Meeting in the middle

Ten days have already past since we stepped onto our Cathay Pacific flight to Phnom Penh via Hong Kong. Unfortunately the journey did not start so well. We met Hayden and Sarah in Auckland for a night stop-over as planned. We boarded our early flight but then the Captain gave us a message to say “ we have inadvertently closed a valve and do not know how to open it again”!!! 45 minutes later the engineers had set us on our way but we knew that was a lot of time to catch up and our connecting flight Hong Kong to Phnom Penh was going to be missed. They rebooked us but it involved a 5 hour hotel booking and meal, flying to Singapore at 1.30am then flying to Phnom Penh 5.30am. A much longer day than expected and we landed just a few hours before Meghan and Blair. At least our hotel room was ready on arrival as we’d paid for the extra night.

Our first impressions of Phnom Penh were so many more cars and congested streets than when Rob and I visited in 2010. A lot of the tuk tuks are now LPG which hopefully will help with some of the air pollution problems. There was one smiling familiar face however who joined us for lunch. Julie Lowe now McGregor hosted us in 2010 and is still working in PP. Blair and Hayden really enjoyed catching up with their ‘cousin’ after 9 years or so. Julie tells us there is a developing wealthy ‘middle class’ there now but still too many only earning a pittance. Blair and Hayden were straight into the swing of learning snippets of the language, (which was always greeted with broad smiles) facilitating Tuk tuk transport and bartering in the markets. Meghan joins the team with great research of sites to visit and restaurants with yummy food. They visited the Palace then the sobering Genocide Museum and Killing Fields over the 2 days before heading by taxi up to the more laid back city of Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat.

Tarantulas anybody!

Airport transport

Rob and I flew ahead to Ho Chi Minh and spent a few days walking around near our District 1 hotel. It was an interesting area with small residential alleyways leading off the main hustle and bustle. Pretty quiet but a reality check as memories flood back to the firm Asian mattress of the cheaper hotels US$36 per night. Very friendly helpful staff. At night the lead alley to our hotel ‘came alive’ with beautiful ladies adorning the doors of their establishments!!! They were so keen to greet Rob until they spotted me following!!! As you can imagine the boys got even better greetings on their later night return alone after some beers. Rob and Blair made some purchases in the main Ben Thanh Market. Everything you need is available in this bustling organised Market stacked to the gunnels. It is very oppressive though and helpful to know “khong cam on”….no thank you.

B M H & S took a Tour out to the Cu Chi Tunnels. This is a War Memorial Park with 121 km of tunnels that were used by the Viet Cong soldiers as supply routes, hiding places and accommodation during the Vietnam War. They have enlarged some of the network so larger western visitors can go down and get a feel for what it was like. On their journey back through HCM Sarah spotted us getting a geocache from a platform over a small lake!!!! What are the chances in a population of 3 million or so. I did have a bright pink top on but still. They then visited the War Remnants Museum which has a thought provoking collection of photographs and history of the War from a Vietnamese point of view. We felt very safe walking the streets and tasting craft beers and sampled a broad range of restaurants. One of these was accessed through a cane bag shop. It was quite swept-up modern décor and had two little chickens wandering around under the tables! When we left they were side by side asleep perched on the edge of a pot plant!!

Intersection mayhem

Community Hall

Our last day was spent together on a very memorable for the wrong reasons Tour to two Mekong Delta Islands. We are not sure if our Guide was new to the job but he gave us very little information and we felt we were just herded through lots of market stalls. There were so many other Tours in the area and the “Canal paddle through villages” was a punt with front and back paddlers. The boys 2 ladies obviously felt hard done by drawing the short straw propelling 4 giant westerners through the mud filled narrow waterway and hassled them the whole way wanting money groaning and grunting for effect!! Needless to say they gave them about 50c which may have been more inflated if they’d had a friendlier disposition. We couldn’t see anything over the banks and learned very little about the Delta existence even after lots of questions as our Guides English was not great. You win some and lose some. The highlight of the day was our conversations with an actor from Manchester who was the only other visitor in our group. He is between jobs so taking a break. After looking him up when we got back to Wifi we discovered he has had some big parts in The Bill, Vera, Cold Feet, Eastenders and movies. I suppose he was happy that we didn’t ask for a change. We were surprised to see that Saigon embraces Christmas in a big way. Giant decorations are rolled out on hotels and department stores. People wearing Santa suits and kids in Christmas clothes.

Rex Hotel

Old and new

So we left HCM on Christmas Day flying here to Con Dau Island. It is so fresh peaceful and compact after the smoggy traffic filled city. We arrived around 2pm and had a bit of trouble finding somewhere to have lunch. Most days people here have a rest at that time as they all seem to stay open late in the evening. Anyway a helpful lady called a taxi which took us about 2km to an authentic local restaurant with some Saigon beer. Just what we needed and then we crashed for a nap as you do on Christmas Day. Different but great to be together for sure. 

Yesterday we had the first sleep-in after a lot of early starts. In the afternoon we took a Guided Tour of the Museum, cemetery and prisons on this Island. The French first opened the prison in 1861 to house political prisoners. Then it was handed over to the South Vietnamese until the end of the Vietnam War. There is no doubt it was a pretty inhumane place but there was also a lot of propaganda artwork in the Museum and the officials don’t seem too happy with the Guides speaking English.

Island electric taxi

It is not very touristy here yet but a few very cool restaurants branching out to meet the market. We finished up in a Karaoke Bar last night which is quite a big thing in a lot of places. There was a piano and guitar and the boys gave it a bit of a lash along with some talented Danes. Fortunately I have not much voice!!

I have had a cold for the past 5 days which is pretty annoying so I passed on the walk up over the hill today to another Bay and am writing this instead. By all accounts it wasn’t that great so I think it was a wise choice. We are early on the plane tomorrow heading for Hoi An on the East Coast near Da Nang.