here's one i wrote while on our journey

we just got in to saigon, more to follow, and pictures will follow too:


Cambodia (more notes from a better time-adjusted mind)
It’s 10 a.m. Wednesday and I’m writing this on the laptop in the backseat of a mini-van in Viet Nam; we’re on our way to the village where we’ll sleep and eat with a family on the river. We spent last night in Chau Doc—I woke up at 4 a.m. today; not adjusting so well. This is my usual routine over here, but this time I’m staying up a little later than usual. I need to get more sleep. However, it was great because I got some great pictures of the early morning routine of Chau Doc. Later, we spent the morning in a small boat visiting a floating fish farm and the minority village…more on that in the next post.

Looking back between now and my last post, I think I was a little vague and didn’t really relate a lot of details. For example, the restaurant at which we ate Monday night was good, which I think I related, but I didn’t mention that there was a bat roost right behind it. As dusk fell, the noise from the bats increased and scores (hundreds?) of bats flew out from above and behind us. The noise eventually faded as they all went in their different directions, but it was pretty neat to see. Monday was also our first time seeing the Geckos which are all over the place here—in the restaurants, in the hotels, etc.

Tuesday started with a great breakfast at the hotel. More spicy food—I had lots of fresh chilis with rice noodles, shrimp and broth. Yum! Later before we left on the boat, we walked around the area near the dock. During our walk we came across a really neat Buddhist temple. They have such great sculptures and symbols. We exited the temple and walked directly across the street into a local market. Hundreds of vendors were crammed into a tent/shack city so close together that it felt as if we were under cover the whole time. They sold everything food—skinned frogs, chicken, fish, eel, beef, etc. The eel were live in a basket, the fish were recently killed, and the chicken was out in the open. Flies were on all the food for sale.

Behind the vendors there were wooden shack structures of sorts. They were elevated about 2 feet off the ground, and it looked as if the vendors lived inside them.

The smell of waste and decay was in the air. The ground was dirty with mud and whatever else…. We were the only Caucasions within sight at this market—the shoppers were all Cambodian. Some were dressed as if they were on their way to work, some dressed in just shorts and nothing else. We meandered through this tight market, stepping over drying tea leaves on the street, stray eels, and all sorts of vegetables in baskets.

It’s easy to overlook how great we have it in the United States. Anyone who is reading this is extremely fortunate in many ways. Many of us spend too much time thinking about what we don’t have and what we want. Guess what? What we have is more than enough.

Leaving the market, we bought coconuts on the street. The guy who sold them to us easily and quickly hacked the tops off, flattened the bottoms, and handed us a straw so that it was like we were drinking from gigantic coconut-shaped cups. Each huge coconut was only $1.

The currency in Cambodia is called the Real, and from what we learned it is hardly used by the Cambodians unless it’s to give small change. The main currency that is used is the USD.

We returned to the dock and ate…I had an awesome papaya and chicken salad. Shredded papaya, carrots, chicken and some sort of limey juice. Awesome. Even better, I had a bowl of fresh chilis to put in it. J Jeff had vegetable fried rice, which he thought was fine, and John had some good looking spring rolls that were good.

Then it was time to board our boat and head toward the Mekong and on to Viet Nam.