Since I backed out of buying a house this time last year, I figured I would take advantage of not having a mortgage and do some more traveling. My cousin Robin is finishing her last semester of teaching in Hong Kong and I wanted to see her and the country one more time before she goes.
I’ll be spending the first week of my trip (which was planned around Robin’s spring break) traveling with her and her friend Karen to Vietnam and Cambodia. I will admit that when Robin suggested these two countries, they weren’t even on the radar screen of my list of places to visit. However, after planning for the past three months and reading the travel guides, I can’t wait to get there. When we visited China in 2008, we met a British couple who was spending the year traveling through South East Asia. They said that Vietnam was their favorite country and highly recommended that we try to visit if we could.
Our plan is to spend Saturday to Monday in Hanoi. We depart Hanoi early Monday morning for an overnight trip on a Chinese junk (sailing boat) on Halong Bay. The boat trip includes a visit to Sung Sot cave, kayaking to a fishing village, a cooking demonstration and squid fishing. Tuesday night, we return to Hanoi. Wednesday, we’ve scheduled a cooking class in Hanoi before we depart for Siem Reap, Cambodia.
Siem Reap is the closest “city” to the Angkor Archeological Park which is comprised of dozens of temple complexes built in the early 12th century. The temples are supposed to rival the great pyramids of Egypt. While in Siem Reap, we hope to take another cooking class, a pottery class and maybe even an elephant ride. After doing some reading on the temples, it sounds like we could easily spend a month exploring Angkor Wat and still not have enough time to truly appreciate all of the details. We depart Siem Reap on Sunday afternoon and after a short layover in Ho Chi Min City (unfortunately not long enough to venture out of the airport) we return to Hong Kong.
My knowledge of Southeast Asian history is very limited. Since, my grandfather was stationed in Europe during World War II, I’ve always been far more interested in that period of history than more contemporary periods like the Vietnam War. To get more of a feel for the events that transpired in Cambodia during the past 30 years, I’ve been reading Survival in the Killing Fields by Haing Ngor, who played the Cambodian translator Dith Pran in the film The Killing Fields. Ngor’s real life experiences are almost unbelievable. It blows my mind to think that such a large scale holocaust could have been carried out post World War II after the western world had fought so hard to stop a mad man like Hitler. Ngor’s story is heart-wrenching and really makes me appreciate all of the freedoms I have in my life. I hope to finish the book on the plane.
I’ve put some links to the hotels we’ll be staying at below. While we may be traveling to third-world countries, our travel agent somehow managed to book us in places that are more luxurious than any hotel I would book in the U.S. Check back often. I’m hoping to post something new every few days.
