I didn't have internet the last few days, so I can only hope now, that the Christkindl (or Santa for all the others...) brought you many presents... I saw Santa passing by recently and urged him to bring you a loads of presents - he really was in a hurry as you can see:
I passed my last few days in the North-East of Cambodia together with a funny isreali guy I met in the bus to the city. But still, even there in the middle of nowhere I got a glimpse of Christmas: I heard a khmer version of "Last Christmas" - isn't that amazing??
And a happy khmer family dressed up for Christmas - I couldn't help but jump in the middle of them for a photo :)
I hope you all had a great time celebrating with your family and friends!
And as a small Christmas-presents for all of you - or at least those of you who want to see more photos: I finally went through my last photos and made 2 new galleries: the remaining photos of China - Yangshuo and Yunnan (greaaaat pics in there!) - and my Vietnam-gallery!! Enjoy!!
I don't know if you already saw that on the right side of my blog I put a list of books I have been reading so far. Some books are completely random, they were just what book-swapping-shelfs in hostels had to offer. However, the book I am reading now and the one I will read next are linked to the countries I am visiting:
I bought "Emma Larkin - Finding George Orwell in Burma" in Ho Chi Minh City, which I am really excited about and looking forward to read. I will definitely tell you more about that in the future...
But before that I wanted to know more about Cambodia, where I am at the moment. And I was really lucky that Alice, my friend from Austria with whom I will travel to Burma in January and whom I met here in Phnom Penh for a few days, gave me the book she just finished reading. It is THE book about the Khmer Rouge - a bit like a Anne Franks famous "the diary of a young girl" for Cambodians (I shamefully have to admit though that I never read Anne Frank...): First they killed my father by Ung Loung.
Ung Loung tells the history of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, a communist military regime that ruled the country for 3 years, 8 months and 20 days from 17th of April 1975, through the story of her own childhood. Within these not even 4 years of Khmer Rouge rule, a horrible regime build on mistrust and the horrifying ideals of brother number 1 Pol Pot, up to 2,5 million people (around 20% of the population) died - they were either killed or died because of the living conditions. The Khmer Rouge were tearing families appart, making people work under unhuman conditions without hardly any food and exterminated anybody believed to be an enemy of the regime...
Alice and I went together to the Choeng Ek memorial, better known as Killing Fields: it is an extinguishing camp not far away from Phnom Penh, where people having been kept and tortured in the S-21 (the Tuol Sleng prison) of Phom Penh were brought to to be killed.
Pol Pot wanted to create a new Cambodia, a completely slef-sufficient country with only two classes: peasants and workers. Therefore the old population had to be extinguished. People had to leave the cities and work on the countryside. Many thousands died when the Khmer Rouge forced everybody to leave all cities - regardless of their physical condition. Within just 2-3 days all cities were literally emptied.
Angkar - the government - had many enemies: members of the old regime, people living in the cities, educated people, ... If you were able to speak a foreign language, or even if you were wearing glasses was enough to be killed.
We also visited the S-21 prison - now the Tuol Sleng Genozide museum - in Phnom Penh after having been to the Killing Fields. You could see photos of the imprisoned people, read about the history of the Khmer Rouge and their leaders. And you could also see the prison cells and the torture instruments...
During my stay in Poland 5 years ago I have been to Auschwitz. Already there, and here again, I felt completely helpless. The question "why?" can never be answered...
I know this blog is about my travel and maybe you prefer to read only about the great things I experience. However, I felt I needed to write about this as well - not everything is or was beautiful... But don't worry, I'll try to be funny again the next time!
And not everything is bad in this context neither: unlike other countries Cambodia is much faster in dealing with its recent history (you remember I wrote about the glorification of other leaders in other countries who as well had a lot of blood on their hands...).
I find this very positive and feel that the people are also looking positively into the future!
The South of Vietnam is quite different to the North - that's at least what everybody says. Not only do they speak quite a different dialect in the South and in the North, but also the mentality of the people is apparently different. I heard quite often, that the people in the South are friendlier and more open... And I am not sure if it was thanks to these differences, that I enjoyed my time in the South far more than in the North.
I guess, in my case it was more the way things worked out for me that made me enjoy myself more in the South: I met a funny British guy in Hoi An with whom I also stayed in Dalat as well. Dalat was the first non-touristy town I visited in Vietnam: in the mountains, surrounded by beautiful scenery, loads of vegetable, wine, coffee and flower plantages it definitely made a change to the coast towns. We visited the Crazy House there - a quite weird building...
However, I was not lucky with the weather as it was quite cold and rainy in Dalat, so we left after 1,5 days to Ho Chi Minh City - aka Saigon.
I really loved the city! So I ended up staying there 5 nights instead of just 2-3 nights. I had great CS-hosts: Viet, a Vietnamese guy and his flatmates were all really cool and I went to parties and dinners with them. And Hoang, another guy I got to know through CS, showed me around in the city and went salsa dancing with me - hooray, that was fun!
But if the people of the South are friendlier than those of the North? I can't tell, because all Vietnamese people I met in the South were orignially from the North.
In the end, I am not a good tourist: I often don't visit the sights that are worth visiting, but prefer "breathing in" the cities and places I got to. Getting an idea of how it is to live in a certain place, rather than taking photos of the main sights (you can find 1000 much better photos of these sights in the internet anyways). I prefer taking photos of szenes that are in my eyes typical for the city instead - like this street in Saigon...
Saigon really amazed me - it is such a lively city. And it is all about the traffic... never saw such a mess!! Hanoi is peaceful and quiet in comparison to Saigon! In rush hour it is simply crazy what is happening on the streets of Saigon... I took a xe om (motorbike taxis) a few times, and thanks to Hoang I was even driving a bike through this crazy traffic! That was hillarious :)
Check this video I made from the back of a xe om: that's how you are getting through a roundabout in Saigons rush hour...
But it is not only by walking around that one finds out more about the life in a certain place. Of course I talk a lot with my CS-hosts about the life here... As already mentionned in my last story - or you could read it between the lines - Vietnam is a really cheap country. Just a few examples:
When going out (in normal bars/restaurants - so no posh or fancy places), I'd pay around 15.000,- (€0,54) for a beer, you'd pay around 50.000,- (€ 1,80) for an average dish (you can also have a bowl of noodles from a street seller for around 15.000,- or even less...). The very delicious iced coffee with milk costs from 5.000 (€0,18) at street-corner-tables to around 30.000,- (€1,08) in nice cafés - however, on average you'll get them for 15.000,-.
Costs for hotel rooms start at about $6,-, a bed in a dormitory is around $4-5.
I asked some people, how much they earn: the average of their answers was 10.000.000 (€350,-) per month; for rent they usually pay around $ 200,- (I appologise for the currency-mix - but that's how people count here...)
I met some expats here as well - of course: English teachers. For English native speakers (and I guess for people who are fluent in English as well) it is really easy to find jobs as English teachers. Those who I met told me that they earned around $1.000,-/month for teaching only two days per week...
Somehow I can now better understand, that non-Vietnamese people are constantly ripped of...
However, Viet was not wrong when saying, that he's completely fine with the fact, that English teachers earn so much more: he said, he was happy that they are here to teach people English as it is really needed! It is a question of supply and demand. But still, it made me feel a bit uncomfortable to see that a Vietnamese person with great degrees can never earn as much (at least not without a lot of experience) as an English person with some shit degree would earn straight away...
One more thing about money: I wanted to change back my remaining Vietnamese Dong into USD - and only after I came back unsuccessful, Viet told me that it is illegal to change Dong into foreign currencies... Because of the high inflation rates Vietnamese would try to get rid of their Dong. Nobody wants this money, not them not me.... So, in Rome, do like the Romans do - I will try to get rid of my Dong on the black market like Vietnamese would do it... wish me luck ;)
So yes, it is all about money in the end - in a communist country? Whatever...
My father asked me, if I felt that I was in a communist country. I admit: no, not really. I don't know how it should feel like anyways. China is a communist country, but capitalism is their only religion. In Vietnam I wouldn't say that capitalism is like a religion. Of course you need to earn money to survive. However, in China I had the impression sometimes, that making money was only for the sake of making money - that's what I mean when I say that capitalism was their religion. Here it is different: They are definitely poorer than in China. While you wouldn't see this in China, here many mainly women walk around in tourist areas, selling loads of different things (nobody would need)... And you can see that they are not making money like this for the sake of making money; they sell these things for one simple reason: because they need the money to survive.
While I had much more time to talk with people in China and was lucky to meet some Chinese, who were really open and would talk about politics with me, I didn't talk much about politics that here. One question people in the West would like to know, is if these single-party-government are indoctrinating people and trying to influence their thoughts? Well, I guess so.
In China I could definitely feel it: Many web pages are blocked (in Vietnam I only know about facebook being blocked) and freedom of thought didn't seem to exist. But I also had the impression that many people simply didn't care - they had the way of thinking the government wanted anyways - no critical thinking, just believing the doctrin and making money. They didn't seem to me to care about politics as long as their standard of living was continously improving.
I can't tell much about the Vietnamese though. The only thing I can say is what I saw. And this really surprised me: whereas I was in a propaganda poster museum in Shanghai (see picture above) and admired the old communist style posters, however, you can see such kind of propaganda posters and messages still all over the towns and countryside - mainly in the South. I don't know how much people care about posters by the government, but the fact that the government spends money to hang up such crappy posters really surprised me...
Usually Ho Chi Minh would feature on these posters.
In China I didn't see any Mao pictures in or on buildings - appart from the really big one at Tianan'men Square. Here you find uncle Ho - how they like to call Ho Chi Minh - everywhere - on posters, on tourist-t-shirts, in post offices, simply everywhere. He is without any doubts their national hero...
In Russia you won't find a city without a Lenin-statue, in Mongolia Dschingis Khan is present everywhere, in China you feel the eyes of the government everywhere (the national TV-station is called CCTV - how frightening is this??) and here you'll literally have Ho Chi Minhs eyes watching you everywhere...
But I'll leave all this behind now, and am hoping not to find any Pol Pots-glorifications in Cambodia, where I am heading to today...
Long time no story...
I had quite some problems getting used to my new environment. First of all I wanted to take time to let all my impressions of China settle and to get myself a bit organised concerning the further travels: checking my guidebook of Vietnam, and I buying other guidebooks: "Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos and the Greater Mekong" and - my new tresure - "Myanmar"... yes, I am planning to go to Burma :)
But at the moment I am still in Vietnam, so one after the other...
Hm... now it's becoming difficult... So far I only wrote how great everything was, but I do really struggle finding Vietnam great. A lot of things were annoying me in China, I admit, but arriving in Vietnam I really started to miss China (appart from the spitting - can't say this often enough...).
It is the way tourism works here that makes me not enjoying Vietnam, and the fact - that goes with it - that somehow I don't manage to keep up travelling like I used to before.
How is tourism in Vietnam then?
You are constantly being ripped of. And having been told that beforehand didn't make it better - it only helped me fight against it literally since the very beginning:
At the trainstation in Lao Cai just after the border there were of course no tickets for the train to Hanoi for the same day left - only the few police men (yes!!) in front of the station "hey lady, hey lady..." had tickets they would sell for a much higher price. As I really wanted to go to Hanoi the same day I was forced to take one...
I arrived in Hanoi at 4am, and even though my CS-host lived really close to the trainstation I thought I should maybe take a taxi as I didn't know the city and didn't want to risk anything. I am not afraid, but you know the story: a girl alone in the middle of the night... Anyhow, I of course ended up in a taxi with an accelerated meter. I knew a bit how much a taxi should cost so I simply refused paying the indicated price of 60.000,- and gave the guy only 40.000,-. He didn't even protest too much - he knew like me that even 40.000,- were too much.
And no, I don't agree that the fact that 60.000,- (approx. €2,-) are still quite cheap justifies this kind of behaviour.
And it just continues like this... It is a never ending fight for the correct price (you will still pay more than the locals, don't you ever dream about being treated eagerly) and to avoid it you end up losing so much time only to compare prices...
Vietnam is a really touristy place. However, the geography of the country doesn't give you much of a way to escape them: you are either going from North to South or the other way round. Then of course there are cities on the coastline that are worth stopping at and some that aren't. And in those worth stopping at - yes, you guessed it - you are one of 10000 tourists considered by the locals as a walking wallet: You can't simply walk down a street without being hassled constantly: "lady, wanna motobike?", "wanna look", and - the from a marketing point of view really effective: "lady buy something!"
Moreover (yes, there is even more...): As you might have realised already, I am not a fan of package tours. I do really like travelling and organising everything by myself, taking public transportation like the locals would do. Vietnam however seems to be a country where everything is offered in package tours - Sapa tour, Halong Bay Tour, DMZ Tour, Beach Run, Brewery Tour, (I am just citing all the posters for tours hanging around in this hostel...). It doesn't mean that you have to book these tours of course, but when you want to go somewhere by yourself it is so much more of a hassle. The people not working in tourism in general don't speak English, so the few times I tried I really struggled to get information at public bus stations - because as the woman couldn't understand me she simply ignored me...
You never get a second chance for the first impression...
...but I decided to give Vietnam a first chance for a second impression
So now I try to overlook everything I mentioned above and enjoy my time (even though I admit that I still struggle somethimes with the overlooking)... And of course there is still a lot of things I like here and I want to share with you:
Hanoi
Even though I stayed about 1,5 weeks in Hanoi I didn't visit many of the tourists sights. I was rather walking around in the Old Quarter and non-touristy parts, enjoying and breathing in the atmosphere (and the bad air...) of this very capital city.
It is definitely quite a fun town, really lively with motorbikes everywhere - not electric like in China though so it is far noisier here and dirtier (Something like fine dust contamination would never make it into the newspapers like in Austria...).
Crossing a street in Vietnam is something between suicide-desire and adrenalin-driven fun.
Already the first day I ended up drinking loads of vodka shots with some men at a streetcorner food place during their lunch break... Alcohol is definitely a big thing here in Vietnam!!
My favourite place in Hanoi was - guess where - the Bia Ho'i intersection: there are many bia hoi corner bars - small places with tiny chairs where you can get ridiculously cheap beer (€0,18 for a 0,33 beer)... The later the evening the further the bar grows into the street.
Appart from that I had a great and really long night out with a former barkeeper of Shebeen who now works in Hanoi, and I also went to a cool concert the following day by Dengue Fever - an US-Cambodian-band playing a good mix of Western and Asian music... you should definitely check them out!
Halong Bay
Somehow it seems that you haven't been to Hanoi if you didn't go to Halong Bay... After a few nights in Hanoi I made a short trip to Halong Bay, which lies close to Hanoi at the sea.
The scenery is really beautiful and reminded me of Yangshuo in China, where you'll find similar karst-mountains on the Li-river. I stayed two nights in Cat Ba Island doing a trip in the bay on the second day including swimming, visiting an enormous grotte and even some kayaking - really nice indeed.
Hue
Picture-title: "The american soldiers panic at Lang Vay bas. What's President Johnson thinking?"
in this government-subsidised museum...
In this small town I stayed only for one reason: I wanted to visit the DMZ - the demilitarised zone: the zone of 5km+5km around the Ben Hai river separating North and South Vietnam during the American war. And of course for this purpose it really made sense to join a tour which I didn't regret it at all: I learned a lot about the war in Vietnam from our guide and went into the Vinh Moc tunnels, where locals had been living for 5 years(!!) during the war.
Hoi An
So far it was all quite ok, but I struggled with my still generally bad impressions of tourism here. I only started really enjoying myself since I am in Hoi An - maybe it's because now I'm in South Vietnam, which is considered to be quite different to the North... hm... will tell you in the future after having been to other South-Vietnamese towns if that's true.
Anyways, it is hard not to like this sweet and kitschy town.
Every night all the restaurants and bars at the border of the river are nicely lit with candles and beautiful lamps, you'd see many coloured lamps swimming down the river and even though there are a lot of tourists (we're still in Vietnam, don't forget that...) they spread quite well around the town. And what is more it is relatively quiet in the center: in the pedestrian zone are far less motorbikes than usually (without them it wouldn't be Vietnam, would it?)
The town itself is definitely worth staying a bit longer: you could just sit in one of the plenty cafés in the town, enjoy the scenery and one (or more) of these delicious coffees (I had stopped drinking coffee about a year ago, I started again here...). However, the main reason why people stay here a bit longer is because they are getting some dresses tailor-made. In history and still today Hoi An lives from silk and tailoring: every second shop is a tailor shop (nearly all the remaining shops are souvenir shops or bars/restaurants...), where you can get yourself any high-quality clothes made within 24h.
And yes, me as well I got myself a nice new ballroomgown - just how I like it: simple and elegant...
only long black gloves are missing and then it's perfect
getting the local experience...
One way of giving Vietnam a chance of giving me better impressions is again Couchsurfing: Even though hardly any Vietnamese person was able to host me, they would still be ready and happy to meet up for a drink and to hang out.
So I went for lunch with a really nice girl in Hue and met another girl here in Hoi An yesterday. She drove me around outside of the town and to the beach, and we finally ended up going to a wedding party we were just passing by!!
It was such great fun! Sitting in the middle all these wedding guests (a wedding with "only" 200 is considered as small), drinking beer with them and cheering for the great future of the couple. The whole lunch-party lasted only for 1,5 hours (the party continued later of course), with food and drinks and of course karaoke!! I wasn't the only Western person at the party and with these two guys - an Isreali and a German guy - we contributed to the party singing the worst ever performed version of "Let it be" - enjoy:
I can't tell you how difficult it is for me to start this story. I spent two months in China - two months is not enough at all to get this huge country. Looking at my travel-map I did indeed see quite a lot of places but still not even 10% of this country. Especially these last 2-3 weeks - since I left Yangshuo - I was rushing through places and towns worth seeing - sometimes for sure too fast. But the expiring date of my visas was approaching and chasing me...
So now here I am, in Ha Noi Vietnam, with loads of pictures - in my head and on my computer - and I do feel a bit helpless regarding the overflow of impressions I want to sort before having all the new impressions from Vietnam flushing them away...
Where to start then?
In the Lonely Planet (yes, again...) they wrote that when heading to Yunnan - the region I spent these last two weeks in - you should double the time planned. I can only agree: if it had been possible for me I would have doubled it for sure!! Seeing these pics, you'll understand why:
Lugu Lake
Lijiang in the morning
Lugu Lake in the morning
Tiger Leaping Gorge
Black Dragon Pool Park in Lijiang
Sunset over the rice terraces of Yuanyang
Erhai Lake at Dali
However, it is not only for the breathtaking landscape that people are heading to Yunnan but also because of the many different minority people (China recognises 56 ethnic groups, with the Han Chinese as the biggest group), of whom many are still living their traditional lives in the very villages of Yunnan (more than 50% of Yunnan are non-Han):
A woman (no idea - I think Dai as well) selling a pig on the Sunday market
Kids with traditional haircovers in Yuanyang (I think Miao)
So, how did I finally spend these last 2 weeks in China?
After a few days in Yunnans capital Kunming, where I just relaxed and hang out with friends I got to know via CS I headed North:
Lijiang
I was lucky to arrive early in the morning so I could walk through the really nice but definitely kitsch old town before all the touristy shops opened and the masses hit the town. What should I say: it does look like Disney Land...
Lugu Lake
Even though the trip to this very lake at the border between Yunnan and Sichuan province took 7 hours on quite shitty roads it was soooo much worth it! The lake and the landscape around it are so beautiful!
With some young Chinese people from the bus (I had been the only non-Chinese person on the bus...) we made an extended trip around the lake the next day. This gave us the opportunity to see all parts of the lake, the small villages bordering it, the farmers living there and their way of living and farming: till then I had never seen farmers plowing their fields with an old horse- or ox-driven plow - appart from in films of course...
Tiger Leaping Gorge
This very gorge is a quite known challenging two day hiking trek. It was part of the Ancient Tea-Horse-Route where horses were transporting tea from the South of Yunnan (Xishuangbanna) to Tibet. And today you would still see loads of horses packed with goods when hikingk. I guess it's not tea anymore they are transporting though...One woman on the trek sold big bags of marihuana, next to refreshing drinks and snacks - however, I don't think these horses were transporting marihuana neither :)
Dali
I didn't have any time left before heading back to Kunming, so I had only one night and one day in this nice little town next to the quite big Erhai Lake. I had a great evening in a pub run by two brits - I had really been in the mood (or should I even say need?) of having an evening out like back home...
Yes yes, I admit: I am in no sense better than the people I was criticising in my last post :D
Yuanyang
Before heading on to Vietnam I really wanted to visit the rice terrasses of Yuanyang. After having seen those of Langli I wanted to see some paddies filled with water so I spent my last 3 days in this very mountainous region. It is really amazing: as far as your eyes can see there are only rice paddies, the mountains end up looking like layers over layers...
But the most impressive view you can get of these rice paddies is for sure in the very early morning at sunrise. It is worth getting up at 6am for that!
Staying in Yuanyang for 3 nights was definitely a good place to end my trip to China. Not only that I could see these very rice paddies. But also becausw this region is not yet overcrowded with people and it is in fact still really rural. So you are walking around in the small villages, making your way through wild pigs and chicken walking around your feet. Women from very different minority groups are all wearing their traditional clothes all the time. I wished I had had more time to learn more about their lifes - now I can only guess how their lives are after having seen bits of it...
On Sunday we went to a really interesting market in another village two hours away: instead of the usual stuff you'd see on classical markets - vegetables, flowers,... - it was a rural market indeed where mainly animals were sold. While in the rest of China people would always more or less look at you or pay bigger attention to you when you're a Westerner, here they didn't give a damn about us. I guess it was clear that we wouldn't buy one of their piglets anyways...
All this will change in the very near future: at the moment you can really feel that Yunnan is still a quite poor region in comparison to others. The majority is working in agriculture, many streets are still in a really bad condition and everything is comparably cheap. However, in the North I saw loads of constructions for future motorways. And in the mountainous regions of Yuanyang were constructions going on literally everywhere: on the roads, in the very villages (mainly hotels and guesthouses), viewing platforms,... They are aiming to become an Unesco World Heritage site. So far they couldn't cope with the huge amout of people this very title would bring them. (Jacky, the amazingly nice owner of the Guesthouse I stayed in, told us that during the peak season you wouldn't get a single bed without a reservation.) But they are doing everything to be able to cope with it in the future.
In the end this will of course kill what I enjoyed the most in this region: the authecity, the rural life and the calmness. However, it would be arrogant to say that this is a bad
development: not wishing these people another source of income, of much higher income than they can have through agriculture, is an arrogant point of view of Western people: we are lucky having grown up with this great standard of living, but please, let us at least when we are travelling in foreign countries see some of the real poverty, can't we?!
In this sense I can only say: I am happy and lucky having been there while it was still what I'd call authentic - in order to be call Lijiang authentic in my eyes I came too late...
The only thing that is left for me to say now is: 再见中国 (Good bye China)!!
