Hoi An

I think we will all say Hoi An is one of our favourite cities on the trip. It is a small city with old French influenced buildings built along a river- Vietnam's Banff or Jasper. There are lots of tourists here which means the city caters to them- a pleasure after some of the "roughing it" we've done in rural areas or large cities. We've had the best meals in Vietnam here and we've been loving the people. We've done a fair amount of shopping here- getting clothing tailored and finding souvenirs that are of a higher quality than we find at the huge markets. Dennis' sunglasses broke so he bought a pair of Raybans (imitation, no doubt), for less than 100,000 dong ($6 US). The picture of him in his new specs is attached.

Saigon- some images.

I've taken nearly 100 pictures of Saigon, but I'll send along only a few street scenes of traffic, market scenes, Dennis with the coffee we've grown to love and one great photo of him buying a newspaper from one of the papers sellers we meet in the morning as we drink our coffee.

Phu Quoc

Okay, I've left out nearly 4 weeks of photos, but I have a collection here of us in Phu Quoc. It is the largest island in Vietnam and the Vietnamese say it is their island paradise. It certainly was paradise for us. We stayed in a concrete hut with a thatch roof that withstood huge deluges of rain on a couple of nights we were there. The days were hot and sunny and the evening didn't cool until about 4 in the morning. We were happy we had electricity and fans. Our bungalow was at the cost of $25/night and it had a hot shower (most of the time) and a flush toilet. It was a lovely place- The Beach Club, it's called. The government is building an international airport on Phu Quoc that will enable huge planes to land (currently on twin props make it here) and you can see construction happening all over the place. The current accommodation levels on Long Beach (now 25 mostly small and medium resorts) will likely double and then triple. This paradise will become a bit more crowded within five years!

But, here's what we discovered:

More pictures! Siem Reap

Here are more photos from Siem Reap. One is of the line-up of people at the children's hospital that is sponsored 90 % by private donation. Taking your children here is absolutely free for Cambodian people, all people must are treated the same regardless of their wealth or poverty, and there are only two of over 2100 staff that are foreigners.

The hospital, one of 5 in Cambodia, trains Cambodian doctors and nurses and pays them a decent wage. Even the cleaning staff earn reasonable wages of $250 per month. That is in stark contrast to the teachers we met who had a starting wage of about $40 per month increasing to almost $60 per month after 20 years of teaching. It is impossible to be cheap in this country when $1 here and $1 there makes such a difference in the lives of the impoverished. We have been very humbled.

The other pictures are of temples and our tuk-tuk driver and things we saw. They are a few of hundreds, but they will suffice for the purposes of letting you all know some of the things we've seen.

Cambodia.

These pictures are a selection from Siem Reap. The notes I've added aren't about Siem Reap, exactly, since we're now in Phnom Penh. I will post more pictures and notes as I am able. The pictures are of the Apsara dancing (only seen in Siem Reap) and of the three of us in one of a dozen temples we visited in Siem Reap. Amazing temples. Amazing. Well worth a trip around the world to see!



I can't describe Cambodia adequately. Regular power outages occur in the capital city, phnom penh, yet shopping here would lead you to believe that the locals have lots of money to spend (in relative terms to the rural Cambodians). We spent five nights in Siem Reap touring the temples and staying in a lovely guest house there with a pool and a great restaurant. We spread our $1 US bills to plenty of children outside of each temple and in exchange we have cheap bracelets, scarves and dozens of empty water bottles. It's here that we have found ourselves most reflective about what it must really be like to be a citizen of the third world.

I, personally, have discovered stories to tell that will boost my fiction output for years to come. The people here are poor and generous in spirit or poor and greedy in spirit- looking to scam the barangs (foreigners). Fortunately we have met more of the former and few in the latter category and we are able (what a departure from my post in Thailand about being taken!) to let go the ill feelings of being taken advantage of; we've accepted that our skin color and our ability to travel affords us priviledges that will mean we pay more.

Okay...I'm still nervous every time we change locations. Tomorrow we travel by speed boat (3 hours) to Chau Doc. We don't know what we'll do with our luggage, we don't have any vietnamese dong (we tried to get some here and failed) and we are hopeful that the hotel we booked will still have rooms for us when we arrive. The worst part about arriving at a new place is negotiating the transport, you are swarmed by tuk-tuk drivers and you never know who you're going to get or how it will turn out. So far we've had pretty good luck, although yesterday the driver who found us at the bus station attempted to get us to another hotel first by asking if we'd been there before (the implication was that it was bad or out of business) and then asking if they knew we were coming (the implication that if we didn't have a reservation we'd be out of luck) and then, even after we arrived and I said repeatedly that we had a reservation, the driver told Dennis and then me that the hotel was full. "I know," I said. "And we are some of the people who are filling the rooms!" I paid him $3 which I negotiated from the start when he said he wanted $4 and then as we were walking away, he tried to get Dennis to give him another $1. And, he overcharged us anyway! We are still laughing about this, but we wonder how many tourists he's scammed along the way.