s the routine. However, we said STOP for today and are taking the day off – ha, ha…I wonder what will happen.

The first temple we visited was Ta Prohm. When Mr. Met told us it was used as the location for a movie what I understood him to say was Tom Rider but in actual fact when we worked it all out was Tomb Raiders. Have I seen it? No, but now that Connie’s nephew knows she’s been there he thinks she’s some kind of archeologist.

So – here are a few photos of Ta Prohm which you will probably know of since it’s been filmed many times for a variety of media. These are all unedited photos as just haven’t had the time to go through them with a fine tooth comb.

Ta Prohm:

Banteay Kdei:

Banteay Srei(Citadel of women)- this temple wasn’t discovered until the early 20th century and was not build by any king but rather by a member of the court that had been given land in trade for his services to the court. It’s small, has no roof, celebrates the role of women and has the best preserved relief and is considered a jewel of Khmer art.

It was midday when we arrived. It has no covering and the sun was streaming into the temple with no shade available. It’s small enough to walk around quickly hence not a lot of pictures taken as wanted to run to the forest for relief!

Hiding today!

These two places are the most significant places in Cambodia if you are interested in old temples. Siam Reap is the tourist town that feeds the people into Angkor Wat. More on Siam Reap later.

One of the smarter things we have done, and we haven’t been that smart in our travels, was take a local taxi in from Siam Reap’s new airport to the main centre and our hotel. During this 45 minute ride we got talking to the driver and ended up negotiating our schedule for our 5 day stay. We’re only on our second day and so far our arrangements are working.

We headed out to Angkor Wat this morning at 0830hrs and visited only 2 temples, Preah Khan and Preah Neak Poan . We decided to start our exploration starting with the smallest and visiting the biggest and main temple on the third day when we plan arriving for sunrise at 0600hrs!

What we were not prepared for was the scale of Angkor Wat. The immensity of this old civilization is awe inspiring not only in its complexity but also in its size. It’s truly awe inspiring and clambering through the ruins and seeing the work that went into building the temples boggles the mind at the amount of resources that were needed to bring this place to reality. It is actually the worlds largest religious building. There is absolutely nothing to compare in its scale.

I don’t do it justice with a few photos but I can only say that if ever get to this area of the world stay and enjoy this place.

The picture above is Mr. Met, our driver for the next 4 days. The jitney we will buy off Mr Met at the end of our trip and bring back to drive tourists through Oak Bay!!

Tomorrow? Another day digging through temples. I won’t say the whole day because we ourselves are old temples and in mid 30 degree temperatures we’re almost done by 12 noon and plan on retreating to some air conditioned facility to ourselves to some cold umbrella drinks. See you tomorrow

We escaped the madness of Ho Chi Minh city after a couple of days and headed down to the Mekong and Can Tho. Glad to get out of the city and into a smaller less insanely intense environment. The hardest part about Vietnam for the tourist and, I imagine, the resident, is the constant barrage of sound and the intense commercialisation of everything.

One has to admire the success of Vietnam. It’s only been about 45 years since the end of the American war yet the economy seems to be booming, the Vietnamese are buying scooters by the truck load and everyone is an entrepreneur. There’s not a place in the country that looks different than the place one just left behind. The same stores and markets selling the same stuff and, some of it, made in Vietnam. Every street bustles with small shops selling everything from children’s toys to fruits and vegetables to e-scooters. It’s ubiquitous from one end of the country to the other.

Along with all that is the madness on the streets. Scooters going everywhere all the time weaving in and out of buses, cars and trucks. Here’s a video taken while sitting in the barber shop waiting to get my hair curled!

Yeah we had just returned to Ho Chi Min from Can Tho and Connie figure this was a good place to get my haircut – took him literally 2 minutes to finish the job. Kind of knew what was coming after watching two previous customers get stripped! Wow…however my main reason for posting this was that the next pic is a video of the traffic outside the barbeshop at rush hour – phew (big blank here trying to figure out how to get a video taken from Connie’s apple phone on to my tablet – aargh – I did it finally)

Okay, so how did we get from Can Tho to Ho Chi Minh – amazing – they do have this incredible bus service on ‘sleepers’. They are double decker buses with lie down beds similar to a business class seat on an airplane. For $15 we had a 3 hour sleeper to take is from Can Tho to Ho Chi Minh City. The following day we were headed Siam Reap.

Here are a couple of photos of the sleeper – why can’t we have these in Canada?

There are hundreds of these buses going everywhere in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

Okay on to Angkor Wat

This museum is in Ho Chi Minh City and I took pictures of some of the pieces I liked. Here are a few of them. I do have photos of the markers for each piece with the name of the artist and title of the piece. Most of the pieces are lacquer but there is one done on silk and one done on aluminium.. Can you guess which they are?

Yes, I’ve neglected posting for a while but it’s been busy, busy, busy.

We finished the marathon cycling. I say marathon as but the time we made it to Hoi An the temperatures were starting to climb and by the last day coming into Ho Chi Minh temperatures were  in the mid 30’s and the humidity was high, high, high.

Usually, we cycled 15-20km before there was a break. Breaks consisted of lime juice, fresh fruit,and nuts. This was all supplied by the tour company. In the high temps and humidity,  it was great to get a break in the shade, but once one stops then one becomes drenched in sweat. It’s a relief to get back on the bikes and feel the breeze generated by biking but still….

Finally, after the last day of 65km, we were bused in to Ho Chi Minh city,  and after a farewell dinner, it was all over. I have to say it was an amazing group. There were 12 in all; 7 Brits, 2 Americans/Quebecois, 2 Canadians (ourselves) and 1 Austrian. We all enjoyed each others company, had no major issues, and all lead by Son a great leader.

We’ve been on our own now for a few days and have made it as far south as Can Tho in the Mekong Delta. In a few days it’s off to Siam Reap and Angkor Wat.

Here are a few pics:

Breakfast has been included and every hotel we have stayed at and here are some of the choices:

Just wanted to clear the air on some misconceptions that might be out there.

Yes, we are in Vietnam – that’s the first one. Secondly, we are not  cycling every kilometre between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

Yes, we are cycling bits and pieces of the highway between these 2 major cities. Intrepid (the company we used for this trip) has done an excellent job on giving us an overview of Vietnam. We are sometimes on the bike and sometimes on a bus which basically follows us for the journey and also sets up break stops for us with drinks and snacks.

We have had a really good selection of places to cycle. Most of the routes chosen by Intrepid have been back country routes interspersed with major urban centres.

We’ve been to places such as Mai Chau, Ninh Binh, Hue, Hoi An, Quy Nhon and Nha Trang. We have stayed in homestays and hotels with each and every one of them having been well chosen to satisfy the needs of everyone. No one has complained about the accomodation.

One more misconception I want to mention is that yes, we are riding electric bikes. It’s not a misconception that we are the oldest ones on the route but we have cycled in every instance and in every condition and every mile.

Our last adventure was to cycle up the Ha Thanh river. It was an incredible day of cycling covering 100km!! It was also amazing because in one of the last typhoons of the season it was devastated not only by the typhoon itself but by the flooding that came after. There was ample evidence of the destruction from ruined farmland to debris scattered not only on the ground but in the hydro lines, in the bamboo, railway bridges and in the trees.

The 100km day has been our longest and we were very glad to have our 2 days in Nha Trang. Here we are now. We spent the day with the group out on the water on a local fish boat, eating, drinking and enjoying the day.

It’s now dinner time!!