Into Viet Nam

During out three month stay in Phnom Penh we plan a month of travel through South East Asia. Many people contribute to our plans by suggesting must-see destinations and offering practical tips about procuring visas and which border crossings to avoid. Our plan is to take the bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City. It is a single bus trip with no change-over at the border. The ride is about 6 hours long and the bus crew will facilitate the crossing into Vietnam. This seems an easy introduction into our four-week tour of Cambodia’s neighbour-countries, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos

The travel agent at the end of the street gets our visas for us, books the bus, and arranges a shuttle to pick us up from his office. As usual, we find ourselves outside the closed travel office early in the morning waiting well past the designated pickup time. Before the shuttle shows an employee arrives to open the agency. A quick phone call confirms the shuttle is on its way, though we have a sneaking feeling we may have been forgotten prior to the call.

The bus ride is unspectacular, but offers three diversions.

The bus is equipped with a bathroom amidships, a very few rows behind and across the aisle from me. The door is broken and at first no one can get in. The bus has a driver and an attendant, who is put to work prying open the door. Once access is gained, the door seals every user inside. Any use of the bathroom is accompanied by banging and yelling; the attendant springs to action, again and again prying open the door.

Prior to reaching the boarder, the attendant distributes a declaration card and then returns to collect it and our passports. At the front of the bus he opens each passport to the photo page, until he has a thirty-centimetre stack of passports. The crossing has two parts. First, we exit Cambodia. The passports are turned over to staff in a booth who check each picture, each Cambodian visa (which are glued into our passports), and each Vietnamese visa. There is a delay as one woman has let her Cambodian visa expire. There is a hefty penalty to pay, about US$50. Despite holding us up, she is quite flippant about the lapse, and thinks it easier to pay the fine than to have renewed her visa in Phnom Penh for half the price. Finally, we are back in the bus for the hundred-metre dash across the neutral zone to the Vietnam border.

Next, we form a “queue” inside a large officious building. Well, this is South East Asia, and the queue is a British invention that has not really taken hold here—so what we really do is mill about in a pack. Our names are randomly called (at least, it seems random) and passports and declaration cards returned. With these in hand we then form a proper queue in the fenced aisles that lead to the border staff.

My name is called and when I return with card and passport to present to the border staff, a young American guy asks me where I got the declaration card. I explain they were distributed on the bus. He has doesn’t have one (perhaps he was locked in the bathroom as they were distributed). He has a short conversation with our bus attendant, and then a card is produced for him. He brings it back to ask me what he is to fill in. To our mutual surprise not only has the card been filled in by someone else using his passport and visa information, but his signature has been forged. So much for post 9/11 security enhancements. Everyone passed through security without incident and was directed – yes, directed - to the duty-free shop.

The third diversion is the change in scenery across the border. Just as there is a distinct shift when crossing from Canada to the US, a shift that is variation within the same, so too does Vietnam both look both like and unlike Cambodia. The geography and vegetation are very similar, which is expected. But the road immediately improves, the architecture changes (gone are the classic wood houses on stilts, replaced with concrete strip malls), and the variety of commercial signage bumps up a few notches. In Cambodia, the only billboards are for cell phones, unsurprising as the cell phone requires no infrastructure of wires and poles, and that Cambodia lacked. Now we see signs for all manner of Japanese electronics and American consumer goods as well as astonishing snaking bundles of wires that bisect the sky while connecting buildings with telephone poles. We will shortly see the extent to which capitalism is a part of Vietnam’s particular communism.

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. 

Fun with tourists

Our days are hard. We must photograph many couples needing proof of their travels together and we must use yoga to amuse and train many more. While posing for yoga promo shots (how often will she have Angkor as a set) Anna-Marie is ogled by the curious. One guy who has never done yoga joins in, delighted that Anna-Marie is doing vrksasana (tree pose) in front of the twisted invasion of trang (ficus altissima) and spung (tetrameles nudiflora) trees. After, we head back to the city for excitement.

Our first day at Angkor we cut short so we could join in the festivities surrounding the water festival. While this is a celebration of the reversal of the direction of flow of the Tonle Sap River, and this river is no where near Siem Reap, the Tonle Sap lake is such a major source of food and resources for all of Cambodia, that the fun is spread about.

We biked the four kilometres back to Siem Reap, to the main park on the banks of its modest river. Dragon boat races are the main attraction, running between the Wat Bo bridge and the 25th Street bridge. On the west bank of the river is a large park, and the road along the river here was closed each afternoon (to cars, motos, and bikes), which always made getting back to our hotel a minor adventure.

North of the Wat Bo Bridge were make-shift bike and moto parking lots, charging inflated prices. We opted to lock our three bikes together on the bridge itself, alongside some other bikes and motos. The bridge was all but closed, with throngs of people taking advantage of the elevated view down the river.

The boat racing was a bit of a bust—a lot of waiting and very little racing—but the people watching was good, and there were odd food snacks to be had. Long before we saw any real racing Anna-Marie thought we should check on the bikes. They were gone. Stolen. Rental for the day is one dollar; replacement is $50 (US) each. 

We found a cop and a bilingual local and explained the situation, hoping the police may have removed our bikes. Several slow minutes pass, with much discussion in Khmer, very little translation into English, and a few radio calls to other police.

Finally, yes. The bikes had been removed (we think) and taken to a public building in the park on the opposite side of the river (we think).

The bikes and an unhappy, uncooperative cop are found. Over much apologizing for our ignorance of local laws we are led to the semi-mangled tangle of bikes. No fine, no lecture, no apology. Clearly, the bikes were picked up as one mass and tossed and kicked to their present location. Once locked, they are now interlocked. I have to bend and break spokes to remove a peddle; the kick-stand on one bike falls off; the front baskets are riddled with holes.

Later, sheepishly, after composing and rejecting various stories of woe for the rental company, we return the bikes. With spokes and kick-stand in hand, with a wave the clerk stops me after "we had some difficulties." No fines, no explanations needed.

On day two we rent from a different place.