asia

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

| 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

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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

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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.

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Till next time,

Craig & Donna