First leg of the race done!

Greetings from Phnom Penh!

Phew! First leg of the race done, we've now left Saigon. If you want Vini's account, check out our (his!) blog here.

Saigon was interesting. On our off day we joined the friends from PUV and Chin and PY who were here to visit; I managed to gather enough Vietnamese to get my new zipper pants shortened and had time to go fix myself a new pedicure (royal metallic blue, to match my Teva's!) and manicure. Of course, because of who I am, a visit to Viet Nam is always odd and stirs weird stuff. Compared to Hanoi in 2004 though, less people came up with the comment that I spoke bad Vietnamese and how come I have a hard time counting money when comes the time to pay... It's hard to explain to them that my Vietnamese stopped at age 3 and that at the time I only knew how to count until 20... So we saw mostly district 1 of Saigon, I looked around for stuff to buy but it resembled more touristy stuff from Bangkok than the traditional craftsmanship and silks that I had found in Hanoi, and this time we went to the Vietnam War Museum and the Reunification Palace with the helicopter in the background, where the Southern Vietnamese were finally defeated in 1975. The Reunification palace was bland, some non descript architecture from the 70's with the matching phones (Vini would always notice the phone colours: pink, beige, khaki, which were matching the walls...); the basement was a bunker full of old maps and artefacts, by and large the most interesting part of the museum. The Vietnam War Museum was a little more difficult to digest, with some pictures from the 60's that won Pulitzer prizes - a mother dragging her children across the Saigon river to avoid American attacks, and the famous little girl running around naked after having been burnt by napalm - she now lives in Toronto apparently. There is a horrible picture of an American soldier looking very satisfied lifting the remains of a Viet Cong - namely a head, some skin and an arm all attached together. The torture rooms under the Diem regime were also atrocious-looking, but I can *only* imagine what the communists are NOT telling us about their own, probably even worse, tortures - they spend their time depicting the tortures under Diem (free South before 1975) regime and mention nothing of their own means of obtaining information. The whole museum is anti-American propaganda and there is absolutely no mention (of course) of the communist-led concentration camps and the millions of boat people who fled after Saigon was defeated in 1975. It's as if us Viet Kieu (expat Vietnamese) do not exist. Of course I did not live the war; and yet, the strange thought comes that I wouldn't be who I am and where I am if it hadn't been for that atrocity. Like I was telling jokingly RP and PV, maybe I would be the girl selling them jackfruit on the street!!! I suppose most of us second-generation immigrants go through a roots-shaking phase like this when we visit our parents' original country.

Onto a lighter topic. To answer the questions, this is a real Amazing Race although it is not filmed on television. The teams are all competing against each other and we have no clue what we have to do until we open our first envelope in the morning. There are 4 other Australian teams, all of whom have fundraised $AUD 5000 to join this trip. We got away with just paying for it (and 500$ went to an Australian charity) because we're foreign. And there is a 1000$ prize at the end for the team who comes in first; we of course are planning on giving it away to a charity as well... we're really here for fun (as you may have guessed!). The real bottom line according to PV and I is that RP and Vini are basically competing against each other and the rest of us are just there for the ride and to keep them away from killing each other. :)

The first day was a half-day race only through the streets of Saigon. It consisted of riding the city in a cyclo, as shown...

vinicyclo, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

We used that mode of transportation all day to find a few landmarks. We also went joining a hackeysack game with the Saigonese at Tao Dan park, and then we ended up in the Vietnam Museum of war again to answer some specific questions about some of the war photographers. Vini and I came in first this time.

1stsaigon, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

Then we were brought to a restaurant where we observed some cooking by a lady called Chi Nghia who teaches to expats and local private cooks. I must say her cha gio (imperial rolls) was excellent and her shrimps in tamarind were delectable as well. The banh trang (rice paper) used for the cha gio is very different from the one back home and is flexible, so I had a good time rolling it before she deep fried my (still ugly) rolls (scuze Mom, j'ai pas le don!). Then we were off to the My Khanh resort, next to Canh Tho in the Mekong delta, where we spent the night.

Shores of the Mekong delta

cantho, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

At supper there was a food challenge which involved mango with chili, dried squid and bird's nest drink; I was the designated Hoover vaccum but had to chew so came in fourth. The bonus challenge was incubated duck eggs, which of course I am used to eating, so I had to do for my team; the strange thing is that they did supply me with the appropriate leaf (rau rau) but put lime in it, which was very strange. Everybody else was grossed out by it but RP did it! I had to tell the gang that my sister has a Cambodian friend whose Quebecois boyfriend is now trained to appreciate incubated eggs, but somehow, they didn't seem to believe me!

The second day of the race was a little hairier. Because of my slight advantage of having a very bad Vietnamese, Vini thought that it would be a good idea to play our Wild Card ie. to double our points for the day. Well, we didn't complete half the photos that we were supposed to take; at least we made it to the checkpoint, and left the hotel at a decent time. We were on long longtail boats on the Mekong to a floating market in Cai Rang, looking for qua chuoi (banana) and dragonfruit, and water buffalow. Vini had to perch himself atop a Monkey Bridge (cau khi; I had forgotten the word for Monkey so had to mimic it to the boat driver who understood!);

Vini perched on the cau khi

caukhi, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

We found a few 'I can't believe it's still floating' boats.

stillafloat, originally uploaded by Galadryel.

Then we took xe om (jumping behind some guy on motorcycle, with the backpack on his knees in the front) back to Can Tho and took the local bus to Chau Doc. We didn't know that they'd stack twice as many people in the minibus, and it was hot and not very well air-conditioned - it made for a most unpleasant ride, even for a seasoned one like me. Vini must have lost half his weight in sweat, there was a little Vietnamese girl who threw up on the ride (was it the stench of all the white people at the back???!) and there was an Ba Gia (old lady) who kept on making funny comments at the white people's too-long noses. We ended the day atop Nui Sam, the only mountain in the Mekong Delta - some 300m in steps climbed at the hottest time of day. Because we thought that we had all day to shoot the requested pictures, we missed some of them. Oh well, you live, you learn. So again we came in first, but only because we used our Wild Card. It's been quite an adventure so far!

Today was an 'off' day. Yeah, right, 'off'. Intrepid wants to use 'local' transport as much as possible so really our day off consisted of getting us to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. We had breakfast in Chau Doc, my last Vietnamese soup, and then took 2 boats on the Mekong and a very long bus. A total of a harrowing 10 hours in a lot of heat, and a good 2 hours on the Mekong wondering why the Cambodian boat driver keeps on looking backwards in a worried fashion. We had already planned our swimming exit in case the boat sank - I was to drag PV just in case using my divemaster training. Vini was all sad about the clothes and electronics that he was about to leave, and I had put my Ipod in its waterproof bag, just in case. I'm just kidding of course, but it was strange. After our harrowing boat ride and acrobatic entry and exit on the boat (on little planks, fully loaded with our packs!), we made it to yet another minibus (with reasonably functioning AC) to Phnom Penh and took the VERY bad Cambodian roads for 20 km = almost 2 hours!!! Cambodia looks significantly poorer than Viet Nam and reading the LP about the Khmer Rouge and its horrors put me again in a very contemplative mode about the atrocities of humanity and of sociopaths like Pol Pot in particular. Phnom Penh used to have 500 000 inhabitants prior to the Pol Pot regime; well now they're down to 300 000. (compared to the 8 million in Saigon). The estimated genocide is around 2 million. Medecins Sans Frontieres got started in Cambodia if I remember well, with the human war disaster here. I don't think that our tour will make it to the Genocide museum but all my friends who went earlier this year (DB from Chisasibi, PY and Chin, JS and Dom from Piouvi) told me that it was extremely difficult.