Sunday, November 11, 2012

Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Penh

2 November, 2012, Air AsiaX Flight.
One of the interesting changes brought about by the 'budget flight' revolution, is the  sort of people who now jet all about the world at basement-level prices. Airports, particularly Australian airports, look more like beach resorts than waiting rooms for the international jetset. Casual is not quite the right word. Try scruffy. And, at the risk of being snobby, Mr Riff and Mrs Raff have been unleashed on other, unsuspecting travellers. There are more tats and piercings than at a bikie rally and the lack of social skills is openly displayed as 'Bruce and Cheryl' converse at the top of their voices across the terminal, and once on board, across the aisles.

Oh well, guess everybody is entitled to enjoy the benefits of the high Aussie dollar and cheap flights.

3 November, Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur.

The Sentral Hotel was once again our choice. It is located in a slightly grungy street about 5 minutes walk from KL's Central Station and the terminus of the Monorail is just across the road. Rooms are comfortable and clean, there is good free WiFi and a fantastic breakfast, all for about $70 a night. There are way cheaper hotels available in KL and many of them are probably a bit classier than the Sentral, but you just can't beat the location for a short stop-over.

Illness struck Janita about midnight the night before we flew out, so to aid her recovery, she decided to skip the planned activities and stay in for the day. The day was mine! Alone in KL!

We had planned a trip to the Batu Caves on the northern outskirts of the city, so alone (and unsupervised) I headed off.

KL has a population of about 4 million, but the surrounding area brings that up, to close to 7 million. The transport system is fairly good, but just off the back of a trip to Japan, we are probably a little spoilt when it comes to public transport. I was shocked to note that the LRT bound for Batu Caves was 45 seconds late on arrival and it departed one whole minute late! The whole transit system is relatively new and, despite the rather unfair comparisons with Japan, it is a rather efficient system.

The caves were crowded, hot and somewhat dirty, but interesting none-the-less. The real attraction is the enormous golden statue of Lord Murugan that stands at the entrance to the caves and the colourful statue of Hanuman, the monkey god. Well over 200 stairs need to be mastered just to reach the entrance to the caves and then there is the little surprise of another 50 or so to reach the main Hindu temple deep in the caves.

To fill in the remainder of the day, I took myself off to the enormous mall in the centre of the City for lunch and a quick flash around the shops.

This is our third trip to KL so we have all but done it to death. No doubt we will be back, given that AirAsia has its mayor hub here.

4 November, Tan Hai Long hotel, Siagon.

Our eyes sting, our ears ring and our noses tilt to the faint whiff of fish sauce. Yep, this is Vietnam, and we love it!

BUT. What a change. Start with the airport. On our last trip, it was a mould-encrusted, Communist era nightmare. Now, Wow! Clean, efficient, slick even. We see a lot of airports and, though this isn't anywhere near the biggest (about the size of Brisbane International) it is one of the best managed. Immigration - no landing documentation to fill in. Scores of gates for foreigners. Customs - throw your bag on a scanner, pick it up and off. No waits, no delays. Taxi rank - managed by the company that has the airport contract. Once we hit the road to the city centre, we are a little reassured. Yep, there is still some of the old Asia left. As we get closer to the city centre, the motor bikes begin to dominate the newly renovated highway. But no tuk-tuks to jam up the road.

Our hotel is right on the main roundabout in the city centre, bound to become Siagon's version of Times Square. Nothing here is ever easy though. Settled into our room, we began to do our washing, only to be greeted with a flow of water UP the sink! No problem though. A new room and an upgrade.

More adventurous this time around in Vietnam, we headed off to dinner in a back street beside Ben Thanh Markets. Little street stalls offer an amazing array of food. Our selection, including four beers (it was a long day) cost the grand sum of $10. And that included some free entertainment. Well for the staff at least. With some ceremony, Paul was presented with a dish cloth in a plastic bag. He played along, much to the joy of the waiters, but we may never understand what it was all about.

5 November, Saigon.

Five years have elapsed since our last visit to Vietnam. What a difference! Guess five years is a long time in a rapidly developing country? Gone are the cyclos, at least from the main traffic areas, the streets have been paved and the open gutters covered. The motorbike is still king and their thin, tinny horns are a constant background to the general traffic rumble.

Lunch time still sees the footpaths crowded with little temporary kitchens dispensing all forms of heated fare. These mini cafes are often carried about suspended at either end of a stout pole balanced on a shoulder of a slightly stooped woman. The streets and park areas are constantly cleaned by a small army of uniformed cleaners. The skyline is dotted with modern highrises and all the big brand names are here, at prices much the same as Tokyo or New York. There are  obviously enough wealthy Vietnamese to cough up the outrageous amounts of money needed to sport the latest from the Pierre Cs, the Calvin Ks and all the rest.

By 2014, the city will have a two-line subway system and freeways are beginning to snake out from the city. If you haven't been to Vietnam, get here soon, before at least the cities become yet more Singapores or Kuala Lumpurs. Don't get us wrong, there is a fair way to go yet, but given the enormous changes we have seen in the past 5 years, it will all happen fairly fast.

Ducking in and out of air-conditioned shopping malls kept us moving in the still oppressive tropical heat of Saigon. Just to remind us of what the Vietnamese have been through, we revisited the War Remnants Museum this morning. Like everything else, the museum has been flashed up, and air-conditioned, at elast in part. Given all that has beset Vietnam throughout much of the 20th century, it is amazing that they have been prepared to leave all that in their past and move on.

Tomorrow we are off to Cambodia on the bus, six to seven hours in what is advertised as a luxury coach. At $12 each, we will reserve judgement.

Just for the financial record. Dinner last night, four beers, a smallish main course each, $7.

6 November, Manor House Hotel, Phnom Penh.

Six and a half hours on a bus between Siagon and Phnom Penh might sound like a bit of a trial, but it really wasn't all that bad. The road between the two cities has been significantly upgraded recently and it is A-OK at the moment. The traffic is another thing alltogether!

We were amazed to see that even the outer suburbs of Saigon are now almost as well-developed as the city centre. As the suburbs fade away, what passes for countryside along the highway begins to emerge. Farms aren't all that big, but people here seem to be doing fairly well.

Crossing the border was relatively simple, because the bus company people look after much of the paperwork. We were almost left behind though because we followed the crowd who walked off through no-man's-land towards the Cambodian frontier. We soon realised that we were the only people from our group and bolted back to the Vietnamese side just in time to pick up the bus, drive 200 metres, get off, go through Cambodian immigration, back on the bus.

Once into Cambodia, the scenery changed fairly dramatically. The ribbon development that had followed the highway from Saigon to the border soon disappeared and rice paddies, complete with water buffalo, took over. The standard of housing immediately deteriorated, with poor rural villages and small farm houses lining the road. On the up side, the traffic thinned out and the driver upped the revs. We learnt a long time ago not to look out the front window when riding on an Asian bus, so we were spared the usual horrors of passing on corners and directly in front of heavy trucks.

The bus station was a bit further away from our hotel than we had anticipated, so by the time we had shuffled there in the mid afternoon heat, we had started to regret knocking back the offers of the Tuk Tuk drivers.

Our hotel. the Manor House, is a small hotel fairly close to the city centre.

8 November, Phnom Penh.

The disparity of wealith in many Asian countries never ceases to amaze us. Here in Cambodia it is not unusual to see expensive European, Japanese and American cars driving through streets choked with motor scooters, push carts and the odd horse or buffalo-drawn vehicle. Here in the city, as in much of the countryside, there are many desperately poor people who eke out some sort of a living selling small trinkets, collecting and recycling rubbish or simply begging. As in Vietnam, there is a growing middle class who have managed, often through access to education, hard work and family support, to establish a very reasonable life for themselves.

Nothing here can have come easy, even to those who are now riding the wave of development that will eventually change Cambodia as it has Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia and of course China. Only a few decades back, Cambodia was emerging from a four year period of barbarity that had driven the nation back to the middle ages, even, some might argue, the stone age. Pol Pot led the horrific regime of the Khmer Rouge which depopulated the cities, destroyed much of the infrastructure and killed almost 3 million Cambodians, many of them, the most-educated and well-qualified of the country's citizens.

Thanks in a large part to international aid programs and the dedication and hard work of the survivors of the Khmer Rouge Genocide, Cambodia has turned the corner. Modern office towers are under construction, roads are being reconstructed and trade is flourishing.

Over the past couple of days we have stepped back a little into Cambodia's past and had a close-up view of her future.

The 'Killing Fields' at Choeung Ek, about 8 kms southwest of the city, have been maintained as a memorial to the millions who died in the genocide from 1975 -1979. It is  sad, gruesome place that we won't attempt to describe here. Suffice to say, it is not unlike the holocaust sites we have visited in Poland and Germany, but on a proportional  scale what happened here far eclipses the work of the Nazis.

To balance this history, we spent much of the past couple of days with the family of a Cambodian friend from Brisbane. Naroth and her extended family (which includes a common school friend of ours) took us into their home and shared many of their stories about their past, present and promising future. The family is building a large apartment building on the edge of the city and when we say building, we mean physically building. Their enterprise, hard work, commitment to the future of their family and their country was an outstanding example for us of just what can be done, and how much those who are prepared to work can achieve, even in the most difficult circumstances. Their hospitality, friendliness and openness will always remain our most cherished memory of Cambodia.


Tomorrow, we return to Vietnam, back over the same road that bought us here a few days ago. This time it will be a different trip. We have seats on the opposite side of the bus!

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