Eating for Two

The bus trip back to Ho Chi Minh City from Phnom Penh was brutally long. The ones in charge shoved in a VHS copy of Mr. Bones 2 which was dubbed in a shreiking language no passenger could understand. My ipod died early into the journey and I never have the best luck trying to read in a moving vehicle, so I passed the time by covering my ears and staring out into the flat, ox strewn farmland.

We knew going in that our Southeast Asia vacation had energy-wiping potential. Instead of kicking back on a beach at an all inclusive resort for three weeks, we opted to bounce around in an attempt to cover as much ground as possible. All told we would board 8 separate flights totaling 19 and a half hours on top of 23 combined hours of layover time. During our time on the ground and out of airports, over 42 hours were spent riding in 9 different buses or vans. During the 23 day excursion we slept in 9 different beds.

The itinerary was even more daunting for Sami who, at the time, was in the middle of her first trimester of pregnancy. This new development forced us to fall into a fuel stretching routine. Morning was the most energetic time and we responded by rising early, dining on breakfast typically provided by whatever hotel we were staying in and heading out on our designated mission. Lunch was usually early and when we could manage it, a mid afternoon rest, cleanup for dinner and in bed by eight or nine. When Sami slept I usually found something to watch online. I think I watched Black Swan early in the trip and the NFL playoffs were on during this time as well.

Eating was also a problem. Sami would get nauseous when her stomach was empty, but certain foods would make it worse. Every meal was a gamble- would it stay down or no? Would it leave a disgusting aftertaste no toothpaste could conceal? Our plan of attack was to order small amounts of as much food as possible. If she liked it, she ate much as she could stomach, and I polished off the rest. If she couldn't, I ate it all. Sami tended to crave the kind of foods she was familiar with and indulged in growing up- pizza, pasta, fries. After one or two bites, she would give up. I would pick up the slack on the hard hitting greasy foods, but I was still insistent on trying all of the local cuisine, so between feedings I would indulge in a street food treat. I ended up a fat and hating myself (but secretly happy).

When our bus finally did arrive back in Ho Chi Minh City, it was nearing our bedtime. I would have been content calling it a day, full from days of eating for two. However, Sami was feeling as woozy as she had all trip and insisted we find a place to eat. She led us to a well lit restaurant with a diner quality. We sat in the front, flanked by the street and open air. Further inside sat a loud group of six young tourists. The three couples let a Filipino man do most of the talking. He waxed poetic about his home country's culinary reputation and I listened carefully to his descriptions of fried pork and greasy concoctions knowing our time in The Philippines lay a mere two weeks ahead.

Sami had a bowl of Pho and (victory!) ate it all. We shared a rice flour crepe filled with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts which was served with a sweet chili dipping sauce. I also ordered chicken wings with fish sauce. I love fish sauce and I hear that there is a restaurant in Portland known for such wings, so I couldn't pass it up. They were perfect, not too salty, and I can't wait to get back to Oregon to compare.

Let it be known that the conclusion of this meal marked the exact moment when her craving for fruit and sweets began and would last for the duration of the trip. This is what we ordered:

While we waited for dessert, a young peddler came to our table and showed off her briefcase of cigars. We found that the peddlers in Vietnam had more of a sense of humor than those in Cambodia. To Sami's horror, I inquired as to the price of each item. I am not a smoker, but hey I'm on vacation. I asked the price of a tin of Dutch coffee cigarellos and was told 200,000 Dong (about $10 US).

"Too much," I said. "100" (meaning 100 thousand)

"No, sir," she replied. "150 ok you buy now"

"No, no, no. Sorry 100 or nothing." I had been burned too many times and now I was standing my ground. After a few minutes which were fun to me, but agonizing to Sami, our new friend came up with an idea.

"Ok, we play game. You know rock, paper, scissors? If I win you pay 150, if you win 100."

I laughed, charmed by her creativeness, but was determined to hold my ground. After an impossibly long and uncomfortable silence, she finally relented.

"Ok, 100."

"Deal."

The next morning while walking outside near our hotel I saw the same brand of cigars in a convenience store being sold for 60.

Tuol Sleng and The Killing Fields

There is a restaurant in the tourist section of Phnom Penh along the river that screens nightly documentaries, one of which tells of the quick and brutal history of the Khmer Rouge. We had read that the show was a worthwhile primer for anyone planning on visiting Tuol Sleng and The Killing Fields. We detoured off into Cambodia from our Vietnam vacation specifically for this purpose, so we went. We sat outside in the hot night and waited for the start time by drinking beers (me) and a milkshake (Sami). White people of all shapes and sizes sat scrunched together in wicker chairs and played cards or read Lonely Planet guides as street solicitors peddled photocopied bestsellers and the latest travel trinkets made in China. One man with no limbs was wheeled an arms length away from we diners. He moaned an agonizing groan while his partner collected donations.

I had a decent buzz going and was delighted to find that beer was allowed inside the theater. I ordered another and we preceded around to the side of the building where we were led through a large, black painted wooden door and up a steep incline of stairs. Velvet curtains bordered the screen which flashed a multi-colored and bouncing Apex logo transmitted from the cheap DVD player on the floor. There were only a dozen or so soft and dirty chairs which soon were filled with people I never bothered to make eye contact with.

Inside the theater

View of the screen

The documentary dealt principally with the so called "King Father of Cambodia" Norodom Sihanouk. As Prime Minister, Sihanouk allowed the North Vietnamese to store military supplies in eastern Cambodia during the Vietnam War. In 1970 a pro-US government called the Khmer Republic overthrew Sihanouk. In the years that followed, Sihanouk supported the Khmer Rouge. Because many Cambodians still revered Sihanouk, they joined the Khmer Rouge. Most felt that they were supporting their leader and the country they loved rather than a change to Communism. When the Khmer Rouge overtook the Khmer Republic, they quickly stripped him of the notion that he would have any power in the new regime.

One aspect of the documentary that I will always remember is Sihanouk's hatred of the US and in particular President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He claims that the US's bombing of NVA supply bases in Cambodia led to anti-American sentiment which made it easy for Cambodians to align with the Khmer Rouge. What he fails to mention is that he permitted the NVA to use Cambodia as part of their war strategy.

Of course, it is never easy to remain neutral and Cambodia surely received funding from China and North Vietnam in exchange for use of land. If Sihanouk had sided with the US and South Vietnamese, there is no guarantee that the chain of events that followed would have been bloodless.

The events and ideas that brought the Khmer Rouge into power need to be remembered and studied. I am certainly no expert and still have a lot of research to do on the subject. The pain and suffering as a result of their brutality is much easier to comprehend. Our first taste of it came by visiting Tuol Sleng, a former high school turned torture prison.

Tuol Sleng looks like it hasn't been touched in 35 years. It sits inside a wall topped with barbed wire. There are three main three-story buildings, all a dirty cement yellow. We were not allowed to enter the building closest to the entrance, so we headed to the smaller far sided building. It contained larger rooms that were used as torture chambers. The Khmer Rouge executed all of the educated people in a quest to create the perfect agrarian socialist society. Anyone even rumored to be engaged in capitalistic practices was tortured and forced to give up names. Captors were eventually killed whether they gave names or not.

Tuol Sleng

Barbed wire over the entrace

The graves in the background honor the last prisoners to die at Tuol Sleng. Their bodies were found when the prison was finally uncovered.

Each torture room had one picture on the wall that showed the devices in practice.

The torture cells were left mostly bare save for a metal bed frame and ankle chain locked to one of the four posts. Pools of decades old rusted blood lay like terrible islands on the checkered floor. Each torture room also had a singular picture documenting the atrocities as the occurred.

Outside there was a piece of metal frame that the Khmer Rouge used as a gallows. The interrogators would bind the prisoners hands behind their backs and attach them to a rope that they would sling over the gallows and raise, tearing the shoulders and chest as they were stretched. They would do this until the prisoners lost consciousness after which they would dunk their heads in filthy water mixed with fertilizer to revive the prisoners for another round of torture.

Gallows

The ground floor of the main building held crudely designed prison cells made from slathered on grout and cinder blocks. Prisoners were chained by their ankles in these cells that were no bigger than a bathtub.

Maybe the most powerful feature of the prison turned museum is the mosaic of photographs that cover an entire floor of the main building. Prisoners had their pictures taken the first day they were brought in and the looks on their faces are haunting. Most had no idea that they were being taken to their deaths.

On the top floor there was information regarding the current status of former Khmer leaders. Most of them are awaiting a trial while others like Pol Pot are dead. There was also an interesting exhibit on former Khmer Rouge soldiers. It is important to remember that many of the soldiers who carried out these acts of genocide were just kids. Joining the Khmer Rouge was really their only option over forced labor and eventual death and all were separated from their parents as older people were seen as carrying the virus of capitalism.

The prisoners of Tuol Sleng were killed and buried in mass graves known colloquially as The Killing Fields. I was surprised at how close The Killing Fields are to the city of Phnom Penh. It was a beautiful mid-morning when we toured The Killing Fields.  Geese roamed the grassy areas and hundreds of yellow butterflies fluttered drunkily among the shallow hills that were once the scene of so much horror. The pleasant weather did little to detract from the remnants of sadness that lay about. There is a glass tower of bones in the center of the field. The bottom contains the piles of clothes confiscated after the site was found. The next few layers contains skulls, many with obvious mortal wounds. Then next contains leg bones then forearms and so forth up and up an up.

We learned terrible things about the methods used, how chemicals were dumped over the bodies in the pits to mask the odor of death and finish off any of the half-living. There was also a tree used for the sole purpose of killing babies. When the hard monsoon rains come and dump over the pits, bits of bone become resurfaced. As we were walking back we easily spotted a tooth lying all too naturally in the grass.

Teeth and parts of bones can still be found in The Killing Fields

 While I was at The Killing Fields I couldn't bring myself to imagine the piles of bodies heaped and mangled, sprawled and buried in a human landfill. How can it be that something so terrible can happen in my parents' lifetimes and then again in mine in Rwanda and during the Bosnian War? How does a human life mean so little?

Just a few of the former mass graves at The Killing Fields

Phnom Penh- Part One

We took an early morning bus from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh on the third day of our vacation. Sami had taught a genocide lesson in her World Studies class, and I have always been intrigued by the horrific brutality of the Khmer Rouge since seeing the movie The Killing Fields. Our plan was to visit the mass graves known colloquially as The Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng, a former high school that the Khmer Rouge turned into a prison.

We had visited Siem Reap a year ago, but didn't have time to make it to the capital city of Cambodia. Siem Reap was and remains a very special place for Sami and me. We will never forget the thrill and amazement of our first tuk-tuk ride from the airport. The warm night air was silent and black. Such a welcome contrast to the cold, neon frenzy of Seoul. I remember being passed by barely humming motorscooters ridden by barefoot teenagers. Skinny dogs sniffed the dirt roads lined with open air gas stations or, to be more specific, short racks of Johnny Walker bottles filled with petrol.

It was only a short walk from our hotel to the bus terminal, but early morning is the busiest time in Ho Chi Minh City, as locals scramble over the best fish and produce sold at narrow sidewalk markets and food stalls. We banged through the crowd clumsily hauling our luggage.

Shortly after finding our seats, the bus began to fill with a decidedly international crowd. I would say that half of the people on the bus were either Vietnamese or Cambodian, but there were a few Frenchman and a clique of young Indian men who smelled strongly of curry. I really don't mean to stereotype and this could have been an isolated incident, but it is my opinion that people tend like what they eat. My first week of teaching in Korea I began to notice that the kids' farts smell like kimchi. My skin smells like garlic if I eat too much of it and my natural armpit odor is enchilada.

On the road again

We were seated toward the back of the bus and I slept most of the way so I did not get a great view of the scenery. I will say that in the US we drive on the right side of the road and in the UK they drive on the left, but it Vietnam they just drive. I am certain that there were dozens of near accidents and close calls. What must be the country's main highway to Cambodia was only two lanes and scooters, buses and cars veered in and out of both at full speed.

At one point, one of the chaperones collected all of the passports and, for a five dollar fee, arranged everything for us at customs on the border. If you didn't want to pay the five dollars you could try and do it all yourself, but it would take longer and you would have to find a way to rejoin the group where they lunched. The group of Indian men chose not to pay, and came running and panting onto the bus just as we prepared to leave after lunch.

Lunch was not overly memorable, but I do remember ordering a beer and asking for a mug filled with ice. This is how I see all of the locals doing it, but for some reason they never offer it to the foreigners. I think maybe they figure we are scared of the ice. Sami certainly is and found my request downright irresponsible.

As the students in Korea say: "Runch-ey"

About halfway into the trip our bus was ferried across a body of water. I am not sure of the name or even if it is a river or lake, so I will have to do some research and revise later. I didn't get a great view of the scenery as we were being ferried across because there were vehicles to our immediate left and another aisle of occupied seats blocking our view to the right.

Upon arriving in Phmom Penh, we were struck by much bigger and busier it is than Siem Reap. The tuk-tuk ride to the hotel didn't have any of the magic of our initial late night carriage due to the traffic and the noise, but the driver was nice, even if he did try to take us to a different hotel- one operated by a family member.

I won't mention the name of our hotel, but it was located in the main tourist area on the river. It seems like a popular ex-pat hangout and is probably known more as a bar than a hotel. Our room upstairs was clean and had a huge bed and flat screen television. Probably the only such tv we have ever seen throughout our cost conscious travels. There were at least a dozen young, attractive Cambodian women (girls?) that worked at the bar/restaurant. It kind of creeped us out how many of the fat old white guys would flirt with the employees, and I wondered just how the owner could afford to pay them all.

Anyway, we ordered some food and then quickly walked to the National Museum before it closed. We soon found out that if we were going to walk places, we would have to pass through the gauntlet of tuk-tuk drivers starving for business. However, we were determined to save money and get some exercise.

The national museum featured many of the same stone relics featured in the Angkor Museum in Siem Reap. The best part about it is the building itself and the courtyard within its walls is a great place to sit and take in the quiet.

Courtyard of the National Museum in Phnom Penh

An Authentic Experience

I wanted to walk the streets of Saigon like Anthony Bourdain or the fat, bald guy who salivates over fermented deer penis and grubs. I daydreamed of confidently strolling into the dirtiest back alley noodle stall and ordering the city's best pho in perfect Vietnamese. The locals would gape in awe at my expert chopstick usage and clamber over each other for the privilege of purchasing my first beer.

Of course, our Travel Channel heroes are undoubtedly chaperoned by bi-lingual experts in their city's culture and cuisine, and I soon found out that it is not so easy to eat like the locals. At least not without making a fool out of myself.

The first handicap in my quest for authenticity was my dear wife, who would just as rather lick the floor of a rest stop men's room than order anything from a food stall. I am convinced that she has created an equation for the perfect dining experience wherein points are awarded for a restaurant's cleanliness, brightness, size (the bigger the better) menu posted outside in English (prices included), and above all, the presence of other tourists.

We settled into a routine of eating at an establishment of her choosing, but I strategically ordered light fare, and left plenty of room to dash off to a back alley food stall afterward. In all honesty, all of the food we ate in Saigon was incredible, and some of the most memorable were from Sami's restaurant choices. Including these two:

Chicken wings with fish sauce. Wings just like I like 'em- crispy. I was worried that they would be too salty, but no way. Just perfect.

Crepe filled with pork, shrimp and bean sprouts served with a sweet dipping sauce. I believe this is called a Bahn xeo, but I call it a B-O-M-B xeo.

Still, despite all of the stellar restaurant food, I was dead set on getting my authentic fix. Right from the start, I had noticed many Vietnamese eating what appeared to be a sort of salad out of a plastic bag. I saw many women sitting on the sidewalk selling some variation on the same thing. I approached one random salad selling squatter and grunted out my order. She seemed dead set on not giving me the salad I craved, but quail eggs instead. This incensed me. I thought for sure that she was just trying to pawn off the more expensive order on the white tourists. I made my intentions clear with another grunt. No one else was eating the quail eggs, why should I? When it finally dawned on the vendor that I could not be deterred, she gave a giddy giggle. And her competitors nearby gave the same giggle and the look of a shared inside joke. The salad was of a crunchy vegetable similar daikon shavings. It was delicious, but mainly because of the squirt of vinegar chili sauce, which she was also reluctant to give.

The approach

Victory! (Although I must say I was displeased by the apparent necessity of the plastic bag that I just know will one day end up stuck in an endangered whale's blowhole.)

I had a similar experience to this on our first night in Saigon. Every local I saw walking around seemed to be carrying and munching from a plastic bag lightly filled with multiple, thumb-sized, salmon-colored squares. I placed an order by pointing and received the customary chuckles. She filled a fruit roll-up like rice paper with chopped quail eggs, bacon, onion sprig and a squirt of honey-mustard type sauce before rolling it and cutting it into pieces. It was so good that it haunted me for a full day after and I knew I must re-visit. However, the second time I went a young Vietnamese man nearby seemed completely overjoyed and intrigued by my purchase and would not leave us alone. He kept asking me if I liked it and tried to get Sami to take a piece. Being as the dirty street and plastic bag met none of the criteria in her restaurant equation, she politely declined. The man followed us all the way to the crosswalk, and passersby looked on equally intrigued- by me or our new friend's passionate admiration, I could not tell. It wasn't until we began crossing the road that I understood. It was then that an ex-pat holding hands with a giggling Vietnamese woman turned to me and said, "By eating that you are going to grow large breasts."


Oh. Yes, it's true. Eating like the locals isn't as easy as it is on Bizarre Foods. But, if I can't eat like Andrew Zimmern in Saigon, at least I can grow matching man boobs.

This is delicious street food and may or may not enlarge your bust.

Cu Chi Tunnels

In The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain relates a story of a young traveler's enthusiastic exercise in journal keeping. The kid involved is certain that a well-kept travel log is worth a million dollars. For the first few days, he carefully reports longitudinal climate updates along with intricate re-countings of goings on both aboard the ship and on shore. Of course, by the time the boy reaches Paris he finds the notebook a complete nuisance and can think of no worse punishment than forced travel reporting.

I am currently laboring through the great American author's 500 page account of his voyage through Europe and the Holy Lands. If Mr. Twain included the above anectode as a barely veiled commentary on the tedious process of completing The Innocents Abroad, it certainly shows in the writing. It is boring as hell. And it is funny because out of all of Twain's classics, Innocents was the best seller during his lifetime. I guess back then folks didn't have much in the way of travel blogs and the 'pickens was slim.

Like Twain, I set out to document every aspect of our voyage, noteworthy or not. Unlike Twain, I lacked the discipline and am now forced to go back weeks in my mind, recount past happenings to the best of my ability, and try not to teeter too far into the realm of fiction (or facial hair).

Luckily, in this great digital age of ours, I have the ability to scroll through the hundreds of pictures recently saved on our laptop. Surely a few will jog my memory. Like this one for example...

Yes, it is just yet another picture of me, but look closely and you will see the beginnings of an Ethan Hawke inspired mustache and chin whisker growth. I wished to look like some made up "Communisto" during my time in communist Vietnam. I even bought a green NVA army hat and a tin of cigarillos to complete my look. The idea failed miserably, or maybe it didn't and I just wasn't prepared for the results. First off, a mustache will never work for me because I have 1) A weak chin and 2) Very little space between the bottom of my nose and the top of my upper lip. Just think about the great mustaches of the world. Tom Selleck comes to mind right?

See there? His face is made for a mustache. Strong chin, easy thumb distance between nose and lip...it's only natural. Now let's try without...

Good lord, he looks like a camel. Hey, come to think of it, old Sam Clemens sported one of the most famous 'staches in American history. Observe:

Look at that old white bushy bastard. Just goes great with the Bea Arthur permanent. You know, growing a mustache like that takes discipline. It gets dirty. It tickles. It makes you look like a perv at first. You just have to persevere. I couldn't do it. Barely lasted a week. But in writing, we press on...

We took a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels on our third day in Ho Chi Minh City via jet boat north up the Saigon River. Click on the link in the last sentence if you are interested in learning about the history of the tunnels. It is quite interesting, but I won't bore with the details other than to say they were a network of tunnels used by the locals in guerrilla fighting- just one more reason why Vietnam was such an impossible place to fight.

You could tell that our tour guide had been around for awhile. Although he was only in charge of an Australian family of five along with Sami and myself, he took the reigns in the video room and explained the layout of the land to anyone who would listen. He was a funny guy, always looking for an extra second to take a puff of his cigarette. He said that he fought for the South Vietnamese Army during the war and mentioned on numerous occasions that he had family in the US. It was difficult to understand him at times, and at one point he said something secretive to us along the lines of "I am not supposed to tell you this because we are communist and I could get in trouble, but..." I wish I would have been paying better attention.

A few things stuck out on the tour. First, there were giant craters left in the cleared forests, the results of US bombing.

Bomb Crater

Second, there were all kinds of hiding areas and they were always very small and narrow. To get down into one you had to hold the cover straight over your head as you lowered yourself.

Third, there were a number of vicious looking traps designed to batter, impale and trap intruders.

Fall into the rolling trap and you are gonna get cut.

The actual tunnels themselves were an extremely narrow and intricate network. I had to either crawl down on my hands and knees or duck walk the entire time.

The tunnels spider off into a number of exits but I wanted to make it all the way through so I stuck to the main passage. I eventually ran into a group of Korean tourists. Go figure.

Here is the Korean tourist I got stuck behind

Later on we ate tapioca which grows in the woods. There is also a popular firing range there where for about ten bucks, you can fire off 10 rounds of an AK-47 or an M-60. We passed on the guns but said yes to the tapioca. It's not that I am against shooting automatic weapons, it's just that my wife is against spending ten dollars.

Tapioca

We got back to Saigon early enough to check out the market, and after taking a couple of laps, I settled into a stall and ordered a delicious bowl of crab soup. If only I had a thick mustache to help me savor the flavor, I might have been more eager to describe it in this blog entry. As it turns out, I only have the picture to look back on. And I probably would have put it off for a month anyway.

This was some awesome crab soup

From Saigon to Phnom Penh

It has been a crazy, jam-packed week and a half of travel. Joe and I went from Saigon to the tunnels of Cu Chi, took a bus west to Phnom Penh (Cambodia) for a day and a half and then returned to Saigon, flew from Saigon to Hanoi, spent three days in Halong Bay on the Gulf of Tonkin, and now we're back at our hotel in Hanoi preparing to fly to Bangkok tonight. We have a couple of hours before we can visit the different facilities dedicated to Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, so I figured I would blog about our journey from Saigon to Phnom Penh and our first impressions of Cambodia's capital.

We were surprised to find that in Saigon things always seem to run on time, if not 20-30 minutes early. Our guide for our tour of the Cu Chi tunnels showed up 30 minutes early (Joe will blog about this later) and the man who came to take us to the bus stop was 20 minutes early. Luckily, both times I convinced Joe that we should be ready ahead of time. We must have looked quite comical as we struggled to follow our guide and carry our various back packs and bags of snacks. I insisted that Joe buy a variety of snacks for the trip and the hotel gave us slices of white bread, bananas, and bottles of water (their idea of breakfast?), all of which contributed to a difficult load to maneuver. By the time we made it to the bus we were huffing and puffing, even though the walk probably took less than 5 minutes, and we couldn't wait to get climb on board.

Our bus for the trip to Phnom Penh.

As seems typical in Saigon, the bus left about 15 minutes early. We were given seats in the back with the other foreigners which we didn't mind because later the inhabitants up front were eating corn that smelled pretty awful. It probably took 30-40 minutes just to get out of the city. The traffic in Saigon is incredible. The motor bikes converge like an amoeba- fluid, morphing, and constantly shifting its shape. If you don't watch out, you will be swallowed up by the chaos, and a path out can be nearly impossible to find without causing everyone in sight to honk angrily at you. Motor bikes are the king of Saigon, though cars and buses make up a large amount of the traffic as well.

This picture kind of gives you an idea of the traffic, but it was hard to take pictures without getting honked at.

Almost immediately after we boarded the bus a representative from the bus company wanted our passports to see if we already had a visa for Cambodia. We didn't because I was told we could get one at the border, and of course he wanted to "make" our visa for us for the added charge of $5 per visa. This was probably a rip-off, but sometimes we just don't feel like fighting the system, so we allowed him to fill out the paperwork for us and it probably made things a little easier. The Indians next to us were much more skeptical and wanted to fill out their own. It was comical to listen to the guy try to avoid telling them the actual visa costs and how much he was profiting by taking care of it for them. The Indians ended up getting their visas on their own, but the bus company made sure they didn't have time to stop for lunch with the rest of us. I guess this was their punishment.

Vietnam's immigration office at the border.

We stopped for lunch and Joe ordered us some rice, vegetables, and mystery meat (we think it was pork?). It was so well done that we weren't too worried about it making us sick. Lunch was almost spoiled by the fact that Joe had to pay $1 for his beer considering he can usually get them for 50 cents, but after being reassured that we could afford it he seemed to forget about the pricey beer and enjoy his overcooked lunch.

After lunch it was back to the bus for a ride that seemed to get bumpier by the hour. There was definitely a big difference between the roads in Vietnam and Cambodia. While the roads in Vietnam were by no means smooth, the roads in Cambodia went through long, bumpy stretches that would cause even those with stomachs of steel to grow concerned about whether or not they were going to retain their lunch. Perhaps the most interesting part of our trip was being ferried across the Mekong River, while on the bus, for the last leg of the journey to Phnom Penh. Before you cross you have to pass streets lined with people selling various types of street food, preying on buses that are waiting for the next ferry. The ferry trip was a nice respite from the bumpy ride that was about to get even bumpier.

The view from the bus.

The Mekong River.

When we finally arrived at the bus station, after 6 hours and 30 minutes of travel, we then had to secure a thuk thuk for our trip to our hotel. Of course we got ripped off (we paid $5 for a ride that probably should have cost $2), but like I said before, sometimes you just don't care. The last hour of our trip had been on a pocked, dirt road that left both of us feeling tired and sick to our stomachs, so the only thing we were thinking about was resting at the hotel.

After a short rest at our hotel we headed to the National Museum of Phnom Penh. We spent around an hour there, but its primary focus was on the early history of Cambodia which we spent a lot of time studying during our trip to Siem Reap. Our goal in visiting Phnom Penh was to focus more on Cambodia's modern history (Khmer Rouge, genocide, etc.), so after briefly checking everything out at the museum we returned to the hotel for dinner. Amazingly our appetites had returned and we enjoyed a western style dinner- a hamburger for Joe and fish and chips for me.

On the way to the museum. Joe was really fascinated by the pig's tail for some reason.

The museum and the grounds were beautiful.

Our last stop of the night was the Mekong River Restaurant. They show two different 45-minute long documentaries. One is on Pol Pot and the genocide, and the other is on landmines in Cambodia. Because we were visiting Tuol Sleng (former primary school used as a torture facility by the Khmer Rouge) and the killing fields the next day, we felt like we should view the documentary on Pol Pot. We arrived a little early, but Joe was happy because they had 60 cent beers that he could bring into the theater with him if he wasn't able to finish before the movie. Our only mistake was to sit outside close to the sidewalk where we were constantly bothered with the question, "Buy something?" Books, sunglasses, cigars, cigarettes- we were offered just about everything, and so we were very relieved when we were ushered upstairs to watch the documentary. Though very well-done and informative, I don't think anything could have prepared us for what we were going to see the next day.

Joe with his 60 cent beers in the theater.