Another trip, another update. I did the Seattle-Taipei-Cambodia run again, and I timed this trip so I'd be there for my fiance's birthday. This is the hot season in Cambodia, and they aren't kidding. It's hot. Really, really hot. Like "writhe-in-the-fires-of-Hell" hot. But other than that it was okay. I got there, she met me at the airport in Phnom Penh and we stopped by her folk's place on the way to the hotel. We killed a whole day getting me a visa for Vietnam and wandering around a bit. The next day we went to Vietnam, and that was strange and bizarre.
We left Phnom Penh and took a little bus/taxi about 50 miles down a thoroughly-ruined-road-from-hell to a little fishing village on the Mekong River. No shit, that road had potholes the size of Rhode Island...every 20 feet or so. They were like tank-traps. (They might have actually been tank-traps for all I know.) Bam, THUD, Wham, crunch. Lather, rinse, repeat, until we felt seasick from all the jolting. At the little village we got into a really small 5-person boat and motored down the Mekong River for about 50 miles or so. The Mekong is a beautiful, picturesque river and about as scenic a place as I've ever been.
On the Mekong River
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Along the river you'll see people washing and bathing, and even watering their oxen. Eventually we pulled over to the shore at this tiny, decrepit little shack. It was so dilapidated that in America we wouldn't even use it for a garden shed, but it was the Vietnamese Official Customs & Immigration Entry Point. We got our papers approved and then took off on a couple of motorbikes ("motos"). As it turned out, this was a huge frigging mistake, but I'll get to that later.
We moto'd along for about 20 miles, then took a tiny little ferry across a twisty little river. Everyone, and I mean everyone gathered around me on the ferry ride and just
stared at me. They were friendly, but still...I was waiting for someone to scream "
Kill the imperialist running dog!" But they just wanted to say "hi". It was very nearly a Depenz Moment for me.
We got off the ferry and by this time we were truly in Nowheresville. We were so far from civilization they'd have to pipe the sunlight in. Tiny little dirt villages that were right out of "Apocolypse Now", except people were wearing Nike shoes. God Bless America- 10,000 miles away and we could still pollute their timeless, age-old culture!
We took the motos another 20 miles or so until we came to civilization, sort of. This is where my fiance's cousin lives and it was semi-developed, but still kinda rough around the edges.
I was a sensation-
everywhere we went people would stop what they were doing and call out to us, wave to us, etc. They'd follow us down the street and stare at us (me, actually). I was the whitest guy for 500km in any direction and some of these folks had probably never seen anyone as white as me. The kids just went bonkers and wanted to touch me, look at my eyes, etc. They all know the word "hello", but not much more. I felt soooooooooo white. Blindingly, excruciatingly white, but everyone was as friendly as could be. They treated me like a movie star, no kidding. Anywhere we went it was a total scene.
They have some weird signs there. I'm not sure what this one says; I think it means "
Beware Of Ninjas Stalking Little Girls" but I could be wrong.
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It was very, very hot and humid. Vietnam is like Hell With Loudspeakers. They have these big-ass speakers mounted all over the city and a couple of times a day they click on, play military music, then they read "news" or propaganda stories. It's freaky and there's no getting away from it.
Clothing is super cheap. There are about 16000 dong to the dollar and nice shirt is about 10000 dong to 20000 dong (about a dollar or so). We bought a lot of clothes for my fiance, she just went wild in the underwear department, lol. We bought underwear, shirts, skirts, shoes, dresses, winter gloves, etc etc. It was too weird- here we were
sweating our asses off in 100-degree heat, and we're buying
winter gloves. It was truly surreal. God only knows why they even sell winter gloves in a place that rarely drops below 80 degrees, but they do.
The schoolgirls in Vietnam all wear these identical white uniforms, it's a white dress and a long white cape and a white hat. When school lets out you'll see like 100 of them go by you pedaling their bikes, and it's just a bizarre sight to behold. They're all the same size and they look like a swarm of clones going by in their long flowing dress, hat, and cape.
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Just imagine coming upon a flock of 100 or so of these young ladies...! We bopped around the city and met a bunch of my finance's relatives, aunts, uncles, grandmas, etc etc. Nice people, very friendly. The way the electricity comes into the house is something else, check it out:
The power panel:
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The wire leading into the house. Bob Vila would not approve. 
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I found that I can read Vietnamese fluently, like a native, although I have no idea what I'm saying. This was a huge source of amusement for everyone as I'd read the newspaper and headline stories aloud. Honest- apparently I read about ad fluently as a native-born speaker but with an American cowboy accent. "
Dai ling ban chung gaow, pardner."
We stayed in a semi-crude hotel. At night the hotel owner takes ("confiscates") your passport and runs it down to the police station, then brings it back in the morning. They explained it was for my "protection" *cough*. I don't know what it was they were protecting me
from, but whatever...it's a rule.
Unfortunately there was
another Cambodian lady staying at the hotel and when she left in the morning to go to Ho Chi Minh city the hotel owner gave her my fiance's passport. The lady took off and went all the way to Ho Chi Minh city (about 300 miles!) and got to the gate at the airport before they noticed that it wasn't her passport. Meanwhile we were forbidden to leave the city or go anywhere since my fiance had no travel documents.
No one could (or would) tell us where her passport went or why it had gone missing, so we were getting a bit nervous. They eventually trucked her passport back but it cost us an entire day of waiting around wondering if we were going to be arrested for something or other. When we finally got it back we decided to get the ^$%#!@ out of Dodge and so we made a mad dash up the road on a couple of motos to get back to the boat. Now I understand that line in Apocolypse Now: "Don't get out of the boat." No shit.
However...when we entered Vietnam, we never got the official stamp on our passports. Whoops. Remember that "huge frigging mistake" thing I mentioned? Yeah, that was it. We had actually cleared the Customs
garden shed Official Entry Point and were literally at the line that separates Vietnam from Cambodia when one of the customs officers stopped us. (The line is about 1/4" wide and is colored white, just in case you're wondering. Vietnam is here, take a step, *bingo*, now you're in Cambodia.)
The customs officer had a *major* meltdown when he saw we didn't have entry stamps. Well, hell, we'd have
gotten one but they never
told us we were
supposed to when we came in, so we didn't. Doh. Apparently it's a pretty serious crime to be in Vietnam without an official entry stamp in your passport. We spent the next couple of hours being run back and forth between several buildings being questioned, sent on, questioned again, etc etc etc. The questioning became more aggressive each time. I was sweating profusely and it had nothing to do with the heat, believe me. All I could do was nod and smile like a retard since I don't speak any Vietnamese. (I do now, but that's another story.)
Customs Officer: "¢¥ αΘ ωψ Φ ≠ζ λϖ, ☼φ
!!"
Me: "
Uh, yeah..."
Customs Officer: "
☼φ ≠ Ξψ, ≤ζ λ╔ ¥ αΘ ω∃!!"
Me: "
You bet, absolutely..."
You get the idea. I had no idea what he was saying. I could have been confessing to stealing nuclear secrets for all I knew.
They finally got us backdated stamps, but not until my fiance gave one of the customs officers a 20000 dong note "for his trouble" (I swear I'm not making this up). That's right, it cost a $1.25 to bribe a Vietnamese Customs Official. That's a heck of a bargain if you ask me. He made a big show of not wanting it but when we left the interrogation room it was sitting on the table under his hat...
We went through it all again, got our exit stamps, and jumped over that little white line. Ha ha, suckers, come and get me now. I'm Cambodia and you can't do shit to me here, hahahah! Well, as it turns out, yes they can. I had to get another #*&%! visa to be allowed back into Cambodia and I wasn't going
anywhere until I did. Twenty dollars and 3 paper forms later I was legally in Cambodia again and just a wee little bit short on patience if the truth were told. Rrrrrrrrrrr.
Back in the boat. Back up the Mekong. Back into the little taxi bus. Back up the road that seemed like it had been freshly bombed since we came down it two days ago. We got back to Phnom Penh that evening and it was like being in New York compared to where we had been. We checked into the Phnom Penh Hotel and I'd swear we looked, felt, and smelled like we'd just crawled across Africa on our stomachs. We were so tired we barely made it to bed.
I got up the next morning and went to the wonderful little breakfast buffet they have on the 4th floor where we stay. There was a German guy in there yelling at one of the adorable little Cambodian waitresses, screaming at her in German for something. He was scaring the shit out her and she was frozen stiff. I have very little patience for this kind of shit even on my best days, and this was not one of my best days. I went up and interrupted him in mid-rant and quietly asked him if he spoke English.
"Yes", he said.
"Then shut the f*ck up", I replied.
"The orange juice is warm!" he bellowed.
"It's
Cambodia in
April", I said, "
Everything is warm. Even the
ice is warm. So just shut the f*ck up.
a**hole." And he did. Prick.
Oooh, the orange juice is warm! Grab your gun, Fritz, ve vill teach those Cambodians a lesson! Give me a f*cking break.
Lol, the waitress appreciated my polite intervention on her behalf and I got really attentive service that morning. What an a**hole that guy was.
That night we had my fiance's birthday party and it was a ton of fun. It was her first birthday party ever. I rented out a private room at the Hai Yi restaurant and invited her whole family. We had the works- a huge dinner, cake, presents, etc etc. We had gone out earlier and I'd had her pick out a nice rock for her finger, but the presents were the fun part. Who doesn't love tearing the wrappings off of presents? No one in that room, that's who. lol
The rest of the time we shopped, ate, and recovered from our *cough* vacation in Vietnam. I got a cool MP3 player that is super small and has a gorgeous color LCD screen. It has a ton of stuff crammed into it: an MP3 player, an eBook reader, an FM radio, a movie player, a picture gallery, built in games, a voice recorder, and some other stuff. The movie player even came pre-loaded with "Ice Age", lol. All of that plus the charger and cables ran about $40. (!!!) It was nice to have on the ride back to the US and I'm going to get a couple more the next time I go back. I've not seen anything like it for sale in the US. I got my son a bunch of games for his Nintendo for a few dollars each. One of the game cartridges has 190 brand-name games stuffed into it. Remember, there's no copyright in Cambodia.
Buhdda Shrines
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We bought a nice Buhdda shrine, then made them take it apart so it would fit in my luggage. That was a first for them- they build 'em, they don't take 'em back apart.
Meeting the MonkWe also visited a pagoda and met with a monk who blessed us and gave us a nice Bhudda statue for the shrine. There must be something to that enlightenment shit because it was over 100 degrees in the pagoda and that guy didn't have a drop of sweat on him. Fresh as a &^#%! daisy. I, on the other hand, was practically swimming in my own sweat.
Finally, we went to the Central Market and yes, I ate a bug. Several, actually.
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YUM. It wasn't bad at all, really. (I'm pretty sure my nose isn't that big in real life.) So, I brought all this stuff back and have been unpacking for days. And that's about it.
Oh, the Vietnamese I learned? Here it is:
"
Ban la nguy chung thom dai liy!".
It means something like, "You are very,
very white!"
