Capital of Capitalism: Hanoi
(Writing from Ahmedabad, India)

We have arrived safely in our new home after three days of travel -- Luang Prabang to Coup-land, Bangkok to Delhi, and early this morning Delhi to Ahmedabad. I am as always behind on the blog, but I'll post a few updates today. Bella tells me her voice will return to the blog in the next few days with some reflections on the trip.

More than any other place we visited, Hanoi left us feeling swindled. For the bus ride from Ninh Binh (Ninh Binh Ninh Binh!), our guest house had told us to pay 30,000 (about $2) Vietnamese dong per ticket, but the driver charged us 35,000. Worse, we watched another passenger pay with a 50,000 dong note and receive 20,000 in change. Bella and I hadn't slept well, and the two previous full days of sightseeing had drained our energy -- so we chose not to complain about the $ 0.31 per person overcharge. But this was the first of a thousand small insults from which our exhausted tourist immune system failed to protect us.

We had assumed the bus would drop us in front of a guest house in the old city, as we'd come to expect from each previous bus journey. Instead, the bus stopped 7 km south of the city center, and we had to fend off the pressing flesh of dozens of moto drivers as we retrieved our bags from the trunk. One persistent entrepreneur followed us for three blocks, vigorously negotiating with himself a ride to town from 50,000 dong to 20,000 dong until he finally accepted our repeated refusals. We looped back into the bus station to regain our bearings, and finally took a taxi to the guest house we'd chosen (after 10 minutes of haggling to the rate suggested in our guide book). At the guest house, our pretty and fast talking host booked us 3 nights at the hotel, 2 day trips, and flights to Vientiane before our thoughts caught up with us. We had enough wits to shave a dollar from the room rate, and 20% from the day trips -- but that night we found plane tickets for $25 cheaper. And we'd already paid for them. When we visited the Vietnam History Museum that afternoon, we felt as if our pockets had been picked by each hand of this gorgeous wooden statue of Shiva.

So against my own promises, I wasted a paragraph of my life with complaints. But in my own defense, these complaints do illustrate the profound difference in atmosphere between Vietnam and Laos -- more on that later.

And in defense of Hanoi, the city does offer one of the best museums we saw in South East Asia. The "Museum of Ethnology" lucidly teaches about the 54 ethnic minorities of Vietnam, and they've built lifesize reconstructions of different tribal houses in their courtyard. We liked this exhibit of a bicycle carrying fishtraps, accompanied by a photo of a man in a conical hat actually riding this thing.

We also visited Ho Chi Minh himself in his mausoleum, preserved like Lenin in waxy perfection.

Vietnamese Vets Save Monkeys -- Cuc Phong National Park, near Ninh Binh, Vietnam
(writing from Luang Prabang, Laos)
Correction -- yesterday's post confused Tom Coc park with Cuc Phong park. Tom Coc equals caves on a river, Cuc Phong is monkeys.

Our second day in Ninh Binh Ninh Binh (since that bus ride, I will always say the town's name twice...) we rented a car and driver and visited the Cuc Phong National Park, an hour out of town. They have a monkey sanctuary where Vietnamese vets (ha!) rehabilitate monkeys recovered from poachers. The Chinese pay good money for monkey brains, a delicacy in Yunnan Province across the northern border. This photo shows a five colored langur, a thinking being happily not being served.

A few other pics -- we hiked through a loop in the jungle and saw an old tree...

a cave... and a lizard.

Ninh Binh Ninh Binh
(posting from Luang Prabang, Laos)

We traveled by 11 hour bus ride from Hue and the DMZ to Ninh Binh, a quiet town one hour south of Hanoi. The steward on our VIP bus spoke not a word of English, but referred to us always as Ninh Binh Ninh Binh. After a bathroom break, when it was time to get back on the bus, he called out to us "Ninh Binh Ninh Binh!". When he passed out water and snacks, he shouted, "Ninh Binh Ninh Binh" before handing us our share. And at 5AM, when we pulled into Ninh Binh, he flicked Bella's ear until she woke up, looked at us in the eyes, and gleefully informed us we had arrived in "Ninh Binh Ninh Binh Ninh Binh!"

The town itself offers dust and expensive yogurt (30 cents a cup? We paid 20 in Hue!). Just outside town, however, huge limestone karsts tower behind luscious green rice patties. We rented bicycles and rode out to Tom Coc national park. There, we practiced our Vietnamese with our guides as they rowed us through three caves carved in the rocks.

Here's Bella in the boat with our guides. Bella spoke with them in French -- many of the older generation parlay fransay, a legacy of French colonialism.

A local species of marmot took up residence on my chin. No wait, that's my beard.

Wild wild stuff, these caves.

En route to Cuc Phong, I made a new friend. His name is Moo. He is a water buffalo.

Perfect sunset -- best of our trip. Sun behind the karsts was amazing.

(Note: the original post has been corrected -- had read "Cuc Phong" when I meant "Tom Coc". Also, we arrived in Ninh Binh at 5AM, not 11PM.)

L'Shana Tova from Laos!
(writing in Luang Prabang, Laos)

Bella and I woke up late yesterday after staying up till the wee hours reading. Shooting the Moon for me -- a detailed history of CIA involvement in the war in Laos; A Thousand Acres for Bella -- a modern Midwestern retelling of King Lear. We stumbled into the daylight and wandered down along the Mekong river looking for a place for lunch. The doorways of all the shops and restaurants advertised their wares in Lao and English, except one...

"Wow -- Lao looks a lot like Hebrew on that sign", I thought as we walked by one wooden structure. "And the people inside are wearing tallit..."

We ventured up to the door and asked, "Are you celebrating Rosh Hashana?"

"Are you Jewish?" replied a young man with a thin wiry beard, wearing a black hat, white shirt, and suit.

"I am!" I exclaimed.

The Chassidic (ultra-orthodox) movement of Judaism sets up outreach sites, "Chabad Houses", throughout the world to serve local and traveling Jews. Rabbi Shalom Ber Marzel, with his year old son and his pregnant wife, traveled to Luang Prabang six months ago and set up a synagogue here. Two young rabbinical students joined him last week to help with the expected Rosh Hashana crowd.

In we went, and mingled with a dozen Israelis. Out came challah, honey, and a meat-potato-bean casserole that was absolutely fabulous (fabulous!). Dessert wins for most memorable -- a dairy free mousse cake that was creamier than the sweetened condensed milk we put in our coffee every morning. After dinner the rabbi told two stories in Hebrew -- one of the Israelis kindly translated for us. This is what he told us (OK -- slightly embellished...)

In the first story, a formerly unreligious man wakes up one morning worrying for his soul. His whole life, he'd worked hard, provided for his wife and children, and volunteered at an orphanage in town. But he hadn't been to shul since he was a child. In crisis, he goes to the empty shul at sunrise, awkwardly places a yarmulke on his balding head, and sits alone in a pew. He opens the prayer book to page one, and begins to read. All day, he reads the sidur, word for word, prayer by prayer, until finally, as the sun sets, he finishes. The next day, he does the same thing. And the next day. For a week, he goes to shul every day, reads the entire sidur, then returns home at dusk. His wife, concerned that has not brought home any salary all week, asks her uncle, a wise and holy rabbi, for advice. He promises to talk with the man. The next day, the rabbi goes to see the man in shul.

"Why are you doing?" asks the rabbi.

The man startles at the interruption, but he recognizes the venerable rabbi, and explains. "I want so badly to say the right prayers, but I don't know what they are! If I read *all*of them, I'm sure to include the right ones."
"Ah ha!" squawks the rabbi. "You cannot spend every day in shul -- you must work, you must spend time with your family. But I can help you! I will show you which prayers to say on which days. Here, let me see the sidur..."

With that, the rabbi produces a note pad and a pen. On each piece of paper, he scribbles "for Saturday mornings" or "only on Yom Kippor" or "every evening" and places the papers into the sidur at the appropriate places. When he finishes, he delicately hands the book back to the man. "This should straighten things out for you. Good luck!" He then turns and walks out the door.

The man looks through the sidur and sees how easy the rabbi's instructions are. He is so overjoyed that he runs outside into the blustery morning and jumps and dances for joy. In his celebration, the sidur slips from his hand and all the pieces of paper fly down the street with the wind. Heartbroken, he falls to his knees and weeps.

Between sobs, he sees the rabbi's footprints in the dirt. He stands up, dusts himself off, and decides to follow the footprints and beg the rabbi to teach him again. Through the town and into the forest he races after the trail in the dirt. After an hour, he finally sees the rabbi in the distance. He yells out for him, but the wind blows in his face, and the rabbi doesn't hear. He watches the rabbi approach a river. The rabbi reaches into his pocket, takes out a handkerchief, and lays it on the ground. He stands on the handkerchief, prays for a moment, then floats across the river to the other side. Once there, he picks up the handkerchief, wrings it dry, and replaces it in his pocket.

The man is determined to reach the rabbi, and acts without thinking. He runs to the riverbank, reaches into his pocket, finds his handkerchief, lays it on the ground, and steps onto it. He strains his eyes to follow the rabbi's path on the opposite shore, and hardly notices as he floats across the river. Once on the other side, he grabs the handkerchief and wrings it out as he runs up the bank after the rabbi.

Finally, he finds the rabbi resting beneath a tree.

"Rabbi, I've lost all the papers you gave me. Can you explain to me again how to pray?"

The rabbi studies the man, and then slowly asks, "Did you follow me here?"

"Yes," replies the man.

"Even over the river?"

"Yes."

"On a handkerchief? Floating on the water?"

"Yes! Yes! Please help me!"

"Well, I think whatever you have been doing will be just fine."

-------

I love the power of story telling and oral history to relay information and morality. I also like the moral of this story-- spirituality, holiness, and prayer are individual. Granted, my telling is third hand: Chabad rabbi in Hebrew to Israeli guy's summary in English plus my embellishments. If any of you find me someday on the bottom of the Hudson River standing on a napkin, you'll know I've missed the point.

The second story I'll tell briefly. The voice of God bellows one morning to a Jewish town that the Messiah is coming in one week. The town's people are so happy, they order a crate of wine and celebrate all day. The next day, the townsfolk wake up again ecstatic, because the Messiah will arrive in only *six* days. So they order two crates of wine, and dance and whoop until the sun sets. When they wake up, they realize that the Messiah will grace their town in a mere five days. Three crates of wine fuels a town wide romp, and everyone collapses exhausted at sun set. The next day four crates, then five, then six. Finally, the sun rises on the seventh day, and every citizen is asleep in the street. Confetti, burst balloons, and popcorn litter every alley. The Messiah arrives. The town rabbi wakes first, sees the Messiah, and runs to him. In his hand, he has the last bottle from the last crate, which contains but a drop of wine. He takes the last clean glass from the last upright street stall, pours the wine, and offers it to the Messiah.

"That's it?" asks the Messiah.

"Well," responds the rabbi. "If you had come yesterday..."

--------

The Israeli guy told us the rabbi had actually told *two* versions of this story. In the second, less inebriated version, a congregation spends a week devising the most elaborate holy virtuous prayer possible, and then perform it for the Messiah when he arrives. After an entire day, the prayer is finished -- to which the Messiah says, "That's it?"

The Israeli guy told us he didn't really get the point of either version. To me, it sounds like the second story is the original version, and speaks to the inadequacy of welcoming the Messiah. And the first story is a Jackie Mason version of the second. Or the first version is supposed to mean that no celebration is sufficient to welcome the Messiah. Neither version speaks to me, but I think the first version is funny...

------

After lunch, I joined the congregation for their afternoon service. The Israelis kindly turned the pages for me and pointed out where we were. I even got to do an aliyah! (singing the prayer before the rabbi reads the torah portion). Today, we returned to the Chabad House for the blowing of the Shofar. Bella stoically sat through the 3 hour service without complaint. I sat and stood on cue, and they let me dress the torah after the reading. During both services, I tried to follow the text the best I could, but I didn't recognize most of the prayers, and they go through it so fast I couldn't keep up. Mostly I felt a combination of frustration (because I don't know the service), admiration (because all these other people did, and they do it every week), guilt (for rarely going to shul), confusion (they repeated some of the same prayers half a dozen times, and some of the wording is different in the prayers I *thought* I knew), and boredom (three hours is a long long time to listen to muttering in a foreign language).

This unexpected reconnection with Judaism (and of all places in Laos!) marks the ending of this phase of our journey. Tomorrow we tour the jungle by dirt bike, and the river by kayak -- then Tuesday we head back to Bangkok en route to Delhi and Ahmedabad, where there is a 400 year old synagogue...

Will post more on our adventures in Vietnam soon.

Image credit to: http://iakovlevi.tripod.com/Hamelin.htm

DMZ
(writing from Vientiane, Laos; posted from Luang Prabang, Laos)

Bella and I booked a DMZ tour from our hotel in Hue so we could see some of the memorials dedicated to the "American War" in Vietnam. The tour itself taught us more about Vietnamese aggressive capitalism than of the horrors of war. The owner of our hotel showed us numerous testimonials from prior guests lamenting that the DMZ bus tour was boring, and how they wished they had taken a motorbike tour instead. I.e. better to spend $25 for motorbikes and drivers than $10 on a bus. But as we learned, "boring" speaks more to the sites themselves than to the transportation. The photos here show a few of the interesting stops, but most of the DMZ sites of historical interest now provide nothing more than a plaque -- the Macnamara line, Khe San, Camp Carrol. A bus travels fast enough, at least, to see all these places in a day -- which we did not. We did learn the benefits of motorbike travel, however: overpriced lunch ("no menu, sorry"), sore butt, and sunburnt thighs.

Complaints complaints complaints! No more!

On the plus side, driving on motorbike does give you a taste for the landscape. The Vietnamese have transformed every arable inch of land into a rice patty. The roadside en route to the DMZ is a notable exception -- napalm and agent orange rendered most of the soil too poisonous for farming, and vegetation is only now starting to take root in the sandy earth.

The photos below looked fine on my mac, but appear very dark on this PC. Let me know if you can make out details.

First, we stopped at the Ben Hai River, which served as the true border between North and South Vietnam -- it runs right along the 17th parallel. The memorial features a Vietnamese woman with her arms on her child's shoulders flanked by coconut palm fronds. An unfinished bas relief decorating the base on the memorial pits Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army soldiers against American GIs. We shot the second photo from the north side -- during the war, the Vietnamese painted the bridge half red half yellow as a reminder of the division of the country.

So many Vietnamese remains were unidentifiable that military cemeteries celebrate more unknown soldiers than known.

-------------------

Bella and I thought this bas relief at the Vinh Moc tunnels just north of the DMZ crystallizes the Vietnamese memory of the American war. Vietnamese citizens and solders persevere, digging tunnels into the earth and resisting the best they can, while American planes bomb relentlessly from above. This perserverance most impressed us -- civilians dug the the Vinh Moc tunnels and lived underground for six years, and every bomb we dropped hardened their support for the communists. After reading up on the history, it seems to me the middle road we took (don't invade the north, don't leave the south) made it impossible to ever "win". If the domino theory was right, we should have marched into Hanoi -- except that might have provoked a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets or Chinese. If we weren't prepared to invade, we should have left earlier -- except our retreat might have emboldened the Soviets to expand their sphere of influence and aggressively support leftist revolutions elsewhere. Instead we laid siege to the South -- we burnt down the villages we were supposed to protect which only fed support for the Viet Cong. While we piddled around with search and destroy missions, the NVA and Viet Cong built the Ho Chi Minh Trail into a supply superhighway and citizens dug in and waited for us to wear out and leave. I'm left with a more visceral understanding of the Powel doctrine -- go in with overwhelming force or don't go in at all.

Coup Coup Ca Choo
(writing from Vientiane, Laos)



Though we heard some tourists muttering about CNN during our visit to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi today, we didn't learn of the coup in Thailand until we boarded the plane for Laos this afternoon. As we found our seat, we picked up a copy of Vietnam News, a govenernment authored English language daily. An understated article on the bottom of their front page mentioned "Coup in Thailand", underneath the headline of continued British foreign aid. Our good friend Kelly lives in Bangkok, and she gives the most interesting report. The photo here is not mine (duh) -- kudos instead to Google and the Shanghai Daily News.

Meatime, for those who are worried about us, we are fabulous! We've been traveling South to North through Vietnam and will post photos and stories on our adventures in the coming days. We do need to return to Bangkok to connect to Delhi, so our travel plans will return us to coup-land. Although the junta government closed the overland border just over the Mekong to our South, the
Bangkok Post says the airport will remain open -- though I doubt "Bob James" has the ear of General Boonyaratkalin. The US Embassy in Thailand gives vague wait-and-see advice, and we'll continue to monitor their website. We'll also stop by the US Embassy here tomorrow to find out more.

Photos from Hue
written in Hue, Vietnam

As I mentioned, we took bikes through the outskirts of Hue today. At the first temple, we struck up a conversation with another tourist, Kem, also on bicycle, and he joined us for a day of idly riding from temple to temple. As we turned up one road towards a local monestary, we stopped to look at a striking white statue. Why, I wondered, is Buddha eating a bat... As it turns out (thank you Google!) the word "bat" and "happiness" are the same in Chinese, so the bat is a symbol of happiness.



Many of the temples and cemeteries feature "pique assiette", in which the artist recycles shards of pottery to make mosaic. Here's a dragon we liked.



Mixing old and new, the dragons guarding this house perch their claws on soccer balls.



Hue has a large incense market, and some of the wares dried in the sun as we biked by.



Here we are! Kem moved to Miami from Peru when he was 11, and then to Utah in his teens to be closer to fellow Mormons. We talked with him the whole day about our lives and travels.

Photos from Ho Chi Minh City
(written from Hue, Vietnam)

Motorbikes! Whoah. Crossing the street requires steely resolve. We watched one woman cross a wide avenue with traffic more dense than this photo. Slowly slowly she advanced, never stopping, never changing pace, as bikers whizzed by in front and behind. Bella and I silently admired her as she stepped onto the opposite curb and continued on her way. Please do not take the mask as a sign to send us a Fed Ex with Tamiflu -- more than half of women bikers wear masks to keep out exhaust and sun. Keeps the lungs clean and the face fair.


Perhaps "vegetarian" means no dog?



We visited the Cu Chi tunnels where Viet Cong soldiers hid out and staged attacks on US positions. I was very excited to check out the underground passages. Also, my beard is getting way too long.

On a lighter note... Phnom Penh photos
writing in Hue, Vietnam

We had a lovely bike ride through the Vietnamese countryside today. Pictures to follow once I look through them. Meantime, here are some photos from Phnom Penh. We spent one afternoon touring the palace. Trying to flesh out the history of the country, we asked our guide what life was like under Japanese occupation in the early 1940s. She didn't know, she said. But her mother had told her that many girls would make themselves look ugly in order to avoid advances by Japanese soldiers.




As we walked out of the palace, a huge golden Buddha on the back of truck drove by.



We again met up with Sharad, Minaxi, and Deval, and joined them for dinner along the main boulevard by the river.

History Lessons
Written in transit, and in Hoi An, Vietnam -- prior to the previous post about censorship. Posted from Hue, Vietnam.

As I write, Bella and I have just boarded a Pacific Airlines flight from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Danang, both in Vietnam. We’ve squeezed into the seats – there is less room here between the seats than any other airline I’ve been on. It is good to be short!

Bella and I visited two intense historical sites and museums within a few days: a Khmer Rouge detention center (Tol Sleng) in Phnom Penh and the associated killing field at Choeng Ek, and the “War Remnants” (formerly War Crimes) museum in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). This all in the unintentional backdrop of the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Killing Fields



Aside from the photos and memorials, the Tol Sleng detention center (now a museum) and the Choeng Ek killing fields are jarringly pleasant. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge chose a local high school for their detention center, and palm trees dot the grassy courtyard. Choeng Ek sits a few miles away on the shore of the Bassac River. Oxen roam freely through the bucolic site, butterflies twitter among the trees, and fuzzy ducklings glide along the shore.

The Khmer Rouge used the Tol Sleng detention center to extract confessions from suspected enemies. Graphic photos show mutilated bodies shackled to bed frames, and photos of thousands of victims stare out from rows of displays. Those who confessed and survived torture were transported to the killing fields, where Khmer Rouge soldiers shot them, beat them to death, or slit their throats. The killing fields at Choeng Ek contained more than a hundred mass graves. Bones and bits of clothing still litter the site.

The 20th century offers too many examples of this kind of mass murder: the Holocaust, Armenia, Rwanda, Bosnia. But what is inexplicable about the killing fields is that there is no clear “other”. As the regime wore on, the Khmer Rouge killed indiscriminately. Jailers became prisoners, and torturers were tortured and killed. One of the museum’s current exhibits tells of a dozen men and women who believed in Pol Pot’s Maoist revolution, left their families to join the Khmer Rouge, and now stare out from the wall of victim’s photographs. Each served and was then betrayed. All told, some 3 million Cambodians died from 1975 to 1978 (when Vietnam invaded Cambodia), 2 million killed directly by the hand of the Khmer Rouge. One of the exhibits suggests a “base population” in the north west that was afforded some protection as original agrarians, but the Khmer Rouge never articulates any rationale for their crimes. There is massive paranoia, but no description of who or what is the enemy.

Guilt

Bella and I visited these sites with Sharad, Minaxi, and Deval, and we reflected as we drove back to town. Bella spoke with confusion and anguish about the physicality of the murders. In order to conserve ammunition, the Khmer Rouge bludgeoned many of their victims to death. Many used palm fronds to slit prisoners’ throats. Bella could believe that a soldier could flip a switch, or pull a trigger to kill, but the up-close hands-on brutality of the murders at Choeng Ek pushed the limits of what she believed possible.

I, on the other hand, did not feel shocked. Nazi Germany and concentration camps appeared throughout my childhood. I have visited the Holocaust museums in Israel, DC, Manhattan, and Miami; attended speeches by Elie Wiesel and Yitchak Rabin; watched Schindler’s List with my siblings, parents, and grandparents. Antisemitism drove my family from Europe a century ago, and Nazis murdered those who remained, like David Hirsh Becker my great great grand uncle killed near the Becker farm in Oshmana, Poland. As a Jew, I am a student of genocide. So while the killing fields represent the very worst of human behavior, it is an evil I have grown up with, the Khmer Rouge a familiar demon with a different face.

To my surprise, however, I felt guilt. I thought maybe I felt guilt as a member of a species capable of these crimes. But although there is an impulse to imagine the circumstances that would lead me to join in these crimes, killing is so opposed to my moral framework, especially as a physician, that I automatically label the perpetrators “other” and believe myself incapable of participating. No, I felt guilt because I have not visited Auschwitz. I claim in one breath to be a student of genocide, and I admit in the next that I am a bad one. I will go, I must go – this part of me is unresolved.

War Remnants, Vietnam

We left Phnom Penh for Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, and on our first full day we visited the War Remnants Museum, formerly the War Crimes Museum. I have been reading a book called Patriots, by Christian G Appy, which chronicles the war as a series of oral histories from participants on all sides: soldiers, politicians, protesters, reporters, and ordinary citizens. The museum and my book tell similar stories, and the museum was much less politicized than I would have thought. Whereas Cuba’s National History Museum in Havana features a wall sized cartoon of George Bush (the first) as Julius Caesar, Vietnam’s War Remnants Museum begins with a extended tribute to photographers who died during the war, including several Americans. The museum focuses more on the long term effects (birth defects etc) of Agent Orange than I had expected, and the visitor’s guest book contains a surprising amount of anti American sentiment from Europeans and Australians – but the exhibits refrain from accusation or distortion. My Lai and other massacres of Vietnamese civilians feature prominently, as expected. In criticism, the museum fails to put the war in the larger context of the Cold War, and the agent orange exhibitions are heavy on photos of disfigured children and light on statistics.



Ho Chi Minh City buzzes outside the museum. After 10 years of a command economy, the Vietnamese government instituted broad economic reforms in the mid 80s, unleashing the current sea of motorbikes that zip around the city in capitalist fervor.

As we walked out, one pair of images in the museum stayed with me. Nick Ut won a Pulitzer prize for his photograph of children running from a village sprayed with napalm. The young girl, Kim Phuc, featured prominently in the photo survived her burns, and the museum displays a current photo of her beneath Ut’s. She turns her head over her left shoulder, showing the extensive scar across her back. In her arms, facing the camera, she holds her infant son. Vietnam is alive and thriving.

Censored!
Writing from Hue, Vietnam
We've been unable to view the blog since we arrived in Saigon. Initially we assumed blogspot was upgrading or repairing their servers. But we've since learned Vietnam blocks everything from blogspot.com. We can post because the editing site is elsewhere -- at blogger.com.

So Vietnam subscribes to the Chinese model of free markets without free minds. Mixed feelings about this -- glad to see the bustling freneticism of Ho Chi Minh City (more to come on this) but I'm supressing outrage at the curtailment of free speech.

Anybody out there?

Bella and I are in Hoi An, Vietnam. For the past two days, we have been unable to view the blog, though we can log into the editing software without difficulty. If you can read this, can you please email a hello?

Good Evening, Vietnam!
(Saigon, Vietnam)

Howdy Howdy from Ho Chi Minh City! Zach and I arrived safely in Saigon this afternoon, after a straightforward seven-hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. The first half of the ride (to the Cambodia border) was bumpy but uneventful (we did get to take a giant ferry across the Mekong--very impressive). After clearing immigration on the Vietnam side, we got onto the "Happy Tour" bus for Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). When they say happy, they're not kidding. A beautiful, charming woman greeted us by microphone once we were on the bus, explaining the logistics of our arrival in the city, teaching us basic phrases in Vietnamese, and then singing (!) a Vietnamese song about HCMC a capella for us (she was quite good, too). Transportation from Phnom Penh to Saigon, language lessons, and entertainment--all for $5 per person. Southeast Asia is amazing.

We're staying at a great guesthouse that has a/c, cable tv, free breakfast, and even hot water. I know, I know--we're going totally soft (so much for roughing it!). But for $12/night, it's hard to resist...

Encore Angkor
(still in Ho Chi Minh City)

Okay, so I took more than 400 photos at Angkor. The first day I listened with half an ear to the guide, and focused instead on light, composition, and battery life (I went throught two and a half batteries the first day). The second day we didn't even hire a guide, and just traipsed from site to site waiting for the sun to offer a promising shot.

Looking through the digital contact sheet each night, searching for my own award-winning wall-displaying masterpiece, I felt... disappointed. A few decent shots, but mostly washed out stone and ordinary trees. These three represent notable exceptions.

On the first day, our guide took us to a smallish temple north of Bayon called Palay Lai. A few trees grow from the temple entrance, so I circled the temple with my camera snapping some photos. My hand started itching, usually heralding another mosquito bite, so I put the camera down to survey the damage. There was no mosquito -- instead a yellow butterfly had perched on my forearm, gently flapping its wings to keep balance. I held it up to try to snap a picture, but it flew away before I could get to the camera. Then, even as I cursed my luck, it came back! It alighted on my hand and I took this photo before it flew off again a moment later.

Bella took this photo in Preah Kahn, a poorly preserved temple overrun with awesome trees. She's looking over my shoulder as I write and is making fun of me because I said that the butterfly "alighted" on my hand. She insists that I call this an awesome tree. Actually, it is pretty awesome.

We caught these monks by Tah Prohm, another temple consumed by the jungle. Monks are awesome.

Angkor Encore
(writing from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

We've arrived safely in here in Vietnam via an easy six hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. We're headed to see the Cu Chi tunnels used by the Viet Cong tomorrow morning, and hopefully the War Remnants museum (previously the "War Crimes" museum) in the afternoon.

A few more photos from Angkor:

The Khmer king Javayarman VII (temple building fiend) built Bayon temple about half a century after Angkor Wat. It features 49 towers each with four enormous faces -- either Buddha or Brahma (Hindu God of creation) depending on who you ask. The Khmer architects mixed Buddhist and Hindu symbols throughout the temples, cleverly working to appease both large religious groups of the times.

Bantey Srei predates the big temples at Angkor. The intracacy of the well preserved high relief carvings amazed us.

Angkor Wat
(writing in Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

We're headed to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow at 7AM, and I'm off to dinner in a few minutes... but I wanted to post just a few pics of Angkor Wat before I left this functional internet connection. First we left one morning at 4:45 AM to catch the sun rise.

We climbed up Phnom Bakheng, another temple on top of a hill, to catch the sunset.We *loved* touring with Sharad, Minaxi, and Deval. They ask lots (lots!) of questions, and after a full day at Angkor Wat itself, we have become experts on Khmer architecture.

Long time no write...
(writing from Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

We have been bad bloggers! The slow slow internet connections in Siem Reap, Cambodia made it mind numbing to sit in front of a computer for longer than a few minutes. Briefly, we travelled overland from Bangkok to Siem Reap, Cambodia. We spent a week there exploring Angkor Wat and the surrounding temple complexes. Sharad, Minaxi, and Deval, Bella's uncle, aunt, and cousin, flew into town halfway through our stay, and we joined them for two days of sight seeing. We've since bussed south east to Phnom Penh at the confluence of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers. It's nearing dusk now in this internet cafe near the river and my hands quiver as I reflect on our tour today of a Khmer Rouge torture center and the killing fields.

Tonle Sap

We had a few days to kill in Siem Reap before Sharad, Minaxi, and Deval arrived, so we hired a tour of the Tonle Sap river, the flooded forrest, and two stilted villages.

The waters of the Tonle Sap river switch directions twice a year. When the waters flow into the lake during the rainy season, it grows from 2,700sq km to as much as 16,000 sq km, and gains nearly 30 feet of depth. We visited the village of Kompang Pluk -- the houses here sit on stilts fifty feet off the ground so the villagers can stay year round. As we came into town, groups of naked children leapt into the water and swam up and down the flooded main street. Everyone waved and smiled at us -- a pleasant contrast to the constant begging in Siem Reap and around the temples.

Our guide hired a canoe for us, and two Cambodian girls, 14 and 16, rowed us in and out of the trees.

On the way back, one of the young men in the boat spied a rat swimming a few feet from the boat. He leapt into the water and swam after it. He slowly approached the rodent, raised his hand high, then grabbed at the rat and dove underwater after it. His first two attempts failed, and the rat resurfaced ten or fifteen feet further down stream. But on the third attempt, he popped out of the water sputtering and splashing, holding the rat victoriously in his hand by its tail. Once he'd returned to the boat, he and another boy on the boat used an oar to hold down its head. This allowed him to pick it up from the back of the neck, and he then strangled it until it went limp. The other boy produced a strip of metal, like a nail file, and the two of them used it to pry out the rat's teeth. The rat survived this bloody and gruesome operation, and lay breathing and bleeding on the boat deck until we returned to the dock.