In Sihanoukville (on the shores of Southern Cambodia), everywhere you look offers the $3 BBQ. For this price, they will grill for you anything they offer – tuna, barracuda, squid, etc., all freshly caught. I flirted with the cook this particular night and actually got a filet and a half of delicious tuna, rice, salad and garlic bread, all for $3.

I seriously don’t know what I am going to do when I eventually leave this continent.

As soon as I left the big city of Saigon to start exploring the rest of Vietnam just over a month ago, it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Suddenly I could breathe again. The rut I had been experiencing seemed like ancient history. I was back to doing what I enjoyed most: travelling. I am a fairly restless person – not always this way, mind you – and for better or worse, this characteristic has coloured many of my decisions over the past 10 years.

And now that I’ve seen Vietnam from top to bottom, the thought of returning to Saigon and working causes a bit of a twitch to develop. So I’m not.

Instead, I’m heading off on my own. The next month will see me backpacking through Southern Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma). I will be posting updates and stories from the road, assuming I can find an internet connection in some of the places I have on the agenda. I’m planning on continuing until there’s no dong left in my pocket.

Hope you’re up for the journey.

A game I would play in one of my English classes was to give students a list of questions that they had to answer (and then guess each other’s answers). One of the standard questions I had devised was “Name a Hero”. With the first group I tried this with, every student’s response was “Ho Chi Minh”. “Wow”, I thought. “Unanimous”. In the next class, one student responded with “Spiderman”, and everyone else said Ho Chi Minh. Results in my other classes were the same.  I began to understand the reverence Vietnamese people have for this legendary man…

Educated in Paris and influenced by Stalin and Mao, “Uncle Ho” was a Communist revolutionary who forever changed the face of Vietnam. He led the Viet Minh independence movement and was leader of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam from 1945 until 1969, when he passed away. He is an integral part of Vietnam’s history in the 20th century, and to say the people admire him is an understatement.

I cannot emphasize the love the Vietnamese people have for this man. His face appears on every banknote, the city of Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after his death, and the vast majority of locals speak lovingly of him.

His body is on display at the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, in a granite structure modeled after Lenin’s tomb in Moscow. Interestingly enough, Ho Chi Minh wished to be cremated and his ashes spread across Vietnam, but he also expressed his wish against being canonized and, well, that didn’t quite go as requested either.

Jen and I made a visit to the Mausoleum while in Hanoi. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I’m seen quite a few mummies in my time so it took me by surprise to see how well-preserved his frail little body was. It honestly looked like he was simply taking a nap. The visitors stream past him quietly and reverentially, paying their respects. It is truly like a pilgrimage for many, and a highlight of Vietnam for myself.

"It is better to sacrifice everything than to live in slavery!"

Yesterday I posted about a visit to the Temple of Literature, so in keeping with that theme I thought that today I would write about books! Travelling offers a fantastic opportunity to catch up on all that reading that you always mean to do but can never seen to find the time to do at home. In a foreign country and away from your usual routine, you often end up with many long bus or train trips on the agenda, lots of downtime (for me, often spent in coffee shops and the like) and less distractions. I generally have a book on the go at home but read WAY more on the road.

What have I been reading lately? I am normally a fiction reader, but I’ve been reading quite a bit of non-fiction lately for some reason, perhaps because those are what books have circulated among our crowd. I thought I’d compile a list of the books I’ve tackled since we’ve gotten to Saigon.

Shantaram – Gregory David Roberts

My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult

Tears of the Desert – A Memoir of Survival in Darfur – Halima Bashir

A Long Way Gone – Memoirs of a Boy Soldier – Ishmael Beah

Into Thin Air – Jon Krakauer

River of Time – Jon Swain

The Rum Diary – Hunter S. Thompson

Reading at the moment (and loving it):

Anthony Bourdain – A Cook’s Tour

Next on the docket:

Graham Greene – The Quiet American

The Temple of Literature in Hanoi was built in 1070 by Emporer Ly Thanh Tong and is the location of Vietnam’s first university. It is still in good condition (compared to a lot of other historical sites we’ve seen) and is a great example of Vietnamese architecture.

The temple itself is dedicated to Confucius and contains 82 stelae inscribed with the names, birthplaces, and achievements of exceptional scholars. The stelae (pictured below) are mounted on top of stone tortoises, which represent wisdom, learning and stability. A visit here is awesome and a welcome escape from the busy city of Hanoi.

The outer gateway. Be sure to dismount!

Confucius says...

The stone stelae, inscribed in ancient Chinese.

We’ve sung the praises of the tailoring available in Saigon and Hoi An, but it hasn’t all been good. Days before Jen and I left on our 4 week-long Vietnam roadtrip, we had some tailoring done by the same woman who made our dress shirts when we first arrived. I ordered two dresses, but Jen was more ambitious – she ordered a number of different dresses and duvet covers. We had shopped for the fabric, given the tailor pictures of the dresses we wanted made and had numerous measurements taken to ensure the dresses were perfect.

Well, perfect they were not. The dress that Jen and I were most excited about was a black dress that we had found online. It looked awesome in the picture and the thought of having it tailored to fit for $13 made it even sweeter. They were not as we had imagined…

We were laughing before we even tried them on. They just weren’t anything like the picture we had given her – they looked more like bad 80’s prom dresses. Jen’s didn’t even fit properly. With all those detailed measurements, I’m still not sure how the tailor got it so wrong. It was so bad that we decided a photo shoot was warranted.

This is Jen and I checking out our dresses for the first time.  I believe Jen’s exact words were, “What the fuck?”

Then we took the photo shoot outside. Leaning up against a motorbike seemed appropriate.

Then we started posing with the staff. Pretty sure they thought we had lost our minds.

There were many more pictures taken, but you get the idea. What will happen to these amazing dresses, you ask? Well, Jen’s landed firmly in the garbage can, but I’m still packing mine around…I figure it’ll make a great 80’s Hallowe’en costume one day.

Man, Vietnam is truly a stunning country. Having been from the far reaches of the north all the way down to the south, I feel qualified to make such a statement. But I feel like I am repeating myself: “THIS is the most beautiful place in Vietnam”. Well, only one more time, I promise. Phu Quoc Island is everything a tropical island should be – white sand, turquoise water, palm trees waving in the breeze, and freshly caught seafood served grilled on the beach every night for dinner. On the other side of the road that lines the beaches there is lush, green jungle. This is one of those that places that you need to be careful about – if you don’t have anywhere to be, you could really get stuck here.

And the amazing thing about it is that it’s not too crowded. The main beach is fairly developed, but with beach-front bungalows rather than high-rise hotels. It’s only an hour flight from Saigon and it cost me $40 one way, and taking the boat back to the mainland is $8 plus the cost of the bus afterwards. I can’t believe more people from Saigon don’t come here for a few days break from the city.

But having said that, the cast from Season 1: Saigon actually did come here for a quick holiday from teaching. You can read about their experience here: http://www.jetsetzero.tv/2008/12/01/sna-phu-quoc/

Suffice it to say, it goes to show that it’s very possible to have two completely different experiences in the same place. The words “gruelling”, “irritating” and “island prison” certainly didn’t enter my vocabulary while here.

Note: the last picture is the series is literally where I wrote this post on my laptop, gazing upon the sun as it went down over the Gulf of Thailand. They will have to drag me kicking and screaming away from here.

There is a lot of awesome fruit here, but one of the cool things is you actually get to see how it grows. Ever wonder what a pineapple looks like before it is picked? Well, we are at the source. I’ve always thought dragon fruits were a neat looking fruit, but only recently saw a dragon fruit plant.

Why oh why must some of the European ladies go topless on foreign beaches? Is it that they haven’t taken the time to learn about the culture they’re visiting or is it because they know it’s inappropriate but simply don’t give a shit?

Whatever the reason, it really pisses me off. I’m not personally offended by it, but the look of shock is evident when locals pass by these ignorant women. Vietnam seems fairly liberal in its big cities – visit either Saigon or Hanoi and you’ll see many young women dressed stylishly in revealing dresses and heels, though even this will get clucks of disapproval from the older people. In the smaller towns or at religious sites proper, respectful attire should be donned. And it’s NEVER okay for a woman to take off her top in public. How important is it for you to tan your damn nipples?

Every responsible traveller should educate themselves about where they are going BEFORE they go. Many Aussies don’t realize that we tip in North American restaurants and they spend their vacation stiffing servers wherever they go. That just leaves a server grumbling that they missed out on some potential cash. Exposing yourself in a conservative country has a much longer-lasting effect on the people. It’s no wonder how negative stereotypes of Western women come to be born.

Apparently there is a strong “food” theme in my posts. Let’s continue that, shall we?

I had walked past Fanny’s Ice Cream Parlour almost every day on my way to work in Saigon and had always managed to engage my willpower to continue walking past its doors. Price was also a factor – it labels itself as “gourmet ice cream” and prices it as such. If I needed my fix, I’d cheap out and go get a delicious Black Forest Cornetto for $0.75 instead.

Jen and I were in Hanoi, lamenting on the fact that we were back in the traffic and noise of the city after weeks of relative quiet and solitude. We had spent a few hours walking through the French Quarter, where I had hoped to find a giant block of cheese to gorge on. Turns out the French Quarter isn’t as French as I thought it would be and we were headed back to the Old Quarter empty-handed when we passed a Fanny’s Parlour. I noticed a sign outside that announced a relatively new promotion: on the first Friday on each month they do an “all-you-can-eat” ice cream buffet for $4.  ”What day is it?” I demanded of Jen. “Friday” was her reply. “WHAT’S THE DATE?” I shouted, my voice betraying the excitement I felt. “The fifth”, she said, as the realization dawned in her eyes.

Oh, happy day. We decided to forego dinner and consume as much ice cream as humanly possible. It was glorious. It’s actually a really social event, frequented mostly by young Vietnamese folks. Everyone mills about the room, glass dish or cone in hand and chats, giving it the atmosphere of a bar. They have over 30 flavours including chocolate chili, banana and young rice, as well all the regular classics.

In the end, Jen ate 21 scoops of ice cream and claimed that she was close to vomiting. The competitive streak in me came out, bringing my total to 21 scoops plus a scoop in a cone for the walk home. Oh yeah, plus the crepes and the fruit dipped in the chocolate fountain. It caused the tummy to hurt but made us so, so happy.