Vietnam/Cambodia

Hello everyone! Sorry this took so long to post- Cambodia and Vietnam were amazing experiences and with only two days before China and more homework than you can imagine, we couldn’t process everything in time to get the blog done. So here it is! We are going to try really hard to get the blog for China done before we get to Japan, but we’ll see….


3/23/2009
Good Morning, Vietnam!!

We have just left Vietnam, and it was very sad because this port was one of our favorites. I’m not sure how I’m going to convey everything we saw because it affected us almost more than India did. Partly because of the fact that we went to Cambodia for three days. It was amazing. Absolutely wonderful! But definitely packed with information and sights, and we are beyond emotionally drained from this port. It’s getting crazier and crazier now that we only have two days in between ports. I feel like we don’t have time to recover or process everything before we get to China. But I’m going to try so you all can get a feel for what we did. Beware: there are some graphic images being described here.

We arrived the first day in Vietnam at about 4 am, and we made our way up the river to Ho Chi Minh City where we docked just before 8 am. The dock was very close to the downtown, much like South Africa, and it looked very modern with high-rise buildings, lots of nice hotels, and the worst traffic I’ve ever seen. We woke up at 5:45 to see the sunrise over the river, and then went back to sleep until we got up at 7:30 for breakfast. There was a diplomatic briefing- not as interesting as other countries but still good- and then we had to finish packing, as our trip was due to leave at 11:30. Once we were done, we said goodbye to everyone and met up with our group. They provided us with the infamous SAS boxed lunch for the bus ride to the airport, which was only about 30 minutes. This lunch consisted of: a sandwich of mystery meat., an apple, a Capri Sun, a small pack of Oreos, a hard-boiled egg, and a chicken drumstick. No, it was not that good, but it was food, so we ate it. Once we got to the airport, we had to go through a ton of lines to obtain our Cambodia visas and other paperwork, and then we had about an hour and a half to hang out before we took off at 14:15. We were tired, so we thought it would be a good idea to take a nap. But after about 10 minutes in the air, they started the landing process, so they woke us up, and everyone was bummed because a “45 minute” flight was actually only about 10 minutes. But then we were in Cambodia, and we were all excited!

We got on the bus and met our guide, Kim, and headed to the Phnom Penh National Museum. Not the most interesting thing in the world- it was basically 5 rooms filled with different kinds of Buddha statues- and we are all a little museum-ed out. Plus it was 100 degrees with no air conditioning, so we were over it within a half hour. We ended up sitting in the courtyard eating really spicy shrimp soup, and then we drove to the Mekong River. Here, we boarded two small boats and took a sunset cruise down the river. It was gorgeous, and very relaxing, and we got to see little “river villages” where the houses are built in the water, and they either swim from house to house, or get in their canoes and row over to their friend’s house or the shore. It was very cool. We had some Cambodian beer, called “Angkor”, and then were brought back to shore where we boarded our bus. Then the trip became really great. We visited the Palm Tree Orphanage in downtown Phnom Penh, and it was one of the greatest few hours of our lives! This orphanage was started by two Semester at Sea alums, which I thought was such a great story, and we had a great time! As soon as we walked into the front gates, these two 12-yr old girls grabbed our hands and led us into their orphanage. They showed us where they eat, have classes, sleep, and play, and we ended up talking for almost two hours. They kept showing us off tot heir friends and saying, “Look at our new friends. They are from America”. We found out that one of the girls, Samak, who was attached to me, had five brothers and sisters at this orphanage with her, and Kate’s girl, Sevy Leak, had two. They loved taking pictures with our cameras, and they were mesmerized by our watches. They wanted to know how it worked, how to turn the light on, and how to set the alarm to make it beep. We eventually went out and played games with the other children until it was time to leave, which was really fun! We did not want to leave at all, and we all got teary-eyed and just hugged for about 5 minutes. They taught us how to say ‘I love you’ in Cambodian, and they kept saying it over and over. When we were about to leave, Kate and I took off our watches and put them on their wrists, telling them it was a gift for them. They were so happy and said they would never take them off. They showed them to all of their friends, and then disappeared. We were like, “Okay, bye, I guess….” And didn’t know where they went. Then they came running back, and they each gave us a bracelet. Samak put it on my wrist and told me that her mother had given her this bracelet. I said I could not take it because I knew it was special to her, and she said, “No. You are special to me. I don’t have a lot to give you, but I want you to have something so you don’t forget me.” It was amazing. Of course, Kate and I started crying, and we hugged them and traded e-mail addresses so we could be sure to keep in touch. We left, all four of us waving the “I love you” sign, and we walked back to the bus. I just find it amazing because we’ve never connected that much with anyone in that short amount of time, and these girls touched our hearts in just under 2 hours. We will never forget them, and I hope we can go back someday to see them.

After we left the orphanage, we were so tired, and a little sad, and thankfully we went straight to a restaurant and had dinner. It was on a rooftop, and we had traditional Cambodian cuisine, which is a lot like Thai food. It was really good, and we were all very full as we drove to the hotel. When we pulled up, all of our jaws dropped because it was one of the biggest hotels we’d ever seen! It was sooo nice, and Kate and I got a nice, big room all to ourselves. We didn’t do much that night. I think we watched a little TV, showered, and then completely passed out around 2300. The next morning, we got a wake up call at 6 am. We went downstairs for breakfast, where they made us pancakes, cereal, and the best watermelon ever. We had to be on our bus by 7, and then we drove to the Tuol Sleng Museum. This is the part of the trip that I cannot possibly put into words, but because I think it’s important to learn from history, I will try to convey what we saw.

We pulled up to the Tuol Sleng Museum, also known as the Genocide Museum, and saw about 4 or 5 buildings surrounded by a high concrete wall that was topped with barbed wire. The grounds were not much to look at, but there were signs explaining what went on there and what each building was. If you are not familiar with this museum or the situation, I’ll give you a brief history. In Cambodia in 1975, Pol Pot came into power and changed everything. The government wanted to eliminate the class system, so they drove everyone from the cities and into the countryside to work as peasants. This way, they thought, everyone would be equal. If you were intelligent, or worked in a professional career, such as a teacher, doctor, or lawyer, you were killed. Men, women, and children were brutally massacred without cause, and this museum, at the time code-named as S-21 Prison, was where they tortured and detained about 14,000 people until they either died there or were sent to the killing fields. Only seven people who entered this prison made it out alive. It was quite brutal, and people from the area had to pretend to be unintelligent in order to stay alive. This means that Cambodia lost almost an entire generation of its leaders, which hasn’t helped in the aftermath or clean-up of this beautiful country.

Going inside the buildings was a horrifying experience. On the first floor of building A were five rooms of pictures. Pictures of the victims, both dead and alive, and mug shots of children crying as they were catalogued into the system. Walking through, looking through these pictures, reminded me of all the people we had met so far during our short stay in Cambodia. These could have been any of them, and the thought scared me into moving onto the other floors. But these were worse. Much worse. As we walked to the 2nd floor, we encountered rooms no bigger than an average classroom, with nothing but a bed in the middle. On the bed, there was a blanket (well, I guess it was a blanket- it looked more like an old piece of plastic or paper with holes in it) and on the blanket there was some sort of torture device. I’m not sure how it was used, nor do I want to, but you could see that that’s what it was meant for. Then we looked to the wall and a photo caught our eyes. The picture looked identical to the scene that was in front of us, however, on the bed, there was a person. Dead. And there was blood everywhere. This is when we noticed that there were stains on the floor of the blood that was in the picture. Apparently their cleaning products weren’t very good, and you could still see the outline on the red-and-white floor. I started to feel what it must have been like for that man on the bed, and I had to get out. The rest of the rooms on the floor held more of the same, and I only glanced in before moving on. You could really sense the despair and depressing feeling of the whole compound, and I’m glad we only stayed for an hour. There was one room on the top floor that looked almost like a gallery and showed the history of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, etc. The pictures in here were gruesome as well, but it taught us a lot about what had happened and why. In the end, we came to the conclusion that it happened for absolutely no reason, which made the whole thing a little sadder and hard to take. So, of course, the next place we went was even harder. The killing fields were about a 30-minute drive, and on our way, our guide, Kim, told us how the war affected his family. When he was 5, Pol Pot came to power, and, being from Phnom Penh, he was forced to walk for 100 days out into the country with little food or clothing. He pointed out that this was almost the length of our voyage, which made it real to us. We really felt a connection to Kim and his story and couldn’t imagine what it must’ve felt like to be alive during this terrible time.

When we finally arrived at the killing fields, we were greeted with a gate, and through the gate was one building and a field. That was it. We walked over to the building, and you will never believe what we saw inside. Thousands of skulls were piled up to the 30 ft. ceiling in one mass memoriam to everyone who had died there. They even had little signs that said, “Women age 30-45” or “Children under 15”. It was eerie, to say the least. And underneath all of these shelves were clothes of the victims, dirty and stained with blood. Everyone was completely silent as we walked outside to see what else there could possibly be. We started wandering around, looking at the mass graves that were still there, when all of a sudden I felt a crunching sound beneath my foot. When I looked down, I saw human bones. They were everywhere, just peeking out of the surface of the dirt and grass, amidst more tattered clothing, and I had stepped on one. I literally thought I was going to throw up, and I had to get away. But there was nowhere to go. The whole place was littered with the remains of the millions of victims who could no longer protest to being trampled by tourists taking pictures. There were some wooden signs detailing what had happened around the fields, two of which read, “Women and children grave: no heads” and “This tree is where children were beaten against before being executed”. I felt like just sitting down and sobbing and it was all a little hard to take before 9 am. None of us will ever forget what we saw there, and we want to go home and educate more people about it so that history doesn’t repeat itself. Every time we think of genocide, we automatically think of the Holocaust or something far off. But it is still happening today, which makes me think the world is not progressing as much as we’d like to believe.

We left the killing fields at about 10 o’clock and drove to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. Honestly, after everything we’d seen that morning, we weren’t really mentally there, and although it was beautiful and rich with history, we really just wanted to eat lunch and relax. So that’s where we went next. We had a delicious lunch consisting of about 20 different dishes that they kept bringing us, and a good amount of tea. The restaurant was located right next to a giant market, so after we were done eating, we walked around for a while. Kate bought a really cute skirt, and we bought 8 DVD’s for only $12 US! Yes, we each bought a copy of HSM 3…haha. We were pretty excited about it! We got back on the bus and drove to the airport for our flight to Siem Reap. Kim gave us a speech about how great it was to have us as a group and how touched he was by our compassion and eagerness to learn. He then sang us a Cambodian song about friendship, which was beautiful! We all gathered money for tips because he was an excellent guide, and when we counted it all up, it was enough to send his kids to private school for a year! He was so grateful and almost started crying! When we got to the airport, he followed us to the gate and then waved at us until he disappeared. We will all miss him so much! The flight was shorter than the last one, so not much time for a nap, and when we landed, we immediately drove to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset. It was amazing- huge, beautiful, breathtaking! Dad, it was better than you described, and you would’ve loved it! We just sat by the reflecting pool for about an hour and watched the sun go down, and then we headed to dinner. Dinner was buffet style, and we got to watch a traditional Cambodian dancing show while we ate. It was good, but we were exhausted by that point and excited to get to the hotel for some much needed sleep! It took us 45 minutes to find our room (we’ll have to tell you that story when we get back, it was hilarious!), but when we did, it was gorgeous!! The room was bigger than anything we’d ever stayed in; the bathroom had a giant shower and a window that looked out to the rest of the room, and we even had a patio that went at least 15 ft out and looked over the Cambodian countryside! It was crazy! We took showers, journaled a little bit, and then Chris came in and we watched HBO, The History Channel, and the Discovery Channel until we fell asleep.

The next morning, we had a wake up call at 4:30 am, and we were on the bus heading to Angkor Wat at 5 o’clock. We entered through the south gate, and we rented plastic chairs for 50 cents to watch the sunrise. We all sat in pitch-blackness, no one talking, for about an hour until the sun rose over the temples. It was so peaceful yet surreal, and one of my favorite moments from the trip! At 6:30, we left to go have breakfast, which was delicious, and then we had to be back on the bus by 8. We drove to a different gate of Angkor Wat (if you didn’t know, the whole complex is huge and there are many different parts to see), walked around the ruins and temples, and we also saw Angkor Thom. We took some stupid pictures with Alex and Kara, and talked about old Nickelodeon shows, and then we went back to the hotel to check out and eat lunch. By the time we got to the Elephant Terrace, we were all soooo hot (it was 104 degrees with 98% humidity) and tired that we opted to sit for an hour under a canopy and drink water instead of walking through the complex. I don’t think I could even describe to you how hot it actually was! We even had a couple girls suffer from heat exhaustion! While there, we talked for a while about SAS and made a couple stupid videos because we were so out of it. It’s gonna be funny to watch those later! After the busses finally came, we went to yet another airport for our final flight back to Vietnam. At the airport, we got foot massages for a half an hour (!) and they were amazing! After the short flight, we finally made it back to the ship! We were very excited to be back in our rooms, in the air conditioning, and be able to shower and put on clean clothes. We were supposed to arrive later, so they told us they’d have dinner ready for us at 2200, but we were starving and it was only 2000, so we went up to the pool bar and ordered a pizza. We talked to Edu and Turrell for a while, relaxed, and went to sleep early!

The next day in Ho Chi Minh City was a blast! We got up, had breakfast, and went out to an Internet café to call Mom, and Dad & Kathy. We talked to them for more than ½ hour, and even though there was a 3-second delay, it was so worth it and wonderful to hear their voices! With all of the other parents coming to visit, it was hard not to be able to just run up and hug them and talk to them. I can’t believe we haven’t seen them in person since the day we left in Nassau, which seems like a lifetime ago! After we hung up with them, we went to walk around HCMC downtown and see what we could find. We ended up buying these gorgeous paintings and going to Tutti Frutti (kind of like Coldstone but with frozen yogurt), before heading back to the ship for lunch. We ended up running into the twins and Pat which was perfect timing because we had planned to meet up with them later but didn’t know how we’d get a hold of them or where they were staying. We walked with them to the hotel Pat’s parents were staying at, met them, and ate lunch in the restaurant there. His parents are great and it was so great to finally meet them after hearing so much about them! Plus, if we couldn’t have our parents, at least we could pretend that they had come to visit. haha. Anyway, after lunch, we went to the War Remnants Museum- about a 45-minute walk- and it was brutal. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about the museum, but it is basically a gallery of all of the bad things the American soldiers did during the Vietnam War. The pictures were sickening- children being burned alive, whole villages laying dead, having been shot, soldiers running after kids with guns, and even a case with fetuses that had been affected by Agent Orange. We didn’t think we could take anymore by the end, and it was beyond hot, so we were all physically and emotionally exhausted. The whole museum was so anti-American, and we were almost ashamed to be Americans walking through the galleries. I almost felt like a baby- unable to decipher what my emotions were telling me. I didn’t know if I should cry or throw up or feel nothing. I’m glad we went to see it, but I don’t ever want to go back. I really feel like it’s something that people should see, though- especially Americans. Because there is more than just the American view of the war. A lot more.

We walked back to the hotel- by this time past the point of exhaustion- and decided to go swimming in the hotel pool. It was sooooo amazing. Exactly what we needed! After more than an hour sitting in the pool drinking smoothies, we got ready and all went out to dinner at a Tapas Bar. It made us miss Spain so much! We drank a lot of Sangria, ate great Tortilla d’Espana, and had some good laughs. Kate and I left to catch the last shuttle back to the ship and went to sleep. The next day we woke up early again at about 6 am, ate breakfast, and drove two hours to the Cu Chi Tunnels on a SAS trip. This was one of our favorite trips so far, although it was also kind of mentally exhausting learning about it and seeing it in person. We got to go inside the tunnels, and if you know me at all, you know I am really claustrophobic, so a tunnel underground is not my favorite thing. Kate went right in, and I was set on going in, but it took me about 3 or 4 tries (I would go in and come back out) before I finally decided to go through. I really thought I was going to hyperventilate and couldn’t stop thinking that I was never going to get out, but I sucked it up and walked- well crawled- through 100 meters of tunnel! After all, why come all the way to Vietnam and not go in the tunnels? It was insane but I’m really glad we did it…what an experience! After leaving the tunnels, we drove back to HCMC and went to the Ben Tanh Market, which is the biggest in the city. We bought an unnecessary amount of souvenirs for people and each bought a new watch, and then headed back to the ship for a special BBQ! We had hot dogs, corn on the cob, and ice cream, and it was such a good time! We hung out with Ellie (we were so excited to see Kevin, Amy, and Ellie after being gone the whole time!!), and then went to the post-port reflections. The stories from Vietnam, and Cambodia, were so good, and almost as impactful as the stories we heard after India!

The next two days before China consisted of a LOT of homework, a family dinner, work, both cultural and logistical pre-ports, and watching The Office. Days on the ship go by so fast and there’s almost a set routine now that we go through, so there’s not a lot to say about that. But now we are on our way to Japan, and after that we have a ton of days on the ship, so I’ll try to write more about the little things that make this voyage so amazing when we have time to actually sit down and do so.

We miss you all so much! Love you and can’t wait to hear from you!!!