March 25
Our times at sea have gotten shorter and shorter. From Singapore to Taiwan we are at sea for 6 days and in port for 17 days, so basically there is a lot of travelling to be had, and not a whole lot of time to write about it. I, of course, certainly enjoy travelling in country a whole lot more than taking classes at sea, but there is a lot of preparation, reflection and sleep to catch up on while at sea and not a whole lot of time. Anyways, my final blog on India will again be delayed (probably until after Taiwan) but I’ll try my best to share about Vietnam and Cambodia.
Saturday: Due to the tides, the ship wasn’t able to arrive until around 1100. It was a lot of fun travelling up the river that morning into port, passing large container ships, ferry boats and a flotilla of small fishing canoes. It was very similar to our travels up the Amazon and also reminded me of the river scenes in a lot of Vietnam War movies. When we finally made it off the ship just before noon, we were confronted with the realization that Saigon is the motorbike capitol of the world (not an official stat, just a guess). With the attitude “When in Vietnam, do as the Vietnamese,” we hired motorbike drivers, hopped on the back and took off into the city.
Our first stop of the day was at the tailor’s shop. I have never had a custom tailored suit before, and going with my Singaporean theme of acting more wealthy than I was, decided I might as well take advantage of quick and inexpensive suits. Sure enough, Sunday night I was back at the tailor’s picking up my 2 suits. I don’t know much about clothes, but the suits fit great, look great and certainly seem to be high quality, so I think it was worth the money. After our suit experience, we had our drivers take us to local restaurant for some authentic Vietnamese lunch (not sure what I ate but it was pretty good) and then on to Ben Thanh market, one of the largest markets in Saigon. We knew from the vendors right outside of the port that we would be able to buy a lot of brand name items for a low price, and Ben Thanh certainly confirmed that we could buy North Face, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Lacoste, Gucci etc… for cheap. Again, I’m no clothes expert but buying a North Face backpack (even if it is probably fake) for $8 is a pretty good deal. We also went to the Russian Market, where I got a North Face rain jacket, Saigon square and the Tax mall where I was to stubborn to pay the extra dollar or two the vendors were asking and walked away from a lot of good deals. After a nice 60min full body massage (no happy ending), which left me feeling refreshed and smelling great (the lotions they used were awesome) about 10 of us went out to this huge Chinese restaurant for a family style meal. The food was really good and pretty cheap and it was fun just taking my food from the heaping plates in the center of the table.
The nightlife in Saigon is incredible, and Saturday night we ended up at this venue called “Acoustic.” They had live bands covering American songs and it was honestly some of the best live music I have ever heard, especially for free. It was an absolute blast dancing with the locals (Vietnamese women are gorgeous) and singing along with the bands. At the end, the owner let us up on stage to sing a few songs, which was a lot of fun and a great way to end the night.
Sunday:
Sunday morning I was able to get a free ticket for an SAS trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. The Cu Chi tunnels are a network of tunnels and underground bunkers, which the Vietnamese used to fight the Americans during the War. It was definitely an eerie experience visiting the tunnels, since it was essentially a monument of the Vietnamese ingenuity and success in killing American soldiers. We visited the bunkers and were shown how Bobbie traps were made out of bamboo spears, how undetonated American artillery shells were transformed into land mines and grenades, and how spikes were placed in the grown covered with fecal matter that would infect the American troops when they stepped on them. There was a monument to a young girl who was a “American Killing Hero,” for her bravery in gunning down GIs and an American tank that was destroyed by a homemade landmine. I couldn’t imagine going through the Cu Chi tunnel compound if I had a more personal connection with the War or knew someone personally who had served in the military during that time.
The actual tunnel aspect of the compound was very impressive, and I am proud to say that I completed both the “tourist” tunnel (slightly enlarged) and the original Vietnamese tunnel. Although I was on my hands and knees and had to bellow crawl for portions, I made it through the 50-meter tunnel section, in near pitch black darkness, 20 feet underground with hardly enough room or air to breathe. To celebrate this amazing feat of squeezing a large object into a small space, I went to the shooting range at the compound and shot an AK-47, a fitting reward.
After the Cu Chi tunnels, we were back on the ship for lunch, and then out into Saigon again to stop by the markets (I bought a lot this time) grab some Pho for dinner, and pick up my suits. We stopped at a country western bar that happened to have a Vietnamese pop band covering 90s American rock songs, which was one of the more impressive conglomeration of culture I have experienced on the voyage so far. It was a packed day, but a lot of fun and also a great educational experience.
May 25th
So… this is where procrastination rears its ugly head. I finally am writing about my time in Cambodia (the previous section on Vietnam I had written on the ship, and just hadn’t posted it online). It has been a full one month and one day since I disembarked the ship in San Diego and I would guess around two months since I was actually in Cambodia, but I guess the saying goes, better late than never.
On Monday we left in the morning for a flight out of Saigon and into Phnom Penh, the capitol of Cambodia. After clearing customs at the airport, we met our tour guide and took a bus through the capitol to the national museum containing various religious artifacts and statues. It was pretty cool. Next we took a riverboat cruise down the Mekong River. The river has great views of the various ornate government buildings as well as “floating villages” where people live and work on houses and boats floating off shore. After the boat tour, we headed to Palm Tree Orphanage, an orphanage founded and staffed by primarily SAS alumni. Unfortunately, we were only there for around an hour, but that gave a friend and me just enough time to “adopt” an orphan and have him show us around his home. I’m pretty sure the kid had some learning and developmental disabilities, since he couldn’t really communicate with us, but we decided to name him “Mambo” and pretend like we had been friends for years. Seeing orphans, especially, in impoverished developing countries always leaves quite an impression on one’s psyche and perhaps worldview, whatever that may mean.
After the orphanage visit, our group had an authentic Cambodian meal (the lemon grass soup was memorable, in a good way), and made our way to our hotel. Again, SAS had put us up with overly nice accommodations, but I won’t complain. Some friends and I headed back into the capitol on the backs of Tuk-Tuk, the local equivalent of an Indian rickshaw. The nightlife of Phnom Penh is pretty famous, both for some bars frequented by famous journalists and celebrities, and for the Russian sex slave and drug trade. We decided it would be best to experience just the bars, and leave the drugs and sex, although I was offered heroin for one of the few times in my life (I politely declined).
Tuesday morning, we headed to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda compound. The architecture and adornments were absolutely incredible. The Khmer empire was one of the largest and most powerful in SE Asia back in the day, and their buildings certainly are a testament to their wealth and opulence. The Silver Pagoda (so named because the floors are silver – seriously) contained a life size statue of Buddha made of solid gold and covered in 9584 diamonds (I wikipedia’d it). Right next to it was a box asking for donations for Cambodia’s orphans. I don’t even want to guess how many orphans would be helped by selling just one of the 10,000 diamonds, or one of the silver floor tiles – but I guess that’s essentially how most governments operate.
After our visit to the extravagant palaces, are next destinations were the Toul Sleng Genocide Muesum and later the Killing Fields. I’m hesitant to write about these experiences, partly because it would be impossible to justly describe the atrocities of these locations, and partly because I’m not exactly sure how to verbalize my reactions to them. I remember in high school doing a project on Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge and the genocide that took place in Cambodia just over thirty years ago and thinking how was it possible that most people, even educated people, are oblivious to this terrible period in human history. The Khmer Rogue straight up brutally tortured and executed millions of people. MILLIONS of people died at the hands of an ideological psychopath thirty years ago, and most people don’t even know it.
The genocide museum was originally a high school before the Khmer Rogue turned it into a prison/torture camp. I’m not really sure how to describe it, other than it was not pleasant to look at the torture devices, or chains, or pictures of dead inmates, or read the signs explaining how prisoners were tied upside down until they passed out and then dumped into a vat of fecal matter to wake up, so the process could be repeated. Our tour guide lost his parents and aunts and uncles at the hands of the Khmer Rogue. He wasn’t emotional until one of the four former prisoners to actually escape the camp and live, showed up. It was an impactful visit, and I remember feeling sick, physically sick, at what I was looking at. After the genocide camp, our group visited the Killing Fields. The name aptly describes what took place there, and again, its tough for me to describe it. A surface level explanation would describe the tree that guards would throw babies at to execute them, or the pits in the earth that were filled with thousandths of bodies just a couple of decades ago, or the shed that held the chemicals to cover the smells of the rotting bodies, or the station where a loudspeaker was positioned to drown out the screams of the dying victims, or the monument of skulls, or the walking path where bone and teeth fragments still wash up to this day, whenever it rains. A deeper explanation might describe the mixed of confusion, sadness, anger, pity, sickness, and the unavoidable screaming question of Why?
We left the Killing Fields and headed to a local lunch and some time at the market. I got a nice Rolex (definitely a fake, but not as fake as the other fake Rolexes I have) and was able to convince some one trying to sell me a fake iPhone that I should test it first. This resulted in a good 15min phone call home costing about 5 bucks, not bad for being on the other side of the world. Next it was on to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap. Fortunately, I was afforded a little of bit of time to process my thoughts and rest before our arrival. Siem Reap is mainly a tourist destination and houses the famous temples of Angkor Wat. After checking into our hotel and taking a quick swim in the pool, we headed to a “cultural dinner” which was pretty touristy and just consisted of a massive buffet and some dancers up on stage. Later that night we took some Tuk-Tuks downtown to check out the nightlife. Just like Vietnam, it was very impressive and a lot of fun (I was also offered heroin again, but declined – thanks DARE). On our way back to the hotel that night we stopped at a massage shop where they had big tanks filled with tons of little fish that eat the dead skin off your feet. I think it cost us each a dollar for a 15min session, although the first 8mins or so were basically spent with all of us attempting to overcome the uncontrollable urge to laugh and pull our feet out as induced by the tickling sensation of hundreds of fish picking at your feet. By far one of the coolest/strangest things I have ever done.
Wednesday morning we were up real early to head to Angkor Wat (collectively all of the temples are referred to as Angkor Wat, but Angkor Wat also happens to be the main temple of the larger compound). The temples were built on a North/South gridlines and Wednesday happened to be the equinox, which basically means that it was the best day of the entire year to watch the sunrise directly behind the largest spire of the main temple. When we first arrived, it was obviously still pretty dark, meaning we didn’t quite get the full effect of how incredible the temples were, making the whole experience a little eerie/awesome. I made one of the best decisions of my life that morning, when I walked up to the main temple in the barely there morning light, hopped over one of the fences and explored the temple by myself. I pretty much felt like Indiana Jones; alone in one of the world’s greatest ancient temples, hopping security fences, climbing along the walls, discovering the ark of the covenant (maybe not) – but it was pretty cool. I made it back out to the rest of the group for the actual sunrise, which of course was incredible and perfectly aligned with the temple.
After sunrise we were back at the hotel for breakfast and then back to the Angkor Wat (the main temple) for a few hours of exploration. We also visited the temple of Ta Prohm temple, where archaeologists have decided to let the massive roots and trees seemingly growing right of the ancient temple stone remain. I felt like I was on the set of a Hollywood movie (they filmed some scenes of Tomb Raider here. That’s how Angelina Jolie got into the whole adopting Cambodians thing, I’m told). We went back to the hotel for lunch and a little bit of free time. During the free time two friends and I walked to a massage parlor to enjoy some cheap massages – hilarity ensued. I’m not the kind of person who likes to be touched a whole lot, and am definitely very ticklish, so when my masseuse found out that by tickling my feet and butt, I would laugh hysterically, it made for a very uncomfortable and funny 45mins. Add to this the fact that my two friends were lying on the ground next to me also getting massages (not sure why they had us all in the same room like that) and the fact that we were all clothed just in underwear. The climax to this comedic experienced occurred when I essentially crushed my petite Cambodian masseuse when she attempted some sort of wrestling move to crack my back (a fitting punishment for her tortuous tickles).
After not feeling relaxed from my massage, we returned to visit the Bayon Temple, again absolutely incredible. Collectively, Angkor Wat is the largest religious complex in the World and its rather unimaginable that people constructed it almost 1000 years ago. I was able to ride an elephant for a while between two of the temples, adding to the whole Asia experience and lengthening my list of modes of transportation I have used. Our flight was delayed for a bit so we had the privilege of having another cultural dinner in Siem Reap before flying back to Vietnam and getting back on the ship a little after midnight. And that concludes my travel experiences on Semester at Sea.
Finally finished!
-Ben
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