Sunday July 25th: our smelly bus ride to Vietnam :)

Susanne:

Sunday was our last day as a remaining Habitat group of 11 from the previous 14.

We got up early, most of us made a last Tuk Tuk ride to the Russian market to get souvenirs.  Michelle, Chelsea and I were extremely lucky to have Marianne help us out in a big way: we bought an extra suitcase at the market and put all kinds of stuff in it we do not need anymore (med kit, paperwork for Habitat, work clothes etc.) and she is taking it home for us. Marianne: we owe you big time!!! Hope all went well on the way home :)

We had a somewhat rushed team lunch at the French place around the corner before most of us met in the lobby to say Goodbyes`s. With every Habitat trip I have ever been on, Good Bye`s are bitter sweet. I think everyone is in some way anxious to get home to see friends and family, but you really do make some very special relationships on these trips and some people do not live close to one another, so that is the harder part of it sometimes :)

Kate, Pete, Michelle, Chelsea and I all got on a 6 hour bus to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to now start the post Habitat vacation. Well, I won`t bore you with details, but the descriptors of the bus trip should include: all seats were taken and only about 6 of us were ``western`` (as we all called here), so it seemed very busy.  A number of people brought food and fruit on the bus, so that the bus had a bad smell on it and the seats were quite small. I think I did not feel my knee cap for most of the trip and likely tripped 5 or 6 people with my other leg hanging out in the middle aisle. There was a TV screen and some kind of local music was blaring so that we had to put our IPods on pretty loud to tone out the music. Later the music turned into Asian Karaoke songs playing on the screen...wow, a few hours of that can really get to you :)  After about 3 hours or so, we got to the Vietnamese border, had to get off, get on, get off, get on and finally put our luggage through a low cost scanner before going back on the bus. The bus actually left without 2 guys sitting behind us from San Francisco and we started a bit of a frenzy of waving our arms and holding two fingers in the air to alert the driver who did not know he was missing anyone....very reassuring to say the least.  It is all an experience and we had some good laughs about it :)

So all was good. The city is large with close to 6 million people, I think, lots of neon signs, the electric and/or telephone cables seem to all be above land and some are so low that I had to duck my head once or twice on the cross walk below them.  We went out for a bite at Allez Boo's around the corner and tried Vietnamese beer called "Saigon"..not so good.  Singapore's "Tiger" was better.......OK...am very excited about something: did you just notice that I found my quotation marks....been looking for them for 3 weeks now on my laptop which seems to hire certain symbols in weird places: """"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""".....ahhhhhhhhhh  :)

Anyhow, turned out the hostel we booked was just around the corner from the bus station and our rooms is decent.  Tomorrow we explore the city a bit.  Not sure how long we're staying yet.

Seems a bit cooler here.  "Cooler" is likely high twenties or low 30's....

Thursday: Floating Villages and back to Phnom Penh

Susanne:

I know, I know...slackers we are. I don`t expect much sympathy from our little reader group, but this vacation is pretty ``exhausting`` and it seems hard to find time to keep up the blog. The days have been packed full, evenings are filled with late dinners and drinks and often it is hard to find some relaxing time. Having said this: we talk often about about how we are so lucky to experience all the things we learn every day, so now we certainly want to share. But thanks for your patience....:)

Today was our last day in Siem Reap.

First I had a happy little morning adventure with Carol. She had wanted to ride an elephant very, very badly, so that the two of us got up early and went via Tuk Tuk back to Angkor Wat to an area where you could ride elephants twice a day: once early in the morning and then for another two hours slot in the afternoon.  So Carol got to ride her elephant and I have rarely seen someone so overjoyed when she first saw them and also when she went for her 20 minute elephant ride with the biggest smile on her face and big waving arms toward me when I took pictures. It was a very special moment I will likely never forget :)

We went back to the hotel and our guide accompanied the whole group to the floating villages which are basically along the Tonle Sap Lake, apparently the second largest freshwater lake on earth, near Siem Reap. The lake grows significantly during rainy season, has a ton of fish to feed many mouths and support the indurty. The waterline creeps up the lake banks between spring and fall. We had to climb down a steep walkway to our boat and got on board a pretty noisy and old boat which we took slowly up a canal to get to the open lake. On the canal, we could see the first homes, gas stations, churches etc which were still attached to land via a plank. Once we got to the open water, we could see a village of homes on the water, a few hundred likely. What a sight. We were attacked by ``pirates`` along the way (our tour guide`s term): small boats with kids wanting to sell us soft drinks. They literally pull up along side your boat while moving and the kids jump from one boat to the other to pull their little bucket across the boat trying to make some money. Ours was a cute, little girl with a dirty face who was pretty comfy with jumping from one to another.

We had a tourist kind of stop where we could buy gifts, hold a python, see huge cat fish, crocodiles. We also saw a floating school, church, basketball courts and a great number of homes. The lake is the home to about 10,000 people who live on the water in these floating villages. One would wonder why people live there....it is just the way it has always been, we were told. Families who live on the water are more comfortable there and get antsy when being on land for too long. The kids often swim to school, families do laundry in the lake, use it as bathroom drainage...everything happens in the lake. So you can imagine that the lake gets much cleaner when the water level is higher in the rainy season which we have just started. My guess is that the level where it was and where it was supposed to rise to was maybe 10-15 metres higher. Many homes in the area are also built on stilts which allows for flooding as well as the usual other advantages: less critters in the homes, extra space to use below the home which is cool, perfect for hammocks etc. Place for motos.

It was a great half day. We went back for lunch, had a couple of hours at our roof top pool, and started our journey back to Phnom Penh (6 hours) On the way, we stopped at our usual stop where they sell the tarantulas and Nick tried to have a hundred placed on his shirt.he o9nly got to about 40, but putting them on his shirt definitely got a few of us to run for our cameras.
Back at the hotel, we got ready to stay overnight before heading to the coast the next morning. We found a great restaurant near the hotel which was French and had some nice wine, excellent pasta, some folks had cognac and they even served real ice cream. Yum. After a lot of traditional Khmer food and many stomach ailments which seem to have plagued our team, everyone is quite excited to order some things that are a bit more western.

We loved Siem Reap. Very clean, touristy, lots to see and do. Very nice, a definite must see!

Thursday to Saturday: our rainy coast visit

Susanne again :)

We left for Sihanoukville at 7 a.m.  we had been looking forward to this trip for a while. After going Northwest for 6 hours to get to Siem Reap, we were now headed South to the coast on the Gulf of Thailand. we were told that due to the rainy season (rain every day, bot often is spurts as we have seen so far), the water is not turquoise or crystal clear, but that it would be warm and we were hoping for good weather.

well.......this is where the problem started.  :)

We got into Sihanoukville around noon and walked up to Monkey Republic, a backpacker`s kind of  restaurant and hangout with hammocks, a pool table and good cheap food which reminded me of my lifestyle during the year I traveled in Australia. They sold towers of beer which we had to try :)
It ended up turning a bit rainy and cloudy, so we skipped the beach for the afternoon and proceeded to the pool for a bit.  we had supper on the strip again and finished off the night at a fun bar called Utopia.  Draft has been very cheap....about $2 for a pitcher.  We were now introduced to $7 buckets of drinks. They were literally buckets of whatever you chose with a bunch of straws and lots of ice cubes. Nancy and I split the daiquiri one, it was really good!  Then peer pressure started somewhere in the group to try a drink called the Flaming Lamburghini...a variety of 4 shots, poured into....(for all my sambuca friends at home who will understand that I was kind of excited about this one as I that is the one kind of alcohol besides beer and win I actually like): Sambuca!  It was the main shot which was lit on fire, the others poured into it.  Wow, holy smokes!.  It was a fun night with the group  :)

Friday:  we were going to head to the beach but woke up to pouring rain. Just our luck...well, we decided to make the best of it. We asked Mr. Ta,. our bus driver who was at our disposal for the 3 days. We stopped when we saw some monkeys hanging out on top of a fence on the way into town and then asked him to take us up into town to see a market but it ended up not being a really good one, so we had lunch and spent the afternoon getting massages, figuring out Visa`s for further travel, some people napped, some got manicures, and then a few of us went swimming, as well. The ocean was warm, waves were strong which allowed a bit of body surfing ....it was great to be on the water finally.  It was a nice, relaxing day and we were getting ready for our last night out as a team at the coast and decided to eat at the Dolphin shack which was a pub/restaurant right on the beach. We had amazing seafood grilled: shrimp, squid, I tried barracuda for the first time and we had the crashing waves only a few feet away. nice night.  Kate had an outstanding task: to eat the grilled tarantula she had kept in her fridge.  well, at least the leg. it was brought to the dinner table and a few of us had fun with it. Michelle had already tried a leg, Chelsea wanted to have nothing to do with it, but I tried a leg and it was actually not bad at all. A bit like the grilled frog I ate.  Done and done.  Eeaten a cricket, frog and now tarantula.  My own food related bucket list :)
 
We did lose 3 of our team members today:  Nick and Paul were going to travel a bit more in Cambodia and had actually booked a night on an island nearby. So they left at lunchtime.  Brian also had to leave around 7 pm for Phnom Penh as he had an early flight on Saturday.  Great guys to have had on the trip! We will miss the Doc, the hollow leg guy who can finish all the meals and Mr Sociable :)

Saturday we made out way back to PP and had a really nice dinner with Eric and Rayman who came to join us.  We also said Good Bye to them after exchanging some more notes on sayings in English for them (i.e. what`s shaking, `brother from another mother`, gimme a break etc.) and we video taped Eric singing a song which Chelsea and Michelle want to teach their elementary kids at some point.  we played it at the work site.

It was a really nice evening topped off with us goofing around the lobby after with a flower which Rayman agreed to put into his hair for some pics.

Siem Reap: What's a "WAT?"

Chelsea:
What's a "wat?" A "wat" is a temple! Monday and Tuesday were spent exploring the Angkor Wat complex which means "City Temple." We got up at 4am to meet our bus and guide, Crow, to head to the temple and watch the sunrise. We arrived around 4:30 and got settled in a great spot- we even got little plastic chairs because we bought tea/coffee. We sat in front of the small pond which reflected the temple. What an incredible sight- the sky started as a dark royal blue and gradually got brighter and brighter. It was so neat- it's funny how few people actually ever take the time to watch the sunrise at home, this experience would certainly make anyone think twice about it now. After that we headed back to the hotel for a little breakfast before we went back out on the road around 8:00. We went to the "Smiling Buddha" temple first. At the top of each tower rock formation there were four faces, one on each side, each with a different meaning: equality, sympathy, compassion and charity. There were also elephants and monkeys around this temple. It cost $15 for 15 minutes to ride in a basket on top of an elephant so we decided to wait and see if we can find a place where you actually get to sit on the elephant itself. We did buy some bananas and feed them though while we were petting them. They were very gentle and appeared to be treated well. They work for a few hours in the morning and then again in the evening but break from 11-4 daily. On our way back to the bus we came across a bunch of wild monkeys. They too seemed to be use to people as they allowed us to come quite close- one of the babies even decided to climb all over Nick. Next we went to Ta Phrom, the famous temple seen in the movie Tomb Raider. The temple and trees have grown together in this place. It's almost impossible to see where one starts and the other begins. The trees are between 400-500 years old and stretch far up in to the sky and winding roots dive deep in to the ground. According to our guide the two are so intertwined you could never remove the trees now without damaging the temple. It was quite a sight- just to stand there and be dwarfed by the roots of a tree- crazy! After a little lunch we went back to Angkor Wat and explored the temple itself. It is full of carvings and ancient inscriptions as well as statues. We climbed the central tower inside the complex on Tuesday and were treated to some pretty impressive views. Given it was a full day of hiking up ancient structures we headed back to the hotel to swim in the roof top pool before heading out for dinner and traditional dancing show.

We got to sleep in a little Tuesday morning which was nice and didn't head off to the temples until about 8:30. The first one we went to see (about an hour's drive away) is known as the women's temple. It was supposedly built by women and made of pink sandstone as opposed to the usual grey. Time has eroded the color and it's difficult to see the pink stone but there are places where it is still visible. The things that set it apart from other temples are it's carvings and it's size. The carvings are extremely detailed- faces are chiseled out with perfect symmetry and distingushed features which according to Crow, our guide, is because women have much more patience then men! The temple structure itself almost looks like a dollhouse in comparison to the others we have seen. Its miniature doorways and windows were made specifically for the women who lived there which averaged about 5'4" in height. Michelle and I had to duck a couple of times but Susanne had to duck every time she entered another section- she wouldn't make a very good Cambodian woman- too funny. Our next stop was alongside the road. We visited a typical thatch stilt home and enjoyed some palm juice candy which tastes exactly like maple sugar... mmmm! We bought three bundles each for $1- unfortunately it probably won't make it back to Canada for you all to try as we still have 3.5 weeks to go and candy around here is pretty hit and miss.

We continued down the road and stopped to visit the Landmine Musem. With the exception of the Preah Viear section of Cambodia near the northern Thai border, the majority of landmines that existed have been cleared. Aki Ra, the creator of this museum, is one of the main reasons this is the case. He grew up as a Khmer Rouge solider, holding his first gun at the age of 10- the gun was taller then he was! He later defected and joined the Vietnamese Army where he fought against his former friends and the Khmer Rouge. There is even one story stating how one day when he looked through the site on his gun, he recognized his uncle on the other side. He was a very good shot and began purposely missing his mark. He had no choice but to shoot because this was war and his uncle was the enemy but when asked why he kept missing he used the excuse that he had a headache and that his aim was off. This allowed him to shoot rounds over his uncle's head and gave him time to escape. According to the write up, he and his uncle laugh about it today. His job included laying and exploding landmines in attempts to catpure and kill the enemy. It was through this job that he came to know a great deal about the mines and how they worked. At the end of the war, he made it his personal mission to de-mine as many areas as possible. Before officially becoming a member of the international de-mining organization that works in Cambodia, he would go to villages all over the countryside and remove the landmines that existed in the farming grounds around peoples homes. To this day, it is estimated that he has cleared some 50,000 landmines on his own!

Our next stop was to the "Upside Down" temple. This temple was used as a place in which to creamate the bodies of those who passed away. It is known as the upside down temple because the bodies were burned upside down, head to feet instead of bottom to top or feet to head. The reason being is that it apparently takes 1-2 hours to creamate a body upside down as opposed to 3-4 hours rightside up. They also did it this way because they discovered that burning bottom to top caused certain veins in the corpses' arms to pulsate and in turn make it appear that the deceased person's arms were moving. This temple also had some serious steps! In order to get up to the top you had to climb at about an 80 degree angle on narrow little steps with a high rise and narrow run. The view at the top was worth it though- it was pretty spectacular to be standing on top of such a piece of history. Our day finished with the trip up the central tower at Angkor Wat that I mentioned above and a nice long swim in the roof top pool. The evening was spent relaxing for dinner on Pub Street eating enormous chicken kebabs displayed on a sword, mango salad served in a banana leaf and sweet and sour chicken and vegetables served in a pineapple- the presentation of food here is pretty neat. We also enjoyed a few pitchers of Angkor beer ($2 each) and some cocktails ($6). Unfortunately we couldn't convince anyone to try the "AK47" which conisisted of rum, vodlka, tequila, gin, triple sec and a little lime and sugar! :) A few of us then did a little shopping at the night market and Erin and I went for a foot massage. Super nice and super cheap- only $4 for an hour!! :) Tomorrow it's off to the floating villages.

Sunday, July 18th: bumpy bus rides,tarantulas and fish foot massages

Chelsea:
The day started with a tuktuk drive to the Royal Palace. We spent an hour or two perusing the various temples inside and walking around the immaculate grounds. The temples are incredibily ornate- I can't even imagine how long it took for them to build and carve out every single little detail. The temples were filled with artifacts and Buddha's of course, as well as some other interesting things. We walked in to one and it had typical pieces of clothing worn by the people who worked and lived there in the past. This was not unusual as most have a sort of display like this but one thing in particular caught our eye here- there were 7 female mannequins lined up across the front of the room all wearing the same dress but in a different color- come to find out, the days of the week were actually color coded and people had to wear certain colors on each particular day! Interesting- at least it would have been easy to keep track of the days. :) After that we headed to the National Museum. It was a pretty impressive structure from the outside but the tour inside itself was a little underwhelmling, especially since we had a guide who spoke like a robot and we could only make out every 4th or 5th word. We could have read the plaques and done just fine on our own.

Later that afternoon, we took off from Phnom Penh and headed northwest to Siem Reap, home of Angkor Wat. The drive was expected to take about 6hrs. which at the time seemed fine, then we actually started down the road. I'm not sure what kind of road work they do in Cambodia but there certainly hasn't been any in the last 10-15 years. That ride had to have been the most bumpy ride I have EVER taken- we were bouncing up and down in our seats the entire time! We even caught some air a few times!! We stopped along the way for bathroom and snack breaks which included an extra bonus stop where you could eat and buy tarantula. Some of the boys had them crawling on their shirts and Paul even bought a few fried ones for later. Nick brought a live one on the bus and took him to Siem Reap with us- his name was Snake Eyes.... note I said "was"... Snake Eyes didn't make it too long and has since moved on to spider heaven. His friends met their match at dinner that evening acting as a post meal snack for Paul, Nick and Kevin. Erin and Michelle had a leg which apparently wasn't too bad but the boys ate the whole thing (fried and well done) which turns out is not such a great idea as it left quite the after taste as I understand. Oh well, when in Cambodia, do as the locals do, right? Luckily for them they could easily wash it down with as much beer as they wanted as a bottle of draught costs 50 cents and a pitcher is $2.00 here on Pub Street.

Siem Reap is a touristy town with markets and stands on the downtown streets, does not seem to be quite as poor and rundown as some parts of Phnom Penh and still has massage places on many corners. It also had Dr. Fish, an outside tank where you can stick your feet in the water that have hundreds of tiny little fish which will basically come and "attack" your feet to clean them...well,Susanne, Nick, Kevin, Brian and Nancy were brave enough to try this ticklish feat. Nancy had to pull her feet out every so often. One thing, though: Nick seemed to attract all fish with his questionable feet, only leaving a few for the rest of the people who apparently had cleaner feet. So he was asked to take his feet out every so often to "share".

Heading out to see the sunrise tomorrow morning at 4am at Angkor Wat- should be exciting!

July 17th, Saturday: sad but interesting day visiting Killing Fields, an orphanage, genocide museum....

Susanne:
When deciding on the Habitat location, Thailand first came to mind due to the beaches, ongoing tsunami reconstruction and I guess the reputation Thailand carries as a travel place. When the trip was switched to Cambodia, which was also on the list of countries to visit after a potential Thailand build, I have to admit that I knew fairly little about Cambodia...besides some of the sad history. I am so glad that I had a chance over the last week (can`t believe that is all it`s been) to get to know Cambodia from a different angle and get to know these friendly, helpful and polite people.

Today was going to be a trip down history lane to explore the types of things we all likely remember from the Khmer Rouge regime.

We started our day with a quick stop at a rice store to get two big 50 kg bags of rice we were going to take to the children in the orphanage we would visit later today. Each bag will go a long way. we drove the 20 or so kilometers to Choeung Ek, the ``Killing Fields``. We had a guide who took us around and showed us many places which were the remains of this horrific site...anything from a truck stop where prisoners were first brought to a small prison to an area where teeth were found, bones, clothing, finally mass graves.....it is tough to describe the learning that takes place when a guide who likely lost relatives in this horrible fiasco back in the 70`s, takes you around and talks about the impact of this historic time on his land. 3 million of the then 8 million Cambodians were killed and mass graves were found all over the country. A monument with over 9000 skulls was built and all were analyzed carefully for age, sex, method of death if it can be determined etc. Very, very sad sight.

We then traveled on to visit the dump site from which the Habitat families moved which we built the houses for. There are nearby rental properties in very poor shape and we ended up taking a walk to also visit families who basically live on/amid the garbage and filth. The very first thing we saw when driving to the entrance were 4 cute barefoot Cambodian boys sitting on a dumpster carrying on with one another. They cheerfully posed for the camera in the now familiar ``v`` or victory pose and went on to mind their own business. We later saw them when we left dragging garbage bags behind them.....very, very sad. Other families we saw lived in horrendous conditions with homes lacking real walls,and being constantly exposed to the noise and smell of the garbage nearby. It sure was a humbling sight to see.


Then we went to an orphanage, the same one which put on the little show for us a few days ago. It was a rundown, smelly place with garbage in the court yeard, but we only noticed this later as we were welcomed with all children lined up on the sides clapping and guiding us to a little stage where they were going to perform some more dances for us. We watched them put on some traditional dances and they finished off with the little boys doing break dance and hip hop moves, it was pretty cool. Then we presented them with the bags of rice, gave another donation and the kids went off to eat. Once lunch was over for them, we had them line up on by one and gave out our remaining gifts. We had enough for all kids who were there: about 50 of them. It was like a little xmas party and lots of smiles all around.
But the place was very rundown....the kids looked healthy but facilities were not great. Apparently costs run at around $550 per month to run it and we were certainly hit up pretty strongly for further donations. I guess tourism is a business and fundraising source for them and the dancing and performing certainly fits into this. I think some of our team members found it difficult to see the kids live in these kinds of conditions...but as Chelsea said in an earlier post: better here than on the street.

We went to see the Russian Market which was great for souvenirs and we will return later when we have more time, we went to see the S21 Genocide Museum. It is an old high school which was converted to a prison where prisoners were tortured before being taken to the Killing Fields or into labour camps. You could still some some blood stains in old tiles, old cells and beds, foot chains where prisoners were tied together and finally: pictures. Pictures were taken of all prisoners where with arms behind their backs, women all had their hair cut short, gaunt faces and even some children. Hundreds and likely thousands of pictures. Then there were descriptions of the brutalities which occurred and hand drawn pictures and paintings depicting them. It is hard to imagine someone would even think of some of those things....truly awful. It is a quiet place with barbed wire on all walls and you see all tourists walking around quietly and solemnly.

Anyhow, it was a pretty disturbing afternoon, but important to see.

In the evening, we went on a boat ride on the Tonle Sap River for a few hours, had a nice buffet dinner on board and 60 cent Angkor beers....fun night to even out the day.

Some interesting facts:
-50 kg bag of rice: $26
-large Cadbury chocolate bar:$4.50
-wine: fairly expensive at around $12 per bottle at supermarket. Anything that has to be imported in is fairly expensive for these standards...other things are inexpensive
-amount of people struck by lightening since May of this year: 60. basically one person a day
-many homes have scarecrows leaned against a tree close to the road. supposed to scare off bad ghosts and keep the home safe
-milk is not often used here for coffee etc, but the milk powder is
-many dishes for breakfast which you would see for lunch or supper at home: fried noodles, stir fried vegatables, salad etc.

I miss yoghurt and skim milk but otherwise the food here is excellent!