Hello everybody.
Well, we've given you a week or so to thoroughly study our last missive, so it's time to bring you up to date, like it or not!!
First, about the bozos at homeland security which, unfortunately, the Coast Guard is now part of. I need to renew my Captain's license and emailed the CG to find out how, since it had already expired. They said no problem; just send in the paperwork, but, oh, by the way, you need to get a TWIC card. What is that, say I? That is the new requirement for all transportation workers of which you are one, say they. What do I need to do? Oh, just come into any CG office to be fingerprinted and photographed, then, after a two week vetting period, come in to pick it up in person. But I'm out of the country; couldn't I do this at an embassy like getting a new passport. Nope. There is not enough demand for us to set up that kind of thing offshore. But what about the thousands of merchant seaman plying their trade all over the world. Sorry, call your congressman if you don't like it. What assholes. So now I won't be licensed which isn't really necessary, but I think it helps on my insurance. Wrote the White House but haven't heard back.
Back to the fun stuff. After only 2 days back in Penang, we took off for Siem Reap in northern Cambodia, site of the Angkor Wat complex and embarkation point for our cruise down the Mekong. Cambodia was awesome. First, the US$ is the currency of choice, even in ATMs, which was nice after so long making mental calculations of what stuff cost. Second, we had a nice hotel, fairly centrally located--the place isn't very big--for $30/night. Top floor, big balcony, great cable!! In fact, everything there was dirt cheap. A massage was $4--our cheapest yet--$8 if you had two people work on you which I did by accident. BUT, it was great. You can get visas on arrival--$20 plus $2 for pics, but Rose had a problem since she had run out of passport pages. They charged her an extra $10 to cover over another page. The stupid UK doesn't allow extra pages (I'm on my second insertion) so she'll have to pony up about $50 for a new one when she's back in the UK. Other than that, clearance was a breeze. I don't think they even had a customs officer on duty!!!
After walking around that afternoon, getting the requisite massage and a very cheap liter of JD, we took a $2 tuk tuk (motorized rickshaw) ride down to the night market. It was really nice with some good food places and a nice bar with $2 mojitos. Silk shirts were $10 which I thought was a good deal until we hit the $5 ones in Saigon. We were a bit worn out and just headed back early, after a couple of the aforementioned cocktails, to the hotel for dinner. Cambodia is very poor, and we all remember the horror of the Khmer Rouge genocide, but, amazingly, the people are among the friendliest and, at least outwardly, happiest people we've encountered. So, this was the off season, and we arranged for our tuk tuk man to take us around again the following night and to take us to the Raffles Hotel gathering point for the cruise. We were his only fares those days!!! We had also arranged with our cab driver from the airport to pick us up the next day for a tour of Angkor Wat, only 10 minutes away. That was $25!! These guys might be inexpensive but they have the right idea--they're so cheerful and helpful, you just can't help giving them a good tip. The tuk tuk guy waited for us both nights for the return to the hotel--no charge!
The Angkor Wat complex is simply amazing. To think some of this stuff was built as much as 1,300 years ago is staggering. AW was completed around the fourteenth century and is a marvel. It was constructed at the peak of Khmer glory and was the capital when the "empire" encompassed much of Thailand, Laos, Malaysia and southern Vietnam. Things have gone downhill since then, but the monuments remain. Sadly, after the Khmer Rouge fiasco, the country and its economy fell into ruin and most of the statues are headless or faceless as the people figured out they could sell these relics. The temples are huge, though, as is the site, encompassing about 40 temples and other palaces in an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Once again, it was hot as blazes so we just did three of the main temples, including Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and the Bayan temple. We also visited the elephant wall and leper terrace. You could easily spend a month exploring all the sites. We had a really good lunch at a local place outside one of the temples. We finished about 4 pm and stopped at another local market which wasn't too good, but we found a good Mexican place--go figure--and returned by tuk tuk for dinner after a nap and a much needed shower at the hotel. Dinner was surprisingly good with even better mojitos there. Our "driver" waited and we segued to the night market for shirts, genuine crocodile skin belts, and miscellaneous knick knacks and gifts.
Even though we each brought 2 suitcases and left room for purchases, we know we needed another. Next morning , it was off to another local market, just near the hotel, to find one. It's quite strange negotiating in US$s, but we got a fake Samsonite or something for about $20, and we definitely needed it by the time we left Vietnam. Our driver picked us up at 11 or so for the short trip to Raffles to meet up with the cruise people. Same hotel as the famous one as Singapore. Pretty funny with the 2 of us and 5 pieces of luggage plus backpack all crammed into a 2 person rickshaw. Fortunately the ride was short. We all met at the Elephant Bar at Raffles and there were about 18 of us, far short of a full ship's complement. More on that later. After a bit of a wait we all piled on a nice tour bus for the trip down to where the ship was. Because it is early in the season the water levels on the river and Lake Tonle, another major waterway, do not allow the ship to come to Siem Reap. The ride would have been about 4 hours, but we made several stops. One was an old bridge, one was just a rest stop with a shop and restaurant, but the middle one was the Spider Village. Obviously a popular tourist stop, because one is greeted at the bus with huge platters of fried tarantulas and pans of cooked grasshoppers. Many of the venders are playing with live ones while trying to get you to buy some. Crazy Rose ate a grasshopper and then tried a tarantula leg. Yes, I have pictures!!!
So we arrived at the ship at about 6 pm, and our cabin was just outstanding. Twin beds, but quite roomy with a regular sized bathroom. Nice little slippers to wear on board and a Pandaw Cruises robe. The ship was basically four decks and resembled a Mississippi paddle wheeler without the paddle wheels. Bottom deck was operations and some single cabins which weren't in use. Main deck was cabins, dining room, and bar. Second deck was cabins and spa. Upper deck was the sun deck and another bar with the helm and a small gift shop. All our meals were included as was beer and local spirits. Had to buy wine, though. After a briefing, we had dinner at about 7:30, still only about half full. HOWEVER, in the middle of dinner, in piles a dozen French travel agents being comped by the cruise line. As it turned out, these a-holes ruined the trip for everyone. Excursions were held up because they were always late, the ship gave them preferential treatment and many were typically rude frogs!!! On top of that, I had to pay an extra $300 because they put them in all the mid deck cabins and forced some of us upstairs to identical, but more expensive cabins. This wasn't the only problem as you will hear, but I definitely do not think this most expensive of our travels was a very good value for the money. When I complained to the cruise line afterwards, they blew me off with "So be it!" Piss on "em". In spite of the problems, we had a good time, but wouldn't recommend it to others. That being said, before all these problems arose, we were impressed. The dinner that night was excellent, and the paying passengers were quite nice. We sort of hung out with some Aussie couples who were interesting and entertaining, one of whom was even more upset than me. The ship sailed that night for Kampong Chnang and after breakfast the next day we hopped on local boats to check out the local culture with floating villages and markets. We had excellent English speaking guides the entire trip. The frogs had their own guides and separate transportation.
Back for lunch and down to another village famous for weaving. I didn't go, but Rose bought some stuff. So far all the meals had been really good, but it started to go downhill with the second dinner. While breakfasts and lunches were all really good, dinner, after the first night, was uninspired and, many times, served family style. They even snuck some durian, a really smelly local fruit into the dessert one night. Some nights there was a movie in the bar relating to local stuff, like the killing fields.
Without boring you with the details, there were generally two excursions a day, some of which were pretty good, like the King's Palace in Phnom Penh and ancient temples, but some, mainly in Cambodia, were thinly veiled attempts to get money to their favorite charities, exposing us to sub par goods at 5 times their price in a regular market. There wasn't a person aboard who didn't feel compassion for the troubles of the Cambodian people, but we would have rather made a donation than trek through the jungle in 100 degree heat only to see same old same old and be conned into buying overpriced stuff. I mean, really, there were free drinks to be had on board. Speaking of which, me and one of the Aussies gave Bloody Mary lessons to the bartender with outstanding results! Phnom Penh was a great stop with tours of the Palace arriving in convoy by rickshaw, and a visit to the Silver Pagoda which is floored with hundreds of kilograms of silver tiles. The captain got on Cambodian national TV. They were doing some kind of story about the rickshaw as a means of local travel and chose me for the interview. Got a good "blind" massage there too.
The next problem came at the Cambodia/Vietnam border. The cruise line had put the fear of God into us that we needed visas in advance. Failure to produce a visa would result in huge delays and probable fines, so everyone's paperwork WAS in order, except the ship's, that is. We were never told what they screwed up, but we were stuck at the border for a day and a half. They tried to gloss it over with some free wine and discounted massages, but we ended up missing an excursion or two and there never was an apology. They filled the time with woman stuff like cooking demos, napkin folding and sarong tying. Whoopee!!! Disembarkation was painless--the frogs got off first, of course, and we bussed it about 1 1/2 hours into Saigon. On the way, another American couple asked if we wanted to share the cost of hiring our Pandaw Vietnam guide for a tour of the Chu Chi tunnels and the city the next day, so we were pretty set. A short taxi ride from our drop-off point brought us to our Saigon Hotel.
Well, Saigon pretty much made up for the disappointment from the cruise. We had a great "boutique hotel" in the heart of the city, near a giant market. At night, the regular market closed and the 2 streets on either side were blocked off for a night market and "portable" restaurants which were excellent. I had a lot of fun with the local currency which is the Dong (yes, I was always whipping out my Dong, etc. Rose got sick of it, but I am easily amused), but the currency of preference was the US$. Seems to me we really won the war as there were all the fast food chains as well!!! So, after a market reconnoiter that night, we had a great breakfast (included) with good views at the top of the hotel, and took off on our tour. I was a bit concerned about being American, but everyone was really friendly and most of the locals still call it Saigon instead of Ho Chi Minh City.
The first stop on our tour was the tunnels, about 30 kilometers outside the city where tens of thousands of Viet Cong hid out during the war. The place is now a huge national park as there are 80 k of tunnels. you get to go through some of them and they've raised the ceiling on others so you don't have to bend over, but they were 3 or 4 levels deep and we didn't go too far down. Really unbelievable to think people lived down there, especially with 1,000 pound bomb craters all over the place. Gives new insight into the persistence of these people, who, by the way, call it the civil war. We headed back into town and visited the old presidential palace which is now called Reunification Hall. It's like a time warp into the '60's and is preserved as it was when the NVA tanks, which are there on the lawn, rolled through the front gates. We had a super lunch and in the afternoon did some touristy stuff, but also visited the Sea Goddess Pagoda, one of the oldest in SE Asia and which was really cool. That night we hit the market, bought more stuff and had a good local dinner.
Next day, Monday, I needed to see a dentist as a crown had come loose just before we left Penang. Rose went too for a cleaning. I was in the chair about 2 hours, and she cleaned my teeth as well as fixing the crown and grinding down another rough spot--$100. Unbelievable!!! It rained heavily that day, so after a massage, we napped and ate dinner in at the hotel. Pretty funny, really, as there was a crowd of about 30 barely teenagers and their chaperones who came in later for what must have been the finale dinner on a road trip. Got a bit noisy.
Tuesday, we hit the botanical gardens and Saigon zoo. The zoo was a surprise hit as it was feeding day for the pythons. Rose claimed to be grossed out but took a million pics. They just put a few rabbits in the cages with the snakes which are huge--about 20 feet long and a foot thick--and let nature take its course. There were quite a few snakes, and the rabbits were in varying stages of still hopping about to in the coils of the snakes to half way down their gullet. I don't think they could get away with this in the states. My ATM card crapped out so the afternoon was spent on the phone and napping. The time difference didn't help, but Morgan Stanley rose to the occasion immediately (well, next day) getting the card reinstated after it was cancelled. We shopped some more and ate local that night.
The morning saw us off to Hanoi. We had wanted to spend more time in Vietnam taking the train up and hitting Hue and a couple of other spots, but the travel people all said the trains aren't too good so we just flew direct to Hanoi. You'd never know we bombed the hell out of the place on the long ride into town, but we were unimpressed with Hanoi, itself. Language was a major problem and people were a bit standoffish to westerners. Our hotel, while not a disaster, was just short of one, and the place is very spread out. But, we only had 3 nights there and made the most of it. A highlight was Uncle Ho's mausoleum which in addition to the tomb, encompasses where he lived and a museum or two. Very interesting. There's also a lot of lakes there and we had some pleasant times just sitting in the cafe's waterside. Hanoi is also famous for their "water puppets" which was an ancient form of entertainment for the people living on the water. Basically, there are a bunch of puppeteers waste deep in water behind a screen operating puppets on sticks. Yeah, okay, you had to be there. There were markets to explore, but I don't think we bought a single thing there. Shopped out, I guess. BUT, I forgot to mention, I bought a bottle of snake wine in Saigon. Just for display for me, but the locals drink it. It's the local vodka in a cool bottle with a small cobra with a scorpion in its mouth preserved inside. Of all the places we've visited, Hanoi is one of the very few we have no interest in returning to.
We're now back in Penang and Joey back on board for a while while he works out where to get more captain's credentials and or a job. Our Freebird friends are also here and we celebrated Joey's 26th early at the fabulous E & O Hotel brunch. Rose has seen the doc who increased her medicine dosage, and we've generally been hanging about and working on the boat. The new autopilot control head came today so that is a future job and some major cleaning needs to be done. Rose leaves for the UK tonight at 10 for 5 weeks and Joey is departing for Singapore a week from today so I'm being abandoned for my own birthday on the 30th. Freebird is leaving on some land travel as well so it will be pretty boring around here for a while.
So, that the latest and greatest and we're completely up to date.
Cheers
Tim, Rose & Joe
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