Vietnam and Cambodia!

Okay, here's a basic rundown on the last five days.

We have to be back on the ship tonight; it's currently 4:46pm on March 2nd in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Our first day in Vietnam was four days ago and I went on a SAS trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. The tunnel system is incredible elaborate and we got to go through the tunnels that had been widened for tourists. The widened tunnels were still only 2 feet wide by 5 feet tall. I'm 5'7 and I had to crawl half the time. I can't even begin to imaging spending months or years under the ground like that. We didn't get to see any of the bunkers that the tunnels connected, but we saw a diagram; they had hospitals and kitchens down there! The hidden entrances are so tiny that I didn't think I'd fit, but with a little wiggling I managed. We had a couple of huge guys with us though and my Graham (6'4 and built like a football player) could only get through up to his knees. That night we explored the local markets.

The next day I flew to Siem Reap, Cambodia with a group on the Temples of Angkor Tour. I didn't know what to expect from Cambodia, but it's gorgeous! The people are all beautiful and seem so happy. 70% of the population are still rice farmers, but the tourism industry is really beginning to pick up. They only have two season in Cambodia, dry and wet, and they're both hot. We visited in the dry season, which is colder than the wet season; it was between 90 and 100 degrees (low humidity) every single day... that's cold.... The first day we visited Angkor Wat, which is massive and has an incredibly rich history. It's also riddled with bullet holes left over from the civil war. I realized when I was there that I've always learned a lot about the Holocaust, but the Cambodian Genocide has never really come up and I didn't know much about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Our tour guide lost his entire family in the war (parents, brother and sister). It's not uncommon to see amputees around the city; the war happened so recently that many of the people were soldiers and many have stepped on active landmines left over from the conflict.

Day two in Cambodia was spent touring six different temples, including the temples in the city of Angkor Thom. The second temple we saw in Angkor Thom was the Bayon Temple and we got to ride elephants on a tour around the ruins! There were also monkeys running around everywhere. After Bayon we went to the Temple of Trees (I don't know if that's its real name) where Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed. One of the most striking things about Cambodia is the number of children selling things for one dollar (they prefer American money to Riel) on the streets. Postcards, bracelets, books and scarves; you name it and these kids were selling it. They're so persistent and they're adorable children with huge eyes, which makes it hard to say no. Kids as young as three or four are sent out to sell things in the morning and they go so school in the afternoon. Most of them are between 8 and 12, which is the same age as the kids in this class. The differences are incredible.

Day three was spent touring a floating village by boat. The village is made up of over 700 families who are all fishermen. Their homes are small boats and there are even floating rec centers with basketball courts and a school. The village moves every year with the seasons and it's absolutely swarming with small children the vast majority of whom will stay with the village all their lives. I'll try to send pictures of the village, too. That afternoon we flew back to Vietnam. We got back to the ship around 8pm and met up with everyone else. That night we decided to go out to the bars. Crazy. Absolutely nuts. We wandered around until we found the first bar, which was fun, but not very full. After a while we all hopped on the back on mopeds and meet up with a bajillion other SASers at Apocalypse Club, which was a crazy crazy crazy dance club. We met a group of people from Ireland, Scotland, Australia and New Zealand who had all met while scuba diving and were traveling around Asia together.

The last day in Vietnam (today), two friends and I wanted to see the War Relic Museum (which is also called the Museum of American War Crimes). The museum was incredible and the Vietnamese perspective was interesting. There was a whole floor dedicated to the pictures of war photographers, many of whom were killed and that was the only real diversity of perspective they offered; they seemed to respect any photographer who risked their life to publicize the war story. We met a moped driver named Aty and he agreed to give us a tour of the city. He and his two friends took us all over the city to different museums for four hours and then bought us delicious spring rolls. Traffic here is crazy, so riding on the back of a moped was definitely an adventure; I'm sunburned and I had a great time. Tonight we have to be back on the ship and tomorrow morning we leave for India, which is supposed to take us 8 days.