​After a bit of sticker shock going from $1.60 bowls of great Pho on the streets of Danang, to seeing a Burger King meal “deal” in the airport for ten times the price, I’ve made my way to Siem Reap, Cambodia. A couple of things about the flight, first. It was the shortest and least crowded international flight I’ve ever been on. There were a total of 16 passengers on an A320 for a 70-minute flight. Also, why the fuck does it matter what my carry on weighs?! It’s going on the plane regardless. Making me check (at no additional cost) my main bag because it weighs more than 7 kilos, is fucking ridiculous. My small bag weighs nearly the same, and didn’t get a second glance.

First impressions of Siem Reap, since I’ve been here for all of about 14 hours, and about half of that asleep, is it’s nice. It’s a lot quieter than the cities I visited in Vietnam, the motorbikes are not quite as ubiquitous, but there are more tuk-tuks – either individually three wheeled, or a trailer pulled by a motorbike. It turns out, that was the method of my hotel shuttle. The temperature was pleasant in the late evening, and riding in relative comfort in the open air for the 15 minute ride was pretty amazeballs.

I checked into the hotel – a very small, boutique ⭐️ ⭐️ job located in an alley – and dropped my stuff and headed out for a beer. My hotel is not far from the main tourist streets that are crawling with bars, restaurants, and yes, tourists. This is the kind of hotel with physical keys on large fobs that you leave at the desk when you go out. Old school, and I like it. A less-desirable aspect of the hotel is a dearth of available power plugs. I’ve a desk and no plug anywhere near it. On the positive side, there are plugs on both sides of the bed, so both charging stuff and watching stuff is a go at night. The shower seems to have adequate hot water, but I haven’t pushed it yet. I also haven’t decided if I am going to stay here for any longer than the three days I originally booked. It’s quiet, and in a pretty decent location, so the tea leaves in the empty cup are leaning in a positive direction.

As soon as I got to a likely bar along Pub Street, I grabbed the $0.75 drafts of Cambodia brand beer and engaged in one of my favorite pastimes: people watching. I find it truly amazing just how much time and effort some people go through to get photos of themselves. Y’all should be glad I don’t have the penchant for doing that, otherwise this blog would be a paean to myself. Ain’t nobody want that.

Also of immediate and interesting note to me is the ATMs only will dispense USD for my card. Huh. The restaurants and stores all take USD for 4000/1 (the official rate is currently about 4135), and dispense change in Riels. I guess I can afford to eat the difference. Today I’m going to spend walking around and checking the surroundings, and probably will go for one of the amazingly inexpensive massages. I thought it was cheap in Vietnam, but here a 1-hour massage is $5. Even a bad massage would be relatively ok at that price. Coffee is $1.00 for an 8-oz Americano. It’s back to the kind of coffee I, as an American, am used to. The super strength, differently flavored Vietnamese coffee is in my past – except for the packets of instant I brought along as an emergency supply.

I’ve got a dawn bicycle tour of Angkor Wat scheduled for tomorrow. I’m really looking forward to that.

My visa expires tomorrow, so I’m leaving today. It’s been good, though my plan when I arrived kind of didn’t happen. I never quite made it all the way north to Hanoi or Dalat, two places I had originally planned to get to. But, on the other hand, I never planned originally to go to Hoi An or Danang, and guess where I did go?
 
I like Vietnam a lot. The people, the coffee, the food, the prices, the beaches… all have been great. I may just make it back. I’ll keep my eyes on the visa situation and if they open up to visas longer than one month again (I've heard they had 1-year and 5-year visas available pre-Covid), I’ll apply so I can come and go without having to reapply every time. It’s tough to say no to living a 3-minute walk to the beach for $20/day, including tasty food and beer.
 
Anywhoodles, Angkor Wat is in my sights. See ya in Cambodia.

​I was reminded earlier today that it’s been a bit since I last posted anything. I suppose it’s mostly because there isn’t a lot going on. It’s hot (mostly), often rainy, and I’m just kind of...living. I’ve taken some stock of my situation as well, and TBH, those results aren’t great either. No worries, I won’t burden this with that. But probably the combination of that and the weather have combined to keep me from going out of my way exploring for food, or experiences. For good or ill, I’m just kind of hanging around Da Nang, and probably will for the next week or so, until my visa expires and I head out of the country to get a new stamp in the old passport.
 
Da Nang is a decent place; I spent some time in the middle of the city along the Han River for a few days before going to the coast. Since it’s mostly been rainy and cloudy, the beach hasn’t been the siren song it so often is for me, though I did take a few dips over the past week. The South China Sea is warm, the surf minimal, and the beaches vary from relatively clean, to relatively not. I suppose it depends on how close the fishing is. Perhaps it’s the generations of simply tossing your stuff after using (since for generations it was mostly biodegradable), but there is a lot of plastic waste everywhere. It’s a bit depressing to see a lovely tropical beach strewn with trash. The fact a typhoon came through only a few weeks ago doesn’t make it better.
 
In comparison to Sai Gon, the food is equally tasty and roughly the same price – butt-ass cheap. I did find a Korean chicken place that does the best boneless hot chicken though. For less than $7.50 I get roughly two chicken breasts worth of boneless chicken, with three beers to cool the fire. That’s a pretty good price. Speaking of prices, a four-star hotel is running me about $38/night. Frankly, I don’t need to even spend that much, and I feel decadent doing so. Three-stars is more than good enough, really. My only requirements are (1) Clean, (2) Hot shower, and (3) Decent WiFi. If there is a breakfast available and an in-room electric kettle, all the better. I can easily get that for less than $30/night pretty much anywhere in Southeast Asia – some party islands in Thailand possibly excluded. I think the extra money goes to more staff to be obsequious, which only serves to put me on edge. I guess I’m not built for luxury.
 
So here’s the update that is not much of an update. I’m still alive, still in Vietnam, still on the run, still stuck in a mental For Loop with no Exit For.

I’ve spent the last couple of days in a relatively touristy area a bit south of Da Nang called Hoi An. It’s not bad. Compared to Saigon, it’s really quiet, and that’s good. It’s pretty spread out, though, so that’s a bit less good, and it’s partially flooded (rainy season and a recent typhoon), so that’s even less good. What tops it is the forecast is for 8.5” of rain beginning tomorrow through Saturday. Yikes. I think I’ll grab a Grab (an Uber homologue), kiss the balance of my days at my current hotel goodbye (all of $80) and hop to the big city, where, if it floods, I can still hang out in the hotel that has a bar and restaurant and not have to wade.
 
Hoi An on the whole has been nice, but…not what I am looking for. Who knows what that is, though. It’s one of those things that I’ll know it when I see it, but it’s nothing that I can really articulate. A small town is okay with me, as long as there is a beach, it’s got nature trails nearby, or something like that. A partially flooded town surrounded by river and rice paddies isn’t it. And when power plugs just kind of fall out of the wall receptacle, well, that's a negative too. One highlight is that I paid for a “four hands” massage with two people simultaneously giving the massage. It was pretty interesting. I think the pair were a married couple though, and they were chatting the whole time. I found that to be rather funny. I don’t think I’ll book another one, but I don’t regret the experience.

​(No photos, and just a quick mind-barf. I didn’t want to focus too much on this, it’s not a fun one.)

It took a while, but I finally decided I would visit the War Remembrance Museum. I had already taken in the Presidential Palace, and with it, a fair amount of historical references to the Vietnam War, but the displays there were only peripherally related to the war itself, like the president’s bunker and radio room, and displays showing receptions of various American dignitaries entertained over the years.

Getting there and entry are easy. Close by and only a few dollars. Once inside the gate, there are displays of vintage American material: F5, a Huey, a Chinook, howitzers, and a couple of tanks. The display of various bombs set the stage for what was inside.

I’m old enough to remember watching nightly news broadcasts that covered the war, often with imagery of soldiers marching, helicopters and planes flying. It was always shown as a war to curb communist aggression and expansion. At the time, I believed wholly in what I was told by my government. It’s been a process that started in high school, but I’ve since figured out one side’s story is not the only story, or even wholly correct. I visited this museum knowing that I would be witnessing the diametrically opposite side of the story, and that this version wouldn’t be the only story, and not the wholly correct version either.

Even so, the middle ground between the “sides” is where people died. Horribly, violently, and, in far too many cases, needlessly and maliciously. I think of what’s going on in Ukraine, and can’t fathom the depths of suck the people stuck in the middle must be enduring.

The images displayed at the museum were…disturbing. Moving. Thought-provoking. They made me think of just how thin the veneer of civilization really is, and that, given enough stimulus, many decent men will do indecent things. I know I had nothing to do with any of it – being only 12 when the USA pulled out in 1975, but as an American, I felt guilt for the atrocities. Guilt feels like shit, and guilt by association feels just as shitty.

As everyone learned in their primary school quantum physics class, there are six flavors of quarks: up, down, left, right, strange and charm. Other than being a quick review of old-school school stuff, why would I be writing about quarks while in Saigon? Well, I’d have to say my day yesterday encompassed all of the flavors. It had its ups and downs, and on the back of a motorbike, I wound my way through the labyrinthine and narrow “streets” of Old Saigon, making innumerable lefts, and rights, and by the end of the night, I’d had some encounters with some strange and charming people. So, yeah, my day was all the flavors of quarkness.

The day started the night before when I decided on a whim to take a ride with a Gojek delivery guy for 150K. I helmeted up and hopped on, and Ut took me around a few of the districts in the cool and dark. We ended up at a café, drinking cacao and beer and tea before he dropped me back at my hotel. I’d agreed to take a city tour with him for three hours the next morning for 500K – about $21. The reason my day started the night before, is that after self-medicating with caffeine from both tea and cacao (had a shot of espresso), I didn’t sleep much. I got up (there’s an Up flavor!) early and decided to try a run. For the first time in a while, I was able to push out a few Ks (only did 4) pain-free. That’s another Big Up flavor.

The ride around was also an Up. Except my poor bony ass. No padding there and not much on the seat. My butt bones hurt. So there’s a Down. We had a nice lunch of Bon bo before once again getting dropped off at my hotel. I may contact Ut later for some other sightseeing, but I need to give my ass a break.

​Another day Down was a massage. I know, I know, how can a massage – that only cost $10.50 – be that bad? I’ll just say I got up and left before the time was up. Ugh. I needed a beer now, so I drifted over to the walking street that is basically a strip of neon, flesh, alcohol, various and sundry drugs and food. Me? I was there for the $0.65 large beers. I got there before sundown and before all the usual entertainments kicked off, and decided to beer myself at an off-main restaurant. As I was swilling some lager, I overheard a conversation behind me. Being curious, I tried to suss out what language. It seemed to be Latin-based, but wasn’t English or Italian or French. Portuguese? Hmm. No. Spanish? Maybe, but, I didn’t think mi español was so bad I couldn’t collect a single word. So, I swiveled and asked. Turns out that Marc (classy, European spelling, natch!), and Marta (definitely not a Martha) are from Barcelona, and were speaking Catalan. We talked and ate and drank cervezas for hours. Guess what? They were charming, and I have a contact in Barcelona now for when (not if) I go that way.

While we were people watching and drinking more cheap beer, a man sitting at the table in from of us turned around and slurred some odd questions and gave us quite the monologue of why his life is a disaster. For one thing, what kind of schmuck gets deported from Thailand? He is one of the people in far-flung parts of the world that give the rest of us hopefully decent and conscientious traveling Americans a really bad name. On top of it all, man, that dude was strange.

So, to give the tl;dr:

1. Up: my tour with Ut, a pain-free morning run
2. Down: Bony butt pain, and a legitimately bad, and hopefully forgettable massage
3. Left: So many left turns. So, so many
4. Right: See above
5. Strange: One drunk, or drugged, American
6. Charm: Mark and Marta

There needs to be another flavor of quark though, called Amazing, which would be the flavor for the time Marc, Marta and I had together. Fleeting, yes. Amazing? Definitely and probably all the more because it was so random to meet, connect, share, and separate in only a few short hours.

My first full day in HCMC is in the books. I went for a walk around, hitting the nearby park. Maybe Sunday’s are unique, but it was packed with groups of people – a lot of them children in uniforms – doing activities. I saw Tai Chi, badminton, violin, individual and group dancing lessons, and the kids appeared to be doing school work and exercise combined. There were several specimen trees identified as well, but the plaques were all in Vietnamese, and all I could glean were the botanical names. Google Fi is apparently cutting off my data access since I’ve not returned to the USA in a while, and I am a bit throttled using a local SIM, so I didn’t look them up at the time. If, in the future, I want to read more about something, I’ll take a photo and look it up when I get to WiFi.

I treated myself to an inexpensive ($11.30) massage, then went to a microbrewery to give it a taste. Prices were on par with cheap American beer, not craft, and the tipples I tried were…decent. Nothing to win a medal, but decent. I did find it interesting that unlike other places I’ve been, there wasn’t really a price increase for the higher ABV beers.

While I was there, I met a couple of Australian guys traveling through. Lucas so reminded me of Adam, a guy who I last knew was working in CC at Sassafras. Similar looks, and his voice matched my memory. I tagged along with him and his partner Gav to a sports pub to watch the Grand Final of the Rugby League. (Or was it Rugby Union? I don't recall, and I don't suppose it really matters, either.) That place was packed to the rafters with expats and visiting Aussies! Apparently the team the most of the patrons supported emerged victorious. All good by me, since I didn’t have a dog in the hunt, and didn’t have to pay for a single beer while I was there. My glass kept getting refilled from passing pitchers. It was like magic!
 
We eventually parted ways; they split while I was chatting about diving with a Brit on a rooftop bar. I made my way back to my street, and found a restaurant. No idea what I ate, but it was pho-like and delicious. A guy at the next micro-table saw me and chatted me up. He's Vietnamese, but grew up in Philly. He ordered, and paid for my dinner. I didn't realize that, until I tried to pay after he'd left. I know prices are cheap, but still that was such a kind gesture.
 
Thus endeth Day 1.

“Hey, this isn’t a test, this is rock and roll!” I’ve landed in the country by which Robin Williams made Adrian Cronauer the most popular DJ for a time in the late 1980s, and the exchange rate is approximately 24,000 dongs to the dollar. I’m sure you can come up with your own jokes here, so I’ll refrain from my own.
​
Although I did have a good time overall in KL, and on my last night met a great couple from Switzerland that I shared beers and dinner with (Hi Luc and Tatjana!), I was ready to move on to where beer was freely available, and inexpensive – both things that are not true in KL. I think it’s due to the Muslim culture.

​I landed in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) at 2:30 and after an interminable time getting through Immigration, I grabbed some cash (getting over a million of any currency out of an ATM is weird to me) and met my shuttle driver to get to the hotel. Despite Google Fi claiming to work here, although I showed I had a signal, I couldn’t access the data network. Kind of annoying, but not terrible. A SIM card cost about $10 for 6 GB of data. I’ll be trying my Google chip again, but I have something, and WiFi is pretty ubiquitous. I don’t need cell service except for maps.
 
I had previously arranged for a motorbike food tour, and I met my “driver” and guide Cici outside the hotel at 5:30. It was pissing down rain, so she gave me a poncho, told me how to ride on the back of a motorbike (first of many firsts that night), and we were off. Let me say that traffic is totes cray-cray (to use the vernacular of some other time) in this place. Traffic control, lights, and direction flow are all merely suggestions that are ignored as often as they are not. It's kind of a free for all. I’m kind of surprised there aren’t bodies splattered and scattered across the roadways, but since everyone participates in the group insanity, it works. I think anyone who wasn’t certifiable on a motorbike would cause a problem.

​The food trip was one of the best tours I’ve ever done. Saigon Kiss is the operator. We started with a Coconut water & pineapple jelly iced drink. Great start, and we met a Indian beauty pageant winner there. Of course photos were involved. She’s got 120K followers on Insta, so natch.
 
After that was a beef noodle place. Similar to pho, but from a different part of the country: Hue. Good, good, good. After that was Bahn Xeo. It’s kind of a build your own spring roll with various leaves and a rice-flour fried pancake with a filling. I tried it with shrimp and beef. It was amazeballs. After that was several different kinds of snails, balut (look it up) and grilled chili prawns. After the almost calm ride back to the hotel, I stuck with my dinner companions, Rickey and Jan for a beer or three. They are both originally from the Czech Republic, but Jan’s been in Perth for a while, and Rickey lives in Singapore. We compared travel notes and chatted way past my usual bedtime.
 
It’s time to do some exploring on foot. Wish me luck crossing streets. The way to do it is to walk slowly, let the cars go by, and allow the motorbikes to flow around you. As they say, whoever hesitates, forever remains on one side of the street.