In an around Buon Ma Thout - Central Highlands

We left Nha Trang, stopping at a fishing village where the wind was too strong for the fleet to go out, but the women had managed to catch a few fish in their nets close to shore. They spread them out on the sidewalk for the other women to haggle over who got what. It was from tiny ports like this that the boat people left in 1975; the boats are tiny and it's 600 km. to the Philippines. It is estimated that about 1,000,000 made it to safety, though rarely all the way that far (they got to Thailand or were picked up by other boats like the one from Medecins sans Frontière). It is also estimated that at least as many died trying. This is a beautiful site and will probably disappear fairly soon in the name of tourist development. You can see vast spreads of land along the coast that have been cleared for hotel resorts.

We drove through some very interesting countryside as we entered the mountains: bananas, sugar cane, corn, rubber trees, teak, and coffee. There were more and more traditional houses. This is where many of the ethnic minorities live. We picked up a local guide, an obligation, but a nice one, and proceeded to a M'nong village for lunch, an elephant ride through the Lak lake (an unnecessary attraction as far as I am concerned, especially when our elephant ducked in the deeper water and our seat was not high enough). The ride ended with a walk through the village. This is enlightening; the people still live in their long houses on stilts. The houses have one window if there is a woman and then a window for each girl. Closed windows mean "unavailable", open windows mean "ready to marry"; most windows are shut. There are animals all over: hens with their chicks close behind; sows with their piglets; cows, sometimes with a calf; dogs all over the place. The disturbing thing is that, although the kids go to school, like all Vietnamese children, they are expected to continue to live in their villages. They have satellite TV and school, so they can see modern living standards, but are expected to remain where they are, with a hose outside for a shower and toilet in the woods behind the village. It seemed to me like walking through an exhibit in a national park.

Buon Ma Thout is a nice town, with clean, wide streets. On waking up we had another surprise -- sunshine! The museum of ethnic music and crafts was closed but we stopped to look at the new building, and admire the big camphor trees in the garden in front of the Bao Dai's house. He was the last king of Vietnam, who lived in exile in France and died in the late 1990s. It was so wonderful to stroll through this park in the sun and warmth.

We then headed for the waterfalls at Dray Sap and that was a short hike, but it was so good to be out of the bus and walking, no one complained. 

We returned to the city for lunch and a visit to a modern pagoda. There's a public school next to the pagoda and the kids were out on recess, so we stopped to say hello. They wanted our autographs. It was amusing. They were all screaming "hello", but you can't go any further in a discussion. We ended with a visit to the local market. I felt very confined and not comfortable at all. Once we got through the poultry section, I had to leave fast.

We are now in Saigon, on route to the Mekong delta.

Photos up to date

Here is the photo album, up to date to yesterday. It's the same as the one currently showing on the menu on the side, but since that will change, I'm posting it here.

Warm but stormy in Nha Trang

I've got internet access in the room and I've got time before dinner! I just read an article in the Washington Post, "Spring Travel: Old war wounds give way to a new Vietnam". Can't be the same country. This article was written from the perspective of high-class hotel accommodations, no mention of the constant pressure to buy. The pressure to buy is not the same as the vendors coming up to you and asking (pleading with) you to buy; that kind of begging you have everywhere, it seems. Here it is a matter of the guide saying you're going to have a stop to pee and then have you spend 45 minutes in the adjacent shop. Yesterday, in Hoi An, I skipped the morning visit of the city because I've caught a cold. I stayed at the hotel and rested. Our guide had been called away for something urgent, so we had a substitute, a nice girl who sped the group through the museum in 10 minutes, whereas Paul and Alain would have liked to spend a little more time, to drop them all at another shop/factory for 45. They finished the tour by 10!

This morning our bus took us back to Da Nang to get the plane to Nha Trang and the guide suggested we stop on the way to see the marble sculptors. I think there was a unanimous groan of "NO!" from us and she got the message, so we did not stop. The Nha Trang airport is Cam Rahn. These place names are so familiar to me. They've turned the old US air base into a sparkling new international airport. After the Americans left in 1975, the Soviets rented the naval base until their regime change and they decided it was too expensive. The Vietnamese finally said "enough" and have decided to make the bay the luxury vacation destination of the future. It's just beginning, but you can see the lay of the land: intersections and streets in the middle of nowhere, some buildings going up, golf courses being laid, the beach, the beautiful sand.... It really could be pleasant.

One of the problems is that this is such a quick-paced tour. We are seeing a lot, and really, it is a beautiful country, but we can't seem to do more than scratch the surface.

Hué to Hoi An

Hué
Early rise, 3 a.m. In order to leave the hotel with our box lunches at four to get to the airport a little before five for our flight at 6:10. Looked like only western tourists are so crazy; the flight was full, though.
We arrived in Hué – not just gray; it was raining. This, apparently, is normal Hué weather. All the scooters were covered with multi-colored ponchos. Sometimes there was a second person sharing the back seat and the poncho. That is the only color on the streets. Hué is already the south. The houses are wider and not so high. They also look better built and more colorful.
We had a 45 minute boat ride on the Perfume River. Why call it a boat; it was a floating shop and we were a captive audience. It was unpleasant in spite of the adorable little girl who must be about 3, no more. The family lives on the boat. We visited the citadel and forbidden city – just like the Chinese one, in miniature and much simpler originally. Very few of the original buildings exist and have been restored. The citadel was destroyed during the the Vietnam War , the Tet Offensive in 1968. As the symbolic center of power, dating back to the nineteenth century and until 1945, each side wanted it. It had no military significance whatsoever. The North won. After the war, the Communists were not particularly interested in restoring vestiges of the kingdom and western (French) domination. Furniture disappeared; what buildings hadn't been destroyed by artillery fire just collapsed from neglect. The empty spaces became parks. Now that tourism is the big money maker, they are busy trying to restore, but the work is shoddy and the new roofs leak; the lacquer paint is fading. Such a shame.
After a very, very nice lunch, we headed to the kings' tombs in Hoa Lu. We only made it to the first one,  and it is set in a beautiful site, with a lake and gardens. We were wet and cold and not very energetic. We had to walk to and from the tomb through a gauntlet of vendors. Even the babies were chanting “buy banananeus”. (that's not a typo; that's the local pronunciation.) Cute babies, younger than Aurelia, chanting in English! We speculated that these were their first words. We got to our hotel and, for once, we were able to walk to the restaurant for dinner. This was the first day we've done any walking in Vietnam. We've been in the bus too much.
This morning we headed out at 8:00, a late start! It was raining, but Mr. Dung promised that we were heading to warmer weather and clearer skies. It was a long drive that took all morning through the mountains, but once through the tunnel, on the other side, the sky was light gray, no rain. Da Nang was a short distance. It's a relatively clean city, the third largest in the country. It's still a major port. They are clearing the waterfront to make room for resort hotels and casinos. The old US airbase is currently a lot of forest with the old airplane hangars, but all that is going to be turned into golf courses and more resorts. We visited the Cham museum (vestiges of the Hindu period, 7th to 13th centuries) and then had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. We passed by a lot of marble sculptors, mostly of funeral monuments and tombs, on the way to Hoi An. When we arrived, we stopped at a silk factory. They don't really weave the silk there; it's too noisy, but they do the standard demonstration. Then you get to visit the shop. You can see the embroiders, the seamstresses and so on. They even have wood-carving and lamp-making. Again, a prisoner. We stayed and stayed. Eventually people buy, so when everyone had finally made our purchases, ordered our custom clothes (I escaped that), we were taken to the hotel. Now, I'm going down to the lobby to send these last few posts.
I don't want to complain. I'm having a good time and the visits are interesting. It's just this constant pressure to buy is irritating. I'd probably be much more inclined to buy if there wasn't so much pushing. My instinct is to say “no”. There's no way you can admire anything without the immediate price. And many of the things are too expensive for the shoddy work.

It's cold here

Hotel Star in Hoa Binh. Where to start? On the outside, it looks like a modern hotel. When you walk into your room, it looks perfectly normal. But if you look closely, the carpet is disgusting. There was an air conditioner that should have also served as a heater. I turned it on, and when it finally decided to start, it blew out several months of accumulated filth, almost like soot. Fortunately, it fell mostly on to the extra bed. I immediately turned it off. There was no hot water. Dinner was a joke. I had to ask for eating utensils (any kind would do) five times, before I got a dirty fork and spoon. Breakfast was no better – moldy bread, a cold, fried egg, ….

We left the hotel, all anxious to be on our way to a ride in an ox-cart and then a bark in rice paddies. Little did we realize it was a four-hour ride on rough country roads to the restaurant for lunch (very good lunch, but cold) with the ox-carts that came by to pick us up and take us through the village to the rice paddy. It was a slow ride, nice to see the interior of the village, though. The houses are not so dreary as along the main road. In fact, some of them are quite nice. But the ride is long and uninteresting after a while. Also, the minimum per person is $1, which makes the woman who drives the ox-cart disproportionately rich with a few rides of 4 people per cart several times a week. After a long while, you get to the dock where women are waiting in their bamboo barks to take you for a glide in a rice paddy along the mountain. It's beautiful and there is a cave (ah, la Grotto Azura? Not quite. You take a little tour of the cave and then head back. The whole ride takes a little more than an hour. We were freezing by the time the whole thing was over.

The driver kindly turned the heat on in the bus and we headed back to Hanoi, three hours away. Well, with traffic and bad road conditions, it was more like another four hours, with a stop to see the temples of the founding dynasties Dinh and Lê. Dinh founded his dynasty in the early 10^th century and named his son as heir, but he was assassinated and the prince was too young, so his mother became regent and married Lê, the head of the army, who became king and named his own son heir. Sounds like a pretty familiar story, very Shakespearean.

We got back in time to go straight to dinner, which was good. There seems to be a system. At lunch we had pumpkin soup; at dinner we had pumpkin soup. Yesterday, we had vegetable soup at lunch time; at dinner we had vegetable soup. The same repetition happens with desserts; we have watermelon day, pineapple day, crème caramel day and so on.  

A day in the mountains

You can't visit two contrasting countries like Cambodia and Vietnam without making some comparisons. So far, Cambodia is coming out the winner. Vietnam is busier and more industrious, but Cambodia is more harmonious. As in Cambodia, the houses, at least in the Hanoi region, are narrow and long. In contrast, they are built of brick and those gray building blocks made of a mixture of coal, sand and clay. Gray, like the sky. The facades are all different, though and as the family gets richer, they add another story or two. It's not very pretty, really. There is coal dust everywhere. Almost everyone wears a mask to filter out dust. In vietnam, they wear cloth masks that they wash out; in Cambodia, in the cities, they also wear masks, paper, to filter out traffic pollution.
In Hanoi, the streets are packed – cars, scooters, trucks, buses, bikes, pedestrians – all trying to move smoothly without having to stop. It was the same in Cambodia, without the pedestrians, but here, they honk warning honks constantly. The sidewalks are just as packed – people walking, people sitting on stools having a quick meal, smoking, getting a sidewalk haircut, reading the paper. There is also merchandise flowing out of the tiny shops and thousands of scooters parked, sometimes three deep.
The north has been very chilly and I don't have the right kind of clothes. My sweater and raincoat are not warm enough. On Wednesday we headed into the mountains.  Since we left very early and made decent time, we stopped at a town market to walk through. They were selling sections of sugar can to suck, bamboo shoots, eggs (chicken, duck, and quail), meat (pig and dog mostly).
We stopped at a Muong village where Mr. Dung knows the people and some of the group had tea with one of the families. We did not. It's one thing to be invited into someone's home; it's another to have the impression they are selling their intimacy. Even if they are his friends and perhaps it was an authentic invitation, it didn't seem that way. All the children expected candy and were not content to take just one or two, they ended up with almost a bag's worth of candy each. We and a few others of the group felt very uncomfortable. That said, the village is quite beautiful. They live in wood houses on stilts. The floor is made of unrolled bamboo.
We had lunch in a Taÿ village, just outside Mai Chau. This is a tourist town. They still grow rice, but the town is really a lot of restaurants, guest houses, and souvenir shops. The weaving is beautiful, but the feeling of being trapped is there. The more I feel trapped, the less I am inclined to buy anything. Kind of like New Hope or Sausalito, Mont St. Michel or Lourdes. This is what they call a White Taÿ village – black skirt, white blouse buttoned down the middle. Black Taÿ wear a black blouse. The Muong wear any color they like, buttoned down the side. Frankly, I think these vestimentary differences are dying out; we didn't see them. None of these ethnic groups wears the conical hat, though. The women wear turban-like cloths around their heads. We had lunch in this Taÿ village/shopping center and it was very good; the men do the cooking, here.
Not far from there, on the way to Hoa Binh, we stopped for an ethnic folk dancing, music show. Again, it was a show in a shop. The show was very pleasant and I bought the video CD, so I can probably discard the little film clips I took.

Ha Long, Hanoi

On leaving the Halong Bay we went through lots of villages – all dark and bleak. Coal dust covers everything. They use coal powder pressed into briquettes for cooking, mixed with clay and pressed into briquettes for heating, and mixed with sand and gravel to make building blocks. We stopped at the Bah Trap pagoda, “Tour du Pinceau” in French for some reason that escapes me. We got to Hanoi just in time to put our baggage in our rooms and set off for an early dinner, followed by a stroll through the old quarter, the 36 streets, where each street used to have a specialty, like silk or leather, but now it seems like it's all electronics, tourist souvenirs, and baggage. I wish I could remember the size of Emma's backpack that has been through its lifetime of travel; it can retire if a good replacement were found.
Early the next morning, we set off in pousse-pousse to go to the National History museum, where we got a concise visual reminder of the different periods and dynasties in Vietnamese history. Hanoi became the capital in 1010 and the king set up a mandarin elite, like the Chinese. So, it was a merit society in which the best elements from all over the kingdom were eligible to take the annual exam to enter the administration. To that end, he also created the Literary Pagoda, where the exams were held and the names of the doctors (our PhDs) were inscribed on steles. Before lunch, we stopped at the Tour du Nord, built to protect the city from the dragon from the north (China).
After an unexciting lunch, we went to the Ethnology Museum, which was very interesting. The ethnic groups are broken down by language groups; the Vietnamese make up 80% of the population and the other 20% are minorities of ancient migrant groups that originated in Indonesia (the Cham, for example) or southern China (Mao, Yao, for example) or Thailand. Further distinction comes from where they live: high mountains (H'mong), mid-mountains (Taÿ), valleys (Muong). The Vietnamese stick to the plains and deltas. Of course, this is over-simplified, but it gives a rough idea of how society is set up. We had just enough time to see the “Pagode au Pilier Unique” with a stop on the way at Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum This monument to Ho was built in contradiction to his most explicit wishes. In good  or Confucian tradition, he'll be venerated, then adored. We're getting a good education on this process, the same as in China, when the king died, a tomb, a model of the palace, was built for the king's spirit to live. And people pray to king and make offerings.

About the earthquake in S.E. Asia

No, I did not feel it in Hanoi at all, but another member of our group, who was having a cup of tea, had a weird moment and saw the curtains in her room move. At first she thought that maybe her bath had been too hot, but then she realized it must have been something else and wondered if it wasn"t an earthquake. All that to say that we are fine, if chilled to the bone. Tomorrow we should be heading towards warmer weather, but we will still be in the mist. Today, it was rain -- all day. I'll try to send a real post tomorrow morning. I'm too tired tonight to try to type anything coherent.

On to Vietnam

Saturday, March 19, arrival in Hanoi a little after 3 p.m. The airport is a good 45 km. From the city. We got a taxi to our hotel – $16 – and we've got to go back in the morning to meet the incoming group from Paris at 6 a.m. We took a short walk around the neighborhood, saw the opera and the art deco post office from the early 1930s. Early dinner at the hotel, where they put us alone in a banquet rooms being set up for a wedding reception on Sunday. The regular restaurant is occupied this evening by a lovely little girl's birthday party. One last look at the news (Libya now taking back the limelight from Japan). If I have a chance, I'll get all this uploaded before continuing, but who knows. 
What do you know -- I wasn't able to connect before leaving the hotel at 5 a.m. Our guide came by to pick us up. As a precaution we had already reserved a taxi because I wasn't able to get through to the agency to ask if the guide could come, but he called us at about 8 and told us he'd come by, so it all worked out. We woke up just before the wake up call and managed to watch the end of the France-Wales rugby game, which France won, 28-9.
In spite of the fact that there was far less traffic than the previous evening, it still took almost as long to get back to the airport. Early morning is when they set up the markets on the street and all the scooters and bicycles are loaded with fruits and vegetables and other merchandise. There are a lot of busy people in the streets. We got to the airport to wait for the group and I tried wifi access there, but no luck again. I should have done it at Siem Reap airport!
Our guide here in Vietnam is Mr. Dung, pronounced “due” not “duh”. The other 14 passengers came out, a self-contained group of 6, plus 8 others. We all changed some money into VND, dong, because that is better than handing around dollars, in striking contrast to Cambodia. There are a little over 20800 VND for 1 USD. We didn't hit the road until about 7, or a little after, and headed east for the Halong Bay. 
On the map, it looks like a relatively short ride; that doesn't take into account the “obligatory” stop at an artisan center where 60% of the workers are handicapped in one way or another. I was most struck by the silk embroidery on black and white photos – spectacular. The silk is so fine, that those that were mounted and framed under glass were hard to identify as embroidery. There were also some ceramics, silk clothing, jade and stone jewelry and all the other tourist-type ware. All very pretty. A state-run affair with fixed prices – over-priced, at that. No one was in a mood to buy anything on the first day in the country. We were all tired from either the flight or, for us, the very early wake-up call. To give Mr. Dung some credit, he had wanted to change the schedule a bit so that we could visit the pagoda first and the shops on the way back to Hanoi, but there was an accident on the way to the pagoda so we had to backtrack and take the original route. While we were at it, he had us stop at a ceramics works, where we could observe the process from beginning to end. We saw the molds, carving on the still soft earthenware, painting, enameling, putting into the ovens for firing. The end of the process is, of course, selling. Again, greatly over-priced; you can find finer bowls at Tang Frères in Paris for half the price. Sorry Rita, but the tea mug with its self-contained strainer that I was looking at for you was just too expensive for its quality.
It seemed to take forever to finally arrive at the Halong Bay dock. We had to wait a bit for our boat, and then wait again for lunch, but we had a fine meal. Halong Bay is always misty, beautiful for drawing, which I managed to do a bit – thank you Anne!

End of last week, end of Cambodian tour

Another day, a new guide. I haven't memorized her name, yet, sorry. It's very hot, about 35°C.
We started the day with getting our badges for the Angkor site. You get a personal badge with your photo on it. Today's visit was Angkor Thom, built under Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century. The main attractions are the Bayon, the Baphuon, which has just opened up for visits, and the Elephant terrace. I can't go into details here; there are guidebooks and wikipedia for that. What I can say is that it is overwhelming. There's a bridge to the entrance of the Bayon: deities on the left, demons on the rights, all holding the protector, a snake. Each tower has a face on each side of it. There's an outer ring and you go deeper into the complex and it's the same, so, for me, at least, it's very confusing. Every which way you turn, it's the same. But it's never the same, because each sculpture is different. The basic structure of these sites is what we learned over the past week, so it's slightly less overwhelming than if we had started out here, but just slightly less. 
One problem is the temptation to take pictures of everything. Sorry about that. I'm putting far to many up in the album and that's just a selection of all that we've taken and I'm lax in getting around to tagging them or putting captions on. I'll cut back when I have time to really look at them. For now, if you are looking at the album, you will be as submerged as I am.
The Baphuon is a restoration project under French supervision. They are trying to put the temple together as it was, filling in with new stone, when they can't find the pieces. They've been working on this since before the war, and during the Pol Pot regime the charts and diagrams that described which stone went where were destroyed, so they had to start putting this 3-dimensional puzzle together again. They're doing a good job.
The Elephant Terrace is not, as it name seems to indicate, a promenade for elephants. It's the observation terrace for the festivities held in front of it for the king and visiting dignitaries, like the Chinese emperor. The base is decorated with sculpted elephants.
We made a short stop at the Ta Keo, a mountain (3-tiered) temple. 
Just when you're about to think your are completely saturated, that you just can't visit another temple today, it turns out to bet yet another one you definitely didn't want to miss. Each temple is structurally built on the same schema, like Catholic churches are. But a Khmer temple is not just one building; it's a group of buildings: the main sanctuary in the center; what they call “libraries” but which were not for books; towers; buildings for people to rest in; entrances at each cardinal point to each square with massive walkways linking them. There are inner squares in a flat temple and different levels for mountain temples. There is two walls around the whole complex, the second one is a square and the outer one is a rectangle. All of this, whether in brick or stone, was decorated. The brick structures were originally covered with stucco and decorated. The brick was also roughly sculpted before the stucco was applied to shape it. The detail in the sculpting is fascinating. It's always the same, yet when you look closely, not really. The older temples, 9th and 10th centuries have much more elaborate sculptures than the later ones, 11th and 12th centuries. This is especially visible in the columns in the “windows”. 
On the 15th, we visited one temple, in particular, set in the middle of an artificial lake. The central sanctuary is still surrounded by water. Another site was entirely invaded by trees that had grown on and around the stones. The Indians are restoring that site without disturbing the trees.
There was water around all the Angkor sites because they were royal cities that the king built as his capital and which served as the representation of the irrigation system at the time. Water was the major resource the country had.
We ended with Angkor Wat (Angkor = city, Wat = monastery) on the afternoon of the 16th. Enormous, beautiful with bas-relief sculptures that tell the stories of the Hindu gods and of  Khmer history.
One last temple on the 17th, in situ, no restoration yet. There are trees and vines pushing out the stones; the buildings have collapsed and the stones are in piles.
We stopped at a village where we could see how they make sugar from the sugar palm. They climb up the palm trees and squeeze the male flowers, kind of like milking them and the liquid drips during the day into a bamboo container during the day. They collect the containers and boil the liquid into a syrup, almost caramel. As it cools, they spoon the caramel into round molds about a centimeter high made from palm fronds, or maybe from bamboo strips (I didn't get a close enough look). That cools into solid, coin-like disks and is then stocked in woven palm frond containers, about 10 to a container. This is what they use to make sweets like the banana in rice wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed (yummy) and to make sweet and sour pork, for example.
A visit to the Angkor school of traditional skills (stone-carving, wood-carving, painting on silk, lacquer, silk weaving that is not done at the school we saw, and some more). A French-speaking guide, a kid, took us through at lightning speed; he was in such a hurry to get back to his friends. It was interesting. The idea is that these kids from rural areas will return to the farm after their training and will have sufficient skills to make a living beyond agriculture.
Friday, the last full day, we had the morning free, but didn't do much of anything because Siem Reap, especially where we were, is not really interesting. In the afternoon we went to the Angkor museum, which was interesting as museums go, but nothing to write about. As you can see, it's been a dense two weeks. We had changed our ticket to Hanoi for an earlier flight and left on Saturday morning, by tuk-tuk, to the airport. 

Last week -- On to Siem Reap

Check Picasa occasionally for photos. I'm not having much luck uploading; it takes too much time.
Not far from Kompong Thom is the Prasat Sambour Prey Kok. (There are other spellings; I don't know how to choose.) This is a forest of a 9th century sanctuary complex. Up to now, we've been seeing sanctuaries grouped with several buildings, but here you can see the outer wall and then the inner square perimeter and finally the sanctuary buildings, which are in ruins. It seems that the destruction is recent. First, of course, the statuary disappeared. That was for the gold. More recently, this was a Khmer Rouge refuge before they came to power in 1975, when they were still guerrillas. They used the buildings as prisons. The Cambodian army fired on them. General destruction. There's a round sanctuary, all brick, that is coming apart. Japanese archeologists have placed wire belts around the building to hold it together. In some cases the sculptures in the brick have been damaged, but you can still make out what they were. In the forest, there are three sites, so it took about an hour to go from one to another and visit. We came out at the other side, where the minibus was waiting for us. From the beginning to the end, little girls stuck to us like glue trying to sell us scarves.
Each farmer has his own rice paddy (or paddies), his own house, and his own pond in front of the house. The ponds are all dried up, so there are deeper holes dug in the middle. Most are also dried up. Occasionally, however, there is still water and we saw some water buffalo bathing.
We also saw the rice truck come by and stop at each house to pick up the farmers' crops. There are also coconut trees, bananas, and mangoes everywhere. From the amount of fruit I've seen on the stands, there seems to be an abundance far above what they can each sell to passing vehicles, or take to market. We've seen no evidence of collection for export or anything like that. No middle man, except for the rice.
The rest of the ride to Siem Reap was long, but we got there in time for a late lunch, after which we drove to the northern end of Tonle Sap, a big lake, with a fishing village on the water. The lake is very low, so the lake covers "only" 2700 km². It's not very deep and it's extremely muddy. There were children having fund in the water; one little girl was giving herself a mud bath, smearing the mud all over herself. There are some floating churches, evidence of the Vietnamese living here. The two communities get along fine. Among the houseboats are also shops and mechanics; it's a whole village. We stopped at a big floating tourist attraction with a crocodile pit. We returned to our minibus as the sun was setting – very pretty.
Dinner was at at a restaurant that seemed like a twin to the one we had lunch at – same food, same tables, same service, same satisfaction poll. Yes, it is a chain, but the guy only has two restaurants. He caters to tourists and serves very bland food.
We said goodbye to San Pol. He's going back to Phnom Penh tomorrow.

Mind-boggling

That's right. It's mind-boggling. I haven't been able to catch up and all the Angkor sites are melding into one. The  situation with the photos is worse, since Paul and I do not seem to have synchronized the time stamps on our cameras. I'll try to work on that. Till then, you can be confused, too.
I'll try to put up more in the blog tomorrow, if I can connect. Connection, even if all the hotels have free wifi, is an iffy proposition. Sometimes we can connect to the wifi, but not get on to the internet.

From Phnom Penh to Kompong Cham and on to Kompong Thom

It seemed like a long drive to Kompong Cham, but really it's not all that far. It's just that when we are going fast, it's not very fast, and most of the time we are not going fast at all. Think of a two-lane highway with horse-drawn buggies, bicycles, scooters, minibuses, SUVs, sedans, and small trucks. The horses are very small and so are the carts or buggies they pull; they are the slowest vehicles. Next are the bikes, followed by scooters. We are in a mini-bus, but there are only 6 occupants (us 4 tourists, San Pol, our guide, and the driver), so we go a bit faster than the minibuses with 15 to 20 people. The SUVs and sedans are much faster as they carry people who need to show everyone else that they are powerful. There is order. The bikes and scooters squeeze to the right and the we pass them, sort of in the middle of the road. The problem is that the same thing is happening with the oncoming traffic, but somehow everyone squeezes through.

We made a roadside stop. Everyone stops here to pee. There are several WC buildings, each a separate private business, because of course you leave a banknote on the way out. The one we used was very clean and I suppose the others are too. It's a business like any other. There are vendors all around where the cars are wait. So, it is also a bit of a tourist trap. You can't avoid them. They sell fresh-cut mangoes, pineapple, the small bananas they have here, dried fruit, migales (yes, spiders), bamboo stalks filled with sticky rice, and so on. A Buddhist  monk passed by and three women bowed down immediately in prayer before giving him his daily ration. The daily ration is no longer a bowl of rice; it's cash, and they collect quite a bit of it. It does not go to the pagoda or the religious communities, nor is it distributed among the poor; no, each monk get to keep it. For the pagoda, there are other fund-raising schemes. In the mean time, the lady with a baby on her hip got nothing from the locals.
Kompong Cham is a fairly big town. Our hotel was on the river front, facing the Mekong and the promenade. After lunch at the corner “pub”, we left for our visit to Prasat Han Chei, another 12th century religious sanctuary – on flat ground, not at the top of a hill. Before we got there, we stopped at a fishing village where there are houseboats on the river with poles holding the nets. Along the road vendors sold fried fish specialties, smoked fish, and fish preserves in jars. The women were preparing fish on the road. 

We stopped at a rubber plantation. This used to be a Michelin latex plant. Michelin built workers' houses all around the plant. The trees are all around the plant, too. The trees, hévéa, in French, are not very thick. They start producing latex when they are about 7 or 8 years old and produce until about 60, so there is a whole rotation around the plantation. The latex runs for about 6 months from June or July. During the other 6 months the workers maintain the forest and the plant's equipment. It's not the right season, so we did not see any latex being collected or transformed. We did get to see the trees and how they are sliced into for collecting the latex. I picked up a few seeds. Maybe I'll ask Agnès to incorporate them into a necklace. They are extremely lightweight. Nearby is a traditional village with all kinds of trees; it looked like a village in a jungle. There were banana plants, coconut palms, sugar palm trees, durian, mango trees and more. They also made brooms, there.

We visited the Prasat Han Chei site, pre-Angkor, ninth century, very impressive. I'm getting used to the structure, now. San Pol says that we are visiting Cambodia in the right order, seeing these small sites first, so that we can understand the Angkor sites.
Back at the hotel and then at the pub for dinner, the news was all about the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami. We are not cut off from the rest of the world. We see what's happening in Libya, too.
Today we went from Kompong Cham to Kompong Thom. It's hot and dry. We made a short stop at Phnom Ho (I think it's “Ho”, for “man”). The legend is that traditionally men always got to choose the women they were going to marry and the women had to pay. One day, the women wondered why it was always that way and they challenged the men. Let's each build a hill for a day. At dawn the next day, we'll see who has the highest hill. So the men started building their hill, but when they saw the moon, they went to sleep. The women built their hill and continued as they pushed a ball of fire (what the men thought was the moon). When the sun came up, the men were surprised to see the higher hill the women had built. So there are two facing sanctuaries. The pagoda only dates back to 1969. There's a gigantic stupa that only goes back to 2003. In fact, most of the pagodas we see only go back as far as the 19th century. Before, it was all sanctuaries on the model of the ruins we've been visiting. 
We also stopped at Kuhear Mohanokor, a 12th century sanctuary that was never completed. There's very little scupture, but the building is in tact. The entire site, however, is occupied by a modern pagoda and all its buildings, schools, monks quarters, etc.
We stopped in a little village so that Paul could finally see the traditional houses up close. I noticed how many had TV antennae attached to bamboo poles next to the house.

Our last stop before a late lunch was the Santuk Silks works. It's run by Bud Gibbons and his wife, a Cambodian. He came to Cambodia 17 years ago with an NGO and after several years of successful work the NGO said they were pulling out. He wondered what was to become of the people they'd been helping... He decided that aide was not being done correctly as it was not promoting the Cambodians to becoming self-sufficient. So, after first helping handicapped Cambodians learn a trade (weaving), he decided that reserving work for the handicapped was a bad idea because of the risk of having parents mutilate their children in order for them to have work, so he integrated the workplace, handicapped and non-handicapped. He bought some land and planted some mulberry bushes for silkworms (not enough for their production, but enough to show the process). The girls (most of the workforce) all start with spinning. When they are have spun a while, at least two months, they can move on to weaving. While they are learning, they are paid by the hour, but when they become weavers producing scarves for sale, they are paid per production. Second-grade quality is only paid half the rate the first time and not paid for at all after that. This encourages the weavers to pay attention and do good work. They are also responsible for preparing the loom; there are 22 threads per centimeter, so a 20 cm.-wide scarf has 440 threads. Next week, he is launching a design contest. The weavers will be asked to create their own designs and the one whose scarf sells first will get 90% of the sale of that model. The place is running on its own; he no longer contributes anything from his US social security check. This was his aim. They are self-sufficient. Of course their production is for the tourist market at tourist prices, but the women have a skill they can take anywhere. His big problem is turnover. These women are earning between $75 and $80 a month, some more, but that's a lot in Cambodia, so after a few months the guys come calling and they get married and before you know it, they have a baby. In order to keep them, if they've been working for a year or more, they get 3 months' paid maternity leave. When they come back, they can have the baby brought in for nursing in the morning and afternoon, but not kept on the grounds. They need baby-sitters, but this is still a good deal here.

Impressions of Cambodia

Day 3 -- Yes, we arrived here on day 2, so even if we think of it as the first day, I'm going to try to keep track of time with the travel agencies description. First, I have to answer Jackie. Yes, it's hot, but not terribly hot. It's very muggy, but this is not the monsoon season, so the humidity just hangs there. Of course we haven't really been in the sunshine, so maybe it would be hotter if we were; it's been hazy. There is a distinctive odor, but I couldn't say just what is so distinctive. There's incense, and gasoline or diesel, food being cooked in the street, fish for sale -- all of these smells running into one another. You notice it. 

So, day 3 and we started off in the morning on the road to Oudong. I think we turned left and just kept on going straight for a long time. There aren't too many roads to choose from. At first it was just like the coming in from the airport, the shops, the scooters, but then the road got progressively worse and the shops started to be spaced out a little more and noticeably less prosperous. It was a neighborhood of "Chams", a muslim minority. The girls were dressed the same as other girls but they wore headscarves in a recognizable fashion. The mosques are enormous, and they are recognizable as mosques, not like in China, where they looked like pagodas. As we left the city, the road continued to be lined with shops and houses. The road is a bit elevated and on either side, the shops are at road level, but behind the shop area is the living area and it's on stilts. This is the traditional Cambodian house. Most looked like they were single rooms. The walls are boards or dried woven palm fronds. The stilts are either wood posts or concrete. Because of termites, it seems that the more prosperous homes were on concrete. There were some very substantial homes on stilts, too, but most looked very small and ready to be blown away. The space below the home is used for storage. Some houses are perched very high off the ground; others are just the equivalent of one story up, and you could see the space being used as a dining area and hammocks were hanging above the table. As we continued further from the city, we went past fisheries, rice paddies, corn fields, lotus paddies and so on. The activities are grouped together, like the stretches of shops all doing the same business in the city. Off the main highway, there are some dirt roads leading into villages. Finally, one such road leads to the bottom of the Oudong Wat. 

Oudong is where, traditionally, the ashes of the royal family were kept. You climb up a hill and there are stupas with Buddha or other divinities. There are lots of families on outings for the day, praying. There are also a lot of beggars begging. And vendors selling water, fruit, incense, jasmin bouquets, lotus bouquets and other items for prayer. The gigantic Buddha is being repaired. It was severely damaged by American bombs during the Vietnam War, when Cambodia was being bombed. The restoration work is slow, though, depending on the flow of donations. Some of the smaller stupas are very old. You keep going up. There are more pagodas, a yellow one, a white one with ceramic decorations, and finally, a white molded plaster one at the very top. There's a very broad view of the plains below -- more pagodas, monasteries, villages, fields. The sky was gray and hazy and that flattened all perspective.

From the very top, there's a single staircase all the way straight down the hillside. More vendors, and then a troop of macaque monkeys begging for fruit.

On our way back into the city we stopped at a silversmith's shop. The women and children were hammering away at the brass and silver at the front. The dilemma -- are you to think of these children as child labor or as part of the family business? Here, it was a family business and the kids got up, traded places, and did fairly much as they pleased, it seemed. I asked about all the children we saw along the road during the day and our guide said it was a holiday. Apparently, they take the international day of women seriously and schools are closed as well as some public places. We saw the crowds of women coming out of clothing factories, though. And the food vendors were set up at the factory gates to sell them lunch.

We returned to Phnom Penh for lunch near the central market. It was one of those deals where the guide drops you off and the meal is served; you don't have to choose. It was very good. Dinner was the same kind of deal in a swankier place. Both meals were excellent.

After lunch we went to the Russian market, so named because that's where the Russians shopped when they were here after the overthrow of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime. There are the usual tourist souvenir trinkets mixed with anything you might need in the way of hardware or to fix your scooter. None of us was inspired to buy anything then and there, so we went back to our minibus and went on to the National Museum. There's not much in the National Museum. The Khmer Rouge destroyed a lot. There are some Hindu deities from 

the 7th through 13th centuries -- a few examples so you can see the changes in style. In the household items section, there was an old family loom. The museum guide told us that traditionally, the women did the weaving and taught their daughters, but she, for example, never learned because her parents were killed by the Khmer Rouge when she was 2. This was a common enough occurrence for some of the cultural links to the past to be lost entirely.

Our guide told us that at the time, 1975, the population of the country was 7 million and 3.3 million were killed by 1979, when the Vietnamese and Russians came in. He said that the plaque at the genocide museum, his old high school, stated 3.3 killed when it opened as a museum, but very soon the plaque disappeared and then was replaced with a new one -- only 2 million were killed. This was then replaced with a new one -- 1 million. He says that no matter what the plaques say, more the country was missing about half of its 

population. The Royal Palace and genocide museums were exceptionally closed, so we'll start with the palace tomorrow.

We took a sunset river cruise. It wasn't quite time for the sun to set, so we saw the sun just go behind clouds. What was interesting was on the rivers, anyway. The Tonlé Sap and Mekong rivers merge at Phnom Penh, then separate for different channels to the sea. The Tonlé Sap is muddy and the Mekong is blue. There are two fishing communities: the Cambodians, who live on land and fish by day, and the Vietnamese, who come up the Mekong with the houseboats, live on the water, and fish day and night. The guide on the boat said they were overfishing and fish production was down. It was a pleasant hour-long cruise.

We had to take our mini-bus from the hotel to the restaurant for dinner. Traffic in Phnom Penh. Traffic runs smoothly. There is no road rage because cars or bikes cut in in front of you. It is a constant flow of give and take, of cutting in and around whatever obstacles there are, no matter what side of the road you're on. If you need to turn left, you sidle into the left lane to do it as quickly as possible while oncoming traffic goes by on your right. Cars are all very new models; mass car ownership is a very recent phenomenon. None seem to have had any accidents. Same for the scooters; they all look good 

as new, no bumps or scrapes. The bikes are in good condition, too. My impression is that everyone is careful. A scooter might be carrying a truckload of goods on the back or a family of three or four, the toddlers standing between the parents and cars going by left and right -- everyone is very careful and calm. While navigating an intersection is slow; it is rarely blocked completely. The thing is that if you are in or on a vehicle, you don't want to have to stop, so you just wriggle your way through.

Day 4

Because the Royal Palace was closed yesterday, we started the day there. The first thing you see, besides the buildings, is a tree, the Buddha tree, with flowers that bloom only in the morning and which fall off in the afternoon making room for new blooms the next morning. If we had visited yesterday afternoon, we wouldn't have seen this. The Khmer Rouge did not destroy the Royal Palace, nor indeed any of the buildings in Phnom Penh. They simply emptied the city of its people. The palace is a mix, should we say, Napoleonic Oriental? It was built during the French protectorate, during Napoleon III's short empire. As in China, yellow is the royal color. The palace building is white with yellow trim and yellow roof decorations. The throne room is immense with a long carpet that is a copy of the tiles underneath. Off to the side, there is a wardrobe building for the official wardrobe, now just for display. There is the silver pagoda with a floor of silver tiles. You can see it just inside, but most of the tiles are covered in carpet for visiting. There is a standing gold Buddha, a very small lying down Buddha and a jade Buddha on a very high pedestal.  As we walked around the light passing through the jade made beautiful effects. 

The king is Norodom Sihanouk's son. He's in his fifties, unmarried, no children. His father, who took Cambodia through independence (he abdicated in favor of his father so he could become Prime Minister and really run the government), the fifties, non-alignment, then allowing the North Vietnamese to use Cambodia, which led to American bombings, exile during the Khmer Rouge period, severe illness and all that, decided to retire. As king, he's not allowed to run the country and he was a hands-on monarch, so it became boring and 

frustrating. He called up his son, a dancer, in Paris, and told him to come home and be king. I asked what the plans were for succession and our guide just said that in Cambodia they don't make plans for the future. They'll deal with it when the time comes.

By the way, it's sunny today, and hot, but not unbearably hot – in the high eighties, I guess.

We hit the road for Takeo, a small silk-weaving town in the south, according to the guide book. We are in a charming guest house, very comfortable. We've taken a walk around town. It's too early. It's after-lunch lethargy, when reasonable people are taking naps. I saw one shop with fabric and a seamstress. All the other shops seem to be selling food and drink. The market was empty but for vendors having their lunch. The rice paddies are green here; there's a third crop on the way. That's exceptional; the norm is two crops, but the monsoon was generous last season and there is still water enough for a third crop. The waterway from here goes to the pagoda that we're going to visit tomorrow, I think. There's going to be a wedding later today, right outside our guest house. The men are busy preparing food -- coconuts in this corner, something in the pot in that corner, chopping vegetables on the table in the shade. Busy, busy, cooking and socializing. The ceremony is broadcast over loudspeakers. There is chanting and then a kind of monotone recitation and it goes on for hours. On our evening promenade, Georges and Marie-Hélène watched the proceedings and eventually got invited to sit and film inside. We had continued our walk and watched the goings on in the village across the pond.

The village is a small group of traditional houses on stilts, with their water cisterns, cattle roaming in from the rice paddies, and water hyacinths in the pond. There are poles sticking out of the plants. These are fish traps. The fish live underneath the water hyacinths and when they are big enough, nets are thrown over the plants and then the plants are removed, leaving only the fish. The fishermen we saw standing in the pond were fishing for frogs. We got these explanations because we ran into our guide on our walk. He also explained to us the wedding procedures. It's a two-day affair. Tonight, just the family is present and the tables are set for less than 100. Tomorrow, it'll be the whole wedding party, about 400. When we went off to dinner, they were also just starting to eat.

Everyone says hello. In Phnom Penh, every time you cross a child, he says hello. Here, too. Mothers with toddlers Aurelia's age in their arms come up to you to say hello and the babies say hello and bye-bye. I'm surprised -- not so much that the children are learning to greet tourists (mixed feelings about that), but that French has totally disappeared. After all, this was a French-speaking country 40 years ago. As a tourist, you are relieved that you can speak to people and try to understand, but there's also something sad about it.

Day 5

Since I don't have internet access yet, I'll just continue. It's 6:00 a.m. and the 

ceremony has picked up where it left off yesterday, with singing and music broadcast over the loudspeaker. So while Paul's in the shower, I'm getting these few words down.

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Back in Phnom Penh for the night. Today was the first strenuous day. On the way to breakfast we got a peek at the wedding ceremony again. Many more tables were set up and the men were busy in front of our guesthouse preparing dishes. As we passed by the entrance, there was a whole ceremony going on. During the night, they had set up branches of bananas on either side of the entrance, one painted silver and the other gold. People came bearing gifts, often fruit, again painted silver and gold. There were some traditional dancers also in front. 

After breakfast we boarded a little speedboat for the visit to Phnom Da, an early, 6th-7th century pagoda up on a hill top. Phnom means hill, by the way. It was an hour's boat ride in the rice paddies. All along the way, people were fishing -- some with a rake to dig up a fish that lives under the mud on the river bottom, some with nets pulled across the ditch. It's a whole irrigation, naviagation system; on the way there I don't think we were on the river. On the way back, we were. The boat did not slow down when we passed canoe-like boats loaded with goods, or the fishermen neck-high in the water. We only slowed down to not get tangled in the nets or the water hyacinths. There were a few duck farms. A duck farm is a lot of ducks enclosed in a pen that is half on the ground, have in the water. There's not much room for the ducks to move. There were other flocks of ducks swimming free, but the norm seems to be the pens. There were children along the whole way -- hello, hello. My question, where's the school? There were pumps pumping water up into the irrigation ditches and there were intersections with other bid navigatable ditches. It's a whole network. The country was built on water management. Angkor Wat, the 12th century capital, is all about water management, having enough water to grow rice.

Phnom Da an hour later and started uphill. It's an impressive hike. The pagoda is built of volcanic stone and brick, no morter. The stonework is joined in such a way that there are no leaks, except of course, these buildings have suffered over time and the roofs are caved in, the carved stones have fallen down. This particular site is especially tragic. The pagoda is at the top of the hill and there are other prayer rooms in the caves in the hillside. These are even older religious sites. During the Pol Pot regime, prisoners were kept in the pagoda at the top and they were killed and cremated in the caves. 

We returned to Takeo by the same boat, but he took the river this time. Same activities, but we crossed an enormous cargo boat carrying rice to Vietnam. 

We had lunch at the same place as yesterday's lunch -- very good, again. Then hit the road for Chisor Phnom, up lots and lots of stairs to the top, where there is a pagoda complex dating from the 11th-12th century. It's lots and lots of stairs. After lunch, in the sun. Beautiful views of the plains from the hilltop and beautiful ruins among the more modern buildings. 

Back in the minibus with a stop at another pagoda on the way back to Phnom Penh. This time it was a hindu pagoda that is under restoration. There are some old brick vestiges and the site is interesting. There is a tremendous amount of money going into the pagodas in use. Somehow I think a lot of the money could be better used on the people, but it's their religion and their business. Just, when you see the level of poverty, you wonder.

We took a different staircase down the hill, through a little village. Rice was drying out on the roadside; chickens were running around; cattle were roaming the street; kids were running up to us to say hello.

Long, long flight

Paris to Hanoi is almost 11 hours. Paul and I decided that with almost 40 years of marriage behind us, we do not have to sit together. We couldn't get aisle seats opposite one another so I sat several rows behind. We each had an aisle seat; that's what we wanted. The plane was packed. My video system had no audio, so I actually managed to snooze a bit. Still, we arrived bleary-eyed in Hanoi at just past 6 a.m. The advantage of arriving so early is that we were whisked into the transit lounge for our flight to Phnom Penh. It was in the transit lounge we found the other couple in our tiny group, Georges and Marie-Hélène, from Switzerland. Introductions, small talk, and a short wait for the flight, which was direct, via Vientiane, Laos. There, we had to disembark and wait a few minutes at the boarding gate before continuing on. We remarked at how shiny and clean the Hanoi airport is, how tiny the Vientiane airport is, and how warm it was waiting for our guide at the Phnom Penh airport. Arianetours let us down, there. We were supposed to be met by our guide on arrival. After waiting about half an hour, the man selling SIM cards very kindly phoned the travel agency for us to ask what was up. He told us our guide would be another 10 minutes. It was more like another half an hour. We were not very happy. It turns out he was expecting us on the flight from Ho-Chi-Minh-City (HCMC or Saigon, from now on, depending on my mood or the references) still later. In fact, in the catalog description of our trip, it is the flight from HCMC, but one would have thought that since the agency in Paris booked us through Hanoi, they would have informed their agency in Phnom Penh.

After a couple hours rest, Paul and I set out on foot. Our aim was to go to the big central market -- on foot. Walking in Phnom Penh is a challenge. The shops spill out onto the sidewalks and food stalls set themselves up for business; cars park and take up the full width of the sidewalk, so the only recourse is to walk in the street with the bicycles and cars and moto-taxis and velo-taxis. The vehicles do not stop for anything; they slalom around you. The moto and velo-taxis all wanted to take us for a ride, but we really wanted to walk a bit after having spent so much time sitting on planes. They were very insistent and we were just as politely insistent in refusing. But it was a difficult walk there and back and we were the only people walking anywhere! I guess we won't do that again.
At least walking gives you a chance to see the shops. As in China (and for that matter, in Paris until the last 30 or 40 years) shops of a kind stick together, so if you want a haircut, there's a stretch of Kampuchea Road for that and if you need rice-milling equipment, there's a stretch for that, too. There's also a stretch of everything you need to perform Buddist rites, a patch of jewelry, street tailors, and so on. 
On the way back, we passed by a school complex that takes up a full city block. It said "university" on the sign, but judging from the age of the kids, I think it's a loose use of the word. Our hotel is near the Olympic Stadium (I don't recall any Olympic games held here, so maybe it's a reference to the size. I should look that up.)

Still here!

Last night I went to hear Jay Gottlieb in a recital at the Collège des Bernardins. You know I love going to hear Jay play (here and here). The program last night was "Alterminimalismes". I'm supposing that means alternate minimalism, but who knows? Actually, this website gives you a better idea of the program. He shared the evening with another fellow, but since he played first, we did not stay for the rest. We were asked not to clap until the very end of his performance and that was frustrating because there were several times I wanted to clap. Jay's playing is moving and exciting. Most of all, I am fascinated by watching his hands. At times, his arms and wrists are not moving at all, but the fingers are a blur of activity. Other times, he's moving his arms -- never wildly; he's got every muscle under control. The pieces he played were quite varied. I enjoyed them all. Still, not the kind of music I'd have at home to listen to, so I'm glad I get to see Jay perform.

The Collège des Bernardins is a beautiful venue. This recital was in the Grand Auditorium, up on the second floor, under the roof, with seating for about 200 (my rough estimate). The acoustics are excellent. Friends were up at the very back and said they could see and hear perfectly. The Collège des Bernardins is worth visiting, if you have a chance, even without a special event to attend. It was built in the 13th century, as a school, part of the Sorbonne complex. It's on rue de Poissy, just off the rue des Ecoles, not far from Place Maubert. At the time, that would have been the eastern extremity of the Latin Quarter. This wikipedia page is in French; they don't seem to have en English translation. Paul was in on the restauration of it and told me that when they discovered the cellar, it had been flooded during at least one of the big floods. Mud had filled it up so that there was only a little space under the vaulting. When they dug it all out, they discovered a very high ceilinged vault -- beautiful. The building has returned to its original purpose - education. And these cultural events, like last night's recital.

Beth has said that she'd like to come to Paris and perform. I don't know how long the waiting list is to perform here, but I would encourage her to try to get it. I've listened to some of her pieces on MySpace and will try to buy her new album when we get back from our trip.