Bukhara, Uzbekistan: A City of Culture and Style on the Ancient Silk Road, or Time Traveling in the Desert

August 2, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

In mid-April 2026 we flew from Tashkent to Urgench on our way to Khiva. We were a month too early to take advantage of the newly operating “Jaloliddin Manguberdi,” a high-speed electric train that whisks passengers 1,020km (630 mi) across the country from Tashkent to Khiva in 7.5 hours with stops in Samarkand, Bukhara, Urgench, and Khiva.

We are not fans of bus trips, preferring to rent a car, and organize our own road trips so we can stop frequently, but the distances between the cities in Uzbekistan were just too great, and we opted for a group tour instead. Consequently, a couple of long bus journeys were part of the itinerary, such as the six-hour trip to Bukhara. While some folks used this time to catch up on their emails and texts, or read, I preferred to look out the window, level the horizon, and try to compose a few photos as the bus bounced along. Leveling the horizon was nearly impossible.

In this part of western Uzbekistan there is not a modern highway system. While the roads were decent, the “highways” were also local roads when they passed through towns, and the sights could be unusual: like the local butcher who had a freshly slaughtered cow’s head hanging in front of his shop; kids in their school uniforms walking to school in a culvert along the edge of a field as a cow grazed nearby; numerous new mosques under construction. In places, large ancient cemeteries lined the road. There were also many examples of Uzbekistan’s informal economy underway when we entered or exited a town, with folks selling the in-season fruits and vegetables, or honey, eggs, and homemade cheeses from their cars parked along the roadside.

At rest areas, tandoors cast forth the wonderful aroma of freshly baked samsas. Passing through the town of Hazorasp, a large silver sculpture of a winged horse flashed by too quickly to grab a photo. This was the Tulpar, the legendary ultra-swift horse in Uzbek mythology. The town’s name “Hazorasp,” literally translates to “a thousand horses.” It’s taken from a folkloric legend where a herd of winged horses descended to the Amu Darya river delta.

We reached the Hazorasp Tumani bridge over the Amu Darya River, a narrow, two-lane steel and concrete bridge that closes to all vehicle traffic when a train crosses the bridge on railroad tracks that straddle the yellow center line. This event caused such a long wait, that our driver and guide made us hot tea and coffee in the shade of the bus as we waited in the queue, with other folks who were leaving their vehicles to stretch their legs, killing time before the train passed.

Our route paralleled Uzbekistan’s border with Turkmenistan and at a viewpoint overlooking the Amu Darya River our guide pointed out how much the width of the river had shrunk since his childhood during Uzbekistan’s Soviet era, when the river’s water was overdrawn to irrigate cotton fields, and that during the communist years there were an incredible 17 security checkpoints between Khiva and Bukhara, that everyone was required to stop at. Farther on the scrubland of the Kyzylkum Desert extended in every direction to the horizon.

One unusual thing that we noticed at the many gas stations we passed along our 443km (275mi) route to Bukhara were the concrete walls between the filling islands. The stations didn’t provide gasoline. Instead, they sold highly compressed natural gas for cars and trucks that had been retrofitted to take advantage of Uzbekistan’s substantial natural gas reserves. Occasionally, explosions during the refueling process happens, and the concrete blast walls are to contain the damage. Drivers using these facilities are also required to wait in certain no danger zones, a safe distance away from their vehicles. The stations are all connected via pipelines and frequently there are problems with their pressurization which results in temporary station closures and long lines at other facilities. If you are renting a car there isn’t any need to worry, as all rental cars in Uzbekistan run on gasoline.

Wide multi-lane boulevards greeted us as we entered the outskirts of Bukhara, a city of about 305,000 people. The roads were lined with newer three to five story buildings with a vast array of shops and services on the ground level and apartments above. And there was a good amount of western style advertising with billboards and digital displays marketing athletic wear, soda and banking services. There had been a large 12km (7.5mi) defensive wall around this Silk Road trading hub for over two millenniums, only succumbing to destruction when the Soviet Red Army bombed and shelled the city in 1920 before they forced Bukhara into the Soviet Union. Prior to this, the Emirate of Bukhara existed as an absolute, conservative Islamic monarchy, while being a Russian Empire protectorate, a result of Russia attacking the city in the late 1860s to end its and Khiva’s notorious slave markets that sold around 100,000 Persian and Russian slaves every year to other Islamic khanates in Central Asia, India and the Middle East.

Just shy of the pedestrian only historic center of Bukhara, we disembarked from our bus, across from the Labi Hovuz, an ancient public square, dating from the 1620s, that’s centered with a large reservoir surrounded by a shallow set of stairs that lead down to the water’s edge. Surrounded by centuries old mulberry trees, it was a popular spot for merchants from the caravanserais, and students from the nearby madrassas to relax in the cool of the evening. The pool was also a vital source of drinking water for the surrounding homes for several hundred years. There used to be many of these hovuz, pools, across Bukhara’s mahallas, neighborhoods, but they were also the breeding grounds for waterborne diseases like guinea worm and cholera, and they were filled in for health reasons during the Soviet years.

Dragging our suitcases behind us, we passed the Magoki Attori Mosque, dating from the 9thcentury; it was built above the ruins of an early Buddhist monastery and later Zoroastrian temple. Interestingly, before the first synagogue was built in the city, Muslims and Jews shared the temple but worshipped at different times. It is the oldest mosque in Bukhara, having survived Genghis Khan’s sack of the town in 1220, and a millennium of Bukhara’s evolving growth, which has left its entrance 4.5m (15ft) below the surrounding city level.

We entered the inner part of the historic center of Bukhara through the Toqi Telpakfurushon, a long gate-like, multi-domed tim built in 1570, that was first used as the booksellers’ bazaar. Its narrow lane was lined with a variety of colorful stalls and workshops, and it is expected that tourists will bargain with the merchants for their best price. We passed through the Toqi Telpakfurushon many times during our two full days in Bukhara, but appreciated the beauty of the building most in the early morning hours as the city was awakening.

Just outside the far end of the bazaar was the Bozori Kord Hammam, dating from the 14th century. It is one of the oldest continually operating bathhouses in the world, where a restorative 30-minute massage can be enjoyed.

Our hotel, The Shahriston, was a few doors down. It’s a newer hotel built in 2018, that wonderfully retains the authentic character of the surrounding medina, and was conveniently, centrally located on Khakikat St, and within easy walking distance of Bukhara’s many historic sites. It also had a nice rooftop terrace for views over the medina’s Toqi trading domes and workshops.

After getting settled in our room, we headed to the Poi Kalon Complex, as the golden hour was approaching, and quickly decided that the rooftop restaurant at Kazan, directly opposite the plaza, would be the perfect spot for dinner and photos later. We made reservations.

The plaza is considered to be the religious center of Bukhara and is bordered with three buildings built between the 12th-16th centuries: Kalan Minaret (1127) replaced an earlier design that collapsed during construction; The Kalan Mosque was completed in 1514, ( it replaced an older 12th century mosque destroyed by Genghis Khan’s army in 1220); and the Miri Arab Madrassah, which dates from 1535.

The square was lively with vacationers, tour groups, and vendors offering balloons, photo services, and souvenirs. The architectural brickwork design of the 48m (157ft) tall Kalan Minaret is amazing. The minaret so impressed Genghis Khan that he ordered his troops to spare it as they totally destroyed the rest of the city when the Mongol army sacked Bukhara. It was also known as the “Tower of Death,” where criminals, political rivals, and unfaithful spouses were marched up the 105-step spiral staircase to the open rotunda at the summit and cast to their deaths. Though there is the legend of a Khan’s wife who on the eve of her execution was granted her last wish – to wear all her dresses. “People stood breathless as the woman jumped, but then a miracle happened as her wide skirts billowed out like a parachute and she landed softly.”

Purposefully designed to rival the size of Bibi-Khanym Mosque in Samarkand, the monumental entrance arch of the Kalan Mosque opens to a grand courtyard that can hold over 10,000 worshippers and is surrounded by 208 pillar-domed galleries. At far end of the courtyard is an octagonal brick pavilion that is the tomb of a revered imam, just before the iwan, an open front vaulted room, where the minbar stood. Sadly, in 1924 the Soviet regime in Uzbekistan closed the mosque to religious use and repurposed it as a warehouse. During those years the mosque fell into neglect and wasn’t partially restored and used as a mosque again until 1991 when Uzbekistan declared its independence.

Directly across from the entrance to the Kalan Mosque were the blue domes and façade of the Miri Arab Madrassah covered with fascinating intricate tile mosaics featuring geometric, vegetative, and calligraphic patterns. Some historians suggest that the madrassa was built to commemorate Bukhara’s decisive victory over Persian troops at the Battle of Gijduvan in 1512, and that the ornate craftsmanship throughout the building was financed by khanate when it sold 3000 captured Iranians into slavery. The school was closed for 25 years after the Soviet Union took control of Uzbekistan, but was reopened in 1945 when the USSR government granted permission to the Miri Arab Madrassah to be the one official Islamic educational institution for Muslims within Soviet Union, hosting students from different regions across Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Russia. Today about 56 new students a year are accepted into a 4-year course of study to become an imam.

Dinner later on the rooftop terrace at Kazan was a charming and unhurried experience and we lingered, watching the color of the golden hour across the plaza transition to twilight, as the size of the crowd on the plaza ebbed and flowed. The food was excellent. Unfortunately, as a functioning school, the restaurant does not permit tourists inside, but occasionally folks are allowed to step into the entrance portal and view the entry hall. However, during our research we found this interesting video tour of the Miri Arab Madrassah’s interior.

The next morning our group headed to Samonids Park, a large lush green park with a Ferris wheel and other amusement park rides, as well as shaded walkways through a nicely manicured landscape, on the outskirts of the historic area. We followed our guide down one of these lanes to the Mausoleum of Ismail Samani, the founder of Bukhara’s Samanids dynasty, (875-999).

The mausoleum is a highly decorated beautiful small structure, with all of its exterior and interior walls covered with intricate symbols and geometric relief patterns that resemble the design of woven textiles and basketry. It’s an effect that gives the building a highly textural feeling. The mausoleum is considered a masterpiece of early Islamic architecture. Through fate or luck, it is the oldest surviving Islamic structure in Bukhara, having been entombed in silt from repeated river flooding or, as legend believes purposely buried in sand to prevent Genghis Khan’s Mongol army from destroying it in 1220. Amazingly it stayed buried until Soviet Union archeologists rediscovered it in the late-1920s and found it in surprisingly good condition, due to the fact that it was entirely constructed with kiln-baked bricks, that resisted the erosive effect of repeated flooding.

Our tour continued through the park to the adjacent Markaziy bazaar, Bukhara’s central market. It’s a substantial complex with several halls and numerous vendors displaying their foodstuffs and offering samples. It is best described as a gauntlet of temptations.

Continuing on we came to the Bolo Hauz Mosque, built in 1712 across from the Ark of Bukhara. It was the official mosque of the emirs of Bukhara until the Soviet Union took over Uzbekistan. With the addition of an ornate 20-pillar wooden portico called an iwan in 1917, the mosque has a unique non-traditional façade. We had seen iwans earlier during our stops at the royal palaces in Khiva, where they were in the private courtyards, not on the front of a mosque. But it’s the perfect addition to accommodate worshippers in the hot summers.

The Ark of Bukhara was a heavily fortified citadel and palace within the extensive defensive wall that ringed the city. It enclosed the royal courts, living quarters and throne rooms of the Emirs. Along with housing for around 3,000 people, it also had mosques, a mint, a treasury, and a prison.

The unique shape of its curved towers and ramparts has been meticulously preserved and today the inner rooms of the palace are a museum detailing the city’s history. The view from the defensive wall back towards the Poyi Kalon Complex was also striking.

Twenty minutes from central Bukhara our group visited The Memorial Complex of Bakhouddin Naqshbandi, the 14th century Islamic theologian who founded the widely followed Naqshbandi Sufi order and was renown as the spiritual mentor to Amir Temur (Tamerlane), the ruler responsible for Uzbekistan’s Timurid Renaissance.

Over the centuries his once simple garden tomb at his home grew into a vast site that includes the dynastic necropolises of the Sheibanid, Ashtarkhanid, and Mangit rulers. Later additions included a mosque, minaret and madrassa. After Uzbekistan declared its independence, with the help of international donors, the country totally renovated the site which had fallen into disrepair during the Soviet era, in time for the 675th anniversary of Naqshband’s birth in 1993.

This was one of the first major opportunities the new Uzbekistan government took to reclaim its Islamic and Central Asian heritage after living under 70 years of communist atheism. Newer additions include a Sufi museum and theological research center, where translations of ancient Islamic texts are undertaken. Through the centuries it has become a revered pilgrimage site for folks from all across Central Asia and beyond.

Everyone was so friendly and eager to take photographs of us, and have their photos taken too, it was a very heart-warming experience. Our guide shared that for many people living in remote villages this was their first trip away from home. He spoke of a Central Asia folk belief which claims that three trips to the shrine equal a Hajj to Mecca, which underscored how dangerous the trek across the desert to Arabia was.

Afterwards our group headed to “the palace that resembles the stars and the moon,” Sitora-i-Moh-i Khosa, the summer palace of Sayyid Mir Muhammad Alim Khan, the last emir of Bukhara. The palace is poetically named for the emir’s wife, whose beauty he often compared to the heavens. Built between 1912 and 1918 by Bukhara craftsmen, the emir had sent to St. Petersburg to study western techniques.

While the exterior facades are traditional, the interior of the palace is a visually and texturally rich artistic expression that wonderfully overwhelms the senses. We mused that the flamboyant Las Vegas entertainer Liberace would have been right at home in its over-the-top décor. That speculation surely dates us as kids of the 60s.

The day we toured the site there were numerous crafts vendors, with fairly priced merchandise, set up along the garden paths and peacocks roaming freely about the park-like settings.

The emir only had a few years to enjoy his creation before fleeing the country after the Bukharan emirate fell to the Soviet Red Army in 1920. Fortunately, the communists appreciated the artistic merit of the site and preserved it as a decorative arts museum.

That evening under a clear night sky we enjoyed live piano music on the plaza around the corner from the hotel, at The Terrace Bukhara ECO Café.

On our last full day in Bukhara we had the morning for ourselves to wander around and explore. There are so many ancient madrassas in Bukhara, many of the smaller ones throughout the town have been or are in the process of being renovated into boutique hotels. And there are others in a state of semi-ruin, that have been stabilized enough to be safe for vendors to set up craft stalls in but remain architecturally interesting. The Abdulaziz Khan Madrassa (1652), located directly across from the Ulugbek Madrassa (1417), was an amazing example of this. Its monumental pishtaq, entrance way, had one of the best examples of a muqarnas, the intricate honeycomb-shape vaulted ceiling, found on madrassas in Bukhara.

Even though the domed ceilings above the vendors in its main hall were not restored, they were also stunning. In the courtyard large sections of tilework were noticeably missing.

Continuing on we walked through the medina to the Chor Minor Monument, a unique structure with four blue capped towers, which represent the cardinal points of a compass and the Samanids, Shaybanids, Karakhanids, and Manghits dynasties. Atop one tower is a sculpture of nesting storks.

They used to be a common sight nesting on the domes all across the city. Their presence was enjoyed, with folks believing the birds brought good luck, peace, and domestic happiness. Across from the monument was an antique shop that features all sorts of Soviet memorabilia.

Afterwards we headed to the Labi Hovuz plaza where we were scheduled to reunite with our group at the bronze statue of Khodja Nasreddin, a legendary folkloric figure who used his “sharp wit, humor, and feigned ignorance to outsmart the greedy, hypocritical, and powerful,” in front of the Nodir Devonbegi Madrassa for a dance and fashion show.

Nodir Devonbegi was originally built in 1622 to be a caravanserai but was repurposed when during its opening ceremony the khan inadvertently praised it as a madrassa. So be it. The front of the building is unusually adorned with an elaborate tile mosaic featuring a pair of stylized birds, mythical Simurghs, clutching deer and flying toward a human-faced radiant sun. This is very unusual for Islamic art as it normally prohibited using depictions of animals or human figures and reflects a short-lived regional relaxation of the rules in the 17thcentury.

Inside we were enthralled by a lively performance of traditional Uzbekistan dances in between the wardrobe changes of a surprisingly interesting fashion show by the internationally acclaimed designer Umida Kabilova, who gives a bold modern interpretation to ikat, a dyed patterned silk fabric for which Bukhara is known.

Afterwards we made a quick stop at the Khammam Sarrofon, a hammam built in the early 1530s. It is a cavernous space that had a heated floor, and was used almost continuously for over four centuries until the Soviets damaged it during their 1920 attack on the city. It was restored and served the community until the 1970s.

Down from the hammam was the studio and gallery of the Ustoz Shogird Miniature Workshop, founded by Davlat Toshev, an internationally recognized artist who is known for his work on restoring ancient manuscripts. He was clandestinely taught the art of Persian miniature painting by his father during the Soviet era, when Uzbekistan’s cultural identity was being suppressed. In a desire to keep this ancient tradition alive he started mentoring students, many with learning handicaps, in the 1990s, eventually opening a school in 2018. It’s a beautiful space, and the demonstration of how to color silk paper by two of his students, with a member of our group participating, was charming. The artwork on the walls was beautiful. We couldn’t resist purchasing one for a souvenir. It was a really great experience that we highly recommend if you like art.

Toshev enjoys sharing Uzbekistan’s culture, so much so that his family offers a culinary workshop on how to make plov, the country’s national rice pilaf dish, in their home. It was our group’s last dinner in Bukhara, a festive occasion, and a great way to end our time in this intriguing ancient city on Silk Road.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Khiva, Uzbekistan: An Intriguing Ancient Walled City on the Silk Road

July 24, 2026July 25, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Lush farmlands surrounded Akhchakol Lake. We were traveling through the Khorezm Oasis, in the Amu Darya River Delta, the ancient breadbasket of Uzbekistan, whose headwaters start in the Pamir Mountains on Uzbekistan’s border with Afghanistan and Tajikistan, then flow north-westwards towards the once massive Aral Sea. Since Uzbekistan’s Soviet Era, water from the 2,400km (1,500 mi) estuary has been relentlessly siphoned off to irrigate extensive cotton farms and food crops. Not a drop of river water reaches the Aral Sea anymore, its desertification one of the largest manmade ecological disasters of the 20thcentury.

On the north side of the road was the Kyzylkum Desert, a monochromatic vastness that seamlessly blended to the overcast sky as it spread towards Kazakhstan. Our destination was Toprak-Kala, an ancient citadel and palace built by King Artav in the 2nd century CE to defend the Khorezm Oasis and Silk Road caravans from raids by nomadic tribesmen. The palace also served as the residence for the kings of the Khorezmian Empire.

It is part of the “Golden Ring of Ancient Khorezm,” the Elliq-Qala, a cluster of over 20 excavated fortress ruins, built between the 4th century BCE and the 6th century CE. From a distance the earthen colored ruins merged into the profile of the Sultan Uvays Dag, a low, rugged mountain ridge that runs through the Kyzylkum Desert near the border with Kazakhstan.

A well-worn dirt path coursed up an ancient man-made hill to what was once a huge 102 room palace. Atop its apex we surveyed how vast the 500 x350 m (1640 x 1148ft) site encompassing 120 hectares (300 acres) was. A massive 11m (36ft) tall defensive wall, covered with alabaster whitewash, encircled the area that is believed to have housed 2,500 people in organized residential blocks.

Soviet archeological research beginning in the 1930s unearthed coins, clay sculptures, and fragments of painted murals. These suggest the influence of Greek and Eastern art traditions, reflecting its position along ancient trade routes. Excavation also unearthed archaic ledgers recorded on clay tablets, leather and wood, along with ancient artifacts associated with Zoroastrian religion

Abandoned since the 7th century, the incalculable number of the millions of adobe bricks used to construct Toprak-Kala have slowly eroded away through the centuries. Adobe construction is still a widely used building technique in the region as evident by the brick factory we passed, and the new traditional style attached homes and free-standing western style homes going up along our route through Urgench to Khiva. Many of the homes had large sunken vegetable gardens, fruit trees or grape vines in the front yard between the street and house. This is a traditional gardening method that takes advantage of the region’s high ground water, and creates a cooler microclimate sheltered from the desert’s dry winds.

Outside of Urgench we stopped at Ulli Hovli, meaning “big yard,” a restored 1600s era caravanserai. It was built by the Khan of Khiva to protect local Uzbeks and Turkmens who had been given land in exchange for guarding the Silk Road. The original complex had over 100 rooms and functioned as a mahalla, neighborhood community, housing both Uzbeks and Turkmens, who practiced a blend of agriculture and traditional crafts. Today the caravanserai is an ethnographic museum/restaurant that caters to tour groups. Of course we rode a camel and tried on some traditional Uzbek outfits. The weight of a Turkmen coat was particularly impressive and would be a toasty winter coat in any cold climate.

Reaching Khiva, we drove through the South Gate of The Dishan-Kala (Outer Fortress), built in 1842 by order of Allahquli Khan to protect the city from marauding tribal attacks. The 6.25km, (4mi) long, 8m (26ft) tall and 6m (20ft) wide adobe brick defensive wall has 10 gates into the city. Allegedly it took an estimated 200,000 free men and slaves 30 days to construct the encircling wall around what was historically the city’s outer residential and commercial areas. Only a short portion of the wall on either side of the South Gate survives; most of it was taken down during the Soviet era, and used as raw material for brick production.

A short distance up the road was the Hotel Asia Khiva, our hotel for two nights. Located across from the South Gate and a narrow water channel, the last remnants of a defensive moat that once encircled the inner walled city of Khiva, Itchan Kala, the hotel was very convenient to the old town’s historic center.

Khiva is old, over 2,500 years old, and one of the longest continuously inhabited cities in Central Asia, a fact that along with its outstanding Islamic architecture which spans many centuries, led UNESCO to declare Khiva a World Heritage Site in 1990, the first site in Central Asia to be so recognized.

Khiva is believed by legend to be founded by Shem, the son of biblical Noah, after he dug a well known as Kheyvak. As the story is told, Shem, thirsty and dusty, was wandering in the desert for years after the great flood, and one night in a dream, he saw 300 burning torches. Taking this a prophecy, he founded the oasis city within the positions of the torches he dreamt, and dug the Kheyvak Well at their center. “Oh, what sweet water!” a delightful phrase exclaimed by weary desert travelers upon quenching their thirst from the well, over time evolved into the name Khiva.

Surprisingly, the first known westerner to reach Khiva was not Marco Polo, who by-passed Khiva, traveling from Persia through Urgench as he followed the Silk Road through Uzbekistan in 1271. Anthony Jenkinson (1529–1611) was an English explorer and diplomat who reached Khiva in 1558 on a trade mission for the English Crown, Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and the Muscovy Company, which had a sole monopoly on trade between England and Russia. It was an off shoot of the “Mystery and Company of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places Unknown.” You have to love the name of a company that so thoroughly embraces the age of exploration.

The overlapping histories of Central Asia are complex, and that of Uzbekistan in particular, which has roots with Eastern Iranian Nomads in the 1st Millennium BCE, followed by Persians and Greco-Macedonians in 6th–4th Century BCE. Then during the 2nd Century BCE – 4th Century CE the Indo-European nomadic tribes like the Yuezhi, Xionites, and White Huns followed the Silk Road into the region, heavily influencing the trade and culture. Arab armies in the 8th Century CE brought Islam to the region, linking Central Asia to the broader Islamic Golden Age and transforming local arts, sciences, and urban life, culminating during the Timurid Renaissance from 1370–1507. Later Turkic-Mongol tribes migrated into the region between the 11th–16th Century CE, progressively replacing Eastern Iranian as the dominant spoken language. This demographic mix solidified during the Mongol Empire in the13th century and peaked with the early 16th-century arrival of nomadic Uzbek tribes led by Muhammad Shaybani Khan, a great-grandson of Genghis Khan.

In 1558 Jenkinson would have entered Itchan Kala, the inner city, through a defensive wall significantly less substantial than the massive one still standing today, that was constructed during 17th and 18th centuries. He noted in his journal the tombs built atop the lower slope of the fortification to avoid the oasis’ high-water table, a tradition since the 12th Century. He would have explored a medina containing only The Juma Mosque, (10th Century), Kunya Ark Citadel (12th Century), and the Sayid Allauddin Mausoleum (Early 14th Century). He witnessed Khiva’s notorious slave market that sold 50,000 Persian and Russian slaves to other Islamic khanates in Central Asia, India and the Middle East.

Though his trade mission failed to establish ties with merchants along the Silk Road due to increasing nomadic raids at the time, he was a meticulous note taker and amateur cartographer, and provided the first western accounts and maps of central Asia. Jenkinson’s ability to safely navigate deep into Central Asia and return with jewels and silks immensely impressed Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible and probably pricked Imperial Russia’s future interest in the region.

The second Westerner on record to reach the Khanate was Prince Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky in 1717. Sent by Peter the Great to discover a route into India, Bekovich-Cherkassky was initially welcomed by the Khan of Khiva but ultimately betrayed and executed, with his head placed on a spike at the city gate; his comrades were massacred.

The second known Englishman to reach Khiva was the British officer Captain James Abbott who in 1839 traveled from the city of Herat, Afghanistan to Khiva disguised as an Afghan. He was on a covert diplomatic mission to see the Khan of Khiva and negotiate the release of Russian slaves, thereby stripping an advancing Russian army of their primary pretext for invading the region. Of the slaves he saw, Abbott wrote in his journal, “The men are chained together by the throats at night. So that rest is scarcely possible, whilst the contact of the frozen iron with their skin must be a torture. Alas! He who enters Khiva abandons all hope, as surely as he who enters hell. His prison house is girdled with tracks of desert, whose sole inhabitants are the sellers of human flesh.”

This was the era of the Great Game when Britain feared the Russian Empire might expand into India. The Russian army was defeated before ever reaching Khiva, when nearly half of the military’s 5,000 expeditionary force succumbed to illness and died from exposure and 10,000 of its transport camels froze to death in one of the harshest winters in Central Asian history. Thirty-four years later, in 1873, following a successful Russian military campaign, the Khanate was stripped of its independence and formally established as a Russian protectorate, and Khiva’s slave trade ended.

By Abott’s arrival in Khiva, the city was still at the height of its glory and would have looked substantially different from Jenkinson’s 1558 visit, with a building boom for nearly three centuries that reflected its importance as the capital of the Khanate. The city saw the addition of the Arab Muhammad Khan Madrasah (1616), commissioned to celebrate Khiva becoming the capital of the Khanate; Shirgazi Khan Madrasah (1718); Muhammad Amin Inak Madrasah; Darwazakhana of Shah Niyaz Khan (18th Century) structural gate enhancements in Ichan-Kala; Kutluq Murad Inaq Madrasa (1804); Allakouli Khan Madrasah (1834); and the Allakouli Khan Caravanserai & Tim (1830), a prominent trading hub and domed bazaar gallery tailored for Silk Road merchants.

Construction of the green-and-blue tiled Kalta Minor, designed to be the tallest minaret in Central Asia at a height of 110m (360ft,) didn’t start until 1851, and ended abruptly with its final height at 29m (95ft) when its patron the ruler Muhammad Amin Khan was killed in an 1855 battle. One can only imagine how magnificent it would have been.

Having received a quick overview of the medina from our tour guide, the rest of the afternoon was left open for us to wander about the medina on our own. For us these are the best hours of a group tour, when we are free to explore the nooks and crannies of a place, allowing ourselves to linger at a weaver’s workspace, where generations of family were working together on a loom, spinning and carding, while the youngest was engrossed with her cell phone.

Or the woodcarvers’ workshop, where master craftsmen were still creating wooden panels with intricate O’ymakorlik designs, in a studio space filled with raw planks of walnut, juniper, elm and mulberry, their future canvases.

Away from the center of the old town, we followed the interior perimeter of Khiva’s huge defensive wall past old courtyard homes called havli. Renovated, many had placards above their doors advertising their availability as guesthouses. Around 400 families still live in Itchan Kala, though there are no longer any traditional food markets in the old town, so folks have to shop outside its walls.

Reaching the North Gate, Bakcha Darvoza, we climbed a narrow, ladder-like, steep set of stairs that opened on to the ramparts as if we were emerging from a rabbit hole, to a wall-walk that was surprisingly about 4m (12ft) wide. Unfortunately, the wall-walk did not continue completely around Itchan Kala and ended before reaching Kuhna Ark fortress. The southern half of the ramparts can be accessed at the South Gate. However, our guide had advised us against walking that section of the wall due to its condition, but we did notice folks taking the risk.

That evening our group enjoyed drinks and the sunset atop the rooftop bar Ayvon and later at dinner we were thoroughly entertained with music and a dance performance at Yasavul Boshi. Funnily, one of the musicians was a doppelgänger of Kramer, of Seinfeld sitcom fame, with expressions to match. While the entertainment was quite nice, the food at these large restaurants that cater to group tours tends, in our opinion, to be mediocre.

The next morning our group walked along the base of the towering sand dune-like defensive wall and towers. The immense structure was designed to project power as an impenetrable fortress to anyone approaching. Construction of this newer fortification with sloping walls, 19m (62ft) at the base and almost 9m (30ft) high, took a massive conscripted, forced labor force of local citizens. Each person was required to work for 12 days a year on the project, which three years to build.

After Khiva’s defeat by the Russians the wall lost its military importance and slowly fell into disrepair, and parts of it were demolished until the Soviet Union realized the importance of this cultural landmark and undertook its renovation in the 1930s.

Upon reaching the West Gate, or Ota Darvaza, which translates to “Father Gate,” a bronze statue depicting members of a Spice Road camel caravan greeted us before we entered the city. This was Khiva’s most substantial gate, with a customs office where traders would have paid a tax after their cargo was inspected, before being allowed into the city.

Entering, we were quickly in the heart of the Medina near Mohammed Amin Khan Madrassah and the spectacular half-finished blue tiled minaret, Kalta Minor. Nearby, puppeteers from the State Puppet Theatre of Khorezm, were performing in the street to drum up ticket sales for later shows. Puppetry in Khiva is deeply rooted in the history of the region, with roots tracing back to Zoroastrian religious rituals, where they were used to ward off evil spirits.

On the plaza in front of the entrance to the Kuhna Ark, there were traditionally costumed dancers which added a nice ambiance to the square, and an activity that often leads to Khiva being called an “open air museum.”

There was also a sculpture of two boys eating melons. Across the medina there were many sculptures illustrating Uzbek folklore and this one drew attention to the importance of the fruit in Uzbek cultural with two tales. The first: “Local legend holds that the sweet melon originally grew only in paradise (the Garden of Eden) before being brought to earth as a divine gift to humankind. And Central Asian proverbs famously praise the fruit, claiming that “melon makes cheeks ruddy, teeth stronger, hair silkier, and eyes younger!” While a second one called “The Golden Watermelon Tale,” tells the story of a poor Uzbek peasant who heals an injured stork. In gratitude, the stork later drops magical watermelon seeds that grow giant fruits filled with gold coins. A greedy, wealthy neighbor tries to copy the deed by intentionally breaking a stork’s leg to “rescue” it, but his magic seeds produce watermelons filled with stinging wasps, symbolizing that true generosity cannot be faked for profit.”

The lanes of the medina were lined with colorful merchant’s stalls as we headed to the Toshhovli Palace, a large early 19th-century palace, built by for Allakuli Khan to replace the Kuhna Ark. It had over one hundred rooms, a large harem for his 40 concubines, and a richly adorned ayvan, a grand columned, high-roofed, open-fronted porch with a geometric pattern wood ceiling. We questioned his choice of location, as the palace is directly across from the Olloqulixon Karvonsaroyi, which typically held 80 smelly camels, waiting for their cargo to be off-loaded, in its courtyard at any one time.

Believe it or not there are around 54 historic madrassas still standing in Khiva, many of which have been nicely renovated into hotels. They all share the traditional Khorezm style of Central Asian Islamic architecture that features corner towers and prominent entry portals that open to central courtyards. To say that they all look the same might be an over generalization, but some were definitely more interesting than others. And the Mohammed Amin Khan Madrassah, now the Orient Star Hotel, was a fine example, with intricate plaster carving called ganchkorlik. The craftsmanship was extraordinary.

Behind the madrassa was Khiva’s central plaza, Ichan Kala, a refreshingly relaxing park with planted trees and flowers, it was a nice place to linger.

Though the medina is mostly a monochromatic sand color, offset by blue tiled facades, it is still a strikingly beautiful and fascinating. But with everything being similarly colored it is difficult to remember a landmark and we got twisted around several times as we tried to find our way back to the South Gate and our hotel.

The next morning we were up at twilight and walked along fortress wall to the East Gate, the “Hero Warrior’s Gate”, Palvan-Darvoza, as the sun was rising, casting a warm glow onto the ancient adobe. It’s named for Pahlavan Mahmud, a celebrated 14th-century poet, philosopher, and a famous Khiva wrestler with legendary strength. He was also a devout Muslim and was considered by many to be Khiva’s patron saint. His mausoleum is near the gate. Palvan-Darvoza was also known as the Executioner’s Gate, as there was a prison near it, where escaped slaves from the slave market and rebels were executed.

As we entered the East Gate to wander through the medina one last time, it was difficult to believe that beyond its walls the 21st century still existed.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

P.S. The newly operating “Jaloliddin Manguberdi,” a high-speed electric train that will whisk passengers 1,020km (630 mi) across the country from Tashkent to Khiva in 7.5 hours with stops in Samarkand, Bukhara, and Urgench.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan: Historic and Cosmopolitan or Surprisingly Fascinating & Wonderful

July 13, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Uzbekistan is having its moment after years of slowly simmering interest; it’s exploding into a full-fledged tourist boom. It is exponentially growing from 1 million tourists in 2016 to almost 13 million in 2026, and with a modern infrastructure that includes the newly operating “Jaloliddin Manguberdi,” a high-speed electric train that will whisk passengers 1,020km (630 mi) across the country from Tashkent to Khiva in 7.5 hours with stops in Samarkand, Bukhara, and Urgench. The country is quickly becoming Central Asia’s most intriguing Silk Road destination, and with the recent opening of the state-of-the-art Islamic Civilization Center, Islom Sivilizatsiyasi Markazi, in March 2026, Tashkent will be of particular interest for tourists from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

The ATMs at TAS, Tashkent’s International Airport, were conveniently located next to the baggage carousels in the arrivals area, as were signs for YandexGo, the most popular ride-share service in Uzbekistan. Walking away from the ATM with about 2,400,000 Uzbekistani Som, roughly $200.00 at the rate of 1 USD = 12,000 UZS, we felt like newly minted millionaires. We were not able to link a credit card to the YandexGo App, but soon realized a twenty-minute ride across Tashkent to the Hotel Uzbekistanwould only cost 21,000 UZS. Outside the terminal we navigated our way through a gauntlet of taxi hawkers to a sea of ubiquitous white cars. In and of itself, white cars are not unusual in any region where you can cook an egg on a rock during the summer, but the fact that they were mostly American branded Chevrolets, not the ever so popular Japanese cars, was very remarkable. They are the result of a thirty-year-old joint venture between GMC and the Uzbekistan government-owned UzAuto Motors, and steep import tariffs on foreign cars, which has led to Chevrolet producing 95% of the country’s new vehicles.

The Hotel Uzbekistan opened in 1974 when Uzbekistan was still part of the Soviet Union, eight years after a April 1966 earthquake destroyed many of Tashkent’s centuries old historic neighborhoods where the one and two-story homes were made of adobe brick. The catastrophic event left 300,000 people homeless.

The Soviet Union used this crisis to transform Tashkent into a “model Soviet city” with wonderfully wide boulevards, open plazas, and earthquake-resistant buildings, deploying architects and laborers from across its republics to build a “showcase of socialist modernism and multicultural “people’s friendship.” The revival of the city mushroomed after Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991, and continues with a building boom that peppers the city’s modern skyline with construction cranes.

The style of the city’s new buildings constructed right after the earthquake is often referred to as Soviet Brutalist, an architectural style which features the love of concrete, and functionality over grace. And Hotel Uzbekistan was designed to be the centerpiece of the Soviet Union’s vision. For many years the building, with an open book profile designed to resist seismic activity, stood as the country’s tallest building, and was the premier hotel for international delegations to stay and hold conferences.

At the time its seventeenth-floor restaurant overlooked Lenin Square until the colossal statue of the Soviet leader was sent to the scrap yard in 1991 when Uzbekistan regained its independence, and replaced him with an equestrian statue of Amir Temur, an enlightened ruler who united the independent kingdoms of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Urgench during Uzbekistan’s 14th century renaissance, as the country seeks to reclaim its cultural history.

A thumping bass reverberated through the hotel, preventing any attempt of catching an early shuteye. Dressed again, we never intended to be Uzbeki party crashers, but we got caught up in the spirit of a couple’s anniversary celebration and enjoyed watching the band perform for a while. The hotel would be our base for three days to explore Tashkent before joining a group tour to Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand.

By 1970 Uzbekistan’s capital city was mostly rebuilt, and construction of Central Asia’s first subway system, a series of beautiful stations that were also designed to be utilized as bomb shelters in case of emergencies during the Cold War era, was underway. The next morning, we set out after an early breakfast and worked our way against the morning crush of young professional ascending from the depths of the Amir Temur Hiyoboni station, just a block from our hotel.

The underground tunnel leading to the turnstile offered perfect acoustics for a young Uzbeki busker who played for the commuters. The Tashkent Metro now has four lines, and 50 stations along 70km (44 mi) of track. Rides at the time of our visit cost 1,700 Uzbeki Som (about $0.14 USD), and were easily payable at the turnstile with a tap of our credit cards.

We spent a good part of the morning riding between the stations that encircle central Tashkent, hopping on and off to photograph some stations that were noteworthy for their striking architectural beauty, that often resembled a formal waiting chamber in an elegant palace, before transferring to another line.

We eventually worked our way to the Kosmonavtlar Station, where the walls are beautifully embellished with tile portraits of early Soviet astronauts. Surprisingly, because of their dual use as bomb shelters, photography in the subway stations was banned until 2018.

We also visited the plaza above the station where we viewed another interesting monument to the Soviet Union’s space program, before we made a short excursion to Tashkent’s Museum of Applied Arts, only a few blocks away. Founded in 1937, the museum is housed in the former mansion of an Emperial Russia diplomat and has a rotating collection of over 4,000 Uzbeki decorative handicrafts, with examples of traditional wood carving called O‘ymakorlik, ceramics, embroidery, gold weaving, jewelry and musical instruments. In the museum’s traditional courtyard was a very atmospheric café where we enjoyed coffee.

Before descending back underground we detoured slightly to see a modern interpretation of Islamic architecture represented in the 1970s era facade of the Central Exhibition Hall of the Academy of Arts.

The 1930s built Alisher Navoi Grand Theatre, survivor of the earthquake, features a blend of classic European architecture with traditional Uzbek ornamental styles. Along our route we walked through many of the parks and green spaces that give the city a wonderful ambiance.

Back on the subway we continued on to the Chorsu Station, only a short walk away from the Chorsu Bazaar, Tashkent’s historical central market, whose history goes back 2000 plus years to the founding of Tashkent. The main hall’s futuristic dome, where meats, poultry and dairy products are for sale, dates from the reconstruction of the city after the 1966 earthquake.

After wandering through the rows of clothing merchants, where nothing has a price tag so bargaining is expected, we were enticed by the aroma of slowly grilling kebabs over an outside fire at Especialidad Pinchos. A smile goes a long way when you don’t understand the language and we were quickly seated outside and served a delightful lemon tea. The restaurant was the perfect place to relax and people watch. It felt as if we were in the audience of an old TV sit-com where good-natured chiding was going on, from the quips flying across the open-air restaurant. We mentally supplied the dialog: “Yasmina we are so busy, can you clear the tables faster?” “Now Zarina you might be the golden one and Bobur’s squeeze, but don’t you go telling me how to take care of my side of the cafe!” And so it went, their familiar back and forth continuing the whole time we were there as the women busily tended the day’s lunch crowd.

Wheel barrel vendors selling round, flat disk-shaped non coursed through the shoppers. These loaves of dough are traditionally decorated with a stamping tool called a chekich, before baking. We’ve read many rave reviews about Uzbekistan’s non but have found it’s best enjoyed when fresh out of an oven, as in our opinion it becomes a disappointing “eh” later. It’s definitely worth spending the time to find the central bakers in the market to watch them form the dough and then lean into the tall brick ovens to throw it against the side walls to bake. The result is heavenly.

Stairs rose from the market’s lower level to the gastronomical equivalent of Aladdin’s “Cave of Wonders.” Literally it was like a culinary temple, with vendors freely offering samples, it had us wishing we had rented an apartment with a full kitchen. The quality, variety, and abundance of the foodstuffs were amazing. It was difficult for the cooks in us to resist the temptation to buy a cart full of groceries, but we did and only purchased some dried fruit and pomegranate juice for a snack later.

After leaving the market we crossed the street into the Hastimom Mahalla neighborhood, in the Almazar District and walked along Zarkaynar Street. The lane was recently renovated as part of an effort to revitalize the maze of narrow lanes in the ancient quarter that lies between the Chorsu market and the magnificent new Islamic Civilization Center.

The street was pristine with new historical murals and buildings shining with their new facelifts, but it lost much of its authenticity in the process and felt a little too touristy. Young boys were enthusiastically kicking a soccer ball back and forth down the lane until a neighborhood buvi, grandmother, put a stop to their raucous play.

Fortunately, as we walked deeper in the mahalla, smaller alleys led to traditional homes still made of adobe brick that share a communal courtyard called a sheriklikli hovli. It was down one off these lanes that we hoped to find Tandyr Samsa V Dome, a small family run bakery in a hovli that is acclaimed for their samsas, a savory pastry filled with meat, chicken or potato, and then baked in a traditional wood-fired clay oven called a tandir. We had a very difficult time finding it. In this labyrinth our mapping app got us close, but eventually we just had to try different lanes until we discovered the right one. Unfortunately, by the time we found the right hovli, baking for the day was over and the family encouraged us to come back earlier on another day. It was very late in the afternoon when we stopped at a small nondescript restaurant, with a plastic pullback sheet as a door, and one low table and cushions on the floor. The owner was delighted we stopped and shared his experience about working the United States for a short time, while serving his many neighborhood customers who came in to get their takeaway orders. Our meal was very simple, just kebabs and non, but it was delicious and memorable.

Afterwards we headed to the Hazrati Imam Complex, an ensemble of buildings around a large plaza that include the16th century madrasah Barak-Khan, that is now a crafts center, the 19th century Muyi Muborak Madrasah, which now exhibits a collection of ancient Islamic manuscripts, and the Hazrati Imam Mosque completed in 2007.

They were built around the Mausoleum of Hazrat Imam, which had become a pilgrimage site. Hazrati was a brilliant 10th-century polyglot and local locksmith who went by the name of Kaffal al-Shashi before pursuing his religious studies in Baghdad, Mecca and Medina. Upon returning to Tashkent he became one of the town’s first local imams and received the title Hazrat Imam. Beloved, he came to be regarded as the chief spiritual protector and patron of Tashkent.

The complex is one of the few large open spaces in the Almazar District, and it’s a popular spot for local families to bring their children to learn how to ride bikes and fly kites.

Next to the Hazrati Imam Complex is the Islamic Civilization Center, a newly opened museum, “conceived under the vision and leadership of Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in 2017. The Islamic Civilization Center was envisioned to be more than just a museum, but function as an international hub for science, culture and learning, combining the richest treasures of pre‑Islamic and Islamic heritage of Uzbekistan with modern digital technologies and academic research.” The center’s striking design took inspiration from the architectural masterpieces constructed by the Timurid Empire in the 15th and 16th centuries.

The ICC was not on our radar when we planned our trip to Uzbekistan, but we were delighted to find that the center stays open until 10pm every day, and seeing that the queue for entrance into the museum was very short we spontaneously purchased tickets. Upon entering the building folks were divided into small tour groups determined by the language they spoke and then led through the exhibits with a bilingual guide.

It’s a huge building with over 2,000 historical items, manuscripts, and cultural artifacts on display, 743 of which have been repatriated from international collections, and a 45,000-book research library. It was a fascinating tour that lasted about two hours and ended in the Quran Hall with a dramatic multimedia event where sacred verses of the Quran were projected onto a digitally created night sky in the 65m (213ft) tall dome, directly over the treasured 7th-century Uthman Quran, and a holographic beam of light descends from the heavens to spotlight the manuscript, representing divine revelation.

Though the constitution of Uzbekistan defines the country as a secular state, there are some concerns about how heavily religious freedoms and activities are restricted and monitored by the government in Uzbekistan. The Islamic Civilization Center is part of Uzbekistan’s efforts to reclaim its history and Islamic heritage for the next generation, information which was repressed during the 67 years the country was under the Soviets Union’s control.

Exiting the building just before sunset, we had the opportunity to take some night photos of the dramatically illuminated building before enjoying dinner several blocks away at the Khan Ahmat, an upscale eatery.

The next day we set out to see the landmarks next to our hotel before exploring farther afield – the Palace of International Forums Uzbekistan, is a modern conference hall opened in 2009, marking the 2,200th anniversary of Tashkent, and the 18th anniversary of the country’s independence; the circular shaped State Museum of the Temurids, which houses a collection of artifacts relating to the 14th century ruler Tamerlane; the Yuridik Instituti (the Tashkent State University of Law) housed in a late 19thcentury building. It is one of the few examples in Tashkent of Tzarist Russia Emperial architecture to survive the 1966 earthquake.

Turning the corner past the school we entered Sailgokh Street, a wide, treelined 1km (6/10mi) long, pedestrian-only boulevard that links Amir Timur and Independence Squares, that’s locally known as Broadway. Sunlight reflected through party lights strung across the street that was lined with food stalls and outdoor seating. Behind them students from the university were challenging their professors to games of ping-pong at numerous tables along the sidewalk. Caricature artists whiled away the time waiting for customers to sit in front of their easels as parents watched their young children scoot about in electric toy cars. It’s a popular destination to grab an inexpensive meal or dine at one of the fancier restaurants along the walkway.

Surprisingly on this street in 1928 Tashkent was on the cutting edge of technology, when a crowd had gathered to watch the first-ever telecast showing a moving tram, made with a device called a Telephot, created and patented by Boris Grabovsky, a student at Tashkent University, and the son of the famous Ukrainian poet, Viktor Popov. Unfortunately, by 1930 he was forced by Soviet officials to stop working on television technology.

Farther along was a very attractive small royal palace built in the late-19th century and early Art Nouveau style in 1891. It was the home of Grand Duke Nicholas Constantinovich who was permanently exiled to Tashkent by the Russian royal family for stealing valuable diamonds from an icon belonging to his mother, so he could lavish extravagant gifts upon his American mistress! Let’s talk about the punishment fitting the crime here. The entrances are flanked by bronze sculptures of deer and hunting dogs, a reflection of the Grand Duke’s passion for hunting. He was by no means a pauper during his punishment, and received a gracious royal stipend which he invested in cotton mills, a soap factory, and the city’s first cinema. To furnish his prison palace he was allowed to bring his collection of Russian and European artworks from St. Petersburg with him into exile. Using profits from his local business ventures he continued to acquire new pieces of European art, rare books, and priceless artifacts. Before his death in 1918, he graciously bequeathed his art collection and palace to the city of Tashkent, to become the foundation for the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan collection. During the early Soviet era the palace was used as a museum to display his collection but later was transitioned into an after-school activity center for young Soviet Pioneers. Sadly, the palace was closed for renovation when we visited.

Crossing under Sharaf Rashidov Avenue we reached the large reflecting pool of the Mustakillik Fountain in front of the building housing the offices of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, all the fountains we passed in Tashkent in mid-April were off. We can only speculate how stunning they must be when they are shooting water skyward.

A short walk away was Independence Square where more dry waterworks paralleled the Arch of Ezgulik, a 150m (492ft) long archway held aloft by 16 white marble columns and crowned with a beautiful sculpture of three giant storks circling a globe as they soar skyward. Storks are a prominent theme on the top of many important buildings in Uzbekistan, and in Uzbek folklore they symbolize humanism, peace and prosperity.

Beyond the arch, down a narrow evergreen-lined walkway, was the Monument of Independence, a tall obelisk with a globe atop it, the map of Uzbekistan chiseled into its center. At the base of the monument is a statue of an Uzbek woman cradling a baby, called the Happy Mother that “symbolizes the Motherland, national rebirth, and hope for a prosperous future for the next generation.”

Continuing on we entered Memorial Square where an elegant, long, open-sided wooden building stood, surrounded by traditional Navoi-style carved wooden pillars, called the Memory Corridor. It holds Memory Books which contain the names, inscribed in gold lettering, of over 400,000 Uzbek soldiers who died during World War II.

Across from it was a large statue called the Grieving Mother that overlooked an eternal flame. It was a very somber memorial and hardly a whisper could be heard from the observers.

Progressing along Sharaf Rashidov Avenue toward the Monument to “Courage,” we passed the Turkistan Concert Hall, where a stylized statue of a majestic stork is perched on top of a tall column.

Along the way we noticed that everywhere we walked there was a definite sense of “pride in ownership.” The city was immaculately clean. Street sweepers with traditional brooms called supurgi, made with bundles of twigs tied to a wooden handle, were always out and about, as were the city’s landscapers who seemed to be everywhere planting decorative flower beds and pruning. When they were done in one area, they packed up their tools and brooms and hopped onto a city bus to go to the next location needing tending.

The Monument to “Courage” is a gigantic statue of a family, erected in 1976 on the tenth anniversary of the April 1966 earthquake that commemorates the victims, as well as collective efforts of Tashkent’s survivors and the thousands of workers who arrived from across the Soviet Union to rebuild the city from the rubble. At the foot of the sculpture is a recreated fissure in the earth’s crust that is believed to be directly above the epicenter of the 5.2 magnitude earthquake that rattled the earth for 11 seconds and had nearly 1,000 aftershocks. Behind the statue is a wall of 14 stelae with stylized bronze bas-relief sculptures depicting the reconstruction efforts of the workers and volunteers who rebuilt Tashkent, from literally the ground up.

A sidewalk next to the stelae leads to Museum of Olympic Glory and crosses over a bridge above the scenic Anchor Canal as it weaves through a quiet woodland before the museum.

Walking from Independence Square along Sharaf Rashidov Avenue to the Monument of Courage, and then following Navoi Avenue, and Mustaqillik Ave back to our hotel, the new design of this “model Soviet city” was particularly apparent with the wide treelined streets, and tall apartment buildings well-spaced apart.

On our last full day in Tashkent we took advantage of multiple inexpensive YandexGo rides and zipped across the city to various destinations. Our first stop, which we had passed earlier in the week, was Magic City Park, an open-air shopping and entertainment complex, that as the name suggests borrows heavily from the mouse kingdom, and seemed very out-of-place in downtown Tashkent. Mid-morning, we had the place almost entirely to ourselves, except for a girl’s dance group practicing their routine in traditional dress.

It was a quiet morning, and we enjoyed walking down a colorful painted and umbrella- covered street, making folks smile as we hammed it up in the mouth of Jaws!

Behind Magic City is Milliy Bog, a large open area national park with statues of important Uzbeks along lanes that lead to the Tashkent Museum of State History; the 19th century Abul-kasim Sheikh Madrasah, which once held a sacred relic of the Prophet Muhammad; the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis; the Friendship of the Nations concert hall; and the Shomakhmudovs Monument, erected in 1982, as a symbol of wartime generosity and unity.

The monument commemorates a local blacksmith, Shaakhmed Shamakhmudov, and his wife, Bahri Akramova, who during World War II adopted 15 orphaned children of various ethnicities. They were only a small portion of the over one million refugees evacuated from the Soviet Union to Uzbekistan to receive food and shelter, an event that caused many to call it “the city of bread.”

From there we traveled far across Tashkent to a beautiful park across from the Tashkent Television Tower that hosts the Museum of Victims of Political Repression. Along our route we passed many examples of older apartment buildings designed with that harsh “Soviet Brutalism” ethos, and only softened by Uzbek tile murals at both ends.

Life in Uzbekistan during Russian times was not easy and the museum documents the hardships and atrocities committed against the Uzbek people, starting with Imperial Russia’s colonization of the country, where the best farmland was given to Russian settlers, through the communist Soviet Union era. Many exhibits draw on information culled from the former KGB archives.

The blue domes of the museum purposely resemble an ancient mausoleum as the building is constructed over the site where the Soviets executed “enemies of the people” during the 1930s. Across the country over 100,000 people were arrested, and over 13,000 of them were shot. Trees in the park symbolically come from the gulags around the country where folks were imprisoned. During World War II ethnic groups that allegedly collaborated with the Soviet Union’s enemies were deported en mass to Siberia.

Outside, the man-made river that runs through the park is symbolically shaped like a Greek meander, to symbolize the eternal flow of life. Under the park’s tall rotunda is a nephrite tomb with the inscription in Arabic, English and Uzbek: “The memory of those who died for their country will live forever.”

Across the busy road was the Tashkent Television Tower, the tallest freestanding tower with a height of 375m (1,230ft) in Central Asia since its opening in 1985. To get to the elevators that take you up to an observation deck and revolving panoramic restaurant at 104m (341ft) above the ground we had to walk along a long corridor lined with models of other significantly tall television towers around the world, a display of archaic boom boxes, an abstract tile mosaic mural and the wax museum likeness of Michael Jackson and maybe the doubleganger of Melania Trump? The restaurant was enjoyable, though expensive for cake and coffee.

However, the views from the observation deck out over metropolitan Tashkent were fantastic, especially where we would see the shadow of the tower cast across the landscape.

We ended our evening and last day in Tashkent with a short walk to Besh Qozon, a tremendously popular, large, fun restaurant that is known for its Plov, Uzbekistan’s celebrated rice dish. The dish is traditionally prepared by men, and at Besh Qozon visitors are allowed to walk through open kitchen and watch the cooking of several different variations of the recipe being stirred in huge caldrons, and the continuous baking of fresh non.

The first known settlers in Uzbekistan were Persian nomads who settled around the oases in the vast Kyzylkum Desert during the in the 8th–6th centuries BC. The desert covers most of central Uzbekistan, stretching from Khiva in the western part of the country to Samarkand in the east. Many of these oases became crucial caravanserais, fortified waystations, to protect the camel caravans along the Silk Road. Others like Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva grew into rich influential regional seats of power called khanates.

In 329 BC Alexander the Great spent two years marching across Uzbekistan in an exhausting campaign to defeat a Persian rebellion, and only left after what legend claims was a love at first sight romance with a local princess named Roxane led to a strategic alliance with her father. The legend of Roxane remains alive in Uzbekistan, with many distinguished families in the region still claiming their lineage from the marriage of Alexander to Roxane, before he set off to conquer India.

In the west we often associate the history of the Silk Road, a 6,400km (4,000mi) camel tract, with the travels of Marco Pollo across central Asia to China in the 13th century. But its history started much earlier in the 2nd century BC, when a Chinese emperor of the Han dynasty sent imperial envoys across Central Asia to establish formal trade routes and military alliances against the Huns. These agreements of safe passage resulted in silk and porcelain from China reaching the eastern-most regions of the Roman empire by 25 BC. On their return journey caravans took glassware, linen, wool and cotton to the Far East.

The Huns never invaded China, but did conquer much of Central Asia, and established a stronghold in southern Uzbekistan during the 4th and 5th centuries. Trade along the Silk Road ebbed and flowed through invasions and peace. Arab conquests swept through Central Asia, bringing the Arabic language and Islamic religion to oasis cities like Bukhara and Samarkand in the 7th–8th Century AD. The Mongol armies of Genghis Khan brought massive destruction to the region in the early 1200s.

By the late 14th century, the region was the central hub of trade and ideas at the crossroads of the known world at the time, and experiencing a renaissance of art, science, and Islamic architecture under the enlightened rule of Emir Timur. By the 16th century the successive invasions of Turkic and Mongol nomadic tribes had ended. The invaders from 92 tribes, as legend believes, had settled and intermingled with the local folk and established what eventually would be recognized as the Uzbek identity.

By the 16th century Spanish and Portuguese Navigators were mapping maritime trade routes across the Indian Ocean to India, Southeast Asia, the East Indies, and China. These nautical routes from Asia to Europe were significantly faster and safer than transporting goods via the Silk Road and trade on the overland route slowly diminished. Regional caravans still plied the deserts of Central Asia, taking supplies to isolated settlements well into the 1930s, but stopped when a growing road network ended the camel caravan era.

Without this international trade flowing both ways through Uzbekistan the armies of the Tashkent, Bukhara, and Khiva Khanates fell in succession from 1865 to 1873 to the technologically superior firepower amassed against them by Czarist Russian Empire in a drive to secure the region’s natural resources, mostly cotton, for the Russian economy. The Khanates retained figurehead monarchs, but all political and economic decisions were controlled by Moscow, which developed Tashkent as its administrative center. Czarist rule quickly forced all viable agricultural lands to be planted with cotton. This valuable crop, often called “white gold,” was then exported from Uzbekistan to the mills of the Russian homeland on the newly built Trans-Caspian Railway that connected Tashkent to the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea. Train ferries then shuttled the freight cars across the water to Baku, Azerbaijan for the last leg of journey. Trains returned to Uzbekistan with colonizers from Ukraine, Belarus, and regions around St. Petersburg and Moscow, who displaced Uzbeks and were given the best agricultural lands. Until this cotton monoculture was forced upon the farmers in Uzbekistan the country was agriculturally self-sufficient but soon relied on imported grains from other regions in the Russian Empire.

After Russia’s communist revolution ended in 1922, Uzbekistan was incorporated into the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic. Communist authoritative rule expanded the cotton monoculture with extensive irrigation systems using water diverted from the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, the source waters of the inland Aral Sea. This environmental mismanagement caused the sea, once an important fisheries resource, to lose over 90% of its volume and transformed the vital waterbody into the new Aralkum Desert within five decades.

Life in Uzbekistan during the Soviet communist era was harsh. While basic housing, medical and education needs were met, there was rampant underemployment, widespread poverty, lack of foodstuffs in the markets, and political and religious repression. During the yearly cotton harvests Uzbeks, including children, were forced to spend 15 – 60 days in the fields picking the “white gold.” Schools and universities across the country were closed, and even teachers, doctors and nurses were not exempt from participating. Refusal could result in the loss of your job or expulsion from higher education.

Over one-hundred years of combined Russian Empire and Soviet rule ended in 1991 when Uzbekistan proudly declared its independence as the Soviet Union was dissolving.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Cambodia: Life Along the Mekong & Tonle Sap Rivers or A Beautiful Country Full of Surprises

May 7, 2026May 7, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

In the golden morning twilight, the skyscrapers of Phnom Penh gleamed like a set of gold capped teeth revealed by the broad smile of a person awakening to a spectacular new day. It was the consequence of a torrential monsoon storm, with I swear horizontal rain, the evening, before that abruptly shortened an otherwise delightful happy hour on the sun deck of the RV Mekong Pandaw. Overnight as we sailed to Phnom Penh the storm cleared the sky for a beautiful sunrise. Our cruise had departed Ho Chi Minh City three days earlier during the last week of September, which was nearing the end of Southeast Asia’s monsoon season, and the mornings were heavily overcast until today.

The forty-eight passenger river vessel is a classic shallow draft, teak and brass finished riverboat, based on historical designs of colonial era river ships that once plied the waters of the Mekong Delta and southeast Asia from the late-1800s to the 1930s, and was built specifically for the luxury river cruise provider Pandaw. We had signed on for their Four Country 21 Night Combo Cruise, which would take us up river into Cambodia, then connect us with flights to Thailand and the resumption of the cruise, on the smaller Pandaw RV Laos downriver from the golden triangle, where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos meet along the Mekong River, in Chiang Khong, Thailand.

Waiting for us as the boat docked along the city’s quay on the Tonle Sap River, just upstream from its confluence with the Mekong River, was a row of rickshaw tricycle taxis or cyclos, set against Phnom Penh’s rapidly expanding skyline dotted with construction cranes. In times past, the cyclo was the predominant mode of transportation around the city but now are mostly used by tourists for scenic tours that weave through its streets.

We whizzed through traffic past the National Museum to the Royal Palace of Cambodia, a richly ornamented grand palace complex built in the 1860s, on the site of an earlier citadel, for Cambodia’s royal families. The palace’s architecture leans heavily on influences from Ankor Wat, a massive 12th-century religious monument that is Cambodia’s most famous attraction.

The palace’s formal and ceremonial buildings feature golden spires atop steeply pitched stacked roofs, orange in color to symbolize prosperity, with highly decorated upturned finials and gables that characterize Khmer architecture. The spires on the rooftops represent Mount Meru, the sacred center of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology.

The grounds also have several large pyramid and cone shaped sandstone stupas carved with elaborate high-relief sculptures of gods, floral patterns, and legendary creatures.

Across the site are sculptures of fearsome mythological animals depicting Naga (seven-headed serpents), Singha (guardian lions), and Kala (fearsome faces), which symbolize protection, power, and the bridge between human and divine realms. There were also some interesting ancient murals depicting significant events in the country’s history. And surprisingly several tranquil spots to rest and contemplate.

By midmorning that day in late September the temperature was in the mid – nineties, 35C, and the humidity was terrible. Some relief was found in the shade of the central market where some folks sought out the post office and a pharmacy while others wandered through the tightly packed clothing stalls. We didn’t find the shopping particularly interesting, but the flower market with its vendors making floral temple offerings of maali (garlands), and Kantong (small bowls made of banana leaves containing flowers, incense, and candles) was colorful, and intriguing. The Cambodian art of Lotus flower folding is a cherished, ancient art form where the green outer petals of a lotus bud are meticulously peeled back and folded, creating intricate, rose-like shapes that symbolize purity, devotion, and enlightenment. The market was beautifully full with these floral displays that represent a spiritual offering to Buddha. The ritual of daily offerings placed in home shrines and pagodas to honors ancestors, bring blessings, and symbolizes enlightenment, and is ingrained in the culture of Southeast Asia.

The market was also a good place to watch life go by on the street, especially the scooters and the configuration of families they seemed to effortlessly carry.

It’s always great to escape to an exotic new destination and see only the good stuff, but there’s always history. Cambodia’s recent history is difficult to ignore, and we encountered it later that afternoon we went to the Choeung Ek, “Killing Fields,” memorial near Phnom Phen. Horrifyingly, these areas and their mass graves were all across the country between 1975 and 1979 when the Khmer Rouge regime under the leadership of Pol Pot killed nearly 2 million people, roughly 25% of Cambodia’s population, through forced labor, starvation, and execution. At the height of this nightmare, folks living in the country’s large towns and cities were forcibly relocated to rural labor camps to work in the fields. There the regime targeted the country’s city dwellers, professionals and intelligencia. The cruelty of the regime was relentless, with children brainwashed to execute their own parents. All in a delusional vision to create an agrarian utopia.

The terror didn’t end until Vietnam invaded the country and installed a pro Vietnamese government, after brutal Khmer cross border attacks. Following the collapse, many former Khmer Rouge leaders were eventually brought to justice, with major leaders being jailed in 2014 by a United Nations-backed tribunal. The murder of the county’s teachers, engineers, and doctors fundamentally halted Cambodia’s development for decades as other countries in the region prospered. The trauma of those years has marked a generation of survivors with untreated PTSD. Today, over 60% of Cambodia’s population is under 30, with no direct memory of the atrocities committed against their families. After all that, it is amazing to see how far the country has come and how welcoming the folks are.

That evening on board a troupe of traditional Khmer dancers and musicians performed. It was an intriguing evening watching several Apsara dances, a style known for its slow, graceful, and highly symbolic hand gestures, that through motion depicts spiritual devotion, as well as to illustrate the Reamker (Glory of Rama), a 16th-17th century Cambodian epic poem that is an adaptation of the Indian Ramayana, that blends “Hindu cosmology with Buddhist themes of karma and dharma. It follows Prince Preah Ream (Rama) and his loyal brother Preah Leak (Lakshmana) as they battle the demon king Krong Reap (Ravana), who kidnapped Preah Ream’s wife, Neang Seda (Sita).

The next morning at sunrise our boat left the quay and headed upstream on the Mekong, the start of a journey to explore rural Cambodia, to the riverport town of Peam Chi Korng where we traveled by tuk tuk to an outlying pottery village. That early in the morning the river was busy with small ferries taking folks to work in the city, as long-tail boats raced by colorful shanties that reached down to the river edge.

Here we visited a family that made large decorative pots and vessels as well as ceramic souvenirs that are sold in Phnom Phen, and a traditional charcoal burning ceramic stove called a Changkhran Lao that’s wrapped in metal to help it keep its structural integrity. Our guide was doing a wonderful job eliciting smiles from the families’ elders as we sat on long wooden benches and listened to a translated presentation.

Behind, younger children had also gathered to watch their visitors, and giggle as kids do, only to be silenced by the wave of the speaker’s hand. Later he demonstrated how quickly a pot could be created by hand coiling, and his son demonstrated climbing a palm tree for our group.

A small local passenger ferry pulled up alongside the RV Mekong Pandaw the next morning after we docked in Kratie to transport us to Koh Trong Island across the river. It’s a small tear-shaped island in Cambodia’s Kratie province that is the home to fishermen and farmers who tend rice paddies and pomelo citrus orchards.

The islanders also promote an authentic community-based tourism initiative that offers homestays and bicycle rentals. The monsoon flood waters on the lower part of the Mekong River had begun to recede weeks earlier so our ferry dropped its boarding ramp onto a steep embankment in front of the island’s elephant guarded Santheati Baram Pagoda, and a cluster of small basic shops. Outside the temple a small group of kids were kicking a soccer ball around as an orange robed monk walked nearby.

Villagers warmly greeted us as we walked along the island’s only lane for a short distance to view the community’s unique stilt homes that are purposefully built to be lifted by the men of the village, and moved when needed to avoid flood waters.

A small caravan of tuk tuks took us to the Kbal Koh Pagoda on the north end of the island, the first on the 10km (6mi) loop which circles the island. Built in the early 1800s, the historic pagoda is surrounded by banana trees and is located across from the verdant rice paddies that run down the center of the island. The simply adorned pagoda gracefully showed its age with a weathered patina courtesy of the numerous monsoons it has withstood. Behind the temple, nearly obscured from view by banana trees, was a row of brightly colored steeple-shaped burial stupas, mausoleums, called chedi.

On the grounds in front of the temple were two statues of sacred white elephants and various Bodhisattvas, compassionate helpers, on the path to enlightenment who stay in the world to assist others. Along with other sculptures depicting Buddhist Protectors and Guardians whose fierce looks deters negative powers. A multiheaded Snake Being called a Naga King guarded the stairway to the pagoda to protect the Dharma, the Budha’s sacred teachings.

Nearby a young man guided a cow along the path, and teenagers played volleyball on a hard packed dirt court. Farther along a man fished from a low bridge over a stream that flowed through the rice fields. These vignettes of rural life were the charm of Koh Trong Island and Kratie province.

That afternoon back in Kratie we explored the town on our own. Just down from our docking was the Krong Kracheh Pagoda, an important community center where the town’s lay people can study Buddhism. It’s quite a pretty temple known for its pink walls and is surrounded by several grand stupas that are the final resting place for several generations of post-Angkorian royalty.

Two blocks away from the temple was Kratie’s central market, a huge, covered pavilion that occupies an entire city block. Think of a Costco super store on steroids, with merchandise of every sort stacked floor to ceiling along aisles as wide as a single shopping cart, operated by nearly 100 different vendors. This is an authentic, vibrant local market, there’s nothing touristy about it. If you can’t find what you need here it probably doesn’t exist. The outside of the building is surrounded by numerous fruit and vegetable stands piled high with produce. Truly a vegetarian’s paradise. Fresh fish and seafood is also abundant as well as fresh poultry and meat. Some of the vendors kept these things cool under ice, while others swatted flies away from the exposed offerings. The smoky grill stands along the street stay open late into the evenings.

The narrow beam and shallow draft of Pandaw’s river vessels make visiting many remote areas along the Mekong River feasible, but north of Kratie the river becomes unnavigable to cruise boats all the way to Vientiane, Laos, adistance of roughly 850km (530mi) due to shallow waters, ever changing sandbars, numerous rock hazards, and the massive Khone Waterfalls, located near the Cambodia-Laos border.

While unsuitable for larger boats, this section of the river is the perfect habitat and a protected zone for the Irrawaddy freshwater dolphin, an endangered species. With a big bulbous head and short dorsal fin, they look significantly different from saltwater dolphins. Sadly, there are only an estimated 117 Irrawaddy dolphins left in Cambodia, but the population has been rebounding in recent years due to enhanced conservation efforts. Fortunately for us a large group of dolphins live in several deepwater pools near the town of Kampi, just north of Kratie.

Viewing rural life along river has its advantages, but traveling by bus to Kampi did provide us with a different perspective. We passed motorcycle vendors laden beyond belief with merchandise, young monks walking along the shoulder of the road as they returned to their monastery, homes on stilts, and all sorts of traffic violations that would incur huge fines in the states.

Reaching the dock in Kampi we were divided into several groups to board small boats. Our boatman was very friendly and made sure we all wore the required life vests, but he wasn’t particularly diligent about balancing the weight on the boat for an even keel and we got underway in a rather tipsy fashion before our group of eight took the initiative to redistribute the load ourselves.

As we traveled to the dolphin pools the Mekong widened, and houses along the river edge disappeared. It was a lengthy boat ride and wonderfully tranquil, as we trailed our fingers into the cool river, passing kayakers paddling, and getting closer to nature as we reached the dolphin pools which are adjacent to the Prey Lang Wildlife Sanctuary. The reserve is Cambodia’s largest national forest, and with roughly 500,000 hectares (1,235,527 acres) it’s Southeast Asia’s largest lowland evergreen forest, and the home to 400 different animal species, that includes Pileated Gibbon, a herd of wild Asian Elephants, Malayan Sun Bear, wild cattle, Sunda Clouded Leopard, and Great Hornbills to name only a few.

The dolphins were very elusive, and we sat quietly in the boat for quite some time before a pair of dolphins gently broke the surface of the water a distance away for a brief moment. We are not sure how many different dolphins we saw, but their surfacing became more frequent, though they were extremely difficult, almost impossible to photograph. Still the experience was very entertaining. Across Southeast Asia and Cambodia the dolphins are considered symbols of good fortune and prosperity. Many folks living along this stretch of the Mekong River also believe that the Irrawaddy dolphins are sacred, protective spirits, and reincarnations of their ancestors.

Later that afternoon, we set sail downstream back along the Mekong toward Phnom Penh to moor overnight and then continue upstream the next morning on the Tonle Sap River to visit the silversmith workshops and Buddhist pagoda in Chey Odam. This section of river was lined with colorful shanty houses, and occasionally the minarets of a mosque or a church steeple protruded from the riverscape.

The ping of a cacophony of unsynchronized hammers surrounded us as we walked along Chey Odam’s main street which paralleled the river and is lined with metal workshops of various sizes. Across the river on a distant hill, we could see the stupas of Phnom Phreah Reach Throap, a sacred mountain that was home to Cambodia’s royal capital for nearly 250 years until 1866.

This was the most touristy of places we visited with each workshop having displays of their craft for sale. But it was still interesting as the skilled artisans create everything by hand using hand-hammered repoussé and chasing techniques, crafting intricately decorated brass or copper plates and bowls to Betel sets, and silver jewelry. We thought the prices were fair, so we shopped for our young granddaughters. Of course, credit cards were accepted.

Geese waddled freely along the road as our group walked to the outskirts of town. We seemed to become a group of pied pipers as we swept up a band of children that followed us to the Moni Sakor temple. Reaching the pagoda, and with smiles all around, the kids suddenly lined up and sang the Cambodian national anthem.

It was a rustic temple with a collection of Buddhist sculptures and colorful stupas on its grounds. While we rested under a shade tree one of the small girls in the group entertained us and her friends by making cat woman like claws on her fingers with yellow trumpet flowers. Across the road a three-wheeled flatbed motorcycle vendor went door to door selling fresh produce, and un-iced fish and meat in the morning sun.

Later that afternoon after sailing upriver the crew tied the boat to trees along the riverbank outside the small town of Kampong Tralach and lowered the gangplank to a line of waiting oxcarts. Our traditional mode of transportation through the town to the Kampong Tralach Kraom Pagoda that was a local tourist initiative, that helped the drivers buy their own ox and cart.

I walked ahead to take some photos of the line of oxcarts. Several had passed by already, but there was one stubborn beast that refused to move until one of the carts behind him tried to pass by. Suddenly it seemed to be a chariot race, with whooping and hollering as the two oxcarts lurched forward. As fun as it was, the folks in the back of the carts held on tightly, worried that they would be shaken out of the speeding cart like fortune sticks.

The jolting ride ended with a circling of the carts, in front of the beautiful monks’ dwelling, in the courtyard of the Kampong Tralach Kraom Pagoda. Though the real attraction of the site was the old Buddhist temple located behind it, that wasn’t particularly well-maintained. Like the two other temples we visited days earlier the exterior of the pagoda showed the challenges of building maintenance in the heat, humidity and monsoons of Southeast Asia. On the raised terrace surrounding the pagoda were a collection of folk-art style sculptures depicting Buddhist protectors and guardians that gave no hint of the treasure that awaited us inside.

The temple’s interior was astonishing, with every surface of the walls and ceiling covered in beautiful murals depicting the life and teachings of Buddha. This hidden gem struck us as being the Cambodian equivalent to the Sistine Chapel! Fortunately, this temple was open when we visited, but it made us wonder what we missed at the other two which were not.

That evening our boat stayed tied to the riverbank, and we had a bonfire in a vacant lot nearby where the crew had invited a few of the townsfolk to join us. With wet kindling from an earlier rain, it was a smoky affair, but folks’ spirits weren’t dampened and there was a lot of joyful dancing.

The next morning, we continued cruising north on the Tonle Sap River. The high riverbanks from the earlier part of our trip now disappeared as the river broadened into a wide floodplain that covered the roads. Only the telephone poles along their edge offered guidance to where they were. Fast long-tail boats were more prevalent now as scooters were stored away on higher ground until the dry season.

Here homes on stilts are surrounded by monsoon floodwaters for six months, from June to November when the Mekong River expands 45-fold, overflows and forces the waters of the Tonle Sap to back-flow into its lake. This in turn forces it to expand in size 4x from its dry season size of 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 square miles) to 15,000 square kilometers (5800 square miles) and cover the surrounding countryside with flood waters to the depth of 9m (30ft) or greater.

The weather since our departure from Phom Phen had been rather unpredictable, with overnight rains and heavy morning mists and cloudy afternoons, but today the weather was brilliant and the river was café au lait colored, and extended to the horizon all around us. The tranquility of watching this broad waterscape and sky change throughout the next two days was one of the trip’s serene pleasures.

We sailed past villages with temples and mosques. The number of mosques surprised us, but there has been an Islamic presence in Cambodia since the 10th century and today Muslims compose three percent of the country’s population with the majority concentrated along the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers.

More of the small sampans we passed now were covered and appeared to be floating homes, with small children aboard and cooking platforms at the rear. Fishermen set their nets with the help of their wives.

We anchored in the lake offshore Chong Khneas, a Vietnamese refugee floating village near the mouth of the Siem Reap River. It’s a fully functioning community with a floating school, church and markets that get paddled between the homes. That supports itself from fishing on the lake and tourist tours. It started in the mid-1970s as a safe haven for migrants in Cambodia to avoid persecution from Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.

Though many of the refugees have been in Cambodia for two generations they have a precarious legal status that denies them citizenship and the right to own land, and cuts them off accessing any state sponsored social programs, forcing them to live in floating homes or marginalized, informal communities. This is due to a deep-seated historical prejudice between the two countries which have often been in conflict with each other. Sadly, the beauty of their floating village makes it too easy for visitors to overlook the complexity of their situation.

Nearby on stilts was a Buddhist temple surrounded by flood waters. During the dry season it is partially accessible by land when you follow Rt63 south from Siem Reap and then walk across a wide sand bar, but now we needed the local boatmen to ferry us over.

From what our tour guide explained, this was the first time a group of westerners had ever visited the temple where young monks are sequestered away to study the teachings of the Buddha. Through our guide’s translation the monk answered questions from our group and with the wave of his hand blessed us with sprinkles of water from a Kusha grass stick. Outside, the boatman’s young son entertained himself by jumping from one boat to another.

Earlier that morning our guide was admiring the day and the clouds floating over the lake and said, “there will be a nice sunset tonight.” His prediction was right on, and it was the perfect ending for our adventures in Cambodia.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Vietnam: A Journey Along the Mekong River or A Lion Dance, Sampans & Fortune Sticks

March 17, 2026March 17, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Ho Chi Minh City surprised us with its vitality and prosperity, from the daily mass migrations of scooters throughout the city during the morning and evening rush hours to verdant parks filled with folks doing their morning calisthenics. The city’s success was reflected in its quickly evolving skyline where construction cranes almost outnumbered the buildings in this old French colonial town metamorphizing into a modern metropolis.

Slow commuter and transport ferries which used to be the only way across the country’s inland waterways are now being systematically replaced at an intense pace with modern suspension bridges to support an economy on steroids and a society that’s increasingly mobile. Since the year 2000 six major bridges have been constructed across the Mekong River Delta in an infrastructure push to improve the region’s connectivity. During our cruise we sailed beneath four new bridges under construction.

Torrential rain and high humidity define the monsoon season that ends during late September in southern Vietnam. The week prior we had lucked out on the weather with it being mostly sunny during the day, but with monsoon showers overnight into the early mornings. The humidity was intense, even for two folks living in the southern United States. What we didn’t expect was the extraordinary amount of time it took for our camera lenses to defog every morning, as we left our airconditioned cabin. Surprisingly it usually took about twenty minutes for our cameras to acclimate to the temperature differential.

Starting in the Tibetan highlands, the Mekong River flows 4,900km (3,000mi) through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, before widening into a web of multiple channels that comprise the Mekong Delta as the river empties into the South China Sea. The delta is a huge area that covers thirteen provinces in southern Vietnam, a region that is often referred to as “Vietnam’s biggest rice bowl.” The river has been a life force in Southeast Asia since the first people settled along its riverbanks in the delta around 2000BC.

According to Vietnam’s ancient mythology, the dragon, as a symbol of the monsoon, is revered as a rain deity that rises from the sea to the heavens with the spring equinox, bringing rain, wind, and flooding along the country’s rivers. The flooding fertilizes the fields with a fresh layer of silt, before the monsoons cease and the dragon slides back into the sea at the autumn equinox, to wait for the cycle to start again the following spring.

As if wanting to remind us of his power before fading away until next year, the dragon whipped up a torrential rainstorm from which we and most of our fellow travelers couldn’t escape getting soaked, on the first day of our Mekong River cruise aboard the Pandaw RV Mekong as we departed Ho Chi Minh City. Built and operated by the luxury river cruise provider Pandaw, the Mekong is a classic shallow draft, teak and brass finished riverboat, based on historical designs of colonial era river ships that once plied the waters of the Mekong Delta and southeast Asia from the late-1800s to the 1930s. We had signed on for their Four Country 21 Night Combo Cruise, which would take us up river into Cambodia, then connect us with flights to Thailand and the resumption of the cruise, on the Pandaw RV Laos downriver from the golden triangle, where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos meet along the Mekong River, in Chiang Khong, Thailand.

Located 50 miles upstream from the South China Sea at the confluence of the Dong Nai River and Sông Sài Gòn, Saigon River, Ho Chi Minh City is a major container seaport in Southeast Asia. Shipping containers offloaded at the port are then transferred to various size barges which then deliver their cargo to other areas further inland in Vietnam or to Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The coffee-brown rivers in Vietnam were like highways, and the main channel of the Mekong River which is very wide and approximately 20m (65 ft) deep was robustly busy with container barges of every size. What was unexpected though was the hundreds of dredging barges loading construction grade sand into large barges with 4m (13ft) drafts to the point that their decks were almost awash as they navigated the waterway, to supply the country’s building boom.

As hectic as the water traffic on the river was, the pilots of the barges we passed all seemed nonchalant. As they steered their vessels with their bare feet, leaning back in their captain’s chair and watching the river’s ubiquitous long-tail boats, the waterman’s equivalent to a motor scooter, whiz by.

Viewing life along the river was intriguing. We watched fishers pulling nets from the river as we motored in a smaller boat to a landing near Bến Tre. We then traveled in a small convoy of openair tuk-tuks through a small town where students in their school uniforms and a bread vendor were bicycling along the road.

In the fields nearby we watched the back breaking activities of farm women, wearing the traditional cone shaped hat woven from palm or bamboo leaves called a “Non La,” as they planted onion sets by hand in raised beds near a riverbank. Occasionally laughter drifted from the field where the women worked rhythmically together in teams of two.

Afterwards as we walked to a nearby outdoor community center, we passed a vendor with a motorcycle-cart laden with everyday hardware and general merchandise conducting business along the roadway with folks that waved for him to stop.

At the center we watched a colorful and acrobatic Lion dance, accompanied by loud, fast-paced drumming and cymbals. It’s traditionally performed during the Tet Trung Thu, Vietnam’s mid-Autumn Festival, that’s held after the busy rice harvesting season for families to reconnect, thank the gods for a good harvest, and wish for prosperity and good luck.

Back on our tuk-tuks we continued through a village surrounded by soursop, jackfruit, and durian orchards to a small dock along a narrow canal in a mangrove swamp of nipa palms, water coconut trees. In narrow wooden sampans, boatmen poled our group along a stream through a jungle of towering trees, where the nipa palms’ roots extended into the water, like fingertips into a shallow bowl. The trees’ canopy cloaked the canal in silence, broken only by the gentle swoosh of the sampans slicing through the water and the occasional bird call.

At one point the canal was so narrow our boatman switched from poling and walked along the edge of the sampan from the stern to the bow and pulled us farther along by grabbing the trees next to our boat. The sampan ride ended at a rustic open air candy workshop where we sampled sweets made with locally harvested coconuts, and durian, that famously stinky fruit that surprisingly tastes delicious.

Returning to the Pandaw RV Mekong via a larger waterway we passed men chest deep in the river, using their bare hands to scoop up mud from the river bottom into sampans. The purpose: to backfill their farmland that’s been eroded away by the monsoon flooding. A little farther along a woman was waiting for passengers to ferry across the river in her sampan.

Across the Mekong the giant glistening white statues at the Chùa Liên Hoa – Mẹ Nam Hải Tiền Giang rose enticingly above the riverfront, but unfortunately the Buddhist pagoda was not part of the tour.

The next day our exploration of life along the Mekong continued as we headed in a larger sampan up a tributary of the Mekong River lined with monsoon-worn, simple tin-roofed shacks on stilts, slung with hammocks, and floating homes on a variety of rivercraft that seemed permanently moored. Boat dogs barked as we floated past.

Our destination was the Miếu Ông Bảo Sanh Đại Đế temple built in the late 1800s by Chinese immigrants to Vietnam. The temple is dedicated to Bảo Sanh, an ancient physician widely worshipped for treating the sick. Today his followers can receive his advice by using “fortune sticks,” where you shake a container of numbered bamboo sticks until one falls out, revealing a number that corresponds to a specific fortune card located on a wall rack that is then taken to the temple’s fortune teller for interpretation.

The numbers 3, 6, 8, and 9 are quite auspicious, being linked to wisdom, luck, prosperity, and longevity. It was very busy with local folks and a family that brought a newborn child to the temple for a blessing.

The temple was colorfully decorated with figures from Chinese epic novels and mythology to create a tranquil space for contemplation.

Occasionally we passed the belltowers of Catholic churches as we continued upriver to Cambodia that afternoon. Nearer the border the sand dredging activity was significantly higher and we were amazed by the number of barges traveling up and down the river, as well as ferry boats traversing the river from one bank to the other.

Crossing the border, officials from Cambodia’s Department of Border Control were welcomed aboard as they jumped from a small motor launch onto the deck of the RV Mekong, to check everyone’s passports. It was a simple process and they were quickly finished.

We continued sailing. More floating homes lined the riverbank, and the river’s islands now hosted banana farms and clusters of simple homes. Farther along cattle stood in the water up to their knees to drink from the river.

The last roar of long-tail boats racing by faded with the twilight as their drivers tried to reach home before total darkness fell, as the darkening river slowly blended with the tree line.

A silhouette of a Buddhist pagoda, highlighted by a swath of orange on the western horizon, slowly vanished with the setting sun. By dawn we would be approaching Phnom Penh.

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City – A Dynamic Blending of the Old and New or Scooters, Neon, and Warm-Hearted People

February 9, 2026February 9, 2026 | 2suitcasesfor2years

Scooters everywhere, with apocalyptic-looking masked and helmeted riders roaring along the streets, like cells in our veins always moving never stopping. Individuals off to work, parents taking kids to school, and florists delivering large floral bouquets, along with ice vendors whose towers of bagged ice tied to the backs of their scooters were slowly melting away in the heat.

Cartons of fresh eggs, ladders, toolboxes, and wheelbarrows all whizzed by our GrabTaxi, the Vietnamese equivalent to Uber, as we headed into the city. Think Mad Max set in a metropolis of ten million; Ho Chi Minh City, formerly called Saigon, was crazy!

What had we gotten ourselves into? With horrific traffic like this into the city from the airport, downtown must be a congested nightmare! But it wasn’t. The cars, buses, and scooters flowed in an impressively smooth manner during the morning rush-hour without tempers flaring or any horns being blasted.

Along our route, ubiquitous Xe Bánh Mì and Xôi, bread and sticky rice carts, were set up along the roadside curb to offer takeaway, while also offering low colorful plastic stools on the sidewalk for customers to perch on while they ate. These street vendors offered Banh mi, small French style baguettes stuffed with various fillings, or a variety of Xôi Mặn, savory sticky rice dish, traditionally served wrapped in banana leaves or a paper container nowadays.

Crossing the street was quite an adventure. We soon realized we couldn’t be timid, and followed the locals’ lead; wait for the light to change and once you commit don’t hesitate. Scooters drivers will give way; they really don’t want any pedestrians as fender ornaments.

After our long flight we spent the balance of the afternoon resting after checking into the Au Lac Legend Hotel, named for the ancient Vietnamese Kingdom. The small boutique hotel was our base for seven nights. It was conveniently located in District 3, an interesting area where “The Pearl of the Far East” remnants of Vietnam’s French colonial past merge with the vitality of a modern neon lit and towering skyline in District 1. There is a confusing merging of districts and reorganizing them into different administrative subdivisions in progress.

Later that evening we walked to Ben Nghe Street Food, a large food hall with many different stands offering a great variety of foods from seafood and Pho noodles to Bún Thịt Nướng, Vietnamese Grilled Pork & Rice Noodles. With a nightly band singing a mix of Vietnamese, and American pop songs, that included the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash, and the Village People’s YMCA, along with its delicious food and good vibes, it’s a popular spot for locals and tourists.

After dinner we continued our first explorations of the city and headed to the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee building in District 1. It is a historic French colonial building constructed in 1902 that served as the Hôtel de Ville, Saigon’s city hall. Tall buildings with electronic billboards now tower over the People’s Committee Building and the in the plaza across the street there’s an imposing monument to Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader whose military campaign reunited North and South Vietnam.

On our route back to the hotel, brightly decorated street posts sponsored by BIDV, the Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam, lit our way. Outside a college, small groups of students taking a break from their evening classes were gathered, two or three friends on a blanket along the sidewalk, thoughtfully supplied by their snack vendor.

Torrential rain and high humidity define the monsoon season that ends during late September in southern Vietnam. The streets were steaming the next morning when we peeked through the curtains of our room, but the weather report forecast clearing skies. The humidity was intense, even for two folks living in the southern United States. What we didn’t expect was the extraordinary amount of time it took for our camera lenses to defog. We observed the balletic chaos of the morning rush, which now included bicycles and an occasional xích lô, or cyclo, a traditional human-powered bicycle rickshaw where the passenger sits in a seat in front of the driver. Along with helmeted tourists and fashionably dressed women sitting side saddle as scooter passengers on GrabBikes.

Our destination for the morning was the War Remnants Museum,several blocks from our hotel, but along the way we detoured to Tao Dan Park, where morning calisthenics are a daily ritual for older folks and women who have just gotten their children off to school. The park was full of hundreds of people practicing traditional Tai Chi, aerobics, badminton, Vo Thuat Quat (fan martial arts), and Múa Kiếm (a sword dance).

In multiple sections of the park folks twisted, turned, and stretched to classical Asian music, channeled Richard Simmons with eighties pop songs, or pursued a modified course inspired by Chloe Ting, a YouTube fitness instructor. In front of the Temple of the Hung Kings, the legendary founders of the Viet dynasties more than 4,000 years ago, was a fountain with a beautiful display of orchids. Nearby the soft aroma of jasmine drifted on the air in a sculpture park.

Everyday during our teen years – this certainly ages us – the Vietnam War was on the front page of every newspaper and the nightly news. We are not historians; the victors write their history and the War Remnants Museum does document both French and American participation in a horrific war. Though the museum does not address the story of the Vietnamese boat people, more than 800,000 refugees who fled Vietnam by sea between 1975 and 1995 following the war. Nor does it address the forced labor “re-education” camps spread across the country where the victorious Vietnamese communist government interned nearly one million people for three years or longer in a system of prison camps modeled after the Soviet Union’s gulags in Siberia.

Ho Chi Minh City was interesting to walk around and the next day we headed to Tân Định Parish Church, a Catholic church dating to the 1870s that’s admired for its distinctive pink façade and Gothic pillars. We then continued to Hồ Con Rùa, Turtle Lake, a large manmade lake in the center of a traffic circle. The site originally housed a water tower built in 1878, which was later replaced in 1921 with a statue of three French soldiers around a water fountain, symbolizing their colonial rule over Vietnam. This monument lasted until the French army left Vietnam in 1956. The lake was later enlarged in 1967, and the concrete tower that looks like a blooming flower was added by the newly elected president Nguyen Van Thieu of the Republic of Vietnam.

There’s a legend associated with the tower – it says that the president, to ensure his success, “invited a famous Chinese feng shui master to assess the land at Independence Palace,” now Reunification Convention Hall. The feng shui master praised the palace for being built on a dragon’s head, but the dragon’s tail was wildly thrashing about in Turtle Lake. In feng shui terms, this was really bad news for political stability, and a large turtle needed to be cast to hold down the dragon’s tail. Following the master’s advice a turtle sculpture was cast and placed at the center of walkways built over the lake that resemble a bagua, a feng shui symbol used for protection. And the flower shaped tower was reinterpreted as the shaft of an arrow shot into the tail of the dragon to pin it down. The turtle didn’t survive the city’s new communist regime and was destroyed in 1976. The plaza, surrounded by a variety of restaurants and coffee shops, was a nice place to relax for a while.

There are many upscale stores and shops across the city, but for every fancy store there are multiple small mom and pop shops that specialize in one item, like glassware or wicker, which is spilled onto the sidewalk in order to show the wares. There were numerous small mechanic shops that tended to the thousands of scooters that whizz around the city; they conducted their business on the sidewalks, repairing tires, changing oil, rebuilding engines, or doing body work and spray painting. This sidewalk sprawl often forced us to walk in the street to pass by.

A large metal relief sculpture above the entrance to the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History caught our eye as we headed to the Saigon Zoo and Botanical Garden in District 1. The cataclysmic scene commemorates the great victory of Vietnamese General Trần Hưng Đạo over the army of the invading Mongol Empire in 1288. The captioning on its placard described it as “emphasizing national heroism and successful resistance against foreign invasion, a recurring theme in Vietnamese history.”

Founded by the French in 1864, the zoo is the eighth oldest in the world and a beloved destination for generations of Vietnamese families. The botanical section with its topiary sculptures of wild animals is what drew us here and we spent about two hours wandering the gardens amid flowering plants, a collection of bonsai trees, some irresistible reptiles, and a miniature Jurassic Park geared for kids.

Turning left upon exiting the zoo we were waiting for a traffic light to change at the intersection of Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, when we noticed a row of recently painted patriotic street murals. Obviously, these were government approved to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the thriving economy that Vietnam now enjoys. Graffiti is unheard of and unapproved street art as a form of expression is illegal throughout the city, and the few decorative murals on buildings we saw were apolitical but still required the city’s permission. While talking about the unusual, we also didn’t see any homeless people sleeping rough on the streets. This is due to active government policies that relocate homeless individuals to social support centers, their home region, or shanty towns away from the city center.

Walking back towards the historic center of District 1 we passed tall glass office buildings and transportation infrastructure projects built to sustain one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia, which is transforming Ho Chi Minh City into a global financial hub by focusing on digital technologies, finance, and high-tech industries.

Near a plaza along the Sông Sài Gòn riverfront with a statue of the legendary General Tran Hung Dao we ducked into a passageway, off Mạc Thị Bưởi, lined with artwork called Alley 39 that opened to a narrow lane lined with small no-frills restaurants filled with folks. We found one with an empty table and enjoyed Pho for lunch.

Afterwards we headed to the Municipal Theatre of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon’s old opera house built by the French in 1897. It’s a fine example of grand colonial architecture, and it served as the legislative assembly for South Vietnam after the war before being restored to its original use and declared a national monument in 2012. Surrounding the opera house are several small squares with musical themed statuary. It’s also a popular place for couples to have their engagement and wedding photos taken and there even seemed to be two vintage sports cars permanently parked there to facilitate a variety of shots.

It was a long hot and humid day, but we strolled slowly back to our hotel past Saigon’s monumental Central Post Office. Across from it was the Notre Dame Cathedral of Saigon, wrapped in construction scaffolding for a multi-year renovation. It was extravagantly constructed between 1863 and 1880 with every brick, piece of structural steel, nail and stained glass window imported from France. Both structures are beloved vestiges of the city’s colonial past and historic landmarks. While Vietnam’s communist government officially guarantees religious freedom in its constitution, it heavily regulates Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, and Islamic houses of worship and the activities they support via the Government Committee for Religious Affairs.

Next to the post office was Nguyen Van Binh Book Street, a pedestrian-only lane lined with books, shops, and cafes. As we enjoyed a cup of coffee in a café, the bookseller across the way sent her young daughter over chat with us, to practice her English. The young girl spoke very well, and we enjoyed her company, but she soon lost interest and wandered off.

The next day we hired a private driver, a relative of the hotel’s concierge, to take us to the town of Thủ Dầu Một to see the reclining Buddha at the Hoi Khanh Pagoda complex, and several smaller temples on the return trip to the city. This was a fascinating ride down roads filled with overburdened scooters delivering various wares and lined with weathered roadside businesses that included a rubber clogs shop and factory with thousands of brightly colored shoes, a coffin shop, poultry and gold fish stores, a birdcage shop, various statuary makers, one of which had a Statue of Liberty out front, and numerous mechanic shops. It’s traditional for business owners to live above their tightly spaced shops in narrow dwellings called “tube homes,” which are often faced with marble to reflect the prosperity of the owners.

The massive pure white Buddha is 52m (170ft) long and reclines atop the temple’s two-story Buddhist academy. Along the base of the giant statue are 20 reliefs showing the life of the Buddha from his birth to his Parinirvana. According to the Buddhist tradition, women cannot ascend to the status of a Buddha — one who is awake, enlightened and emancipated. I like to tease Donna, who is a Methodist minister, that she might have been a little too close for the Buddha’s comfort, and he pushed her as she was coming down the stairs. Fortunately, a very sweet vendor selling flowers for offerings gave Donna an herbal salve to help with the immediate pain while our driver hurried down the street and bought two bags of ice from a nearby restaurant, to help reduce the swelling.

Across the street was the site of the original small Hoi Khanh temple, first established in 1741 by Zen Master Đại Ngạn Từ Tấn, a third-generation monk. This temple was destroyed during fighting in 1861, as the French colonial army colonized southern Vietnam. The temple is a major spiritual site in the region and continuous to evolve with additions of the seven-story pagoda in 2007, along with the academy and reclining Buddha in 2010.

Returning to Ho Chi Minh City, we visited the Vinh Nghiem Buddhist Temple in District 3, where we incorrectly assumed that classical design of the temple reflected its ancient history, only to learn that the temple complex was started in 1964 by two monks who migrated from North Vietnam to spread the Truc Lam Zen meditation sect to the south of the country. The Vinh Nghiem Pagoda holds an important role in the spiritual life of Ho Chi Minh City. “It serves not only as a place of worship but also as a center for moral education and community learning. The temple actively promotes Buddhist teachings on compassion, mindfulness, and filial piety through lectures, study courses, and social activities.” It’s a large complex with many areas and a 14m (46ft) tall stone memorial tower, that was once the tallest in Vietnam. In the Buddha Hall we received our first introduction to Buddha puja, a devotional tradition that symbolizes respect to Buddha by offering fruits, clean water, non-alcoholic drinks, or vegetarian foods. These offerings are often shared daily with the less fortunate.

The Saigon Cao Dai Temple in District 5 was the last temple we visited and fascinatingly different, with a tarpaulin covered courtyard sheltering scooters, coffins and a hearse. Cao Dai was formally established in 1926 in southern Vietnam by Ngô Văn Chiêu, a civil servant who received divine revelations, along with several others who practiced spiritualism, to create a syncretic religion that unites the philosophies of Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam into a into a single, universal faith.

The group revealed through séances the faith’s three saints and “Divine Messengers;” French writer Victor Hugo; Sun Yat-sen, a Chinese revolutionary who fought against oppressive rule; and Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, a 16th century poet regarded as the “Vietnamese Nostradamus” for his accurate prophecies. The faith’s minor saints include Joan of Arc, Thomas Jefferson, William Shakespeare and Louis Pasteur, amongst others. In the sanctuary colorful dragon motifs surrounded an altar prominently displaying the Eye of Providence.

On our last day in the city we waited for morning showers to clear before we took a GrabTaxi to Landmark 81. With eighty-one floors, this has been Vietnam’s tallest skyscraper since its completion in 2018, a symbol of Vietnam’s economic growth, and an iconic structure on the city’s quickly evolving skyline. It’s a mixed use building with a shopping mall and entertainment complex, residential apartments, and the Vinpearl Landmark 81 – Autograph Collection hotel. We, however, were there for the fantastic panoramas of Ho Chi Minh City’s sprawling metropolis from its SkyView observation deck.

Afterwards we took another GrabTaxi to Ben Thanh, the city’s old central market in district 1, where a bazaar has been on this site since the 1600s. The current building dates from the French in 1914. It’s a sprawling place with hundreds of stalls offering clothing, food and everything in between. The premium outer perimeter stalls are operated by the government with set pricing, while the maze of hundreds of inner stalls offer dynamic opportunities to bargain. We bought several shirts and blouses, along with some dresses for our granddaughters at very reasonable prices. Nearby was the nicest fish store we’ve ever visited. It featured a towering pyramid of sculptural water tanks holding the fresh catch of the day.

After returning to the hotel for a reprieve from the day’s heat and humidity, we headed out in the early evening to Bui Vien Walking Street, the city’s center for nightlife. It’s known for its partying atmosphere along a vibrant neon-lit street lined with open-air kitchens, bars and clubs that stay open into the early hours of the mornings. It was a fun place to stroll, and people watch as the night sky darkened and more groups filled the street.

We are not sure why it took us so many years to get to Southeast Asia, and Vietnam in particular. It was a nice change from our European centric vacations, and we found Ho Chi Minh City to be a youthful, vibrant and energetic destination that was very affordable compared to the United States and Europe. Everyone we encountered was friendly and welcoming, with the hotel staff almost feeling like family by the time we left. And we managed to stay dry during the occasional monsoon downpour with the help of umbrellas provided by our hotel.

Since the airfare is a considerable portion of any trip, we also booked a cruise up the Mekong River to Cambodia because we’re not sure if we’ll get a chance to return one day or decide to explore other areas of Asia. But after getting our feet wet in Vietnam, we are confident we’ll enjoy wherever we choose to go next in the region.

Book your flights!

Till next time,

Craig & Donna

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2 Suitcases for 2 years

Traveling the world, on the road without a home or 2 years.

asia

Bukhara, Uzbekistan: A City of Culture and Style on the Ancient Silk Road, or Time Traveling in the Desert

Tashkent, Uzbekistan: Historic and Cosmopolitan or Surprisingly Fascinating & Wonderful

Cambodia: Life Along the Mekong & Tonle Sap Rivers or A Beautiful Country Full of Surprises

Vietnam: A Journey Along the Mekong River or A Lion Dance, Sampans & Fortune Sticks

Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City – A Dynamic Blending of the Old and New or Scooters, Neon, and Warm-Hearted People

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