Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island

I awoke to the chirp of my new alarm clock. It was time to go. A minibus waited for me at the travel agency and they crammed me in with of bunch of other tourists like it was Tetris. I reckon I was the tall skinny piece. I sat in between two people who more closely resembled the square piece. No empty space on that minibus. And I hate minibuses. They're really just minivans except with no air-conditioning, uncomfortable seats, no legroom and lots of hot breath. Used exclusively for tourists.

I met a spunky guy on the drive up to Ha Long Bay who spent four years on Dubai. What an insane sounding city. Money in large quantities has shaped it into a creature like no other. Cosmopolitan, yet mitigated by the fundamentalism that comes with the territory.

A rest stop came and went, and before long, we rolled into the pier. Passports were collected. I didn't have mine because it was off in HCMC getting a Chinese visa, so I was given a Vietnamese pseudonym. Then we waited. Oh, waiting. I never truly knew you until Ha Long Bay. It was an hour of milling about, making small talk with people I'd never meet again and fighting off touts. Who knows what was happening with our passports at the ticket office. For all we knew, we were being auctioned off the different skippers.

I was tugged out of the group specifically and handed a ticket. Completely arbitrarily. I booked a 3-day, 2-night trip while some of the others booked shorter tours. Also, I believe there were different classes of accommodation. Perhaps I was the only one who booked the longest, cheapest tour. That didn't seem likely. Anyways, I was tossed onto the boat with a bunch of new people and we set off into the sunny sea.

The boat was a typical three story live aboard. Cabins, restaurant, sundeck. It had a very classic air about it, but was a far cry from the beautiful, red-sailed junks in the tourist brochures.

I shared lunch with a guy named Gavin who was a musician working in Shanghai, and a Korean Air employee named "Lee" (although I assume his Korean name is different), who was taking his mom on a vacation. The boat maneuvered around the congestion of the pier and out into open waters. In the distance we could see the famed limestone cliffs poking skyward from the horizon. Gavin and I finished lunch quickly and hopped onto the sundeck for a better view. The weather was clear and warm. Up above I met a few more travelers. I concluded early that it was a good group, and it wasn't long before everyone felt comfortable with one another.

We approached the first huge formation which also happened to be the first attraction of the tour; a magnificent limestone cave. Because, I guess, normal limestone caves are boring, they decided to augment this one with multi-coloured floodlights. Purdy, yes, but it felt artificial. And kind of like Christmas decorations. On the way out, perhaps to cheapen the environment further, they were playing honest to god selections from Sister Act 2 over the PA system.

The boat set out further from the shore, away from the chartered fleet and day trippers. Things got more peaceful, and the seascape started getting very interesting. Drifting between two dramatic spires, we entered a floating fishing village. Yes, like Waterworld, everything was on rafts. That included houses and shops.

A motorboat chugged up and brought a handful of us through a cave and out into a swimming area completely encircled by a wall of towering limestone. I forgot my bathing suit, but jumped in regardless. The water was beautiful, warm and clear. The cliffs shot up, almost 200 meters, on all sides. These perfectly tailors experiences are the upside to doing group tours. My peripheral vision was 100% limestone and water; impossible to capture that kind of majesty on film.

On the boat again, we sailed even further into the speckled sea. Anytime I thought that the scenery could not get any more dramatic, it did. The islands, numbering in the hundreds, were all uninhabited and draped in foliage. They shot straight up out of the water, sheer cliff on all sides, completely impractical, even if someone did want to settle on one. I did spot one with a shrine built on top, which brought up all kinds of questions. Soon, we dropped anchor at another floating village. This one even had a bank, no word of a lie. We paddled around in kayaks for a bit.

The boat sailed north a few kilometers before dropping anchor for the night. It was about 6:30 and everyone jumped into the water to work up an appetite before dinner. The sun was setting, casting a dramatic orange light over the surface of the water. It was still as warm as we could possibly hope for it to be. Some, myself included, dove off of the sundeck into the water. Best moment in Vietnam.

After dinner and after the sunset, a group of us conversed on the sundeck until past 11. I met two girls from Quebec, Arianne and Andreanne, who were also doing the three-day trip. All the others, I had learned, were heading back to the shore the next day. The lights from the distant fishing boats illuminated the faint outlines of our surroundings. It was the kind of night you could stay up forever enjoying.

I was sharing a two-bed cabin with Gavin. A bathroom was attached, and fans were thoughtfully provided as it got quite hot down close to the engine room. Unfortunately the power cut out in the middle of the night and the room heated up like a Easy Bake Oven. Gavin shot up at one point and said "I can't deal with this", then stole away out the door and into the night. I opened a window and fell back asleep. I was awoken again by a hard blast of water to the face and the sound of hard rain pummeling the boat. Gavin came tearing back in as I was closing the window. Somehow I fell back asleep again.

Once more I awoke, this time to a deafening howl. Like, deafening. Gavin and I both flew out of bed and covered our ears in a panic. The sound kept on. "What the hell is that and why isn't it stopping?!" I exclaimed. It eventually did, and we deduced it was the horn. Some jackass member of the crew might have pushed it on a dare. Our cabin was right beside it. I went back to sleep knowing full well that there was a good chance I would be woken back up again. But I wasn't.

The next morning, the chatter around the breakfast table centered mainly on the horn blast. Every time someone new would come in and sit down, they would inevitably ask "Hey did you guys hear that horn last night?" "Of course we did!"

After breakfast, another boat arrived to pluck the three-day trippers while the rest sailed back to shore. Myself, Arianne, Andreanne and a large German guy whose name I forgot, switched boats and bid the others farewell. This new boat was called the "Ha Long Party Cruiser", almost identical to the last boat, save for the addition of a flatscreen TV, some speakers, a PA system and some mildly depressing decals that would suggest "party" (a rock guitar, some music notes, a martini glass, you get the idea). I went up on the sundeck. It would be a few more hours of sailing until we reached our destination, Cat Ba Island, the largest and only inhabited island in the bay, so I fell asleep.

I awoke to chatter. Chatter about me. People were wondering who the sleeping man was and how the hell he got on the boat. They must have been sleeping during the exchange. The sundeck was now full of people, some of who I recognized from the ride up, such as my Dubai friend. Pretty soon we arrived at Cat Ba Island.

A flat, man-made strip of road greeted the boat. We were transferred onto a bus after 45 minutes of hard, unadulterated waiting. The bus carved around the limestone peaks on the island, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending. Flatlands occasionally appeared in between cliffs. There was overcast that day, and it was a little damp. Somehow it made the island seem a little more mysterious. Muted greens were everywhere. One could find themselves shipwrecked here; collecting dew to drink. Out towards the sea, there was nothing to see, only fog and jagged limestone. Like if you sailed away from Cat Ba Island, you would be mysteriously led right back to it again. For all I knew, while we were sleeping, we crossed into a void. Cat Ba floated in it's midst. Everything else ceased to exist.

The bus stopped at an entrance to a national park. The was a hike that led up to the highest peak on Cat Ba. I threw on my boots and joined Arianne, Andreanne and the German (who will be henceforth referred to as 'Fritz') on a hike to the top. Our new guide was named Tony, and he was a bit of a Hitler. He had given us 45 minutes to go up and then come back down again, and he seemed genuine in his threat of the bus leaving people behind.

We sauntered up the mountain, through mud and over sharp, jutting rocks. Fritz, perhaps keen on impressing the girls, blasted up the mountain in an awkward display of strength and virility. Soon after, we would come across his hulking frame, keeled over in a state of extreme exhaustion on the side of the trail, and eventually pass him. Things got tighter and steeper as we approached the summit, until finally we had arrived. A lookout tower was the last thing to climb and it provided a breathtaking 360 degree view of the impossible landscape. Before long, we had to head back. The descent was arguably worse, with bumps, scrapes and falls happening with frequency. We got back just in time.

I was disgusting. Glazed with sweat and caked with mud. Tony's threat was completely empty, as we had to wait no less than an hour for the bus to arrive and take us to Cat Ba Town. It wasn't even that big an island so I had no idea what took so long. The town, aside from being in glorious isolation, for the most part resembled any other town in Vietnam. A main street went along the shoreline while a few others tangled around some cliffs. All were lined with houses and shops. Apartment buildings seemed to lean back onto cliffsides, facing the ocean with a casual cool. The fog and the gloom swallowed boats out to sea.

They hauled everyone out at a hotel and another guy showed up with a sack full of keys. Doubles and group rooms were given out first until it was just the singles left. Fritz nabbed his own room while Tony tried to pawn one room off on the three of us remaining. It was me, a Chilean girl and a large, hairy Frenchman. I would have had to share a bed with the Frenchman. No way that was happening, so I mustered up all the indignant rage I could and butted heads with Tony until he conceded to giving me my own room. The squeaky wheel got the grease.

And man, was it ever some nice grease! My room must have been the bridal suite or something! Huge bed, air con, TV, phone, towels and linens, fridge, hot water. I felt like I didn't deserve it, but the thought of awkwardly taking turns showering and changing in a small room then sharing a bed with a burly stranger quickly convinced my conscience otherwise.

Tony had allotted three hours for free time before we had to meet again, so I cleaned up and watched a bit of the Dark Knight on TV. Then I walked about town. It certainly was busy, or at least it seemed that way with the amount of car horns honking. In about 40 minutes, I had circled and seen the whole town. Not much to report.

Dinner was typical bland tour food. The World Cup had just started, so after the last plate was cleared, the TV was switched on and people started buying drinks. South Africa vs Mexico. I sat with the Quebec girls and watched. There was something comforting about the World Cup. Like a tiny sliver of the outside world being piped into this strange dreamland. After the game, the girls left and I joined another group for some cards. Before long, it was time to sleep, and boy did I ever need it.

Early the next morning, few people talked. It was hazy again. Perhaps it was the same day repeated. That's how it works in the void maybe. Nonetheless, we were leaving and the real world would greet us soon enough.

On the bus I started a new book. Dance Dance Dance, another Murakami. In the time it took to do the previous days' travels in reverse, I had a quarter of it finished. Themes of isolation and sober modern life.

I did finally get to see a red-sailed junk. However, this one more closely resembled a typical "party cruiser" with some tiny sails strapped to a bulky frame. "Oriental Sails" they read. "Ornamental Sails" would have been more appropriate.

Back at the harbour we waited. Oh god, the waiting. It was endless, all for a bus that took us a few kilometers up the road for lunch in Ha Long City. Before long, we were off again, this time back to Hanoi. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but couldn't wait for this choking regiment to end. Soon I would be back in the hurried clatter of what had become the real world to me. Hanoi, and my path up to China. Halfway through the ride the sun finally made an appearance.

The only natural light I could find in the cave.

Through the tiny cave that led to the swimming area. We had to duck our heads.

The magnificent swimming area.

The view from the sundeck was beautiful on day 1.

Kayaking.

Sunset. If I ever wanted to open an eharmony account, I now have a profile pic.

Swimming in the sunset.

View from the highest point on Cat Ba Island.

Hanoi, part 1

There are two different types of sleeper buses. One type has double beds along the sides of the aisle, or the "cuddle bus" as I like to call it. The one I took to Hanoi was the other type; similar to the one I took to Nha Trang. I call it the bobsled bus cause each person sleeps in these isolated compartments that are never terribly wide. More personal space, but less space.

My sled was pretty uncomfortable, but I managed to doze off for the bulk of the trip. When I awoke, it was daybreak and the bus was cruising through some real run-down territory. All the buildings were made of dusty concrete and trash was piled up in every conceivable nook. It looked like Fallujah. 'Dear god, I'm in a different country' I thought. I hoped that the bus wasn't stopping. Honestly, Myanmar looked better than whatever godforsaken hellhole I was driving through at that time.

Soon the traffic started to swell and the streets widened. The bus stopped on the side of an expressway that dug through Hanoi and let us all off. It looked marginally beter, albeit quite chaotic. Capital city so what do you expect? I played the usual game of "who can find Jon the cheapest room?" with the motorbike drivers and one guy said he knew one for $6. Done. Off we went into the cramped, messy neighborhood.

Vendors sprawled their territory out in front of buildings leaving only enough room for a few motorbikes to squeeze in between. Raw meat was being washed in basins and hacked apart on makeshift tables. There were puddles of water and dripping awnings all along the patholed road, even though it hadn't rained. Nowhere was there space for a pedestrian to walk that wasn't in the way of the throngs of motorbikes trying to pass, each honking their horn viciously. And garbage. Lots of garbage. Way too full-on for my morning state.

My guesthouse was right at the heart of the mess. The owner took me to my cheap room up 5 flights of stairs. The door was almost half the size of the others and the ceiling was probably just 6 feet high. Another quirky room in a big Vietnamese city. There were two beds again.

I actually got a good sleep on the bus, so rather than passing out, I showered, shaved and immediately set out to obtain my Chinese visa. See, I had originally planned to fly into Hong Kong and get it there, but the funds were getting tight, and I planned on making it to Tibet, so I opted to get the visa in Hanoi and book it up Vietnam and into Yunnan directly. A little detour, but plans were always loose this far into the trip.

Back out into the mess, it wasn't hard finding a motorbike. It was hard trying to communicate where I wanted to go however. I got the price down from 50,000 to 15,000 dong. I arrived and the gates were closed. It was noon. The sign in front read 2-6, 8:30 - 12:00, which seemed odd, but I nonetheless interpreted as 8:30 - 6 with a two hour lunch break in the middle, just like the Vietnamese embassy in Sihanoukville. So I had two hours to kill. It turns out Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body was lying in state a few blocks away, so I set off to check that out. It was unusually quiet. 'Open 8 - 11' I read. Dammit, what terrible hours.

So I kicked stones around and visited a 'Literature Temple' that was all kinds of boring until 2. When I returned to the embassy, it was still closed. It turns out 2 - 6 is their way of saying Monday to Friday and the gates were only open from 8:30 to 12, almost the same piss poor hours to Ho Chi Minh mausoleum had. How frustrating!

So I spent the rest of the day with a map walking around the city. It was a whole lot nicer outside of the district I was staying in, which happened to be both the Old Quarter and the backpacker ghetto. The streets were wider and cleaner and there was much more vegetation. I crossed some dodgy intersections then got hungry. I found a wealth of Western restaurants but they were all very expensive. I concluded that I had walked into the 'affluent tourist district'. Finally I found somewhere reasonable and sat for a sandwich.

While sitting, a book seller came up to me and I made the mistake of briefly checking out his wares. He had the Lonely Planet China, which I needed, so I had a look. Upon opening and examining the book, it became clear that it was photocopied quite poorly and the maps were illegible. I had already haggled him down a good deal before making this discovery, so when I said I that I didn't want it, he threw a fit. "I am very angry!" he kept screaming while banging on the table. I told him to calm down and that there was no reason to be angry while he kept trying to force the book upon me through his wrath. I told him that I wasn't going to be intimidated into buying his book, very calmly, which was surprising cause I was in a pretty foul mood prior to even talking to this guy. He said a bunch of stuff about "stupid tourists" and how we should "never come to Vietnam" before switching gears and talking about his four children and how his family died in the Vietnam War. I had no idea what to make of it, I just didn't want to book so I gave him my sympathies, told him not to be angry, paid my bill and left. Looking back, I think I handled it well. I didn't get angry, and if I gave in, I would have had a useless book and possibly justified his demented sales tactics.

I continued my walk around a lake in the center of town. I passed a few vintage camera stores and looked to see if they had any Rolleis. The only one I found was very very old and $600 so I had no choice but to pass it up. Sigh.

I checked out the famed 'Hanoi Hilton' briefly and was treated to a schlocky display of how brutal and ruthless the French were and how kindly and humane the Vietcong were. There was plenty of spooky music you can bet. Next I stopped for ice cream in this packed hellhole of a shop before realizing why it was so packed: the ice cream was fantastic!

Next I happened upon the National Water Puppet Theater, so out of natural curiosity, I stopped in. Water puppetry, I learned, was an art conceived by rice farmers as a way to entertain friends and family on the rice fields. Kind of like marionettes, except they are controlled from below by a mechanism which skirts them through a pool of shallow water. I was interested to see how this could possibly be entertaining.

The orchestra came out and played a few Vietnamese warm-up numbers. They were quite talented. Soon, the puppets came puddling out and danced around like, well, puppets. The water provided some neat advantages to traditional puppetry, but otherwise it was a little hokey. Maybe I should have bought a program. Ultimately, the orchestra was the best part.

I returned to the Old District, satisfied with the fact that I managed to salvage the day with water puppets, arguments and ice cream. I ended up picking up a legit copy of Lonely Planet China from a used book store and FINALLY getting rid of the Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I ate dinner on a plastic stool by the side of the road for cheap before heading back to the guesthouse,

Next morning I woke up early and went to the embassy. the gates were open. Yes. Inside I was told that foreigners could not get Chinese visas in Hanoi and that I had to go to Ho Chi Minh City. NO. Since when can you get a visa from a consulate in a city that's nowhere near the border, but not from the actual embassy in the capital city itself? Failed again! "Oh well" I thought, "Ho Chi Minh's pickled corpse should cheer me up". Nope! I read the fine print: 'April - October, open 8:00 - 10:30. It was 10:30. Deja vu from yesterday.

Discouraged, I went back to the Old Quarter. No more walkarounds. It was too hot anyways. I booked a tour of Ha Long Bay for the next day and then spent time in my surprisingly air-conditioned room drawing up my plan of attack for China. The only time I left was to go get dinner and an alarm clock, which I sorely needed at that point. I had enough of the swirling tangled mess of Hanoi that was literally right on my doorstep and clearly audible from my room. The air-conditioning was the first I'd had the whole trip so I reveled in it. I set my new alarm clock for 7am and went to bed.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum Complex. Closed.

Train tracks through the city.

The water puppets.

Hue

A knock came at 7:30-ish. The voice on the other side of the door sounded upset and, in my semi-conscious state, I deduced it was the bus driver and that I had a whole bus full of people waiting for my lazy ass to get out of bed. I scrambled like I've never scrambled before, pancaking all of my possessions into a disorderly mess in my backpack. It was just my wakeup call. The bus hadn't arrived yet. I had a little time to grab a coffee and check my email before it finally did.

It was nice to drive the Vietnamese countryside in daylight. The highway took a few bends around some mountains and passed through an incredibly long tunnel. Now there's something I hadn't seen in awhile. A tunnel. I had just finished the last page of On The Road when we made our rest stop at yet another overpriced roadside restaurant. Before long, we drifted into Hue; a mid-sized town like the last two. Not long after that, I was in a budget guesthouse unpacking and taking the shower I never got to take.

I planned on staying only one night and two days which wasn't a lot of time, but since I slacked so much in Nha Trang and Hoi An, I resolved to make those 36 hours count. Rather than napping, I set out on my new town walkaround.

The streets confused me at first, but I figured them out eventually. I was baking hot and sweating my shirt see-through, but I covered alot of ground. I stepped into the "Olympic Park", partly to check it out, partly for a chance to sneak past a sleeping security guard. A river ran along a good portion of the town and separated the old district from the new. And when I say old, I mean really really old.

See, the star attraction in Hue is it's massive walled citadel just across the river. It's so big in fact, that they have cultivated fields inside to grow crops. In the center lies another citadel, massive in it's own right. Inside, the remnants of an old ruler of an old kingdom, and that's all I knew. I crossed the bridge to find out more.

The walls were massive, maybe four or five meters tall, and in great condition, probably from reconstruction. Cars and motorbikes zipped in and out of the modified entrances and across the moat. Inside, things were incredibly well-groomed. Men were setting up bleachers and stages. Apparently a festival was going on, which explains why room prices were a little higher than normal. I took in the sights under the canopy of some very large trees that lined the boulevards.

Before long I reached the inner-citadel. The walls and moat were just as big. Here, the real tourist attraction began. People flooded the formerly forbidden city in droves taking in the residence of the Nguyen lords and their loyal mandarins. It was nice. I found the landscaping around the place especially spectacular. There were little secret gates that led to quiet groves and cobblestone paths that stretched around gardens. Temples were liberally dispersed throughout the grounds, occasionally completely empty until a tour group blasted through like a motorcycle gang tearing through a quiet midwestern town.

The day ended in a downpour, with me still inside the inner walls and a good four kilometers from my guesthouse. I waited it out inside of a lonely temple. I had arrived in Hue with this image in mind. Rain, haze and quiet temples devoid of huddles and mess. I had hoped for it. I missed my gloomy Canada. My gloomy Korea. Even sunny days and hot weather lose their novelty. It's like working at an amusement park. This was the switch I needed.

Someone had left abook next to the bed in my hotel room in Nha Trang. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I read the back cover and one chapter and decided to trade it in. It was too intentional. And typical. I had no luck finding a bookstore that would take it in Nha Trang or Hoi An, so I wandered the streets of Hue for an hour trying to find one. All I found was dinner. I guess the book was coming to Hanoi with me.

I planned a boat trip for seven in the morning the next day and a bus ride out for later that night. No wasting any time. My wakeup call never came, but thankfully a horrible bout of dry-mouth woke me up at seven sharp. I packed up and shipped out.

The boat was a "dragon boat", or really just a regular boat with dragons carved in the front for tourists to find exotic. It would go down the Perfume River and visit a swath of attractions I had a minor interest in. I had picked up a map and on the back, in big letters, it read "BOAT TRIP" and I said "Yes". Once the late risers got on board, we left the harbour and I immediately set to work falling asleep.

I awoke about 20 minutes before we reached our first stop. An empty garden restaurant where some young kung-fu enthusiasts put on ashow that included fake duels, brick smashing and various acts of corporal mortification. Ok that was nice, now everyone GET BACK ON THE BOAT! Tours.

Next was Thien Mu Pagoda. Yes, Vietnam added anew structure to my diet of Southeast Asian religious sites: the pagoda. See, places like Thailand and Cambodia are more closely related to the cultures that descended from the Indian subcontinent, while Vietnam is much more Chinese. Less stupas, more pagodas. This was my first, and considering China is my final destination, it sure as hell won't be my last. I walked around it's haunting yards & structures and watched a table of monks say a Buddhist form of grace which seemed to go on forever. I had to get back to the boat before they could finish and dig in.

Next we hit a temple that the guide described as "not very interesting", so I spared myself the admission fee and stayed on the boat.

Minh Mang tomb was next and took everyone's breath away with it's sprawling grounds, it's grand lakes and it's symmetry. Sadly, being part of atour meant that every potentially beautiful shot had some dopey stranger milling about in the background. Oh well. Tours. Back on the boat.

Another thing about tours which hardly gets mentioned is how utterly bland the meals are. It was rice, greens and tofu. Such a perfect example of blandness. Sugar is sweet, lemons are sour and tour food is bland.

We got off of the boat and boarded a bus that took us to another tomb: Khai Dinh tomb. It lay on a mountainside, almost like it was carved out. The steps were too hard for some to handle, but the top was unparalleled in it's opulence. So opulent in fact, that it's probably a good thing swept through when it did because these royal burial grounds were getting out of hand.

Next we did another tomb I skipped in favour of a cup of coffee, an extra $4 in my pocket and some rest. Finally with topped off the trip with a visit to a roadside hut so we could all gawk at this lady making incense sticks. The trip back to town was brisk.

Things ended up working out perfectly because shortly after arriving, I boarded my overnight bus to Hanoi. This one would be abeast too, so I dressed comfortably, popped a Valium and prepared myself for 16 hours on the road.

Running wild at the Olympic Stadium.

The inner grounds of the citadel.

The inner inner grounds of the citadel.

One of many lonely temples in the citadel.

Displays of manishness.

BOAT TOUR!

The haunting grounds of the Thien Mu Pagoda.

The long grace at Thien Mu Pagoda.

The opulent Khai Dinh tomb.

Woman rolling incense sticks.

Hoi An - Vietnam's premier gift shop

The bus ride to Nha Trang was 10 hours. This one was 12 hours. And the bus was a little different too. The bunks were a little more, uhm, intimate. On each side of the aisle was a small, barely double bed, and you can bed they sold every spot available. Traveling alone of course meant I was going to be cozying up to some rando. It was this situation and it's terrifying prospects that kept me alert as the bus made it's rounds around Nha Trang at night picking up strangers. I ended up getting a Vietnamese teenage boy who was all arms and legs. Of course, he probably thought the exact same thing about me. It seemed like there was no way to position ourselves that wasn't uncomfortable to the other person. Somehow it worked out though.

At the 2am rest stop, I introduced myself to a girl from Quebec who was also traveling alone extensively. Her name was Marie and we each talked like we hadn't talked for days (which was, in all likelihood, true). I was certain I would bump into her again in Hoi An.

It was a gray morning when the bus arrived. I slept poorly and was fiercely cranky. I had absolutely no idea where I was in relation to anything else in town. I entered a hotel and told the lady I wanted a cheap single. She must've not understood single cause she led me to a room containing a very hairly bearded man in his underwear who I figured I had to bunk with. I politely declined and went back out on the street. The touts were trying to sell me an air-con room in a hotel with a pool for $10 saying it was the cheapest room in town. Didn't sound right, and it wasn't, cause I found a sparten den for $8. An extra $2 for a pool and air-con would've been nice though, but I gotta be frugal. Again I slept.

Hoi An is a guidebook darling. Lonely Planet extolls the virtues of this place any chance it can, and indeed the promise of Old World streets lined with hand-tailored silk shops was what drew me there in the first place. Tourists flock to Hoi An in abundence for a hopefully authentic taste of Indochina. Unfortunately, in the first half of that last sentance lies the problem. Keep reading.

I awoke in my windowless room with absolutely no concept of the time. I pulled out my camera to check. Yeah, since my ipod got stolen, I've been using my camera to check the time. It was three in the afternoon. "Shit on a biscuit" I thought, "I gotta get up and seize the rest of this day". And so I set out in a direction I thought was towards town. After a bit of walking, it looked like I was leaving town, so I headed back. I asked a lady where to go and she pointed in the direction I had just walked back from, so again, I turned around. I walked a good kilometer before realizing that the old lady was 100% wrong and that the town was the OTHER way. Fed up, I surrendered and took a motorbike. It was 4:30 at this point. My debacle took close to an hour to sort out. Great start!

Finally I was in the old town. The famed streets of silk and silver, cobblestones and craft. A river passed along the south end with picturesque boats offering tours. Women in comical hats balanced their wares on scales perched upon one shoulder as they walked about town. It was charming alright. the alleys were narrow and the houses were classic. A quick walk revealed the sheer volume of the tailor shops per block. there must have been hundreds, all poised to make any suit, jacket, dress or other article of clothing you wanted at a price that absolutely had to be cutthroat competitive. Some of the designs they had on display were really really nice, it's a shame I couldn't shop.

The sun was setting, illuminating the streets a bright orange. I had my bearings and was able to walk back with ease. For dinner, I ate cao lau, a Hoi An specialty. Flat noodles, croutons, bean sprouts, greens and pork in a savory broth. I knew my ill-timed nap would keep me up late, so I passed the time watching BBC World News and making headway in my book until my eyes grew droopy. Sleep came, but very late.

Next I day, I decided to do Hoi An proper. That meant buying tickets to some of the many many attractions nestled within the corridors of the old town. On my way there, I passed Marie from the bus and we made plans to meet later. Now, the municipality (or some organization) has authority over all of the historical sights in Hoi An and sells packs of tickets for admission. One ticket for one attraction and they came in sheets of five. Unfortunately, they were quite expensive. Double unfortunately, all of the attractions sucked.

My first ticket got me into a craft workshop. I saw maybe one lady putting together a paper lantern while the rest was just a souvenir shop. Ok, flushed that ticket. Next was a culture museum. It was a room, one half containing a few old looking pots and photos and the other, a souvenir shop. OK twice burned. Next was a heritage home. The daughter of the family that lived there showed me afew architectural nuances of the otherwise unremarkable looking home before leading me to the, uhm, souvenir shop. Finally, a family chapel. This one was a little special because it had a trap door I guess? Oh, and a souvenir shop. So, getting this gyst of how this whole racket was run, I tossed my last ticket and ambled about looking in the shops that didn't require tickets. Funny thing was, all of the souvenir shops sold the same shit! I just then realized what the town was. It was one giant souvenir shop. They make them here, they sell them here. Heritage homes my ass! One woman ran up with a foot long gilded Buddha delicately perched on a jade lotus leaf hoping for me to buy it. Lady, how the HELL am I going to drag that thing around?

I was disillusioned. How could I have not seen it coming? Next, they'll advertise a town known for beautiful scenic tours of the countryside, you'll show up and it will just be a tuk-tuk feeding frenzy for an otherwise unremarkable tour. "Nooo! They got me again!" you'll think. My advise for anyone visiting Hoi An: walk around, enjoy the scenery, but don't buy any tickets!

That night I discovered that I had lost one of my memory cards full of photos. Kind of a really terrible thing to happen. Bangkok to Luang Prabang was all gone. I cursed at the sky. I had comfort in the fact that all my best shots were saved in high-res on the blog however. Still sucks tremendously though, and it did not help elevate my perpetually gloomy mood.

I met Marie for dinner in the midst of a downpour. She was a world traveler, having lived in Australia and South America and now bound for Europe. No one you meet on the road leads a boring life. Meeting dull people again is going to be ahard crash back to earth. Later we went to the old town at night and it seemed to have taken on a different character. All of the store shutters were closed and swarms of young folk kicked up a racket. We followed the clatter to ahip backpacker joint with fratty humour on the walls. Things stayed pretty much on the chain that night aside from a large girl falling off of her stool. She let out a loud "WHOOP!" that had a few necks craning, but that's about it.

The next morning I had abus booked to Hue. Since it was only a 4-hour trip, there was no overnighter. I tasked my lanky after-hours doorman with waking me up at 7, then slept my beer buzz into oblivion.

Riverside, old town.

Road to the Japanese covered bridge. Looks like a set from a movie.

Unmistakeably old town.

Nha Trang-quilized

Sleeper buses are a little different from sleeper trains. Space is a lot more limited so things can get pretty cozy. Also, none of the bunks allow for your Western male of average height to fuilly stretch out. This means that if you have another person of the same height beside you, you'd better believe you're spooning. I got a snug bunk in the back next to the window with miraculously more legroom, which was good because the guy beside me was a massive mess of a man. The bus bounced a lot, which occasionally sent my spine into fits. I got maybe around four hours of sleep.

It was orange dawn in Nha Trang when the bus arrived. It was a ten hour trip, and a mere dent out of the whole journey. My hotel room contained two beds and lay above a post office. Before any kind of excursion took place, I flopped down on one of the beds to pick up the remaining sleep I missed back on the bus.

At twelve noon I awoke. My fan had stopped curiously. I plugged in my camera battery and got nothing. There was no power. Fair enough. I was used to it. I would just go without a camera for a day. I finished up and set out for the beach.

See, Nha Trang is Vietnam's premier beach town. Lots of Vietnamese tourists milled about along with the inevitable backpacker contingent. The beach stretched along the entire coast of the town and everyone enjoyed the sand and surf. A strict 'no peddling' rule ensured that the experience would be extra pleasant. And it was. "This is nice" is all you really can think when you bob in the waves alone. I landed an especially isolated stretch. Soon the clouds rolled in and I sought out shelter before it started to rain.

A handful of Vietnamese would regard me with curiousity every so often. Must have been tourists from small untouristed towns. Haven't gotten stares since back in Indonesia. Past a few shophouses, a pair of angry dogs darted out of an alley towards me bearing teeth. I leapt back just as a voice in Vietnamese yelled something that halted them in their tracks. This happened while I was locked in the deepest realms of thought, so to be jarred back into reality by something like that was almost enough to kill me.

Much of my time was spent milling about. I was in a slump and my money was starting to dip worryingly low, so I did nothing of note. Thought a lot. How this has been the longest stretch of my life without anyone that's close to me, well, close to me. What am I like as a person when there's no one around me? Kind of boring, I figured. I bored myself. I have become that tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it. I didn't make a sound.

The next day I gave myself a boot in the ass and went and visited a bunch of sites I particularly didn't want to visit. This included the Long Son Pagoda and it's giant seated Buddha. I walked there; a good kilometer and a half through real Nha Trang. Locals and their everyday jobs at fruit stands and motorcycle repair shops. A stimulating journey, but the destination failed to garner any interest from me. Buddha was indeed giant and seated. I took in a nice view oif the town from above however, and strolled around the grounds of a Vietnamese cemetary that encircled the Buddha.

Back at the beach, I hung a right and just kept walking. In the distance, I saw a cable car connecting the mainland with the very clearly labelled Vinpearl Island. Maybe that would be fun. I walked for about five kilometers along the shore passing waves of gawking children and still, the cable car seemed no closer than from where I started. It wasn't on the horizon, it was the horizon. Always visible, never reachable. Battered by exhaustion, I gave up and caught a motorbike back to the guesthouse. Who knows if Vinpearl Island was what I was looking for. Maybe it was, and my discouragement and inability to reach it was a giant metaphor for the whole trip. For life. If this was fiction maybe.

Power in the town resumed at 5pm everyday I discovered. not sure what the deal was, but it sure made everyone go outside and play. Take note moms. I was waiting for my open ticket bus to show up and whisk me off to Hoi An, my next destination. I rattled off a few emails and even a post card or two while I waited. The shuttle bus to the real bus arrived and within seconds I was on board with my gear, leaving.

So what was Nha Trang? Nha Trang was the holiday locale I did not deserve. Other people deserved it more than me and, as such, they were rewarded. Nha Trang was long walks and long hours of deep introspection. What am I going to do when I get home and my life restarts? Where will I be in ten years? Nha Trang was four hours alone in a double room watching the National Geographic channel. I'm shocked with the amount of double rooms I've ended up with as a solo traveler. I had been getting a lot lately. Another metaphor? Nha Trang was finished, that's what Nha Trang was, and it was off again into the thick black.

Nha Trang from on high.

Vietnamese cemetary.

I was shocked how deserted this huge square was so I had to get a shot.

The beach. Nha Trang's feature.

A lovely sky blue...

Ho Chi Minh City

I awoke in the midst of the swampy mess that was Phnom Penh. No! What had happened? I was back in the belly of the beast and the traffic had ramped up it's level of insanity to welcome me back. Cars and motorbikes going in both directions in both lanes. Intersections with perpendicular vehicles forming a thatch, no regard for rules. Like I said before, 'if you can fit, you can go' seemed to be the only rule. We rolled into the bus station and they began tossing the bags out of the bottom. No no no!

I disembarked ready to uncork some blind rage when I was directed to a second bus with 'Ho Chi Minh City' written across the top. Oh yes! I played Red Rover with the usual cluster of touts and hopped on. It was big and beautiful inside, the likes of which I hadn't seen since Malaysia. I hoped that this foreshadowed my time in Vietnam.

I slept some more. I think at one point the bus boarded a ferry, but I don't remember. Border crossing was great. Vietnamese nationals kept wedging in front of tourists only to get culled into their own separate line. This glimmer of fairness filled me with hope.

I rolled into tha HCMC just after sundown. A modern city spread out around me in all directions. Traffic seemed sane. It was clean. There were sidewalks. Touts greeted the bus just like anywhere in Southeast Asia, but I didn't feel any of the dishonesty and blatant harassment I received in Cambodia.

I told one driver I wanted a $4 room and he set out dilligently to find me one. And did he ever find me one. See, rooms in HCMC go for around $10 a night on average. What I got for $4 was actually more of an overhead storage compartment. hard to describe, but it was basically a 5-foot tall room nestled in a bulkhead that overlooked the main lobby. A squat little Alice in Wonderland style door marked the entrance. Below the door, but before the floor, was a window that overlooked the front desk area. It was kind of a crummy room, but so damn interesting and cheap, I couldn't refuse. It had a bed and fan anyways, so yeah.

Before I set out to explore the streets, I sat down for some birthday cake with the family who owned the guesthouse. It was the son's 27th birthday and I told him that it was a good age. Nice folk.

Big surprise, I was in the backpacker district once again. Lots of neon signs. Lots of peddlers. Book stores were everywhere selling photocopied books; a first in Southeast Asia so far. $8 for the fatty that is Lonely Planet's guide to China. Good savings. I tried to withdraw some of the local currency but was brisky declined by every ATM I went to requiring yet another email back to dad to help sort stuff out from the home front. A credit card advance prorogued the problem.

I slept in a lot. Goddamn I have been so lazy. What ended up waking me was the cleaning lady barging into my room to get some bedsheets. Only $4 I told myself. Really, at this point in the trip, I've had so many people barge in on me that unless I'm stark naked, I'll just disregard and head back to sleep.

All day I walked around a well-groomed Ho Chi Minh City. I visited the Reunification Palace, the last allied stronghold during the war, and got some good insight into the national psyche. The War Remanants Museum offered even more insight. A war like the Vietnam War, which is already pretty unpopular amongst Americans, is downright maligned by the Vietnamese. Halls upon halls spotlighted the numerous atrocities perpetrated by the Americans during the war followed by a display celebrating the triumph of reunification. As you can imagine, the war is seen as a successfully repelled invasion chock full of tragedy. Vietnamese pride has swelled since, but really, you'd have no idea who won in the end. Although technically a socialist republic, capitalism occasionally pulls strings behind the curtain. Foreign investment, local corporations, skyscrapers. Country seems to be doing rather well, which casts the war, and the utter pointlessness of it in a whole new light.

The next day I booked a tour starting early at 8. I grabbed a cheap baguette for breakfast, a welcome carry-over from the French colonial days. My first destination was the Cao Dai temple in the town of Tay Ninh, about three hours outside of the city. I would have skipped this tour of yet another temple had I not known of Caodaism and it's unique mashup of other religions to form something different from your usual stupa and spire boilerplate. The town of Tay Ninh is the Holy See of Caodaism, like it's very own Vatican, so as you can imagine, it was the prime location to experience it. I wanted to see this unusual creation in action, and I certainly got to as the bus rolled in, just in time for midday mass.

The tourists were ushered onto a balcony inside the massive temple. Bright colours assaulted the senses, and the imagery of an all-seeing eye featured prominently. Practitioners in white garb filed in amidst chants. I had no idea what was happening, but it was hypnotizing. Couldn't really get a hold of the whole religious mashup though. Seemed like your typical cultish behaviour that all religions seem to exhibit. But yeah, hypnotizing.

Back on the bus, the next stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels, a vast network of underground corridors built by guerrilla Vietcong. A stop for lunch gave me time to chat with an apprehensive British fellow. Nothing about the conversation comes to mind. The bus stustered past rubber trees and into the compound a short while later. The tourists filed out and bought their tickets. Our guide kept us tightly corralled. This is generally what I hate about tours. Yes, they're very efficient ways to see places, but being part of a daffy herd strips all of the romance out of visiting any attraction. Less adventure, more field trip. It didn't matter though. The Cu Chi Tunnels were all field trip.

Anamatronic Vietcong guerrilla fighters carved pikes and dismantled Allied bombs. A row of recreated pit traps made everyone wince; some just the men. The guide had a voice that was gargley and sincere yet keen and playful, and he narrated the trip excellently. I got down in a pothole and played Charlie for a bit. There was barely anywhere to move, even for my skeletal frame. Later the whole lot of us crawled through a tunnel that had thoughtfully been widened for us. It went a total of 100 meters, but had people bailing through the escape hatches every 20 meters until only a handful of us trickled out of the other side. I shined my camera tracer down a hidden corridor to reveal a large cluster of bats hanging from the ceiling. Everyone was squeezing through these horribly narrow tunnels, god only knows what kind of havok stirring up a nest of bats would have wreaked.

The tour passed a shooting range that offered guests a chance to try various firearms starting with a handgun and working up to the big bad M60 Rambo cannon. Bullets were expensive so many opted out. The racket was deafening.

After a short film, we all piled back onto the bus and headed back to Ho Chi Minh City. I enjoyed the tour. That night, I would eat a hamburger and drink a beer; reward for my full day of activity. At night I met two fairly innocuous gentlemenand joined their quest to find a happening bar. Nothing materialized unfortunately. We parted without knowing each others' names.

In the morning, I booked an open ticket across Vietnam. $37 covered my transpotation all the way up to Hanoi on overnight sleeper buses, so I rested easy knowing that I had that covered. My last day in HCMC was spent at the Natural History Museum. I ogled tiny dioramas before heading out on an unintentional walkaround of the downtown core. I saw sidewalks cluttered with vendors and parked motorbikes. The notion of a sidewalk has gone completely in the toilet in Southeast Asia. Buildings grew taller and more stately in what appeared to be a financial district. A very tall building under construction peeked out over the others; visible from all parts of the city. I passed a bustling market before ducking under the awning of a pharmacy to escape a sudden downpour. Motorbikes roamed the streets in swarms forming the most abundant and viscous fluid in the traffic formula. I learned how to cross the road on day one, so by then I was a pro. Walk slowly, make sure they see you and don't make any sudden moves, like dealing with animals. I got back to the guesthouse and collected my bag.

That night I loaded into my first sleeper bus and started my long journey up the curved spine of Vietnam

No idea who this is. Honestly. Reunification Palace.

War talks room, Reunification Palace.

Reunification Palace.

Idol shoot at the Notre Dame Cathedral.

The all-seeing eye at the Cao Dai temple.

Devout practitioners, Cao Dai temple.

Midday mass, Cao Dai temple.

Playing Charlie, Cu Chi Tunnels.

Risky business.

After the rainstorm.

Down in Sihanoukville

Down in Sihanoukville,
Down in Sihanoukville,
All I did was die.

Interesting times make for interesting entries. By that rule, this entry is destined for failure. The text above is a slightly altered quote from On The Road (the city was originally Denver), but I read it while I was in Sihanoukville and it delivered a hefty dose of poignancy.

Sihanoukville is a beach town south of Phnom Penh where a lot of locals go to enjoy some sand and surf. I too would have relished in the waves, having just spent a month hopping around inland, but I didn't. I didn't want to. In fact, I didn't even want to come to Sihanoukville, but the promise of a quick and easy Vietnamese visa lured me out. I guess you can say I'm still jaded with traveling.

It was a rainy day when I arrived. Gloom swallowed the seaside town, and the already bland city center was mired in fog. I had come off of an easy 4 hour ride from the clogged organic mess of Phnom Penh, so in many respects, I was poised for a holiday, be it in the ocean or sequestered alone in a hotel room. The gloom didn't bother me. I love a good atmosphere.

After I checked into a cheap guesthouse, I did nothing. A quick saunter around town revealed the usual backpacker amenities, nothing to get excited about. Travel offices offered tours out to far flung islands. I'm sure they would be great. Really, it was me who wasn't making the effort. If my time in Sihanoukville were to have any kind of mantra, it would be "no effort". They had the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic and the History Channel at my guesthouse and a pizza joint next door that delivered. No effort required. Perfect.

Cambodian television is a general mishmash of other Asian television programing. Korean dramas, Chinese historical epics, Thai reality TV. Domestic programing had a very PBS-ish quality to it. The national anthem played frequently overtop the image of a waving flag. For kicks I sang along, reading the Khmer script as it's closest looking Roman equivalent, and you'd be surprised how funny that actually ended up being. Discovery had a dynamite lineup of programs about megastructures. Somewhere out at some bar, maybe some fun was being had, but I wasn't leaving my haven. I hadn't watched TV in ages.

The beach wasn't bad. It was only one of many beaches in town, and I'm told there are some beauties a few kilometers down. Some vendors walked up and down the sands selling wares. In town, things were a little more bothersome, with tuk tuk drivers all but grabbing tourists by the arm. I watched a volleyball game between locals that was quite spirited.

Then I had to get my visa, so a motorbike driver sped me up a hill to the gates which were, surprise, closed. My god working at an embassy would be a dream job. Office hours are from like, 9-12 with a 2-hour lunch then 2-4. I showed up halfway through the lunch break so my driver used the opportunity to try and shake more money out of my wallet. Continuously. For the whole hour. I suspected he knew that the embassy was closed and saw an opportunity to possibly make an extra buck. Forget my troubles. I waited until the gates opened and acquired my visa with the usual mechanics that the procedure requires.

Having gotten my visa, it was time to plan my escape. One bus left for Ho Chi Minh city, but it was at 7 in the morning, so I had to spend another night. Fair enough. The tuk tuk drivers were out in swarms looking for fares. The streets were uncharacteristically empty, so I had the cross hairs on me the whole time. I was well beyond fed up with this crap peddling that had come to signify Cambodia. Really, I was getting fed up with Cambodia. The begging, the smells, the open sewers, the garbage and especially the peddlers and touts. Nowhere else in Southeast Asia was it this bad, and at three months into traveling, I wanted to go home very badly. I locked myself in my room for a second night in a row and cradled my soul with English documentary television.

In the morning, a motorbike driver gave me some, ahem, "advice". he said it was much cheaper to buy bus tickets at the bus station rather than at the guesthouses. Sounded like solid logic, so I chartered a ride with him up to the station. Sure enough, it turned out to be more expensive, not to mention the fact that I had to pay the dishonest bastard that drove me up there. And that was probably my last interaction with a Cambodian citizen. Excellent way to go out guys.

I boarded the bus and was seated next to the Khmer Super Mario whose hammy foot frequently breached my comfort zone. It would be a ten hour journey and sleep seemed nearly impossible. however, thanks to my body's extreme aversion to waking up early, I managed to doze off. I hoped to god I wouldn't wake up until I got to the border.

Busted up car.

That volleyball game I was telling you about.

Phnom Penh

It had been a while since I had been in a big, stinky city. Bangkok was the last one. Nothing in between would qualify. Phnom Penh is a big stinky city though. Only one million in the city proper, but you would never guess with the crowds and the traffic.

My bus rolled into a miscellaneous part of the city just after sundown. A tout offered me a $3 room and a free ride so I took it. I pulled out a map on the way there to get my orientation. The Mekong and Tonle Sap come to a convergence and run along the east side of the city before separating again. A lake called Boeung Kak sits in the north-central part of the city while the rest is a sprawling grid of streets with the occasional roundabout. My guesthouse was on the banks of Boeung Kak, an easy location to remember.

It was another backpacker ghetto. Good because of the easy access to Internet and other amenities, annoying because of the overpriced Western restaurants, army of pesky tuk tuk drivers and inevitable drug dealers and prostitutes. My guesthouse was a party pro hub with loud bad music and weed smoke aplenty. The room smelled like sewer and the fan was barely noticeable from the bed. One night it would be. I got Indian food for dinner. The dealers were out. Motorbike? Marijuana? Cocaine? Every 10 meters.

Next morning I packed up and went to the place next door that was $2 a night and infinitely better. I didn't even want to shower in the stinky place for fear of what would gurgle up from the drain. Pennywise the clown. Just like Siem Reap, it would be one night in a bad, stinky place, two nights in a nice place. Upon completing my morning routine and getting breakfast, I chartered a tuk tuk for the day and set out for the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.

In the Killing Fields, dozens of mass graves were discovered sometime in the 80s. The Khmer Rouge used the area as an extermination camp where over 8000 people were killed and buried. A huge white pagoda sits at the entrance filled with the skulls, bones and clothes of the bodies they excavated. When I arrived, it was late morning and the place was almost empty. The only sounds were the wind and the rumble of approaching thunder. The path around the grounds wound between the pits formed by the excavated graves. Signs described the atrocities that took place at that very location. Pieces of bone, clothing and teeth stuck out of the ground in some places. Those who were there, respectfully stayed silent.

In a nearby museum, a movie was shown detailing the atrocities which took place. The gravity of the film was slightly diminished by the spooky haunted house music played at the beginning complete with a howling wolf.

I dodged a few begging children on my way out who were putting on their best sad voices to get my money. Everyone knows that giving money directly to begging children is the absolute worst thing you can do. It goes to their parents or keepers who in turn keep them out of school so they can earn more money begging. You feel like a cold, heartless prick saying 'no', but it's the right thing to do.

Back in town, my driver took me to Tuol Sleng Museum, formerly known as S-21, the largest center for detention and torture in the country under the Khmer Rouge. It was once a high school, but the rooms had been fashioned into various detention and interrogation chambers. A steel bed frame with manacles attached lay in the center of each sparse room. The walls and floors had not been cleaned. Signs posted everywhere reminded visitors not to talk. In one building, dozens of cramped wooden stalls were installed for confinement. In the next building, hallways filled with mugshots of detainees. The atmosphere was quite intense, and thankfully everyone showed a solemn respect.

My ride dropped me off at the old market so I could do some wandering of my own. I walkedalong the rivers on some kind of half-finished promenade. Phnom Penh was in a miraculous state of decay. The traffic was unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life. The rule seemed to be, if your vehicle fit, go ahead and drive it on through. With the majority of vehicles being motorbikes, this made for utter pandemonium.

I hopped over piled of garbage and puddles of god-knows-what. There was no sidewalk to speak of. I walked around the grid-like streets, moto drivers fiercely harassing me at every intersection for my business. God I hate that with a passion. My walk took me to Wat Phnom, a temple perched on a hill inside a roundabout. Monkeys were on the hillside eating rambutans. Eventually I made my way back to the guesthouse, content with another one of my successful city walks. I hoped to never have to do it again.

That night I was severely homesick. I had more or less reached the three month mark, and that's apparently when most people get it the worst. I ate Western food for dinner and watched Rambo 4 to cheer myself up. A Spanish guy watched too and would let out wild Spanish exclamations every time Rambo would blow some guy to bits. The way he rolled the 'R' when he said 'Rambo' was hilarious. That cheered me up more than anything.

Next day I woke up late. I considered leaving Phnom Penh and gunning straight for Sihanoukville for my Vietnamese visa, but I stayed to give the city more time. I walked to the post office and encountered Paul and Kim, two slow-boaters that I've bumped into at least three other times since. It's great running into people you know in a big city. We made plans to meet later.

I found myself retracing the same scuzzy steps I took the day before through the old market. I bought a dragonfruit and sat on a curb munching on it. Even this display of slumliness didn't stop the moto drivers from constantly hassling me. Like, they would whistle, honk their horns and scream "my friend" one after the other after the other after the other. Like as if I'll change my mind in the span of 3 seconds. And the fact that they say "my friend" bugs me to no end. AND the fact that even if you take a ride with them, they'll find some sly, deceptive way to rip you off. The guys are not "friends" or even respectable services. They are pests and they would force me to become more and more curt with them as I constantly rebuked their relentless volleys. "Tuk tuk?" "No thanks." "Where are you going?" "It doesn't matter, I already said no!" No other country was as bad as Cambodia for this.

I found my way to the Grand Palace. Tourist trap. I found it so utterly boring. Like, I am honestly not impressed by the lavish habitation of the Khmer king. So much space and tacky ornamentation. Impeccably groomed grounds. Fat tourists shuffling through. The complete opposite of the bedlam outside.

I was so off put by the silly opulence of the palace that it influenced my decision to visit the Stung Meanchey garbage dump. I wanted to see the other side of the coin. Get jarred by the contrast. I grabbed a driver and he looked puzzled as to why I even wanted to go there. Nevertheless, he took me for a decent fare.

We drove just outside of town, and I could smell it as we pulled up. The stinkiest part of the stinkiest city in Southeast Asia. A guard ran up when he saw me, a prime opportunity for a bribe he must have figured. Inside, heaps of trash in every formation, piled high and stretching on for kilometers. Sun bleached and flattened underfoot. Women and children rustled through the debris looking for anything of use. I knew the Grand Palace was a hulking tourist facade; this was a more poignant face for Cambodia.

So the Killing Fields, a Khmer Rouge prison and a garbage dump was enough for me. Tomorrow I would board a bus for the beach town of Sihanoukville in the south. For my last night, I met with Kim and Paul at a riverside lounge bar for drinks. It was an upscale place with handbag house music playing and expensive cocktails. I always feel uncomfortable in places like that, and in Cambodia, for some reason, I felt like I was especially more of a dick for being there, so we moved to some picnic tables in front of a 24-hour convenience store. Seoul style. Cheapest patio bar in town.

Later, after a few KLANG beers, I got the idea to check out Heart of Darkness, a notorious bar in the center of town. From what I heard, it had a very strong mafia presence and was a must-see for anyone checking out Phnom Penh nightlife. Metal detectors greeted us at the door. There was a staggering amount of prostitutes milling about and the proportionate amount of sad old white men. Upstairs there was an ample supply of VIP booths all with very dark characters looming within. The DJ was terrible. I bopped my head while leaning on a railing with my one beer. After a bit of this, we all decided it was time to depart and said our goodbyes.

The motorbike ride home was along empty streets. The driver was trying to sell me contraband the whole time. At the hotel I left a note requesting a 9am wake-up call then hit the sack. Tomorrow morning, I would leave this city.

Photos of the detainees of Tuol Sleng.

Tuol Sleng.

Tuol Sleng.

Mass graves, Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.

Skulls piled in the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek.

Statue of Gandhi.

Some wat.

One of the many rubble heaps.

Street meat, Phnom Penh style.

East market.

Sunset over Beoung Kak.

Hungry monkey at Wat Phnom.

Different clothes for each day of the week, Grand Palace.

Stung Meanchey garbage dump.

Kids hanging out at the dump.