Phnom Penh: New Orleans in a Jungle Kingdom: Day 1

I'm still not sure how New Orleans became the analogous city for me when thinking about Phnom Penh. It's got characteristics of both Berlin and San Francisco, which are very similar cities in their own rights (temperament; pulsating heart), and New Orleans is like those two, only with a flair and oppressive weight. In New Orleans the heat is oppressive as well as the specter of the institution of slavery and physical subjugation and oppression is still noticeable. New Orleans, though, because of its character, seemed poised to have been able to, up until Hurricane Katrina, be ahead of the curve and ahead of most southern cities in regards to integration and psyche-recovery from slavery.

Phnom Penh is vibrant and muggy, like New Orleans. Phnom Penh is full of Khmer people who vividly and viscerally remember the oppression of the Red Khmer, the murderous and destructive regime lead by Pol Pot, but because of their temperament and character, they seem well poised to be ahead of the curve of some of the other Southeast Asian cities in regards to facing their past and learning from it and moving on.

So...

We left the boat dock and started walking down an esplanade towards an area of town that was centralized and full of hotels and guesthouses according to our guide book. We did not have reservations anywhere, but figured that we'd be able to find a place.

That turned out to be true, as we found reasonable accommodations, dropped our stuff off, and headed out for a bite to eat and try to figure what we could get done on that first day. When we left California we had only three nights booked anywhere in Asia: the first night in Can Tho and the 29th, 30th, and 31st in Siem Reap (the Angkor staging city). As it was now just afternoon on the 28th, and we were staying until tomorrow afternoon, how much of Phnom Penh could we realistically get to?

As luck would have it, we were approached by an English speaking Khmer tuk-tuk driver at the (locals only) restaurant we stopped in for that bite to eat, and, after getting over some reservations and realizations about the reasonableness of the prices, we hired Visal Mao to be our personal driver. After this first day we arranged to meet with him the next morning, and between those two meetings and the maybe ten hours we were with Visal we got to know him rather well and he told us as much as he could about the Khmer people and Phnom Penh and the Red Khmer, and much more.

Here's a shot from the tuk-uk on that first day:

The first place we went to was the so-called Russian Market. It was one of the biggest "covered" markets in Phnom Penh, and, like any good Asian market, it had its very own neighborhoods. Food stalls over here, jewelry over there, clothing and paintings and trinkets everywhere in between. The following picture, while blurry, shows how the sun peaks through the various covering styles:

The place was caled the Russian Market because it had been the main market that the Soviets used between the '50s and '70s, and the name, once derisive in nature, had stuck as the market grew to the status iof true rival for title of the city's biggest.

Afterwards, since we're pretty bad consumerist tourists, we were off to a solemn and powerful place: the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum.

Also known as S.21, for "security office 21" in the inter-office memorandums, Tuol Sleng had been a high school in the center of Phnom Penh. When Pol Pot and the Red Khmer came to power, they vacated the cities and moved everyone into the rural areas to enhance the nations agricultural clout. Phnom Penh was a ghost town.

But, not S.21. The former high school was converted into a detention center, and from 1975 to '78 saw an estimated 20k people pass through the place on their way to be either killed or tortured or both. Now Tuol Sleng is an important tourist attraction and a reminder for the Khmer of today: Complacency lead to the evils that caused this place, and we must never let that happen again.

They face that everyday.

So, immediately on entering you see these kinds of signs, basically telling you this shit ain't funny:

Here's a typical room that had been converted into an "interrogation" room. Corrie's looking at the photograph on the wall that shows an inhabitant from that very room, and you may be able to see that they're laying on a sheet on that metallic cot only:

From the third floor of one of the complex's buildings you can see how it certainly does resemble a high school:

In many rooms they have photos of the enemies of the state that were brought in and "dealt" with. Here's one seriously dangerous looking enemy. Better be careful of those nine-year-olds:

This next picture shows barbed wire strung up over the openings of this particular three story building. In fact, it's all over the entire place. I remember thinking, what the hell? Then I read the sign: the barbed wire was for keeping the "poor souls on the upper levels from throwing themselves over the rail and committing suicide." Uhh, whoa:

If you've ever left the trail on a trip to Alcatraz and gone off on your own and found some creepy vibes, imagine taking those creepy vibes, distilling it down to a powder and then snorting it for an hour and you might be close to Tuol Sleng. I asked Corrie what she wanted to do later, go strangle some puppies? Drown a bunch of kittens? You try to temper what you're trying to do--enjoy vacation while learning--with some of the actual activities--checking out the tools and sites of a torture prison--and find the balance.

That place was pushing those limits, but I'm glad we did it; it affirmed the Khmer point of view: this history cannot ever be forgotten.

From there, as dusk was falling, Visal took us to two monuments lined up on a grand boulevard. The second, which shows up first here, is one celebrating the birthday of the highly popular and recently deceased king. At this spot I watched as a group of tiny Khmer girls asked Corrie for a picture, not that they could take be in a picture she took, but if they could get a picture with her. I tried to photobomb the picture, but that wasn't necessary--they wanted me in it too.

The next is the independence monument, but since it's at the center of a large roundabout and nobody's allowed up on the landing, we kinda sped by:

Visal dropped us off and agreed on a time and place the next day. On that day he would tell us about himself more and about the history of the city, and show us places tourists never get to, which is what we're all about.

In Transit: Chou Doc to Phnom Penh by River

Since Can Tho was a specific destination for us, as was Phnom Penh, the trip from Chou Doc to Phnom Penh occupies its own segment of my memory.

It started with our waiting for a tuk-tuk that I thought may never come. Eventually we got down to the docks and boarded a cool zippy tourist motor/speed-boat thing that had almost the exact same white folks that were on our bus from Can Tho to Chou Doc. Most of us were tying to get from Vietnam to Siem Reap, the tourist town next to the ancient capitol of Angkor and staging point for the temples thereby. We were in that group as well, but, with our single night in Phnom Penh, we didn't need to rush off to the bus station like almost everyone else on out little boat-bus. In any case...

At the river dock in Chou Doc someone had built a mostly serious monkey bridge over the water lilies that was designed to make it easy to water the potted flowers that are chilling there. I'm not sure the following picture either makes sense or does the scene justice:

From the other side of the rusty gangway this tiny canoe seemed lonely:

We finally left and got going, and I ended up taking this sweeping distant shot of Chou Doc, making it resemble a place far more exciting and romantic that it ever felt in the sixteen hours we spent there:

Along the river we sped for a few hours, and then we stopped at a large, Marxist river cube. Turned out it was the exit point for Vietnam. We were shuffled off the boat, into the cube, handed over our paperwork (and photos and cash), and waited. Not for too long, though; that was nice.

As we headed back to the boat, I snapped a picture of it. Below is our river bus:

Like the photo from February 2012's View from an Autobus, I leaned out the window and tried taking a similar picture:

It wasn't too long before we made it to the Cambodian entrance control. This was a leafy spot on the river bank instead of the drab river cube. We all again got off the boat and walked over to a waiting spot. I played with the sad mongrels that, eh, "lived" on the complex...Corrie took pictures. Hers are better than mine, but what can you do?

Vietnam and Laos are socialist/communist republics, while Thailand and Cambodia are monarchies. I'm not sure, but that may have something to do with how the entrance/exits felt while you experienced them. The Cambodian Bassac River entrance point was relaxing and beautiful. Corrie learned that the (wealthy) family of white folks speaking Spanish were from Mexico, and the eldest daughter worked and lived in Sacramento.

I couldn't have made that up had I wanted to...

In any case, soon enough we were back on the boat and back cruising along the river towards Phnom Penh. I napped, scarfed the free grub they provided, tried napping some more...Corrie took hundeds of pictures of villagers down at the river's edge doing villager-lifestyle things...they're pretty cool pictures.

Eventually as we made our way to where the Bassac and the Mekong conflate, we knew we were there. I took a handful of pictures of strictly Phnom Penh stuff, and have included only the following picture from the boat ride: the river entrance to the royal palace:

We did visit the palace, and that experience and photo collection should be coming up next, along with the other Phnom Penh material, of which there was probably too much. We tried to make up for only getting a single day in the Cambodian capitol by cramming each one of the twenty-three hours we spent there with necessary stuff (sleep was necessary, for sure...).

Floating Market and a Bike Ride: Can Tho

Our first day waking up in Asia proper was in the Mekong Delta town of Can Tho. I mistakenly called the river the Mekong itself. I do believe it is the Bassac. 

Corrie had wanted to see this specific floating market, the largest in the world I've heard, but at least the largest in this region.

We woke up early on the 27th so we could meet our guide for the day, Johnnie. That was what he told us to call him, but his name was something else. He was young and energetic and spoke English very well. He led us on bike to the boat we were going to take to the floating market, then led us on our little bike tour later on in the day. The best photographs come early in the morning, so that had us out at dawn.

We traveled slowly up the river until we got to the market zone, all the while Johnnie was regaling us with stories of the economic realities of modern Vietnam. At the market he showed us how to tell what was being sold on each boat: whatever the fruit or vegetable it was was tied up high on a pole on board, visible for a good area around.

The meat vendors zipped around in smaller boats, going where they felt they'd be needed--their cargo was more perishable than other vendors'.

One thing that was noticeable was that the river market in the picture above was almost like a wholesale market, with maybe the majority of the buyers being folks who were going to be bringing the produce up the many tributaries to villagers and families up in the delta region off away from the main artery.

After that we moored our boat, grabbed the bikes, and hit the road, riding around a populated area that could loosely be called Can Tho. There were irrigation areas and farmers and rice-noodle makers. Below is a flooded plain getting ready to be drained and sown--rice being the main crop.

At the place we went for breakfast they let us make rice noodles. The process is multi-tiered and intense: first you have a hot fire going that heats a cauldron of water. On top of the cauldron is a sheet of latex or skin stretched tight, on top of which a pancake like batter of rice flour and water is spread even. It's covered momentarily, cooked, removed with a bamboo apparatus that looks like a tiki-torch, and laid down onto a bamboo mat to cool off and dry.

Within two days it will be put through a slicer and noodles will be the result. Corrie and I got to try each part of the process, if not with the same exact example.

Many farmers were growing flowers for the Tet holiday, which was in a few weeks and marks Asia's New Year.

Johnnie took us to a place that farms fruit and coconuts and catfish. We went over a monkey bridge above one of the catfish holes and dropped in food. That was a cool scary-movie effect of hundreds of fish spouting for grub.

Here's a "monkey bridge":

This is a bridge made of reclaimed wood that spans one of the tributaries. It costs nothing and serves a very real purpose.

Back to the river boat and eventually back to the hotel saw us pretty spent. It had been a long day and it was only 1:30. Here's a neat shot of one of the dynamic buildings along the river:

So, our plan had been to go from Can Tho all the way to Phnom Penh, the capitol city of Cambodia. That proved unfeasible. The number of miles, or kilometers, it is from Can Tho to Phnom Penh is not very scary, but we Americans have a tendency to imagine freeways being the way folks move about by car.

This isn't the case. Imagine driving for hundreds of miles on a two lane road and that's pretty much it.  No freeways. Just one road...

So, instead of the entire way, we went halfway to a border town called Chou Doc. We were pretty ready to rock once we jumped off the bus. We got a ride to a hotel we didn't have reservations at, and were sent away. The pair of drivers (we were each riding on separate motor-bikes) took us to another hotel where we were able to get a room.

Here's a picture of Chou Doc from a balcony attached to our hotel:

We left the next morning on a boat. It took a while to get to the crossing, and Cambodia proper.

Buh-bye Vietnam! 'Til next week!

Day Zero

1. Traditions in Santa Monica

One of the many Italian traditions to which my mom's family adheres is the crab and shellfish dinner on Christmas Eve. I'm not sure exactly from where that tradition comes, but I can say I'm a fan.

Day Zero for this long fortnight in Southeast Asia started early on Christmas Eve, with me driving Corrie to Pasadena for some errands she had to run for work. That's when I took some pictures of the Pasadena City Hall. What grandeur.

Then we found ourselves finishing the last of the household prep items and packing things, finalized the list for our house- and cat-sitter, and left for my Auntie's house in Santa Monica.

In the last half-decade or so a tradition has been cast where my mom's family (me and Dan and Norm) congregate at her sister's house with them and their kids (Mike and Liz, our closest cousins)(when they're around, of course). We have a big crab dinner Christmas Eve, go to the beach the next day and take a dip (weather permitting), and generally do the family thing.

This year with Holly introducing Simon to the world, along with many other factors, we pegged the 24th as our departure day, but late enough to have dinner with the family. Mike was in town in between moving preparations and Liz was still around before her spousal Visa for England was approved, so it was just my siblings who were elsewhere.

I chowed on crab and enormous shrimp until I was full and sleepy. 

Then it was off to soap up my hands and face and eventually head off to LAX.

We boarded the first plane, took stock of our neighborhood in the plane (my seat was 57 J), perused the movies that were to be offered (Chinese Air has little screens for each person and offers free earphones) and settled in. This flight was going to be long.

We took off a little after 11 pm on Tuesday the 24th. I'm not sure how long we were airborne, but we ran from the sun the entire time, maybe thirteen hours, maybe fourteen...I didn't sleep much and Corrie slept even less.

It was just before 5 am when we landed in Taipei, on the island of Taiwan, but it was now Thursday, the 26th.

We'd timewarped over Christmas Day.

2. Day Zero Should Be Over?

To me it was just a long flight through the night, and maybe I should start calling this part of the trip, the "Arrival in the Future" part of the trip Day One, but my rest on that first flight was so minimal that it's just part of this "longest day" deal you get twice on these time-warp trips.

The day started to break while we were getting on the second plane in Taipei, and when we landed in Ho Chi Minh City, the sky was hazy with "winter's" humidity and the clock said just before 10 AM local time. We gained another hour getting to Vietnam.

Even though we were offered food and drinks on each flight at pretty regular intervals, we were pretty hungry as we left the plane and headed towards customs and immigration. 

We were confident that we could get through easy enough, and get out into the city-formerly-known-as-Saigon and find some food by noon. 

Then it would be off to the bus station, because we never do anything easy.

3. Angry Overprivileged Masses

That turned out to be a miscalculation.

Vietnam has every right to do what they want how they want to at immigration. But these guys don't mess around.

If you'd like to visit the nation of Vietnam, you first need to contact their embassy and request a letter of admittance. Your request must expressly state what the reason is for the trip, as well as the exact arrival date and whether you'd like your entrance Visa to be for a single entry/exit or for multiple entries/exits. Easy enough, right? Oh, it goes without saying that this letter request process isn't free.

Once you get the approval letter back from the Vietnamese government, then you're set to finalize your flights. Once you arrive in country, you bring your letter with your passport, two tiny passport photos of yourself (that you'd better have on you before you get there--in fact, bring a dozen, since everywhere you go you'll need another one), an entrance application that they give you, and cash to a window and hand it all over.

The officials look everything over, insert the Visa, collect your money, and you're ready to go.

Of course that process, on Thursday the 26th of December of last year, 2013, took nearly two hours and felt like many, many more. There was no food in the waiting room, there might not even been a bathroom, but I can't remember. What I do remember is the angry mob of white people.

The windows where they collect everything was that thick bullet-proof glass type they have at 'hood banks, and it was constantly mobbed by two hundred of the most privileged folks on Earth. White people from all walks of life and countries, all made to wait and suffer like never before (for them, of course). Swedes and Scots and Dutch and Germans and Ruskies and Aussies and Kiwis and a few Yanks here and there--it was madness I tell you!

Madness but hilarious at the same time. Maybe because I was starting to get a little delirious and punchy I couldn't help but to laugh at the whole spectacle. Look at all this angry privilege, I kept guffawing to Corrie. 

4. Our Passports! Freedom!

While you wait, hungry and tired, part of you feels like this would be an ideal time to make a scene and start yelling at people. This rarely works in airports anywhere anymore, but here you need to remind yourself of an important thing: they have your passport at this very moment. That just means you're pretty much at the mercy of whatever time table they're working from: you're not going anywhere until they say so.

And once you hear your name...JOY! A new day has begun! Grab the bags, let's go!

We easily got through customs and on the way out of the airport, we found a money exchanger that also hired out cabs. What an awesome idea.

I changed over $100, seing as how we needed the cab, a pair of bus tickets, some grub, and we were going to be in Vietnam for a few days at least, so it was reasonable.

They handed me something like 2,138,000 Dong for my five twenties. What?

The rough estimate was D 20,000 per dollar, which is trippy, to say the least.

We made it outside and headed for the column where our cabbie would be waiting. I took a picture of something right outside the airport that my students would recognize:

See that price? "Only 45,000 d".

5. Because we don't do easy...

The main reason for this trip was Angkor Wat. There. Not a secret.

But there were some other cool ancillary things Corrie found out about during her research phase of planning this adventure. One was a very cool floating market in the Mekong Delta region, the biggest in the world in fact, and that was to be the first stop on our trip.

Not Saigon, er, Ho Chi Minh City. We were heading to a hotel we actually had reservations for in a city called Can Tho, only four to six hours away. 

We got the cabbie from a reputable taxicab company because they would write the name down in Vietnamese of where we were trying to get to--the Mekong Delta-region bus station in An Lac--and you've already paid.

Just so we can keep track, Day Zero started in Long Beach, took us to Pasadena, then to Santa Monica, then to Taipei, then to Ho Chi Minh City, and now to someplace called Can Tho.

But of course it couldn't be that easy...

6. The Streets of Saigon

Do you live in a reasonably large enough metropolitan space? Sacramento, Scottsdale, OKC, Denver, Austin, Seattle: you all qualify...Sulphur, maybe not so much...

Imagine driving around your city for thirty five minutes and seeing just three stoplights. Is it impossible for you? It would be for me, until I saw Ho Chi Minh City--huge intersections, no lights! People just slow down, meander through, and head off once they get out the other side.

Also something to take note of: the largest vehicle gets the right away in all situations.

7. Faith in the System

We got to the bus stop, made sure we got the tickets we wanted at the price we wanted (the posted price, thanks), and we were then directed back behind the glassed in counter. This was the general open-air bus depot. Buses were all over the place, and so were people.

An older gentleman took Corrie and me by the shoulder and yelled to some guys. They dropped what they were doing (eating and reading, respectively) and started putting on motor-bike helmets. One directed Corrie to have a seat on the back of a motor-bike. She did, reluctantly.

Then they motioned for me to join her, sitting behind her. "I don't effing think so," I said in English, but with the 'effing' a little more spicy. I knew they couldn't understand me, but my point was that Corrie still wore here backpack, and I had all my gear, and this was a motor-bike, which is a pony compared to an American motorcycle horse.

"I can walk across this parking lot, I added as they pulled me, now in a hurry, the other way to another motor-bike. A helmet was thrust into my lap, "On, on!" they barked pointing to the helmet and then my skull. "I have legs, dude," I was saying as a guy jumped on the bike, fired it up and turned around, starting to drive through the parking lot.

I noticed I could no longer see Corrie and her motor-bike escort. I started to wonder just what in the hell was going on. I knew I could walk across this bust station to get to my bus...what's with the ride?

The situation got murkier once we pulled out on the bus station and out into traffic. I hope Corrie's up there somewhere, I said to myself as my driver sped out through the maze of cars, trucks, tuk-tuks and the billion other motor-bikes.

We went for so long that I got frustrated and yelled in the driver's ear, "Yo, where the heck are we going?" with, if you know me, a spicier version 'heck' being my choice. I knew he didn't understand English, but my tone was universal. He pointed. Up ahead. "Where the hell's my wife? Lady?" He pointed again and again.

In telling the story it becomes obvious that we found each other, and in typing it here, it seems silly that it could be anything other than the truth of what happened: The station sold us tickets for a bus that was leaving right then, and in trying to squeeze extra money out of us, and us haggling back to the stated price, the bus had left without us, and these two nice motor-bike drivers were taking us to catch up to the bus, who, when called by the ticket sellers, eventually puled over and was waiting when we arrived.

But that doesn't remotely capture the terror of what was happening as it happened. We had not set up any protocol for what to do if we were to get separated, and here we were, phones not working, fresh off the plane, receipt in hand for a bus ticket, and totally separated.

Later on while sharing a laugh about the whole thing, we thanked the concept of karma for having positively effected the peoples: they just weren't going to try and screw you over. You bought a ticket, they were going to make sure you made the bus.

But when you're hurtling in and out of dangerous traffic with no view of your loved one and no idea of your destination, you feel your shoulders tense and you fists tighten--you may just have throw-down here in a second...

8. The Bus

Holy cow, what a cool bus! They had us take our shoes off when we got on, they happily stashed our bags underneath the carriage, and one dude on board even spoke passable English. He had lived for a number of years in San Francisco, and he and everybody else--who incidentally were all local folks--were very curious about our adventure. It was about here that I thought it funny that our long day was somehow beginning again right in the middle.

That, and my hands still smelled like crab.

The bus had three columns of reclining type seats you could sleep in if you weren't as huge as me, but the thought was cool. I pulled out my camera and had Corrie try to get a shot of me barely fitting in the seat, one of the first in-earnest pictures from the trip:

9. The Drop-Off

Since we were on a locals bus and not a tourist bus, it didn't stop in the city center of Can Tho, rather, it stopped near a corner populated by local "cabbies", or, "shady bastards". 

Someone got off the bus specifically because he didn't like the idea of us being dropped off right where we were being dropped. I laughed at that idea, frankly. I had already noticed that nobody had guns--not the police, not even the military guys at the airport. Sure, some soldiers might have firearms, but we never saw any of them. If somebody wanted to mess with us out here, FINE. I was ready--that's the 'hood coming out.

We gave a guy the phone number of our hotel, they called, and I'm not really sure what happened. I got into a messed up pick-up truck's front seat, and Corrie got in the back with a handful of other "paying passengers" and we took off towards what glowed as a city center.

From the front seat I eagle-eyed our hotel, "Yo! Right over there! Yo!", my tone not hiding my real intentions ('I may be too tired to speak clearly, but not tired enough to pound you if you don't take us over there right now.') 

It was later that evening over a bowl of noodles from a street vendor that Corrie and I had that talk about karma and the inherent pleasantness of most people in Southeast Asia. We even got a hot shower at our hotel.

We had made it to a resting point, and Day Zero came to an official close. The next day, before dawn, we were heading out to the river to do the floating market and then take a biking trek. It was all starting to come together...

Here's a street view as we ate dinner before turning in for the night:

Blurry, just like our heads at this point...

Brief Background on Southeast Asia

I mention Southeast Asia in the title of this post because simply talking about French Indochina out of the context of the entire region would do a disservice to people who care to get a clear enough overview of the scene.

Southeast Asia has been historically known as Indo-China, and consists of the peninsula east of the Indian Subcontinent and south of Tibet and China, as well as the large archipelago south of Japan and north of Australia, known generally as the Malay Archipelago.

"Indo-China" as a rough moniker had been used because in general the area had been influenced heavily--in art, in language, in social customs and religious beliefs--by both the cultures of India and China.

Today the countries are lumped into two categories: Mainland Southeast Asia, and Maritime Southeast Asia. The mainland countries tend to have more in common with themselves than with the maritime countries, and the nature of these differences makes the separation all the more natural.

The mainland countries are: Burma, Thailand, Lao, Cambodia and Vietnam. While Malaysia and Singapore are technically on the mainland, both on the end of what's called the Malaysian Peninsula, they are considered closer to the maritime countries like Indonesia and the Philippines (and Brunei and East Timor) and are culturally listed in the maritime section.

1. Language Family Melting Pot

One of the main characteristics folks of white European ancestry will notice about the languages of China and Southeast Asia is their tonal properties. Tonal languages are very difficult for westerners to grapple with quickly or on a short trip because of the wild nuance needed for understanding. In these languages instead of our five vowel sounds, they tend to have between 25 and 30 recognized vowels, as each of our vowel sounds can be effected by voicing any one of five (or six) tonal changes. Think of it like Californian valley-girl speak: "I went to the store today? And the girl? Behind the counter? She to-tuh-lee overcharged me for..." 

That upward lilt in English tends to point to a question, but in tonal languages that changes the vowel and the meaning of the word, sometimes drastically.

One thing I think is cool about all this is that these languages developed independently of one another. The Burmese language is from the Burman-Tibetan side of the Sino-Tibetan language family, the only language in Southeast Asia "directly" related to Chinese. Thai and Lao are in the Tai-Kadai family, which has many hill-tribe languages that are still used today. The Austroasiatic family houses both Vietnamese and Khmer (Cambodian). The Khmer written alphabet seems to be one of the oldest in the region, is based on the Indian and Sanskrit scripts brought over from India in prehistory (rather than the Chinese pictographs that serve as the visual basis for Korean and Japanese), and is itself the basis for both the Thai and Lao scripts.

2. Under the Thumb for a Millennium

Today a relatively skinny country takes up a very long coastline and goes by the name Viet Nam. We tend to write it as Vietnam, but they use the two words, and the special diacritical marks (that I don't have currently enabled on my blog-host). "Nam", in this instance for them means "south" and Viet is their identity, their people, and so, to them, their country is called "South Viet." 

"Vietnam" as a name became popular in the 1920s during the struggle for independence from the French. For many centuries the land was known as "Annam". That was the name used by the Chinese for the strange and annoying wayward province south of their southern mountains. 

Annam had always been a province filled with tough individuals who didn't take to colonization that well. After enough interbreeding, it was mostly subdued, and for over a thousand years the people of Annam, the Viet people, were under the rule of the Chinese occupation.

A thousand years of occupation.

Eventually, after many failed uprisings, a masterful and decisive victory was had by the Viet, now calling themselves the Dai Viet, or "Great Viet", and things were good. Mostly. For a while.

The millennium of Chinese rule lasted from the first Century BCE to the 1000s CE. Around this time the Burmese and Siamese (Thai) had been battling in the western jungles of this enormous peninsula while the most sophisticated empire, the Khmer, were setting up shop in their new capitol city of Angkor. 

The Khmer were the Mayas to everyone else's Aztecs. They flourished with a taste for the arts, science, and grand building projects.

As the Dai Viet moved south along the coastline from the area surrounding today's Vietnamese capitol city of Hanoi, they battled and pushed the Cham people mostly off of their historical land. 

On a map of today's Vietnam, you have the mountain highlands bordering China and surrounding Hannoi, then the long central coast curve, and the Mekong Delta in the south. When the Dai Viet finally got free of the Chinese, they only really held the top portion around Hanoi. The Cham, an Austronesian people, occupied the central coast, and the Khmer empire held the Mekong Delta.

By the time the Siamese finally and decisively sacked Angkor in the mid-1400s, the Dai Viet had mostly dispatched the Cham and were poised to grab the Mekong Delta from the crumbled Khmer.

Affecting the Cham and the region in between the rise (1000ish) and the fall (1500ish) of Angkor and the Khmer Empire was the Lan Xan kingdom. They were a Tai-Kradai people who were in what's almost exactly today's Lao and the best known example of the last time things not associated with opium or landmines made Lao a place of importance to somebody. (That's heartbreaking, by the way.)

The Vietnamese were insular and protective, the Siamese enjoyed the buffer that the fallen Khmer empire offered between them and the Viet, while they kept a wary eye to the west and Burma. Things were balanced, mostly, (unless you were Cham or Lao) until the French and British and Dutch took an interest in the region.

3. Sometimes it's About Timing and Good Diplomacy

The Thai are very proud and quick to point out that they were the only Southeast Asian country not to be colonized by Western Powers. Sometimes it's about timing.

Again with the Mayans...the Mayans were the intellectual and artistic powerhouse of Mesoamerica, only to be mostly a shell of their former selves by the time the Spanish arrived. Does that imply that they would have been a better fighter against the Europeans than the Aztecs? Of course not.

But in this region, the Khmer were the "premier", if you will, ancient society, and by the time the European powers arrived, they were a shell of their former selves.

The British promptly colonized Burma for their rubber trees and spices, while the French grabbed what they could on the other side, up to the Mekong River, as the region proved harder to subdue than originally wagered. The Dutch took most of the Malay Archipelago.

The Siamese kings and other diplomatic leaders were able to deftly play the insecurities of the British and French off of each other while keeping their own sovereignty intact. Good job, Thai folk.

4. Something Not Even the Nazi War-Machine Could Do

The Vietnamese people were a pain in the ass to the Chinese for a thousand years; they were a headache for the French before the Japanese occupied the region during WWII and they were a pain in the ass for the Japanese occupiers; they were finally successful in ousting the French after the end of WWII, declaring their independence with a document sent to major capitol cities around the world.

One particularly militaristic country decided that the Vietnamese declaration of independence was not acceptable--they had made the wrong choice of choosing a communist government. That country decided they were not going to stand by and witness more people living under communism, and they decided to wage a full-scale military action against the mostly peasant country.

That was us, in case you weren't following.

As a country, the United States military used everything at its disposal, every single thing short of nuclear weapons, against a skinny rural country full of barefoot kids, and failed.

The US used nuclear bombs against the Japanese, but not against the Nazis. So, in a sense, the Vietnamese are the only group that can accurately say: "We said GTFO to the American military, and then made it happen." 

I have not had any close family members involved in the on-the-ground fighting in that conflict, but my in-laws were in the military during the conflict and saw overseas duty, but mostly stationed in Thailand or the Philippines. 

That fact lead, I'm fairly certain, to a peculiar position: I've held the Vietnamese in very special regard for some time now, even to the point of obsessing. 

If I was forced to choose a country that I might call my "hero" country, it would have to be Vietnam. All they ever wanted was to be left to their own devices and choices. They had a will that was stronger than the full military might of the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world. 

To quote the late and great Howard Zinn: "When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won."

That might have tinted the goggles with which I viewed everything during this trip, but hey, that's life, baby.

Some "Fun" Numbers from our Trip (Episode 2)

We visited three countries during this voyage, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

(The following areas don not include maritime claims.)

Vietnam

Area: roughly 310k square kilometers
Population: 92.5 million
Think about it like: slightly bigger than New Mexico with more people than California, Texas, New York, and Massachusetts combined.

Cambodia

Area: roughly 177k square kilometers
Population: 15.2 million
Think about it like: slightly smaller than Oklahoma with more people than Illinois but less than Florida.

Lao

Area: roughly 231k square kilometers
Population: 6.7 million
Think about it like: Slightly larger than Utah with as many people as Massachusetts.

Basically, the entity that was for over a century called French Indochina, the combo of today's Vietnam, Lao, and Cambodia, is slightly bigger than Texas with a third the amount of people as the US. It's big and it's dense, but there's still plenty of wilderness and remoteness, so, go figure...

Photograph-love Numbers

Number of photos taken with Corrie's nice big dSLR: 2901.
Number of photos taken with my Cannon P&S: 1735
Number of photos taken with my phone: 258

Total number of photographic captures: 4894.

As I said in the 2012 Mesoamerica version: Are we having fun yet?

Blond Giants Invade French-Indochina Series

I think I might finally be ready to start working on this series. I haven't been posting, obviously. Very cool things have been happening that under normal circumstances I would have been mentioning here or one of the other dozen or so blogs I keep...Norm and Holly had their second baby (welcome Simon!); A-Rod's gotten himself suspended for the entire year ((sigh) chode); the Sherweezy game is in full effect for the time being...

That last one has had more to do with the lack of posting than anything else. That's something that I'd like to speak to as well, being a full-time fully-involved adult for a hundred-plus rough South-Central LA kids, but, like so much other stuff, that's for another time.

This series, apparently another in the "Invading Blond Giants" category, will occupy the next few days of my time. I have a few other post ideas I've been marinating for over a year (seriously...) that I'll be getting to in the next few months, but I felt like if I didn't address these anecdotes while they're still fresh, they would essentially be part of the oral history surrounding me and Corrie, and subject to easy relegation to the background.

I don't now what that means, really, since they're already there, relegated to the background. It's just part of the fabric of our lives...but I'm a writer and I need to write, and I have pictures and anecdotes and maybe thirty posts about some weird shit they throw at you while you holiday in South-East Asia.

We were there for fourteen days, and it's been seventeen days since we returned (as of this writing), and this is the first time I could get some time to focus on putting these ideas to cyber-space.

So, like the February 2012 Blond Giants Invade Mesoamerica series before, I'll start out the series with a post about numbers and relative sizes, and a post about the background of the countries we visited, and then a post surrounding the idea of Day Zero.

Day Zero on a trip to a new country is a combination of excitement, anxiety, and stress; this adventure's about to start (excitement), I hope whatever cabbie we get will get us to the correct bus station (anxiety), when is that booth going to give me my passport back and where's the goddamn food (stress) all happening simultaneously as you wait in customs.

Somethings we do to ourselves, and somethings are done to us...we try to set the former up well enough to be able to at least get through the latter with our good humor intact...

Longest Wednesday Finally Over

Today is Thursday, January 9th, and yesterday, Wednesday January 8th, was the day we returned from Asia. Anytime you fly over the international dateline heading east, like we did, makes that specific day very long, as the time-warp sends you to the future going the other way. We skipped Christmas Day altogether, not existing for December 25th, leaving late the 24th and landing early on the 26th.

Coming back stretches the day as you catch up to your own past. Which boggles the mind.

Yesterday we woke up Da Nang, on the Central Coast of Vietnam, and flew to Saigon, which has been called Ho Chi Minh City for the last 39 years. From there we flew to Taipei in Taiwan, and then lasted the long stretch from Taipei to LAX, landing before 8pm last night. We left Taipei, though, at 11 pm on the 8th, flew through darkness and into sun, and through dusk and back to darkness and landed, technically three hours before we left.

I have plenty of things to say about Vietnam, Cambodia, and Lao, but right now I'm still decompressing and taking care of Long Beach business.

Here's a taste: New Orleans in a jungle kingdom--Phnom Penh, capitol of Cambodia: