For our grand Asian finale we headed back to our home base of Thailand and finally visited those world renowned beaches.  We spent 10 days soaking in the sun in Ao Nang, Ko Phi Phi, and Railay.  We had lots of time for hiking, swimming, snorkeling, boating, sun bathing.  It was incredibly beautiful with its jutting limestone, yellow sand, turquoise warm ocean waters, and cheap beachside massages… definitely the right way to finish our honeymoon adventure. 

What can we say about our trip? Well, we’ve had good days and frustrating days, hot days and hotter days.  We’ve experienced many amazing and not so amazing things.  We’ve had fun, made mistakes, had successes, and struggles.  We’ve learned about the world, ourselves and each other.  And to think, it all began with a crazy idea we had while on the beaches of Crystal Lake in Burnsville, MN, daydreaming about how incredible it would be to live, just him and I, in a tropical paradise on the other side of the world.  To anyone thinking of teaching abroad I say go for it; it won’t be what you’re expecting but it will be so much more. 

Thank you for sharing our trip with us.  We look forward to visiting with all of you again once we return.

The End 

Note: we will be spending a few weeks in Hawaii with my sister and her husband, Michelle and Lucas.  Blog to be updated sporadically. 

Below is some background on the Khmer Regime and Pol Pot.  This info was pulled from Wikipedia:

The Khmer Rouge is remembered mainly for the many deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people or 1/5 of the country’s total population (estimates range from 850,000 to two million) under its regime, through execution, torture, starvation and forced labor. Following their leader Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge imposed an extreme form of social engineering on Cambodian society—a radical form of agrarian communism where the whole population had to work in collective farms or forced labor projects. In terms of the number of people killed as a proportion of the population (est. 7.5 million people, as of 1975), it was one of the most lethal regimes of the 20th century.

Khmer Rouge wanted to eliminate anyone suspected of “involvement in free-market activities”. Suspected capitalists encompassed professionals and almost everyone with an education, many urban dwellers, and people with connections to foreign governments. Khmer Rouge believed parents were tainted with capitalism. Consequently, children were separated from parents and brainwashed to socialism as well as taught torture methods with animals. Children were a “dictatorial instrument of the party” and were given leadership in torture and executions.

After four years of rule, the Khmer Rouge regime was removed from power in 1979 as a result of an invasion by the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and was replaced by moderate, pro-Vietnamese Communists. It survived into the 1990s as a resistance movement operating in western Cambodia from bases in Thailand. In 1996, following a peace agreement, their leader Pol Pot formally dissolved the organization. Pol Pot died on 15 April, 1998, having never been put on trial.

We hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day to take us around to all the temples.  We started at 7am when the temperature had already reached about 90 degrees.  It was a scorcher, no doubt.  The wats were enormous, old, gray stone structures.  Some had faces built into them, some had shrines, some had silk cotton trees encroaching between stones.  They were magnificent. 

We noticed three monks following the same path throughout the wats as Vince and I.  We tried to inconspicuously take a picture of them.  (What better picture can you take in the Angkor then one that has monks in it?)  As it turns out, they were trying to do the same thing. Later on in day they stopped us and asked if we would take pictures with them, first the three of them together with us, and then each of them individually with us. 

Later that evening, we visited our last temple of the day.  It sat on top of a hill and provided a view of the Angkor Wat, as well as much of the city.  We were looking out at Angkor Wat when we were approached by a few small children that were entranced at seeing foreigners.  They sat down quietly next to us, and then said “hello”. “Hello,” we replied, “Sawas dei.”  They laughed at our Khmer (language of Cambodia).  One little boy was enthralled with a cheap Chinese fan I had.  I started fanning him and he got so excited. He was so cute. I gave him the fan as a gift. He said, “thank you”.  He began fanning me so I said, “ah kuhn (thank you),” back to him. The children laughed again at my pronunciation.  More children came.  Soon their parents and even grandparents joined in curiosity. One of them, a young man, was able to speak decent English.  He lived in Siem Reap, but we learned that the rest of the group was farmers from a province 400km away.  The young man’s sister had invited them to visit the city.  The families said they would visit as long as the sister would be able to support their trip, since they had no money.  She did, and they were all staying at her house; all 30 of them.   The group was composed of several families and about 10 monks. They had never been to a city and never seen a foreigner.  The children asked us lots of questions (translated through the young man).  The father of the family eventually worked his way over and began to speak, (translated through the young man).   He said how happy he was to meet us.  He was glad we were visiting his country. He was very proud of his country.  He survived the Pol Pot period.  He told us that it wasn’t until he was our age that he realized there existed people who were not Khmer.  He was in awe by farangs lighter skin and features.  Eventually one of the grandmothers jumped in telling us how beautiful we were and how much she liked our nose. They all agreed. They like our noses. J  

As the sun was beginning to set Vince and I said goodbye to our friends.  Rain clouds were nearing, we ran out of water and were so thirsty. It was time to make the hike down.  Our friends said they were ready to go, too, so we all walked down together.  They led us, along with the whole troop of them, down a “shortcut”, a.k.a. the elephant trail. It was steep. It was narrow. It was slippery.  It was getting dark.  But if the elephants and the older women could do it (with bare feet), then I sure as hell could, too.  Everyone was so happy, and said on several occasions how happy they were to be walking down with Americans.  Probably because they thought it was funny to see us struggling down the elephant trail while they gracefully strode down with ease.

At the bottom we said our goodbyes. All the older ladies wanted to touch us and tell us again how beautiful we were, and good luck. To the children we waved and shouted good byes. To the man who spoke English and the father we gave handshakes, and expressed great appreciation at meeting one another. They all piled into the back of a truck, and rode off.  Just then the thunderstorm came pouring in. 

(Dong) Millionaire’s at last………………….

Mui Ne is a coastal city lined with beautiful beaches, and plenty of places to stay and eat. Unlike other Vietnam coastal cities, however, its has one unique attribute; sand dunes. Being that we’ve been experiencing the beaches for a couple weeks now, we were very interested to check out the sand dunes.

We rented a motorbike and headed for the hills. It’s rainy season here so many of the dunes were actually sprouting vegetation. As we were biking around we noticed many local children yelling for us to pull over near the big dunes. They wanted to be our tour guides. We’d heard that the children could be very aggressive, so we thought we’d be sneaky and find another area of entrance, though we knew it would only be a matter of time before they found us in the sand.

Within about 1 minute of entering a gang full of children ranging from 8-16 years old came running towards us with pieces of plastic for us to use for sliding down the dunes. The kids were cute, and let’s face it; of course we had to try sliding so we were sold. We had them bring us to the biggest hill out there. The sand babies (that’s what we call them) were all smiles, and laughter. So innocent. So adorable. We all slid down together. Note, it was fun, but we didn’t pick up nearly as much speed as we do on the snow back home. After we finished playing, the children were expecting money. We gave them all the small dongs (Vietnamese money) we had… approximately $2. They were not satisfied. They all crumbled onto the sand and gave us puppy eyes saying, “we don’t want to share. Give us 100 dong.” Note: 100 dong (~ $6) is what we paid to rent the motorbike for the day. We told them we couldn’t and the puppy eyes and pleas continued. They wouldn’t take our money unless we gave them more. Finally, we told them that if they didn’t want the dongs and we didn’t want the dongs then we’d just leave the money there for the dunes, and we set the dongs down. They still didn’t crack. They wouldn’t take the money. We said told them to take the money, said goodbye, and began to walk away.

Just then, one of the children yelled something that sounded like, “fuggoff.” Excuse me, but did that child just say the ‘F’ word? More little voices rang out, “fuk off!” “fuk you!” “go to hellll!!” Yep, they were definitely swearing at us, and at a very high pitch and volume I might add. They swore us all the way off the dunes. In answer to your questions.. Yes, they did throw our money back at us. Yes, we did walk at a fast pace thinking they might chase us or destroy our bike. Yes, we did laugh at the madness of the situation. Though in reality, this trained begging is extremely sad.

Thankfully, we got this shot with them before our Sand Babies flipped:

 (View from our hike down the Fairy Stream)

Nha Trang is known as the French Riviera of Vietnam; beautiful beaches and lots of tourism.  We were excited to visit it for the reasons above, as well as for the international cuisine.  We’ve been missing all the choices back home.  Our best meal in Vietnam we found here, and it wasn’t Vietnamese. It was french seafood.  Cockles, mussels, and scallops for appetizers; fillet of fish and seafood clay pot for entry; sticky rice with mango for dessert, as well as several beers. Total bill.. about $15.

The city is also very popular among backpackers for having a 1-day boat cruise.  Our cruise began with an easy ride out to one of the many islands where we snorkeled.  Next we boated around and had a seafood lunch.  After lunch our crew turned into a band and we had a dance party. Promptly followed by a “floating bar”, which was about 30 minutes floating in tubes drinking free mulberry wine. We then made our way back.  It was a great taste of the city…Total price per person for the cruise.. $8.

Not bad, eh?

We took a 17 hour overnight bus ride from Hanoi to Hoi An.  We had booked our bus tickets through the alleged “Sinh Café”.   When we got off the bus we found that our bags were soaking wet.  It had been raining all night and apparently the puddles on the poorly kept roads creeped into our bags below.  Talk about putting salt into a wound. 

Anyways, Hoi An was a charming town, though very empty of people since it’s now their off season.  Vince and I rented bicycles and took our own tour of the city and beach.  At the beach we built a sandcastle.. well, kind of like a sand castle.  Below is a photo of our creation.  It was actually a giant pyramid, surrounded by a moat, with a dragon at the entrance.  The dragon’s spine is also the staircase to the entrance.

Vince needed a haircut so we stopped at a local shop. Check out the barber below.  Vince got the full package: haircut; beard, neck, and forehead shaved with a loose blade; and ears cleaned out with dentist like equipment.  The barber did a great job.  Vince had been getting pretty scraggily from all our traveling.  After he was finished I thought he looked like tarzan cleaned up after coming out of the jungle.

It was a great place to relax for a while before traveling on.

We wanted to visit the world-renowned Halong Bay, and to do so we would need to go book a tour. The city is scattered with travel agencies, mostly Sinh Cafes so we had no problems finding a tour. We heard that many Sinh Cafes are fake, so we had the sales lady show us a stamped letter of authenticity. We thought we were in the clear. Clearly, by the picture I am painting we were not. The next day we left for a 3-day 2-night trip to Halong Bay.

 Our minivan picked us up early from our hotel. VP and I hadn’t eaten our breakfast or had our coffee yet- not good. That would be the last time they did anything early throughout our ‘tour’. We joined 18 other passengers in a van. We were the only 2 from the U.S. The rest were from Denmark, Iran, Germany, France, Malaysia, and Japan, quite an eclectic group of countries. English was the common language. Filled to max capacity, and then some, our van made the 4-hour trip to the Bay. No possibility of sleep for the drive was so bumpy it would be described as disturbing at best.

We waited at the port for about an hour for our ‘junk boat’, a long wooden boat that sleeps about 20 passengers. The boat sailed into the bay. The view was incredible; green hills jutting out of the blue ocean. We were surrounded by beauty. The boat floated through a fishing village. The village was composed of about 20 boats floating peacefully. Adults, children and dogs lived afloat. There was even a school boat for the children! The ladies and children from the village came out in little canoe-like boats to sell us fruit. Come to think of it, I’m not sure where they would have gotten their fruit from. It was unbelievable.

We visited enormous caves filled with neon lights, and then docked out on Cat Ba Island where we were to spend our first night.

We waited at the dock for about an hour to be picked up by a new tour guide and brought to our hotel. The island was nice and we spent our evening in a little bar listening to Jack Johnson on the stereo. The next day we were given a tiny breakfast, and then we waited over an hour for another tourguide to pick us up. Once picked up we had to back track for about an hour to pick up some more people to fill our tour to capacity. Once full we went to Cat Ba’s National Park where we hiked up a mountain. On top of the mountain was an entirely rusted out 75 ft tall watchtower. At first Vince wouldn’t climb it but when he turned around to go down he was blocked by people and he knew he was in for the long haul. It was beautiful from up there.

After the hike we were transported to the dock, where we had to wait for a couple hours for our boat to come back; all the while being attacked by ladies at the dock wanting to sell us their goods. “10,000 Dong for water. It is 20,000 on Cat Ba. 10,000 beer? It is cold. Cigarettes?”

After the bulk of the daylight sun had passed we boarded our boat. Peace at last. We watched the sun set over Halong’s backdrop. By sundown we anchored. Several of us jumped a good 20 feet into the dark waters below. Exhilarating.. and surprisingly painful. I’ve never jumped from so high up, and certainly never into such uncertain jellyfish filled night-waters. We ate our alleged ‘seafood by sunset’ dinner, which was more like fishcakes in darkness. Vince observed more than a few mice scamper across the floor. The workers didn’t seem the least bit surprised. For the night our boat shared a generator with another boat. The exhaust from the overworked generator filled the night sky-– so much for fresh air. Still, we had a wonderful evening conversing on the moonlit roof deck with our new friends

When the evening ended, VP and I went down to our sleeping quarters. Though the lights in our quarters below were dim, we were able to see mouse poo on our beds. Gross. I closed the curtains and saw one of the little critters scurry out and down the bed. “A mouse! A mouse!” I yelled and jumped on the bed. It was just like out of a cartoon. Personally, I thought I would’ve handled myself better, but I just freaked out. We had a hand-charging flashlight. When you squeeze it, it makes a clicking sound, and illuminates the bulb. Vince pulled it out and began clicking away, searching all crevices for mice. He didn’t find any, but we decided it would be safest to sleep with the lights on, just in case. So we’re stuffed in a tiny, dirty cabin. No aircon, and windows closed to keep mice out. It was stuffy, and musky, and we lay stiff staring at the ceiling trying to fall asleep, with the lights on. Eventually we did. At about 5 in the morning I woke up and turned out the lights. Not more than 10 seconds later I heard the clicking of Vince hand charging the flashlight..

 The next morning we woke up for a cold egg, some stale bread and a bit of jelly for breakfast. We went kayaking around the bay, which was great. As soon as we got back on the junk boat, dripping wet, our tour guide told us he needed our room key for immediate checkout. What he should’ve said is please take a shower, pack your things and checkout. Instead, when I refused to give him the room key before showering he just said to, “hurry up”. We irritably did, as our boat docked.

 Our tour guide had us gather all our bags and walk just out the port gates. He then informed us that we had an hour ‘free time’. Of course this was just more waiting with nothing to do. As he was finishing his sentence the unrelenting souvenir ladies squeezed their way into our group as began, “cigarettes, water, beer…” We waited. Our 4-hour ride back to Hanoi was bumpier than our ride in. Breathing irregularly, Vince was about to ask the driver to pull over so he could puke. Thankfully, we arrived. As we got out of the car the elder Iranian man was calling out, “Torture, torture!”

 It was a truly memorable tour. Though lesson learned- stay away from all Sinh City travel agencies, it’s just not worth trying to hunt out the real one (if a real one does even exist).