Honeymoon Crashing & Happy Birthday Grandmommy, Malin and Ramp-Dawg

  Wedding crashing is so last decade.  Honeymoon crashing is where it is at y’all, and we have been doing a lot of that recently – sometimes by accident, but more often on purpose. And always the same newlyweds.  But last night, after spending about 10 out of 30 days of their honeymoon with them, we tearfully said hasta luego to our amazing friends Tolo and Laura.

To catch you up since the last blog, our 6-hour boat trip from Ben Tre to Tra Vinh was everything we were hoping for and more.  The funkiest, most authentic (i.e., run-down) river cargo boat you could ask for, with some pretty funky and random cargo (hundreds of quail eggs, paper doll houses, bundles of straw, etc.), that weaved through some very cool Mekong riverside activities, almost all of which involved coconuts.  Harvesting, collecting,  tossing, catching, transporting, de-husking, de-shelling, taking the meat off of, disposing the husks of, transporting the husks of, eating:  COCONUTS.  We saw millions of them – literally. And saw what life is like for so many who work and live on or right next to the river. We also got our first glimpse of what was to be 72 hours of being celebrities/aliens.  Little did we know that once we left Ben Tre, which was in and of itself pretty tourist-free, we would not see another tourist until we got to a border town on our way to Cambodia.  Two tourists standing on the top of a cargo boat as it winds through working riverside villages well off the tourist path get a lot of interest, some stares, and countless warm and enthusiastic waves.

We spent a couple of days in Tra Vinh exploring the beautiful countryside, some of the 140 Khmer pagodas in the area, wandering the central market (while simultaneously failing to identify most things at said market, although they appeared to be being sold under the pretense of being suitable for human consumption), going on runs through rice fields and tiny villages among the waterways, and failing to communicate basically at all.  And, as I mentioned, stopping people in their tracks just by walking by (people were asking to have their picture taken with us).  One of the highlights was the Hang Pagoda which we visited at dusk.  We had it completely to ourselves aside from the monks who were doing their evening chanting inside the temple, and the hundreds (if not thousands) of black and white storks who nest in the trees of the forest in which the pagoda is shaded.  It was nothing short of magical and that evening alone would have been worth the trip to Tra Vinh.

Reluctantly, we gave up our Brangelina/E.T. status and moved on to the border town of Chau Doc.  After 6 unforgettable weeks in Vietnam, we decided it was time to cross the border over into Cambodia. The trip from Tra Vinh to Chau Doc – all of 100km – took 8 hours and was one of the hottest and most tiring experiences of our whole trip, but very entertaining.  Two very local buses/mini-vans, lots of honking, no A/C, minimal windows that opened, insanely risky passing, and a few more hours of stare-receiving and non-communicating.  It was a tiring day so after hiding in our A/C room for a bit, we booked a boat over the border to Phnom Penh for the next morning and headed out for dinner.  After dinner, only steps from our hotel, we randomly ran into Laura and Tolo who had plans for the exact same thing border crossing and – when we arrived at the dock in the morning we found out – on the exact same boat.

We spent about 5 hours heading north on the Mekong on a relatively un-speedy speed boat.  During the journey we docked and got off twice – once to get stamped out of Vietnam, once to get stamped into Cambodia.  We also stopped three times to add river water to the overheating engine. This more luxurious crossing cost us an extra $15 or $20 a person but was, in my opinion, totally worth it (not sure Gabe would agree) as the border crossing and ride were painless and really pleasant, respectively.  As we crossed into Cambodia the riverside landscape changed quickly from rice fields to corn fields, and the buffalos changed to extremely white cows, with whose whiteness my husband was ever-so-slightly obsessed.  The boat approached and docked at the riverside pagoda-lined skyline of Phnom Penh.  New adventures awaited.

We spent 3 days exploring Phnom Penh, a comparatively peaceful Southeast Asian capital.  We did the requisite visit of the S-21 genocide museum with Tolo and Laura which was an infinitely more confronting and difficult and mind-bending experience than the American War museum in Saigon.  I can hardly bring myself to talk about it even a week later.  We also ran the riverside, joined the fitness-conscious Cambodians during their evening aerobics routines in the public square, visited the Vegas-like casino (but didn’t gamble), walked the backstreets admiring the elegant colonial mansions and trees, browsed many local and tourist markets, sampled both delicious and completely disgusting Khmer dishes, and, of course (seeing as we were in a Southeast Asian capital), did some unsuccessful shopping for electronics.  The evening before they were leaving for Angkor Wat, we shared some roadside tarantula snacks (well, the boys did at least), and yet another fun “last” dinner together with Laura and Tolo at the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC for loc’s), getting a taste of what it might be like to be an expat in such a lovely city.

In Phnom Penh we finally had to make a decision to head to Siem Reap to visit the temples of Angkor Wat, or to the Southern beaches and islands of Cambodia.  We chose Angkor Wat and joined Tolo and Laura at the Apsara Centrepole Hotel. Since then, we have been living large (at a blissfully small price) in a gorgeous hotel, with a gorgeous room, a gorgeous pool, and wonderful people.  Yesterday we concluded 3 days of unforgettable fun, beauty, sunrises, sunsets, hiking, running, climbing, wandering, tuk-tuk riding, and laughing our way through the temples and back roads of Angkor Wat.  It is hard to even describe the beauty and variation of the temples here.  They are breathtaking.  Some are really well-preserved with detailed carvings that look like they would have taken centuries to complete.  Others are practically ruins with piles of huge stones covered in bright green moss, and walls, or even entire buildings, taken over by the jungle with trees roots hundreds of years old strangling them from every direction.  Yesterday we took an extremely long shortcut on a dirt road between two faraway temples and spent two hours bumping and laughing and marveling our way through some very remote Cambodian countryside.  Locals stopped and stared, smiled and laughed, brought us handfuls of their peanut crops from the piles and piles drying by the side of the road.  The few pictures in this blog won’t do this place justice, but there are more to see on the photos page.  (We may or may not have taken approximately 700 pictures in the past 3 days.  And the “we” referred to here may or may not be of the royal varietal.)

 

 

 

Last night we said some very sad goodbyes to Tolo and Laura for real this time as the headed back to Vietnam this morning en route to Mallorca.  We vowed to see each other next in either Mill Valley or Mallorca.  Today we are taking it easy by the pool and in the A/C before a final day of temples for us tomorrow – probably by bike.  Supposedly we are also figuring out where to go next but not much headway has been made on that.  For now we are basking in the fortune we have to be doing what we are doing, with the people we have been lucky enough to meet along on the way.  And maybe keeping our eyes out for some more honeymooners.  Not that any could ever match our new good friends.

Love,

Haley and Gabe

Other notes:

Khmer Fish Amok may be God’s gift to the human palate.

We tried and failed – twice – to watch sunset at one of the temples in Angkor Wat.  The first night we just got there 5 minutes after they closed the gate.  The second night was a shit-show of tour groups that rivaled Ko Phi Phi Leh.  And this is the low season.

Asian tour groups love to get their picture taken with Gabe.  So do monks.

Asian tourists, group members or individuals, love to take pictures of what Gabe is doing.  Pretty much whatever he is doing at any given moment is picture-worthy.

I now speak Spanish with the Spain lisp. According to Laura, Tolo now speaks Gabe Spanish.

Gabe held his breath for 1 min and 44 seconds today, a new personal record.

Tolo and Gabe are tied for 35 year old man most resembling a 12 year old boy. Competitions in the pool, breaking any and every temple-exploring rule (while it is hard to imagine for those of you who know Gabe well, Tolo gets caught and scolded way more than he does), table-soccer with bottle caps, sitting still never, etc.

Ice cream is expensive in Cambodia but that’s not stopping Gabe. And it’s not even that good, but it is cold.

I got an excellent two-dollar haircut in the market in Phnom Penh. I passed on the crimping iron offer, though, despite it only being $1 more.

As awesome as our Siem Reap hotel is, we did both got woken up by being stung by the same huge insect within 30 seconds of each other – a sting that for me was a bad as a bee and is still bothering me 3 days later, and for Gabe was gone by morning.

Malls in Phnom Penh forbid, among other things, both photo-taking and grenade-throwing.

Angry Birds is VERY big here.  We have seen many an Angry Bird garment of clothing, and in PP we witnessed Angry Bird skewers – the “food” it was made out of was unidentifiable.

Gabe says I use too many adjectives, but I think he’s amazingly, stunningly, stupendously wrong on this one.

Gabe also says I mention how hot it is too much in the blogs. But I don’t care and just so you know Angkor Wat is the hottest place I’ve ever been in my life. And Gabe too, even if he won’t admit it.