mccullochblog

Misery Morning

The trip in South East Asia hasn't exactly been devoid of reminders of tragic historical episodes, but our visit yesterday to the former Tuol Sleng prison and killing fields at Cheoung Ek near Phnom Penh were particularly gruesome.

Until 1975, Tuol Sleng was just a school. That year it became a Khmer Rouge prison and torture centre when Pol Pot's army swept into the city and began its campaign to create a communist utopia. The Khmer Rouge believed that intellectuals, civil servants and anyone with an education was an enemy of the 'Angkar' (the organization) and an enemy of the Khmer Rouge.

At Toul Sleng, the Khmer's soldiers tortured over 17000 of those people before sending them to their deaths at the killing fields. Like the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge photographed many of their atrocities and so there remains plenty of evidence of their crimes at the prison museum.

The reminders at Cheoung Ek are even more vivid. The recent rains have once again brought the clothes and bones of many who died there to the surface.

Disturbingly, the Khmer Rouge leaders have never been called to justice. Although the Vietnamese invasion and later Pol Pot's death led to the organization's demise, former Khmer Rouge leaders are still prominent figures in Cambodia's political firmament. The country's Prime Minister, Hun Sen, is a former Khmer Rouge captain.

Cambodia here we come...

With the help of an eight hour bus ride and a ferry across one of the largest tributaries of the Mekong River, we came to within a stone's throw of the Cambodian border today, to Chau Doc to be precise.

We've been forewarned that after the relatively civilised calm of Viet Nam Cambodia promises to be a whole lot more third world. Chau Doc is very much a half-way-house between the two. This way into Cambodia only opened up to foreign travellers in the past year and the locals are clearly still unused to seeing white skin and blond hair!

As a result, this is one of those places where foreigners feel like minor celebrities. Just about every child in sight shouts "hello" (before hiding in embarrassment) and every local seems to have a smile for you. As Emma and I strolled along the palm tree lined narrow alleyways where most of Chau Doc's population lives, it was like a sort of Eden before the snake - all smiles, innocence and tranquility.

No doubt as more travellers come this way beggars and hawkers will appear like they have throughout Viet Nam, but for now this is a great little stopover. I wouldn't recommend the barbecued bananas though; they were pretty tasteless.

Zoom, zoom Saigon

Not content with trying to terrify Emma with underground tunnels, today I put her on the back of a motorbike for a six-hour high speed tour of Ho Chi Minh City. Naturally, I was right there by her side, dodging traffic aboard my own bike like the best of them.

Our first stops were a couple of Buddhist Pagodas which, oddly enough, are used predominantly by the Chinese population here. (I've warned the locals to watch out for those Chinese, but apparently Viet Nam already beat them in a war in 1979, so they're pretty relaxed about it all.)

We arrived at the Pagodas at the monks' lunchtime and were almost fed as well as provided with a guided tour! We declined gracefully, heading instead to 'Hao Pasteur', rumored (by our motorbike driver) to serve the best Pho (noodle soup) in all of Saigon....it was pretty good, although naturally I'm suspicious of a family connection.

The afternoon saw us zip off to the War Remnants Museum (formerly known as the American Atrocities Museum) to see a stirring collection of wartime photographs that captured the harrowing lives of soldiers on both sides of the American war and the horrific human and ecological damage attributed to America's use of the Dioxin defoliant 'Agent Orange'.

After that...well, naturally, we'll be trying to cheer ourselves up with a beer. And, as luck would have it, the rest of our new travel companions arrive today, giving us the perfect excuse.

Going Underground

Emma arrived safely today and within a few hours I'd persuaded her to crawl through a muddy tunnel three meters underground courtesy of our trip out to the Cu Chi Viet Cong tunnels.

The Cu Chi tunnels are a complex of tunnels that extend for more than 200km (yes - kilometers!) around the jungle 60 km from Saigon. They were used by the Viet Cong during both the French and American wars as underground homes, kitchens, hospitals and most importantly supply routes of weapons and soldiers.

Their secrecy proved to be a critical factor in the North's ability to take Saigon - even to the extent that the Americans built a base on top of the tunnels without realising they were there. Unsurprisingly, many American soliders died as a result of the Viet Cong's ability to appear, launch attacks and immediately disappear below ground.

Fortunately for us, some of the tunnels survived the massive B52 bomb strikes that followed their discovery, which provided for a fantastically sweaty afternoon crawling around inside them. Needless to say, the whole group goaded each other into going 30 then 50 meters underground....it was hot....and then a bit scary when Emma bumped against an underground lamp and plunged us into darkness!

Suits you, Sir!

I always thought it was a bit flash getting clothes tailor-made. That was until we arrived in Hoi An where it is literally easier to get clothes made precisely to fit you than it is to buy something off the peg.

And given I was still wearing the grubby t-shirts that got me across the Tibetan plateau while my travel-mates are donning smart shirts and summerwear for dinner every night - I thought I'd take the plunge.

But it wasn't exactly a plunge as Mrs Nginh of 55 Tran street made me two raw-silk shirts and a pair of strong cargo-pant shorts for under $20....bargain!

And of course, I'm meeting Emma at Ho Chi Minh airport tomorrow, so I thought I'd better smarten myself up a bit!

Face-to-face with the Viet Cong

A small sub-set of the group awoke at 6am today to make a dawn trip out to the ruins at My Son (pronounced Mee-son). My Son was the holy land for the Champa population of central Viet Nam from the 4th to the 13th century. What's left of the place - a UNESCO World Heritage Site - is remarkable even though many of its temples were destoyed in 1969 by American bombing.

Strangely enough it was an encounter with a veteran of the American war that really made the visit. Just a few minutes after we arrived with our guide, Mr Twan, we noticed a group of 20 pensioners tottering across the same unstable group we'd just crossed. Spotting medals hanging from their civilian clothes, we asked Mr Twan to investigate and couldn't quite believe what we discovered.

In chatting with the first pensioner we met, we quickly realized he and his group had fought against the Americans for the Viet Cong - the southern rebels sympathetic to the North's communist regime. Rather more staggeringly, we learnt that the white medal he wore with Ho Chi Minh's head on it actually commemorated a visit by Ho Chi Minh himself to the jungle camp of his battalion. This man had met Ho Chi Minh!!!

As we digested what we were hearing it was impossible not to display a bit of awe. At that the pensioner puffed out his chest with pride. While returning American servicemen never seemed to receive the respect they deserved, his type were recognized as heroes in Viet Nam and continue to be treated as such by the government.

We only talked for a few moments, but it was impossible not to be moved by this strange scene: a man awarded medals for killing Americans proudly introducing himself to another generation of Americans and Brits amid the ruins that were a Viet Cong base 30 years earlier.

The encounter was all the more remarkable given Mr Twan's father served in the South Vietnamese army's signals corp. Despite his opposite allegiances, it was clear there was no particular bitterness. True, he highlighted many South Vietnamese chose to became refugees rather than go to Communist 're-education' camps, but in general he said most Vietnamese were happy to forgive and forget.

Head out on the byway!

Less than 24 hours after my first motorbike experience....my second! The whole group hit the road (and the country lane and the dirt track) today creating a stir all over rural Hue with a convoy of eleven motorbikes that must have resembled a strange mixture of Quadraphenia and Platoon!

It was the perfect counterbalance to the tourists visiting the same sights by air-conditioned bus. Everywhere we went - from a historic amphitheatre to a buddhist nunnery to a conical hat making shop - we drew baffled stares from adults and shrill "hello's" from children as our noisy convoy whizzed past.

It was also the perfect way to see even more of the Vietnamese countryside. It's harvesting season, so the fields were abuzz with activity of all sorts. We saw buffalo swimming, ducks being 'herded', traditional fishing (HUGE spring-loaded nets suspended in rivers) and rice harvesting. Better still, we met loads of locals in a whole host of small villages. A particular highlight was the clairvoyant who predicted six children for two of the girls on the trip. After that...the other girls didn't bother asking.

To top it all off, we visited the final resting place of King Tu Duc, who ruled over Viet Nam from 1847-1883. Apparently, he is famous in Vietnamese history for failing to father a son (despite having a harem of several hundred wives and concubines) and for letting the French invade! Off to Hoi An next - the home of 'made-to-measure' clothing in Viet Nam.

Get yer motor runnin'...

After being offered a ride on the back of 100 'moto-taxis' in Ha Noi, I finally succumbed in Hue, donned my helmet and head out on the road to adventure. It's a funny thing, at the age of 32, to realise you've never ridden a motorbike before...it adds to the fear of cornerning at high speed (35mph), I think.

For the record, it wasn't a mid-life crisis that led to this sudden change of heart, but a desire to see the remotely located Tombs of the Emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty, who ruled Hue from the early 19th to mid-20th century.

At it turned out, it was a fantastic decision. My driver (no, I wasn't THAT brave as to drive), Mr Kwah, took me on an amazing ride through the Vietnamese countryside beside paddy fields, along the banks of the perfume river, past elephants and buffalo working in the fields and eventually to the spectacular tombs of the Nguyen emperors.

As if that wasn't enough, I had to make a river crossing to get to the second tomb, that of Mang Minh, which gave me an even better view of life on the river: men fishing, others dredging sand by hand to make cement, children playing, small wooden ferries taking tourists to the same temple...it was quite a sight.

And of course the whole scene was reminiscent of so many American Vietnam war movies. An awful lot of fighting took place here, just south of the 17th parallel that divided North from South and it wasn't difficult to visualise American troops patrolling these fields, villages and forests. Still, that's a WHOLE different story.

What Jellyfish??

Well, I was initially dismayed to find that my Viet Nam trip was to be spent in the luxury of air-conditioned hotels, but I have to say I'm kind of enjoying getting used to it now....

My new group (11 of us) spent today cruising around the spectacular rock formations of Ha Long Bay in Eastern Viet Nam suffering nothing worse than slightly warm Tiger Beer in between mouthfuls of fresh seafood and dips in the Emerald coloured waters of the Bay.

Ha Long bay is a stunning natural phenomenon; a collection of a hundred or so small, rocky islands that jut out from the water upto 100m high in the North Western part of the South China Sea. The islands are uninhabited except for birdlife and insects and make a fantastic location for a lazy cruise and some swimming.

Aside from the odd tourist boat, the only company there is from the Vietnamese who choose to make their homes on the water. Around every island is a little community of houseboats that is home to the fishermen and shopkeepers that bring ice creams and cold drinks to the tourists that actually manage to jump ship and get some exercise. Quite idyllic really....and a hell of a far cry from those Nomads and their Yak butter tea!!

Oh, and yes....the jellyfish were HUGE....but we didn't notice them until we'd finished swimming. Thank God.

Underwater Pinnochio

On a trip like this you occasionally discover some truly odd forms of entertainment. Last night I forked out a massive US$3 (breakfast has been costing $1, dinner usually less than $2) to see the Ha Noi Water Puppet Theatre. It's exactly as odd as it sounds.

Essentially, you're in a theatre but instead of there being a stage at the front, there's a brightly-lit pond with a temple for a backdrop. Under the temple - and behind some bamboo screens - the puppeteers stand up to their waists in water and slide wooden puppets to and fro on the end of sticks as if the puppets were dancing through a Vietnamese paddy field. Naturally, the whole performance is set to traditional music (drums, cymbals, gongs and a one-string violin etc.)

Oddly, it's quite entertaining too once you get over the fact that you're watching an aquatic pinnochio. It all lasts about an hour and I must admit I got quite absorbed into such memorable segments as the "Dance of the Fairies", "The Legend of the Turtle and the Sword" and "the Dragon Dance".

However, as Hung - a man I met at Hoan Kiem lake, and machinery inspector at the Institute of Agriculture - told me: "The Vietnamese don't go to the Water Puppet Theatre. We can't afford it. It's just for tourists." I think it was his polite way of saying: "We can't stand it."

Still, it passed a last night alone! The rest of my Viet Nam group arrives today.