It's going to be a bumpy ride

Just as I was getting used to the traffic of Southeast Asia, we get on a bus to take us from Phnom Penh to Siem Riep and are spending the first half of our morning on a bumpy, dusty road filled with holes and rocks and no lanes. The country side is filled with rice fields, houses on stilts and fruit stands. Children on their way home from school stare as we raise dust, moving forward. 

We made our way out of Hoi An and took a plane down to Ho Chi Minh City, still known as Saigon to many even though th name changed in the 70's. A commercialized city, it was almost as if we weren't even in Vietnam anymore. There were plenty of western restaurants, Korean grocery stores and tall buildings glowing with bright lights.

A little outside of Ho Chi Minh City are the Cu Chi tunnels that were used during the Vietnam war. They lived essentially underground to protect themselves from gunfire and bombings. The tunnels are now open to the public and we crawled around their homes, which have already been widened twice so that tourists can fit in them without getting stuck. So go ahead, have another doughnut. 

The entrance was larger than the actual tunnel, trust me. 

After we crawled around in the dirt, fired a gun and drank hot tea in the hot heat, we watched a short film about the history of the tunnels. Our guide had actually been a soldier and let us know ahead of time that the film is not quite accurate. It had been filmed after the war and showed soldiers crouching through underground tunnels. This would've been impossible at the time, because the tunnels were so small soldiers had to crawl through them. Only one side was shown during the fighting scenes and the fighting trench shown in the film was not actually used for fighting. It was a bit of a propoganda film, not the first I've seen in Vietnam. To an outsider, it seems so one-sided and untrue, but if it's what you hear all your life, how are you supposed to think otherwise? It made me wonder about our own media coverage back home, and how much is actually hidden and twisted around and repeated until we believe it. How quick are we to judge other countries information and not question our own?

Luck was on our side as we headed to the Hard Rock for some drinks afterwards. My friend Jacqueline was standing on the street corner, trying to figure out where we were when a moped zoomed by her, ripping her purse off the strap and taking it with them. She reached for it, the flap opened and all of her important things fell out as the man zoomed off with a purse containing only sunscreen.  Her eyeglasses and wallet were on the ground and we were so surprised we couldn't even figure out what had happened. They're not kidding when they tell you to hold on to your purses and watch your bags. 

The next day we went to the Mekong Delta, where the Mekong River empties into the sea. Many of the villages and areas are accessed by rivers rather than roads. We took a boat tour around and got to hold a python, try fresh honey, drink coconut wine (not as good as it sounds) and fresh coconut water (tastes even better than it sounds). We saw how chewy coconut candy is made (probably the reason I don't fit in the tunnels) and how coconut milk is made. We ate fresh dragon fruit, cocoa plant, jackfruit and watched musicians perform on local instruments.

A huge jackfruit compared to Dat's head. 

We ate, we drank, we laughed and then it was onto Cambodia. We took another bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh and I fell in love with the country immediately. It has a sad history, but beautiful architecture. We took cyclos around the city when we first got there and were welcomed by rain shortly after leaving the hotel. 

In the morning we visited S-21, a prison from the Khmer Rouge days. Between 1975 and 1979, Cambodia was under the rule of the Khmer Rouge, who forced people to leave their homes, took all their belongings and put them to work in the fields and country sides. The people were treated terribly. They did not have healthcare for when they got sick, they were not fed properly, families were torn apart and thousands of innocent people were killed in executions centers around the country. S-21, a former school, was turned into one of these prisons. Innocent victims were tortured until they made false confessions, resulting in thousands of deaths. 

 Razor wire kept prisoners from escaping or committing suicide. 

This was only 40 years ago. I highly recommend reading the book "Surviving the Killing Fields," a truly moving, heart breaking story of a man who managed to escape into Thailand, but lost everything along the way. He was sent to prison three different times, and the torture he endured is unbelievable. There were two survivors at the prison, the only two still alive. They receive no help from the government and are there to sell their books and share their stories, every single day. 

 One of the "prison cells" of the survivors. 

The Killing Fields were where thousands of people were killed and buried in mass graves. Men, women and children alike were tortured, beaten and killed for no reason. It is now a memorial, with some of their bones preserved in a memorial tower, while others lay undisturbed in their graves. Not only did they suffer greatly, but they did not receive a proper burial. This means their souls were left to wander, lost and without a home. 

It was a heavy day, difficult to grasp how someone can be so full of hate. It was so recent, and yet so few people know about the suffering this small country endured in the 70's. And yet Cambodia is still moving forward, trying to keep up with everyone around it, rebuilding itself and picking up the pieces.