Ho Chi Minh City

Apparently, only government officials refer to HCMC by its post American war name. Most still use Saigon. Though, given that Ho Chi Minh is affectionately known as Uncle Ho, I think it could go by yet another name.

On December 1 Anna-Marie is finished with her duties in Phnom Penh and we head out by bus for Uncle Ho City. The boarder crossing is easy; we don't change buses, and though there are formalities we are practically whisked through. It is a long 7 hour ride, but the scenery is new, and across the border we notice immediate differences. First, the road is much better, there are traffic signs, and pedestrians and animals, while not staying off the road, do give way to motorized traffic.

We arrive in HCMC mid-afternoon and immediately find a good hotel. We will only stay one night; tomorrow as 6:00pm we will take the night train to Danong, midway up the country.

Here is my first impression of HCMC.

Battambang

Cambodia’s second largest city, with a population of about 150,000, spans the Sangker River. For its size it is quiet (even the central market didn’t seem overwhelming) and replete with charming colonial buildings, including a district governor’s mansion that seems all out of proportion to the importance that the position must have held. Like Phnom Penh, the central market is a good example of art deco architecture.

In planning our trip I had booked a room at the Royal Hotel, but on arrival the room was not what we wanted. More common in South East Asia in hotels catering to locals and backpackers are twin beds. Insisting that we get a double, the manager offers us a deal at a sister hotel, a few blocks away. Without promises we load on the back of two motos are scoot the few block to a new, almost complete hotel. The room is a sumptuous corner, overlooking a university building, with a king sized bed, large television, and comfortable chairs. Everything is absolutely brand new, and if we opt for no air conditioning (an easy concession as the ceiling fan will be adequate) and don’t reveal how little we are paying we can stay for $12 a night (the price I had originally negotiated for the Royal).

One amenity the Royal has that we now lack is a roof top restaurant, designed to encourage patrons to lounge for hours on end. Since this is open to the public we spend a few hours that evening looking out over the city. On the plus side, our hotel faces a very good restaurant where in the mornings I get large cups of take away coffee (with real milk, not sweetened condensed) that I bring back to the hotel room. What we know in Canada as Vietnamese coffee is the standard throughout South East Asia, thick espresso made thicker and cloying with sweetened condensed milk. In Canada, this is a novel treat, but it proves an unsatisfying alternative to a real mug of coffee. Those places that do offer a large cup with fresh milk become instant favourite hangouts.

We have dinner in the evening at the bright, sprawling White Rose restaurant. Fortunately we sit outside on the sidewalk. Also fortunately, we are not in any rush, as the service is terminally slow. While eating vegetarian always eliminates great swaths of the menu, we eat well, the night air is warm and fragrant, and the beer is cold. Across the street is the Smokin’ Pot restaurant (the owner is aware of the pun), closed at our late dining hour, but the home of a good cooking school. Tomorrow we will book a class for the next morning. The timing is perfect as class will end just in time for us, with full bellies, to catch our bus back to Phnom Penh.

On our full day in Battambang we rise slowly and wander down to the central market and the river. We could hire a tuk tuk to take us into the mountains surrounding the city, but opt for a long leisurely walk through the city. So our day takes us to the Riverside Balcony Bar, the Governor’s residence (now a museum with some good artifacts from local Khmer ruins), and a small local restaurant for lunch. We ask the waiter to have the cook put together a vegetarian hot pot, and while the results aren’t stellar, still it is tasty.

The neighbourhood around our hotel is comprised of many little food shops and corner stores. We cobble together a dinner from a variety of shops and head back to our room. We have TV and a strange Asian version of Pringles (which themselves are strange). There is extensive coverage on TV of a Buddhist funereal ceremony transpiring in Thailand. The late Princess Galyani Vadhana, who died almost a year ago is being moved to her final resting place. The ceremony cost millions of dollars (the funeral platform alone cost $11 million) and is watched by most everyone in Thailand and throughout South East Asia on the cable news. The princess is the older sister of king Bhumibol Adulyadej, and her body has lain in state for 11 months. She is now being transported to the royal crematorium. The procession is majestic, stately, and extremely slow. The Thai government has declared three days of national mourning and they will need all three to move her remains the few kilometers. When the night before I had first turned on the TV I thought someone in Phnom Penh had died. We are struck by the similarities in the architecture, decoration, and dress between Thailand and Cambodia. The great differences emerge, but the influence of the Khmer empire that once controlled all of present Thailand is obvious.

In the morning we head off to school. Class runs from 10:00am to about 1:00pm. During that time we will make three dishes, amok, the classic Khmer curry, a green mango salad, and a tofu hot pot. Vannak Robie began the cooking school because he tired of explaining that Cambodian food is not like Thai food, but that Thai food is derived from Khmer food. He acknowledges there are differences but the roots of Thai cuisine date to the Khmer empire.

The first part of the class is a short walk to the central market. Battambang’s market is typical of markets we have visited throughout Cambodia; a jumble of smelly, crowded aisles, often with slick, slightly gelatinous floors, and vendors perched on the counter tops amidst their goods. Vannak explains each of the ingredients we are buying, what they are called, how they are used, where they come from. In part, this is a refresher for us, as we have taken a cooking class in Phnom Penh that also included a tour of a market. Vannak, though, is more thorough, and as the class is smaller, easier to hear.

Back at the restaurant we grind fresh galangal and turmeric root, kaffir zest, garlic, shallots, small chili peppers, and lemon grass. These will comprise the curry in our amok. They get mixed with coconut milk that we make from scratch. Only in places where coconut cannot be had fresh, it seems, do people eat the meat of the coconut. In fresh coconut the meat is soft, the beginnings of the coagulation of the milk. Here, the drier meat is ground into a moist version of our desiccated and shredded coconut. We place a large handful of shredded coconut into a bowl of water and slosh it around, squeezing it, until the water is milky and opaque. This is then strained and the shreds discarded. Amok is a mix of coconut milk, curry spices, and traditionally fish. We have eaten it with tofu, straw mushroom, or baby corn as substitutes. The mixture is then steamed until it thickens and the fish is cooked through.

As we make two versions of amok (I elect to go with the fish), a salad, and a hot pot, I am surprised that there are no leftovers for the bus ride.

A Slow Boat to Battambang

In Phnom Penh we had decided to not return from Siem Reap directly, but to take a longer circular route back. Outbound we had travelled up the north side of the Tonlé Sap Lake, though we didn’t see any of the lake. Our return trip would take us south of the lake, though we wouldn’t see any of it on the return. But from Siem Reap we would travel west to Battambang by boat, crossing the northwest section of the lake and up the Sangker River into this mid-sized city.

Tour books rightly describe this is a beautiful excursion. They also describe it as a trip of variable length, ranging from 4 to 7 hours, based on the levels of the Tonlé Sap Lake. During the wet season the Tonlé Sap River flows into the lake, which expands from 2500 sq km to 13,000 sq km. As the water levels drop and the shoreline recedes the boat route becomes more convoluted. This was impressed upon us mid-day when we spent hours motoring through narrow channels among trees growing out of the lake. Wrongly, we thought our trip, just at the end of the rainy season, would be on the shorter side. But our boat set off at 8:00am and docked in Battambang after 4:00pm. It was a beautiful, tranquil ride at 8 hours; it would have been a beautiful, tranquil ride at 4 hours.

The day began grey with an early ride from Siem Reap to the shores of the Tonlé Sap. Given the fluid nature of the lake’s shoreline, the boat launched from a causeway built kilometers out into the lake. About 20 of us loaded onboard, some sitting close to the water line inside the boat, others perched on the roof. The boat is really similar to a bus. Inside are rows of paired seats, four across with a centre aisle. The sides are paneless windows. Topside, the bow is flat and square, a good tanning deck, and the roof long and flat, with passengers slumped against bags and knapsacks. And like a bus trip in Canada, midway we stop at a bus station for lunch.

The first few hours of our journey we traverse vast expanses of open water. There is no real shoreline on the Tonlé Sap, just a slow transition from open water to occasional trees and shrubs to more dense, but still water bound, growth. Because 75% of Cambodia’s fish come from the lake it is a busy, populated place. There are villages suspended over the waters, and villagers who have never set foot on solid ground. At we wend westward we pass single huts built on stilts, a thin line of smoke rising from the cooking stove, a boat tied to an abutting tree. Further west we encounter several small villages with children paddling about as kids in Canada ride bicycles.

In one floating village we pass a temple, large and imposing, with the typical steep gold roof, the whole, built on stills, rising out of the lake. In another, a long string of connected barges slowly moving a forest of logs out into the Tonlé Sap passes an old women drying flat breads on the deck of her boat. And the lunch stop, a floating convenient store, ready for us with steaming pots of rice, soup, curries; and on the porch a deep icy cooler of pop and beer. Despite the bounty, for the vegetarians there is rice and a single dish of vegetables.

As we near the Sangker River the sun burns the cloud cover off and the tree growth expands. We now motor through passageways between thickets of scrub trees. For several hours we crawl along these pathways, frequently whipped by long branches that scrape the boat and snap into the openings along the sides. Despite the tranquility of the trip and the lure of a good book, vigilance is required. Several times we encounter oncoming traffic, forcing us to nose into the trees as the two boats squeak and scrape past each other.

Finally, we spy a clump of solid ground, a small patch of grass with a cut bank of mud rising 20 cm above the water. Now more and more land. And finally, a river bank (only one) but clearly the start of the Sangker River. Now we pass groups of people, net fishing from boats or the shore, waving as we pass. Still there are many hours to go, but the bustle on the shorelines provides a more engaging preoccupation.