Vietnam and Cambodia

Hello everyone! I am still alive, happy, and healthy. I am on my way to Hong Kong right now; the MV Explorer just left Vietnam, and is traveling down the Saigon River. As soon as the ship docked in Vietnam my SAS trip left for Cambodia, so I am going to talk about Cambodia first.
This was my first big SAS trip, and I mist admit it was pretty nice to have everything all planned out for you. Our trip leaders were Bob McGowan, a business professor, and Judy Al-Bilali, a theater arts professor. They are two of the “cool” professors on the ship so it was really nice to have them both there because they are laid-back.
We left for the airport at 10am for our flight to Phnom Penh. The flight was only about 40 minutes long, so that was nice. According to our itinerary, we were supposed to go to the hotel to check in when we arrived, but everyone was really hungry, so we went to lunch instead and didn’t check in until later that night. After lunch we went to the Silver Pagoda and Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is where the King of Cambodia lives, and he apparently was there with some guests so that was closed off to us. The Pagoda was really nice though, and I got some pictures. After visiting the Pagoda for a while, and being absolutely disgustingly sweaty, we drove to the Mekong River. We got on little riverboats, and drove down the Mekong as the sun set. It was really beautiful; I love when we go somewhere specifically to see the sunset. On the boat, we drove past what I guess could only be called a neighborhood. It was a whole area of floating homes. It was really amazing to see, and I took a ton of pictures as usual. One of the best things we saw here was a boy going to his neighbor’s house. How do you get to your neighbor’s house when it is in the middle of the river? The boy was sitting in a small tub and using his arms to paddle himself. It was so crazy. After our sunset cruise we went back to the hotel to check-in and get showers and all that stuff. We were supposed to meet in the lobby for dinner with the group, but a few of us decided to do our own thing for dinner that night. We went to this local pizza place, and there were about 10 of us there. The street kids in Cambodia are far worse than we have seen anywhere else. They came into the pizza place and were standing there as we ate asking us to buy stuff from them. A few people bought things from them, but we gave them all of our leftover food, which was a lot. After dinner we all went to bed because we had an early wake up call the next day.
Our wakeup call was at 5am to wake up, eat breakfast, and pack. We had to be checked out of the hotel since we had another flight later in the day. After getting all packed up and everything, we drove to the Toul Sleng Museum. This was S-21 where the Khmer Rouge took people to torture them. Before the Khmer Rouge took over, this was a school building, but they turned it into a place for killing millions of people. There are three separate buildings, each with three stories. We walked around these different buildings going in all of the rooms. Many of the rooms still had remnants of what was there before. Quite a few had the large iron bed that the prisoners were tied to, and the small iron box that served as the prisoner’s toilet. Many of the rooms had bullet holes in the walls and ceiling. Some had pictures of that same room when the Vietnamese found them. There were pictures of that exact bed that I was looking at, with someone tied to it and either cut up, shot up, or beat. The first floor of Building B housed pictures of the victims of the Khmer Rouge. The majority of the pictures were taken before they were killed. There were so many men, women, and children. There were even a few pictures of women holding their infants who were too young. Only 7 people survived S-21. I looked at every single one of the pictures because I felt it would be disrespectful not to. I looked at, I don’t even know how many, people who were tortured and killed for no reason besides being educated. There was one wall of pictures that were taken after the people were tortured or killed. It was really hard for me to look at these pictures, but I felt like I had to. This set of pictures was the one that really made people the most sensitive. I’m not going to go into details about some of the pictures I saw just because I don’t know who is reading this, but I will definitely want to talk about this with people when I get home. When it was time to leave Toul Sleng you could see the difference in people’s attitudes right away. The bus was absolutely silent besides hearing someone’s sniffling due to their crying. Our next stop was the Killing Fields. When we arrived here, we all went on our separate paths and walked around the grounds on our on. Close to the entrance is this building with shelves that go really high up housing skulls of the people who were buried here. Once a year, monks, family members, or anyone really, come to the Killing Fields, and set up a nice little ceremony. They have offerings, candles, and other things. During this one-day a year the people chant and pray that those who did not have a proper burial here could rise up and be free from this place. How lucky am I that I happened to be at the Killing Fields on this day. I didn’t really realize that impact of that on me until we learned about it in my religion class today and I got to share my pictures. After watching the chanting for a few minutes, I started walking around the grounds. I am not sure of the exact number, but there are a lot of mass graves here. Some were specifically for women and children, some were specifically for decapitated people, and then there were other ones. As you walk around the Killing Fields, you have to be especially careful to watch the ground you are stepping on closely. There are remnants of clothes, teeth, and bones stuck in the ground around the mass graves. The Killing Fields is where the people were taken to be put in mass graves after they were at S-21. Being here only emphasized the feelings that all of us had had all day. Again, it was really hard to see all of these things, and then just up and leave. I guess the tour operators know how much those sights affected us, so our next stop was to go shopping at the Russian Market. We got to stay there and shop for about 40 minutes, but I couldn’t even stay in there that long. It was SO hot! Everyone in my group looked like they had just stepped out of the shower that is how hot it is in Cambodia. After the market, we drove to a restaurant for lunch, and then headed to the airport. We took a 30-minute flight to Siem Reap, which is more in the interior of Cambodia. We went directly from the airport to Angkor Wat to watch the sunset. Angkor Wat is a huge ancient temple. It used to be part of the Wonders of the World, and the Cambodians are arguing to make it that again. After visiting Angkor Wat, and getting eaten by mosquitoes, we took the bus to a restaurant that had buffet style dinner and a cultural dance show. A lot of people from our group didn’t stay for this because they wanted to go to the hotel and get showers. I am glad I stayed because the cultural show was really nice. After dinner we went back to the hotel, got showers, and then I met up with Terron, Erik Silk, and Hanaan and we went towards the night market. There were a few shops here, but the SAS’ers were mainly at a few bars. The most popular one was Angkor Whhhaaat. Since I didn’t feel like drinking, Erik and I went to get massages, and then we met back up with everyone else at the bars. As we were sitting at the outside table, I was watching the street kids run around asking people for money. There was this one little boy holding an infant so I got up to go talk to them. I was asking him questions, but I could tell he was not being honest with me. He said that he was 11 years old, and that he was holding his 1-year-old brother. After talking with him for a few minutes and asking him questions he handed me the baby and told me to hold him because he didn’t want to anymore. So I was standing in the middle of the street holding this infant while my friends were at the bar. After a few minutes this Canadian woman came over and was telling me that she had been in Cambodia for a few days, and she has come to this same restaurant every night and has watched the mother of these kids “pimp” them out to the tourists in order to get money. She also said that this is the first time in the last few days that she has seen the baby sleeping in someone’s arms. Another one of the street kids came up to me and was asking me questions. She was a 14-year-old girl who seemed like she would be a lot more honest with me, and she spoke English so she was also my translator. I asked her about the boy and this baby and she said that the boy was actually 8 years old and the baby is only 1 month old. She took me over to the baby’s mother, who is actually the sister of the 8-year-old boy. I was talking to her through a mix of translation and non-verbal communication. I found out that she has 3 kids under the age of 5, and she is only 21 years old. She then said something to my teenage translator that made her look a little nervous. She shook her head and responded as if she didn’t want to tell or ask me whatever it was the mother wanted to say. I told her that it was okay and she could ask me whatever she wanted. She said that the mother wants me to take her baby back to America for her because she doesn’t have enough money to buy milk, and I was very comforting to him. I told her no I could not do that, and handed her back her baby. I said bye to the other kids, and went back to find my friends. After about 5 minutes I said I couldn’t stay there anymore, and everyone else was ready to leave too. The tin-tin ride back to the hotel was pretty hard for me because of all the emotions and “what-ifs” going through my head. Obviously, I would never take a baby like that, but it really makes you think. I know a lot of people were saying before I left to not come back with a Cambodian baby in a joking matter. The one thing I am asking all of you is to not comment either on my blog or directly to me about this incident. Do not make jokes about it or anything because even though you are reading what I am telling you are my experiences, you have NO idea how that felt to me. I will be willing to talk about it when I get home if you want, but just please don’t make jokes about it. Thanks.
The next morning there was an optional sunrise tour of Angkor Wat that met at 5 am. There were about 20 of us that woke up for it. It was a horrible day for it because it was extremely cloudy and it began raining. After it got brighter, which I took to mean the sun rose, I went back to the bus just in time for it to start pouring. I fell asleep on the seats and didn’t wake up until we got back to the hotel. At that point we got breakfast and then headed out to another section of Angkor Wat. During this one, we had the opportunity to climb up to the 3rd level of Angkor Wat, which is the Nirvana level. The steps to get up to this level were extremely steep, and it was really scary to climb up, but I did it. After that tour, we went back to the hotel for a short nap, lunch, and check-out. We got all of our stuff together and headed to Ta Promh to look at more temples. Terron, Erik, and I took a ton of pictures on the different rocks and statues. Also, there were little kids following us around trying to sell us things, so we stopped and had a conversation with them. We all bought these little paper fans from them, and gave them some money. Let me just say that the fans were amazing in the extreme heat of the Cambodian jungle.
That evening we headed to the airport for our flight back to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. This was one of the first times I wasn’t extremely excited to see the ship, because I really didn’t want to leave Cambodia. We all got showers because we were gross, and then met up with Eric for dinner. We went out for a little while, but didn’t stay out too late because we were so tired. The next day I woke up early to go shopping with my roommate, Ashley. We went to Ben Tanh market, which was this inside market with tons of little stands and just so much stuff. We didn’t shop around too much because of the heat and the fact that there was nowhere for us to eat (the food was not so good). We got a few things, and then decided to just go back to the ship and sleep. That night Jordi and her mom were getting back from their Cambodia trip, and we were all supposed to do dinner together, so Terron, Eric, and I all got ready for that and then sat in Eric’s room waiting for them to get back. We watched the entire season 2 of Weeds waiting for Jordi to call us, but she never did. It turned out that their trip got back late, so Jordi decided to go to the hotel with her mom and go to sleep. Terron and I completely understood because we knew how drained we were the night that we got home. The next day, which was also our last day in Vietnam, I had to wake up early for an orphanage visit, which was also an FDP for my HIV/AIDS class. We took a bus to the Tam Binh 2 Orphanage; which is for kids whose lives were affected by HIV/AIDS. Either they are HIV positive or their mothers were. There were 25 students on this trip, and we were all matched up with a child that we were to stay with all day at a local amusement park. All of the children from the orphanage that came with us were HIV positive. They all seemed very healthy and were very friendly. We spent the whole day with them going on rides and walking around. At the end of the day it was hard to leave them back at the orphanage. No one could guess the future of “their kid” as we lovingly called them. After getting back to the ship I went out to the market by myself to get some last minute shopping done. I also walked around the city by myself; which gave me a lot of time for reflection and thinking. In Vietnam, they have cars for taxis, but the most popular means for transportation are motorcycles. There are men with motorcycles waiting on every corner to ask if you need a ride somewhere, and you get on the back and he takes you wherever you need to go for $1. They were so scary! A lot of girls got bad burns on their calves because they didn’t get off of the motorcycles properly and touched the exhaust pipes. After spending the day by myself, I was ready to get back to the ship and see people I knew. When I got home I had a note from Jordi on my door saying that she came to find me because her mom was going to take us to get massages and pedicures, but I wasn’t there. I didn’t see Jordi until after on-ship time, so I didn’t get to meet her mom L. No worries though because we are all going to meet for dinner in Philly. Cambodia was definitely one of my favorite countries that we have visited, and I would love to go back there someday and work with street kids to get them into school. Vietnam was also nice, but the whole time I was there I was thinking about going back to Cambodia. We waited until the next morning to sail back up the Saigon River because of currents, and were on our way to Hong Kong.