Sadly our time in Chiang Mai came to an end and we schlepped ourselves down to Bangkok which, in the words of Paola (lovingly referred to as Pay-o-la, the butchered pronunciation of a pizza place of the same name in my hometown) �Is a REAL SHIT.� Shit it was, especially given the lack of mango sticky rice, a Thai treat we had all embraced with fervor. Little did we know, the shit was only about to begin. After a night in Bangkok (just like the song) Emily, Ted and I hopped on a bus headed for Siem Reap�former home of the infamous Khmer Rouge and site of the timeless Angkor Wat.
On December 5th, when we were collected from our skanky little Bangkok guesthouse. Despite the fact that we purchased a ride to Siem Reap on a minibus, we were herded into a dirty, dusty, cramped, hot bus. A smaller than average bus, but a bus nonetheless. Off we, and 20 other frustrated backpackers, went on our journey to Siem Reap. We should have rebelled from the beginning-refused to get on the bus, demanded nicer amenities, etc. But no, we sat silently as we were swindled. What should have been an 8 hour journey (though estimates ranged from 5-10 depending on which liar you asked) turned into a 14 hour escapade,dotted with random stops to fix the air con with a shoe string, reconfirm passengers, pick up passports. etc. You name the excuse, they had it. In reality every stop was designed to 1) make money for random sellers along the way, who gave a cut of the profits back to the bus driver and 2) prolong our misery so that by the time we arrived in Siem Reap we were too tired to put up a fight when they 'encouraged' us to stay at their guesthouse.
But fight we did, and thank god because our upheavel led us to the GOLDEN BANANA (nice name, eh?) a fantabulous little guesthouse recommended by Pay-o-la. After a wrong, very wrong, struggle to get to Cambodia, I am going to give you a bit of info that may be useful if you travel there in the future�FLY.
Angkor Wat, the definitive highlight of Siem Reap, is unimaginable, defies any adequate explanation, and boggles that mind. Created between the 9th to 14th centuries, Angkor Wat is a testament to the struggles of mankind to build something permanent and legendary in their name, and to honour the gods and forces of nature. Angkor Wat has at one time or another served as a religious haven for followers of Animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the Angkoran �monarchy�. Now it is a relic of Cambodia�s once monumental past and, if it weren�t for the throngs of tourists flooding the area, might almost be lost in the trees. Cambodians in the surrounding area either use the tourism as an opportunity to make money, chasing you down with requests to buy pirated Lonely Planet books, or ignore it completely, instead tilling the rice fields in the area.
While in Cambodia we had the amazing chance to meet the Cambodia Lonely Planet �dude�, on assignment for National Geographic. Click HERE to read my friend Emily�s account.
After Siem Reap it was on to Phnom Penh (also a real shit, save for the Foreign Correspondents Club and a fabulous French patisserie) and then to Sihanoukville, a Cambodia beach town on the Gulf of Thailand and former vacation spot for Prince, then King, Sihanouk of Cambodia. Beautiful.
Bidding Emily adieu, Ted and I moved on to Vietnam, where we would spend the next two weeks moving up the coast from Saigon to Hoi An (old trading port and now wonderful place to get an entire wardrobe made for under $200) to Hue (old capitol of Vietnam) and finally Hanoi, as north as northern Vietnam can be. I could spend days extolling the virtues of traveling in Vietnam�I personally cannot wait to do it again. But instead I will impress upon you the one reason you should go there in this lifetime�the legacy of the Vietnam War.
Some of you are old enough to remember it. I am not. And I am not even educated enough to know enough about what �really� happened. I would say 95% of Americans, and 99% of Americans my age, aren�t educated enough either. Why? Because we don�t talk about it. We don�t write about it. We don�t contemplate it. Politicians occasionally use their experience there as a strong point in their public service record and rock classics reference the tempestuous period. But even if we think we know what that war was about, we have no idea. Visiting Vietnam (and Cambodia, a very key battlefield in our fight against Communism) was a first step in my contemporary history lesson. A shocking amount of �did you know that xxxx� type revelations uncovered why so many adults from my mother�s generation are mistrusting about politics and politicians. The Vietnam War was all about false ideology and lies.
The interesting thing about Vietnam is that for most Vietnamese the war is a distant (albeit painful) memory. Old battlefields were impossible to find without a guide, and unless you push, even as an American you aren�t pushed to discuss it. With the exception of our tour guide in Hue (a former member of the American force coalition for the south eager to play Credence Clearwater Revival and reminisce) for better or for worse the war was a silent fact. Capitalism is the new Communism in Vietnam (much like in China where �to be rich is to be glorious�) and perhaps it is this new desire to gain economically that makes politics and history a secondary concern. Of course, Ho Chi Minh is a hero in Vietnam, museums certainly paint the picture in a colored way��The American Imperialist Forces�. � and the number of mine victims, offers testament to what happened here over 35 years ago.
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam though, was that silence has the scary ability to relegate history to the past. Especially the silence in America. Perhaps you know about mustard gas, napalm, flechette cluster bombs, big Blu (aka. The Shaker�a bomb destroying everything in a two-mile radius), etc. But did you know that, according to Ted, the marine, �we used these in Afghanistan, only better versions�. Read�more precise, more destructive. These violent arms that are a violation of humanity are the tools of our war against terrorism. Bet you didn�t know that. I didn�t. Point�just because it is in a museum doesn�t mean it is history.