That's Cambodia Captain

Well we've made it to Cambodia alive after a long but awesome boat trip up the river from the town of Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta. Randomly one of my friends from the language program I did in Turkey is here in Phnom Penh working for USAID and she was nice enough to let us stay with her for a few nights. We have one more day in the capital and then its off to the town of Siem Reap and the temple complex of Angkor. We should get some really good photos from there and I'll put some more up when I get the chance (my camera got fixed, yay! and even with a two month warranty at a little shop in Hanoi) Here's whats been happening since our last update:

Instead of taking us directly to the town of Hoi An our open bus instead took us to the city of Hue, the old imperial capital during the colonial period. Since we had five hours until the next bus we decided to explore a little bit, and ran into one of the students of a Buddhist monk whose book Mike had read! He and his friend took us around the citadel of the city and told us a lot about his experience with Buddhism and the American War (what the Vietnamese call the Vietnam War) We poked around in the ruins of the royal palace which had been bombed out quite a bit during the war. We finally got to Hoi An and got up at 4:30am for the sunrise tour of the Cham ruins in the jungle at My Son, kind of a miniature version of Angkor. Since it was hella early no one else was there at we got to explore the beautiful place on our own. I also got a suit tailored (the town's specialty) and some shoes made for when our trip eventually ends and I have to face the prospect of job interviews, which is depressing to think about right now.

Next we took another open bus to the town of Dalat in the central highlands, which turned out to be a mix between a Swiss village and the city of Valparaiso in Chile. It was hella cold and rainy pretty much the whole time but it was a great experience anyway. We visited the town Crazy House (yes it was officially called the Crazy House) which had really strange architecture and was filled with giraffe statues and other assorted animals with glowing red eyes. We also took a ride with the "Easy Riders", basically a motorcycle gang based in Dalat that take travelers around on their bikes to nearby villages and waterfalls and such. We met a monk in a pagoda who loves soccer.

Our last stop in Vietnam was Ho Chi Minh City, which everyone still calls Saigon except in an official business. We spent a few days exploring the city and Mike got his ATM card swallowed by a machine (which thankfully he got back the next day) Interestingly there are tons of old white guys with young Vietnamese women in the city (and in Dalat too actually now that I think about it). At the War Remnants Museun (used to be called the Museum of American War Crimes) there were a few exhibits set up displaying the horrifying aftereffects of spraying the Agent Orange defoliant all over the country as well as other wartime atrocities. It was really hard to see. We also visited the Cu Chi tunnels area where many Vietcong lived and transported supplies from the Ho Chi Minh trail to Saigon during the war.

We took a tour around the Mekong Delta that ended up on a boat going up the river into Cambodia (Apocalypse Now anyone?) and have been enjoying the incredible friendliness of the Khmer people. Tonight we tried a Cambodian specialty, fried tarantula, which actually isn't too bad. There are a lot of expats here and we are still getting used to the new language and culture but I really like the country so far. Anyway, I'm sure Mike will add some more details later but I just wanted to give everyone a basic idea of whats been going on in the past week. After Angkor we head through Thailand to get to Laos and then make our way back to Bangkok by the 19th to catch our flight to Yangon. We've just about hit the halfway point in our journey, and have many more adventures to come.