Bird’s Nest Bevarage – 25% bird’s nest

“What is the only good tiger?” asked the tour guide while the rest of the bus rolled their eyes in a ‘Oh god, not another crappy joke!’ way. “A tiger beer”. Groan. At the risk of generalising, why are ALL tour guides more annoying than unscheduled stops at tourist workshops?

A few moments later the bus stopped for half an hour at a tourist workshop.

I had finally made it onto the tour to see the Cao Dai temple and Chu Chi tunnels. Religion and War on the same trip. The two sites have little to connect each other, but the broader issues certainly do. I doubt the organisers had the intention of teasing out the links and even though i would like to, i think such a discussion is slightly beyond the scope of this post.

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Was it the cheap Vietnamese vodka we drank on the street, the expensive B52’s cocktails in Apocalypse Now, or the rum and coke in the bar/whorehouse we briefly frequented? Most likely it was all three combined with one hours sleep. There was little chance i would crawl out of bed and make it on the trip to the Chu Chi Tunnels we booked the day before. Though everyone else managed to go, i decided to stay in bed.

Gallons of water, and a salty breakfast later i decided to take a look (with bloodshot eyes) around the War Remanants Museum.

The aim of the institution according to the leaflet is to “systematically study, preserve and display exhibits on war crimes and aftermaths of foreign aggressive forces caused for Vietnamese people.”

A balanced exhibition of the atrocities committed by all sides in the Indochinese Wars this was not going to be.

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Saigon’s roads are notoriously bad. I have never seen so many mopeds and motorbikes. They clog every inch of the roads.

One evening I overheard a poor guy telling a friend on the phone that on his first day in the city he waited so long for a gap in the traffic that he finally slinked back to his hotel room and spent the rest of the day there, not venturing out because there was nowhere he could go.

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Every asian country has a variation on the rickshaw theme. In Vietnam it’s the cyclo. Imagine sitting in a slightly upturned wheelbarrow with a bike attached to the back and an old skinny man powering the contraption with legs of steel. That is a cyclo.

We hailed one vehicle each and hopped in for the short journey to the Reunification Palace. So began our first journey on the suicidal roads of Vietnam.

In other forms of rickshaw it’s not always possible to see where you are heading (a blessing trust me – its usually in the direction of an oncoming car) but in a cyclo you are exposed, essentially forming the front bumper of the vehicle. Hence you are the first part of the vehicle to pull out onto a street of speeding cars, the first part to smash into the back of a bike that broke too suddenly, and the first part to scream when you cross over into the wrong lane and hundreds of modpeds are steaming towards you. Driving down the M25 in an armchair is the best way i can describe it.

Built in 1966 to serve as South Vietnam’s presidential residence, the Reunification Palace is now a museum full of historical exhibits. The building itself is also of interest.

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Ho Chi Minh is Vietnam’s biggest city. Another bustling asian metropolis, it’s streets team with activity at all hours; buying, selling, eating, washing, gambling and occassionally sleeping.

Saigon (which it is still affectionately called by its inhabitants)
was once described as the Paris or Pearl of the Orient, reflecting French control of Vietnam after 1858 for almost a century. The influence of France lies heavy over the city, architecturally and culturally at least. Traditional, quaint wooden shophouses jostle for space with historic, crumbling colonial mansions. Narrow alleyways crammed with noodle shops and stalls lead onto wide, elegant boulevards lined with boutiques. Worshippers flock to Chinese inspired pagodas or neo-romanesque cathedrals and catholic churches.

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Another country meant another border crossing. The differences in architecture between the two border points were striking. The Cambodian side represented classic Southeast-Asian styles, with peaked roofs and long, dragon-neck appendages. A few hundred metres away, across no mans land, stood the Vietnamese buildings; modern, functional, and grey. In short stereotypically socialist. Dominating the front of the building was a tall obelisk statue capped by a stylised technological wheel. It evoked ideas of industry, progress, speed and the future. Communism was first and foremost an ideology of modernity.

On the Vietnamese side our visas and passports were checked four times in the space of 20 metres. Now thats efficiency for you. Why bother with unemployment when you can just create unnecessary jobs?

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Destination number six on my journey.

Vietnam is a country mistaken for a war. Googling ‘Vietnam’ returns eight results (out of the first 20) directly related to the conflict. That is a significant number reflecting the dominance of the war in people’s imaginations.

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Up early to start the journey back to Phnom Penh.

Unfortunately it was not possible to get a coach all the way through to our next destination so an overnight stop at the Lakeside guesthouse (where we stayed before) was in order.

The journey began with a seven person ride in a taxi with the driver laughing at us.

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Sihanoukville has some of the best beaches in Cambodia. I’ve obviously been spoiled by Malaysian and Thai beaches because i was unimpressed.

The beach was a thin strip of white sand, so narrow in places that the legs of the beach loungers were washed by the waves. Curving round for some miles it was lined with small rustic cafes and restaurants, dotted with grass umbrellas and bounded by Casuarina trees. If i had come straight from England my reaction would have been different, but even then i would stop short of calling it beautiful.

My first morning was spent eating breakfast on the beach accompanied by a troop of kids swarming around me trying to sell the bangles all the way up their arms.

One in particular continued to pester me when the others realised my wallet was staying closed. His name was Tha, a friendly enough boy who insisted on drawing pictures in my journal including an imaginative map of the world. “This is Cambodia, below is Germany” he would say in a teacherly, pedagogical tone as he drew. Scotland came next, to the west of Germany, and below that lay the United States, and so on and so forth.

Sihanoukville is a demanding place to holiday; lying on a beach can be an exhausting test of endurance. Relaxing on a sun lounger dozing off is an invitation for women offering massages to stroke your arm or back without warning and who interpret “No thankyou” as “Possibly in the future”

“You help me yeah?”

“No thankyou”

“Later yeah?”

“No thankyou”

“Tomorrow yeah?”

“No thankyou!”

If it wasn’t massage women it was amputee beggars, blind singers led by obedient guide dogs, or (still more) children with fruit balanced on their heads.

If you desire relaxation and rest, Sihanoukville is a place full of frustration. Even if you take it as it comes, the place can try the patience of a monk. Since entering Cambodia I had been eyeing up a multi-use, checked, red and white scarf so popular with the locals. I purchased one off of a young women patrolling the beach. Immediately Tha came up to me asking why i had not bought from him. I explained i had no idea he sold them; he had never offered any to me. This failed to satisfy him and he irritatingly asked that i never asked him if he had any. Apologies failed to satisfy him. “You don’t like me”, “You think my drawings are crap”, “You wish me dead”(!).

While i was apparently casting a death wish, a young child was reading the last rites to Louis who refused to buy her produce – “I hope you get eaten by a shark and a dolphin eat you too.” How lovely. Wal Mart has greeters, Cambodia has shamers.

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A beach retreat is not the first thing that springs to mind with the mention of Cambodia; a country famous for its temples and infamous for its terror. Most tourists beat a well worn path between Phnom Penh and Siam Reap. But that is changing.

Sihanoukville, established a mere half century ago, is a toddler of a town in such an ancient country. Born in 1950 when a French-Cambodian construction company tore out a large chunk of jungle and began building the first deep-sea port in the country, Sihanoukville expanded quickly. Growth and good-times abruptly halted with the onset of civil war in 1970. Even with the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge the beaches stayed empty. The bumpy road to Phnom Penh remained notorious for banditry and in 1994 three backpackers were abducted from a train and murdered by remnant communist forces.

With a tentative peace in 1997 the town picked up where it left off, rapidly developing to cater for the first intrepid explorers. More recently larger crowds have been arriving as the resort becomes established on the backpacker trail. In response a number of shops, guesthouses and bars have been opened. Even the Independence Hotel is scheduled to reopen, having lain empty for 30 years since the Khmer Rouge redecorated it with bullet holes.

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