Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hi All,
In Vietnam, the only true holiday they have is Têt or Chinese New Year. It's a time when the family gets together and they enjoy each other's company. They have a lot of beliefs and traditions that are completely different from ours; offering bacon and eggs to a lion statue; asking their ancestors the right lottery number during a 'spirit moves the glass' session; making sure the first one that enters your house after Têt will bring you luck; and picking the right day after Têt to re-open your shop to make sure business will be good this year (that's the reason why almost everything is closed during a week). So we decided to spend our Têt on a little island in South Vietnam called Phu Quoc, a great place with nice white sand beaches and little bungalows with mosquito nets. It was the perfect place to chill out for a few days while the rest of Vietnam was off.
After Phu Quoc, we took a boat and a bus to arrive in Can Tho 15 hours later and find out all hotels were full. We finally found one where they still had rooms left. It was obvious why. Disgusting place with a capital D. It's good we took our thin sleeping bags. The next morning we checked for a luxurious Mekong delta cruise (we thought we deserved it after a night like that) and found one leaving the same day. Wow, that was indeed luxurious, great food, service and cabins. We cruised along the Mekong delta and had a nice sunrise the next morning for my birthday. We heard that in Vietnam the hotels were still very busy because of Têt, so we decided to postpone the rest of our Vietnam trip and first head off to Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat.
In Cambodia, we spent our first couple of days in Phnom Penh, the capital. The temples there are really awesome and completely different from Vietnam. We visited the immense royal palace and the national museum. Really stunning places. The next day, we had an other kind of experience visiting the Killing Fields and S-21 where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed thousands and thousands of people. It's always terrible to see what people are capable of. Surprisingly the Cambodians we talked to do not hold a grudge against the former Khmer Rouge people. They say it is history now and the new generations should learn from it and not make the same mistakes.
After Phnom Penh, we went to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is one of the many temples in that area. It's the biggest one and a very well preserved one, but the great thing is that there are a lot of other ones which all have their own charm. One of these charming temples is featured in the movie Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie (after the movie she adopted Madox a boy from Cambodia - all Cambodians know and love to mention this of course). We saw a beautiful sunrise at Angkor Wat, it was very serene with about a hundred other tourists around us flashing their expensive camera's ;o)
Although we only spent a bit more than a week in Cambodia, we really enjoyed this country. The people, the food, the history, it is a special place.
One big long bus ride from Siem Reap to Ho Chi Minh City and we will continue our trip in Vietnam.
So see you next time from Hanoi!
Harald and Sylvie
- comments
Heiko Hey Sylvie and Harald! Really your trip still seems like a dream... the best of your photos I could see is really excellent. You will have to find a huge house in France to put all these photos at the walls...
Frankjan I want têt too! Damn you people and you têts........