I may or may not struggle with the biker chick image, but can’t a girl try?
I actually was trying.
We had a couple of days left at the end of our trip so we decided to take the bike to Mui Ne, a beach that’s about a 6-hr drive from Saigon and a regular weekend destination for people in these parts. It’s a sleepy little area. It’s the only place in the world where I go and automatically sleep like 11 hours a night. I exaggerate a lot but not this time. The first time I ever went there I slept for 16 of my first 24 hours there! On our first night there this time, Chelsea fell asleep at 8:00. On the second night, I did the same despite my best efforts. I don’t know, it’s just that kind of place. But enough about zzz’s, here are some photos.
It’s the first time I’ve driven there. It was a rainy first couple of hours, but the rest was smooth sailing, mostly. Here are some photos from the journeys there and back:
So far on this blog you’ve seen the beaches, charming towns, fabulous restaurants, and adorable people of Cambodia, and that’s probably as it should be. They’ve come a long way since ‘79, and all of that deserves to be seen. However, we decided to spend some of our time in Phnom Penh learning more about its history, specifically the 4 years of hell that happened under the Khmer Rouge in the 70s, and the way the country has dealt with it ever since. I’ll start by sharing an article that I came across in the New York Times a few months ago. It talks about the struggle to have young people understand what happened to their parents and grandparents when most of them don’t or can’t believe it. And it makes some sense – it’s a difficult story to imagine.
We spent an afternoon visiting S-21 Prison and one of the Killing Fields just outside of Phnom Penh.
This high school building was turned into one of the most notorious prisons in the country during most of the reign of the Khmer Rouge. The cruelty was most specifically (though certainly not exclusively) directed at city people and anyone who seemed remotely educated, as these were all threats to the peasant utopia that the Khmer Rouge hoped to create. If you look closely at some of the photographs in the slideshow, you’ll see how very young many of the prisoners were.
If the prisoners didn’t die here, they were often taken to the killing fields just outside of town.
I’ll leave it here, but I’ll recommend a book that I read while we were there called First They Killed My Father. It’s written by a woman who was 5 years old when the Khmer Rouge took over. It’s valuable time spent reading about those years through the eyes of a child.
I won’t do Chelsea’s entire visit in one post, but I’ll start at the beginning – Cambodia. I’d been there once before and absolutely loved it, and this time was no disappointment.
It started with breakfast and a bus ride and a jaunt on a ferry.
The ferry ride was a jolting reminder that I’m in a very different world here, as our bus was right next to a wagon stacked with squealing pigs as they were jabbed in their faces by their . . . owner? Not to sound cold, but I’ve never had a super-soft spot for animals the way that some people do. But, I am used to thinking about them as real live creatures that have some feelings. It seems the understanding here is dramatically different, on a rather large, and occasionally alarming, scale.
But moving on to happier topics for a moment . . .
We stayed at a lovely guest house called the Top Banana, where we slept like mad and were lazy bums for our first half-day there. Eating food and reading books and drinking coffee (whispering now: there are many things about Cambodia that I would consider “welcome departures” from my experiences in Vietnam, but the coffee is not one of them, but it was coffee nontheless).
It's a tough life
Also, it was Chelsea’s birthday and the owner of our guesthouse suggested this hidden, fabulous, incense-smelling, greenery-covered Cambodian restaurant where we ate food and drank wine. If you’re ever near Cambodian food, go for the Amok. That is all.
And then we did some additional wandering around Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. I’ll share some random photos with you here.
My friend Chelsea has just left after visiting and roaming the subcontinent with me for a couple of weeks. The cool thing about having visitors is it helps you see a place that you’ve gotten used to through fresh eyes. For instance, she reminded me that this is not a normal situation for power lines to be in. This came a day after I saw a construction man with his entire upper body up in the middle of a bundle much like this, and I didn’t think a thing of it.
Anyway, much more to come on the visit and the roaming, but for now, just power lines. Disclaimer: every single photo that I will show you of this couple of weeks is credited to her. Every single one. I was a camera bum while she was here.
I used to work in a warehouse. In this warehouse, Safety Was King. You could only carry so much on your vehicle at a time, nothing ever hanging off, and at a certain point you weren’t allowed to back up anymore. Oh, also, if anything ever fell off of your vehicle, for any reason, you had to report it. Oh, also, if you ever hit anything, and I mean so much as tapped it, you had to report it. I’m not ridiculing . . . just remembering.
A little while ago I made a little slideshow for them of the crazy nonsense that happens on Saigon’s streets. More specifically, the gargantuan items that people manage to carry on the back of their bikes. But I forgot to share it here. I took all of these photos in about 30 minutes standing on a random corner that I basically pulled out of a hat. It just didn’t take that long. Enjoy!
Every weekend morning I get to spend my first two hours with the fabulous, adorable, eager, hilarious, occasionally annoying students below. See why I like this job? This was our end of course party – they just passed super-beginner and will soon be slightly-less-super-beginner.
This kid looks no less ridiculous in any of the following photos so get used to it. He's going to chase me down if he finds this blog in 10 years.
This is called teacher-kills-little-brains-softly-by-letting-them-watch-kung-fu-panda-on-the-last-day
Love love love this kid. What's he doing? Don't know, but that expression is always on his face.
What did I tell you about this one.
In case you're wondering, nose-picking is totally cool in Vietnam. No matter how old you are.
Class photo!
Well, lovely children or a bunch of delinquents. You decide.
Just today I discovered something that I’m going to have to work very hard on before my return to the States. That or get myself in a lot of trouble and learn the hard way once I’m back.
Consider the following two facts:
Most people in Saigon can’t understand a full sentence that I say anyway. And if I want to make it impossible for anyone to understand anything, I just speak a little faster and it works like a charm. Even the best English speakers here can’t really understand fast Busbee speak. Throw in a little Chicago slang and they’re completely excluded.
Most people in Saigon aren’t too worried about politeness/offensiveness themselves
Given these things, I’ve become quite careless about saying really rude things to/about people right in front of their faces. This is in part due to the fact that I spend most of my time with a woman who is quite skilled in this area (see Da Lat post for details).
Some example that come to mind:
When a woman in the market showed us an amount of money that we owed her as opposed to saying it: “Oh, she thinks she’s going to pay us for buying these mangos.” — my roommie
Or to various motorbike drivers: “Thanks a lot, mate, I was going to turn right there but you just do what you need to do. Don’t worry about me!” –my roommie
Or on the tennis court when most people would kindly kick your tennis ball your way after it’s rolled into their court: “DON’T WORRY MATE, DON’T WORRY, please don’t move a muscle. I’ve got it. Wouldn’t want you to have to move to return our ball.” –my roommie
This kind of thing.
And it’s usually perfectly fine because nobody can understand a damn word we say anyway.
So today we were at the tailor’s and I was waiting while Ali tried on some clothes, and I couldn’t stop staring at these two women who were in there. We were in this shwanky part of town, where all the rich expats go (and therefore I generally steer clear). And in my time here I’ve gotten a few little glimpses into a little subculture of expat wives of businessmen whose companies have stationed them here. And I was getting one of those glimpses today and just couldn’t stop staring. It was such a bizarre kind of culture shock/flashback to places I’ve been before. Just two women in their 40s with carefully fixed hair and makeup and Ann Taylor clothes having a little chat about where they were going to eat lunch. Really quite a basic scene, and I was completely dumbfounded and curious about what their lives are like in a city like this. No value judgments, just completely intrigued.Then the women left the room.
So Ali came and joined me on the bench. We’re sitting and waiting, and one of the women returns to the room. Without even thinking, I blatantly point my finger and start a sentence (loudly) with “SO THIS WOMAN . . . ” at which point the woman looks up and Ali and I both drop our jaws in stunned silence at how fabulously rude that just was. Here is a perfectly nice woman who does understand my language perfectly and she does have perfectly good ears. YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT. I wasn’t going to say anything mean. I was just going to talk about someone, loudly, in front of them.
Operation Return to Good Southern Manners starts now.
