Look mum, I’ve still got my teeth!

All of them in fact are still residing happily in my mouth where they belong, and apart from a big bruise on Amy’s leg we escaped unharmed from our bike ride to the beach! I’m not sure if Amy would agree but I definitely think it was worth it… the beach was beautiful!

 Contrary to popular belief we have not been abducted or injured – we’ve been in Halong Bay for the past two days. The best was to describe it is with pictures… it was truly amazing. I just can’t fathom how wind and water could possibly do this over time. My only criticism of the trip was that it wasn’t long enough to explore more than just the basic “tourist” highlights!

So right now we’re back in Hanoi and, having been quite frugal with most of our other accommodation, we’ve checked into the Sheraton. It seemed like a good idea at the time but what we didn’t know when we were booking was that the ASEAN conference was on (at the Sheraton) this week. Yesterday we got back from our cruise and had to walk up the driveway because they wouldn’t let our bus drive us up because the Russian President was here! It’s a bit funny really - Amz and I are still dressed like scummy backpackers so we get these looks from all the staff constantly like we don’t belong. Last night we’d gone out to grab some dinner (we gave up trying to find somewhere because the traffic is shocking because of the conference and super tight security) and when we got back to the hotel we got in the lift with this man… whom we later realised wasn’t with a friend, but a security guard! It went a little bit like this:

S: Amz… did that man have a security guard?

A: Yep… did you feel like a dirty backpacker?

S: Yep… did you get the feeling we should have known who he was?

A: Yep…wish we were a little more up-to-date on world political leaders, then we might have!

Then this morning, who do you think was on the front of the newspaper? That’s right…Mister Elevator! We’re pretty exhausted so coming back into a crazy city is almost just a little too much to handle at this stage of the trip! Hanoi traffic is just as bad as Saigon and there’s no one to help tourists cross the road (which probably makes it worse!).

Today we’re off to the Old and French Quarters but it will most likely be a very low key, low energy day before we come home and try to pack…again!

Take care – see you soon!

SQ

A little Hoi…

Hello from Hoi An – Vietnam! As I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s been some radio silence in the past couple of days… don’t worry, Amy and I haven’t killed each other and we’re safe!

So last post saw us leaving Siem Reap for Saigon with a post from Amy still to come - I have to admit that I wasn’t a huge fan of Saigon, however, we were really only there to see Cu Chi so it didn’t really matter that much! Our lovely tour guide – Dang – took us out to Cu Chi and walked us around the tunnel complex (they were VERY small tunnels, but I made it through with only a minor freak out!) giving us a great overview of the Vietnam War. After the tunnels we visited the Cao Dai Great Temple… it was very pretty and a good representation of the mix of five religions that it serves!

We then went to a local ladies home and ate some (what we think is) “real” Vietnamese food – I’ll sum it up in two words, TOTALLY AWESOME!!! For me, it was the highlight of our time in Saigon.

Right now I’m writing to you from a beautifully shaded courtyard where I’m munching on some yummy Viet- delights and drinking a cheeky cocktail! This morning started with a 4am wake-up, a 6am flight and a 1 hour drive and was followed by a pretty full on 3 hours at a local tailor’s (and maybe the local shoe maker too!) – All before midday, so we think we deserve a little down time. We may also be indulging in a little dutch-courage because we’re thinking of hiring a pushy and riding round the city!

My first thoughts on Hoi An – BEAUTIFUL – everyone is really friendly and approachable and want to chat to you (and tell you about their aunty who owns this shop….)! I think what I love most is that people just randomly burst into song – what’s not to love about a city where everyone suffers from spontaneous musicality????

We’re thinking of heading to the beach tomorrow (again on the pushy!) before we have to leave on Tuesday morning (early again, but I booked the tickets so I really shouldn’t complain!). If you don’t hear anything from me after that – it’s probably ended in tears (and a trip to the doctor)!

Take care – always choose the fried spring rolls!

SQ

What???

So…remember how I said Amy would be blogging about our visit to Angkor Wat? What I didn’t realise when she was saying “can I do another day instead?” she meant “Suz, I think I’d prefer to write about Saigon or Halong Bay instead” not “Ok, but I need a day or two to think about it!” like I thought!

All I can say about our trip out to the temples yesterday was that it was truly amazing… I can’t comprehend how these temples were built in a mere 30 years with no machinery, just their own hands and elephants!

All up we visited Angkor Wat, Bayom Temple, Ta Phrom… and really just wandered around the entire area taking in a few extra sights along the way! Next time I’m spending a good 3 days here and getting about on a pushy! Pictures really do speak louder than words, so I’m going to keep this short. It really was magnificent and, despite all the tourists, quite serene.

SQ

Patience is always rewarded…

Well I mentioned previously that this trip hasn’t just been about the destination, and yesterday’s journey to Siem Reap just brought home that fact!

We had arranged for a 7.30am bus from Phnom Phen to pick us up from our hotel. A mini-van arrived promptly at 8.15am  and then drove us around for what seemed like a good 15 minutes before picking up other travellers from various other city hotels! Now, in the 15minutes, Amy and I let my imagination get the better of us… the conversation went a little like this:

A: This isn’t the tourist coach with on-board toilet like they said…

S: I know, I really wish I’d peed again before we left the hotel…

A: Suz…

S: Ummm…this is taking us to Siem Reap right?

A: It’s probably taking us to the main bus.

S: What if it’s not? What if they’re going to ransom us?

A: Suz…

S: I’m going to message Sophie just so someone knows where we are!

A: That will totally freak Sophie out, please don’t.

S: Someone should know what’s happened to us if we disappear…

A: Please don’t.

S: Ok… I’ve texted her

Then we stopped and picked up more passengers…

A: Ok, so I’m a little relieved that there are more people on this bus!

S: ***sat there thinking… I know, right?

So once we’d finally picked up a mini-vans worth of passengers, we made it to the main bus depot to get on our “luxury tourist bus” to Siem Reap… Having packed on we began bumping our way along (what seemed like a) dirt track towards Siem Reap. We stopped at random intervals along the way, I’m not quite sure what we accomplished, however, on two of these occasions we picked up people the bus driver seemed to know! About 3 hours into the journey we stopped and the driver just turned off the bus… turns out it was lunch time – not that anybody confirmed this!

Amy and I wandered around this random little city for a good half hour and managed to find (and use) the loo… it was entertaining!

S: Hey Amz… do you have any paper?

A: Nope!

Enough said really…

Anyway, we got back on and were bumping along when we hear this god-almighty BANG, this British lady screams and jumps across the aisle into her friends lap, all while the bus is filling with an acrid  rubber smelling smoke! So we pull over (about 1km up the road) at this conveniently located pseudo-repair station and pile off the bus – all while it’s being jacked up to change (what we soon find out is) a busted tyre!

The tyre really did need replacing, however, we’d stopped where they were using traditional methods to make rice crisps style treats (which many of us bought!)…  I will admit that I was hugely cynical by this time because we had found out about 2 hours into the bus trip we’d been TOTALLY ripped off for our tickets! What cost us $11 each, should have only cost us $6… This was after spending $2 to send a postcard and having to buy a new internet card every time I wanted to log on regardless of the fact that my initial 24 hours weren’t up yet!  

So, during all this I kept my cool (Amy and I slept most of the way!) and finally we got to Siem Reap bus station…where we were mobbed by tuk-tuk drivers wanting to take us to out hotels! It was honestly the only time I’ve felt threatened in Cambodia, and it lasted all of 5 minutes… and then we arrived at Ree Hotel – Siem Reap (referred to lovingly by us as travellers heaven)!

…our patience was definitely rewarded! Our hotel is beautiful, the staff is SUPER attentive and they aren’t trying to con you! The worst thing about it is that we’re only here two nights! After the lovely concierge had shown us how to use the lights, air-conditioning, safe and tv...Amy and I did a little happy dance, hugged and thanked the travel gods for our lovely travel agent Brooke, who’d organised our trip!!!

We then set off to explore a city we quickly fell in love with. It’s a lot more relaxed than Phnom Phen, the people smile a lot more and aren’t as likely to run you over! In short – It’s amazing, we love it and are already trying to work out when we can come back!

Today we visited the Angkor Wat and surrounding temples… breath-taking! Amy will tell you about it in the next post!

We’re headed to Siagon tomorrow morning, so hopefully you’ll hear from us there!

Remember, always try something new if presented with the opportunity!

SQ

It really does taste just like chicken!

Last night we braved the great unknown and headed to a local Khmer Restaurant to try all kinds of tasty delights, one of which being spicy frogs legs with capsicum and peanuts! Having never eaten frogs legs before I really didn’t believe that they’d taste just like chicken…but they did. After a little disappointment to begin with, I got in and devoured the dish! I have to admit that it was pretty messy – they may taste just like chicken, but they are a whole lot smaller and fiddly to eat because of all the bones…don’t worry, I managed!

I’m not sure if they are giving us “western” spicy, but I’m finding the chilli very mild over here. I think I might be a little outrageous next time and ask for it “normal spicy”… I’ll let you know!

As last night was our last in Phnom Phen, we decided to get a tuk-tuk and do a lovely driving tour of the city… the thing you really notice here is how abject poverty exists a street away from ostentatious wealth. I found it very hard spending what I think is nothing, when in reality it is what an average worker is paid in a month! I’m not sure how I’m going to handle Siem Reap, it’s meant to be a poverty stricken city.

On a happier note – I’ve counted five different KFC’s since I’ve been here! There are tonnes of “Western” fast food joints around the place… we’ve actually had to do a little investigating to have a “real” experience and even then I think it’s been fairly tame! One thing we have decided to do is try one of these western style take away and see how we go!

Anyway, I’ve gone on far too much and have to jet to brekkie, then we’re jumping on the bus!

I’ve asked Amy to “guest blog” from Siem Reap – so chances are she’s the next one you’ll be hearing from!!! I’m sure she’ll do a much better job of actually describing what we’ve seen than I have!

Anyway, take care and watch out for chafe inducing knickers!

Xoxo

SQ

And the rain came tumbling down

We’ve just come back to our hotel room to freshen up (and get out of the afternoon storm) so I thought I’d take this opportunity to tell you about the lunch we had today!!! For those of you still wondering – yes, I finally braved up and bought something from a street vendor. I got (what I eventually worked out to be) a bag of fried potato and banana. Now, I’m generally a banana loather! I hate the fruit, it makes me want to be sick and it’s due entirely to the fact that my mother force fed me a banana smoothie at the age of 10!

So this bag of fried goodness, that I originally thought was some obscure type of meat, was phenomenal! The banana was all melted and caramalised within this crispy, sweet and golden batter…yummy.

This morning we set out to visit the Wat Phnom, The Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda, the National Museum and the Russian Markets. After our walk up to Wat Phnom (where Amy and I were asked to be in a Cambodian family’s holiday photo!) we trekked down to the National Museum and on the way we spotted the restaurant Friends. We’d read about it in lonely planet – it supports street children by training them for a career in hospitality as a chef or waiter – and were keen to try it out.

Our first impression of it was how clean everything was which was then over shadowed by how friendly, helpful and attentive the wait staff were… then we got our lunch! We decided to try some more traditional Khmer food – after all this is Cambodia! – and opted for a Khmer style pork and glass noodle salad, spicy shrimp wontons, and a grilled Mekong fish fillet with tomato and red onion salad…we followed this with a delicious dessert of caramelised pineapple with red chilli and coconut ice-cream! I know – we ordered dessert at lunch time…

My salad was to die for – the flavours packed a punch, yet, at the same time were very subtle and delicate!

Amy described her fish as amazing… that’s all she had to say!

Anyway – we loved being out and about, the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda was an enormous complex and we worked up a serious sweat walking around it with our tour guide… I don’t think my pictures do it any justice!

I’m keeping this short and sweet – the rain is stopped and I need a shower so we can go to dinner! Tomorrow we’re heading to Siem Reap on a bus (I’ll have my eyes closed most of the way!) and checking out the Angkor Wat and other temples so stay tuned – hopefully I’ll have some decent photos!

Eat lots, work hard and don’t drive your tuk-tuk through pot holes (story still to come)!

SQ

Hey Lady!

…you want touk-touk??? I’m sure you can apply a totally non-pc accent and imagine what I’ve been hearing all day! I didn’t realise last night – mainly because I was so tired – but there are people everywhere. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m not a huge fan of really large crowds. I know, I can hear you asking what I’m doing in south-east Asia! Well, I did an assignment on Cambodia for year 10 SOSE and have wanted to see this country ever since…

Today Amy and I were baptized by fire and got right into Cambodia’s dark and nasty history… We visited S21 (Genocide Museum) in Phnom Phen and the Killing Fields a little out of town. I was prepared for the brutal reality about what we saw, but I still found it very confronting. Lets just say that reading about something is a little bit different to seeing where it all happened and hearing about how it impacted on a country!

When you arrive at S21 you are stuck by how peaceful and calm the complex is - it was easy to imagine how children would have played on the grass and sat under the tress when it was a school. Then you notice the barbed wire. Our tour guide took us through the buildings, telling us the stories about prisoners and how they were prisoned, tortured and ultimately taken to be killed. As we moved from room to room, reading and hearing the stories and seeing photos of the captors and prisoners it was hard to comprehend that the Khmer Rouge regime only ended in 1979. After seeing some truly gruesome photos and paintings we jumped back on the tour bus and trundled out of town to the Killing Fields. Driving through Phnom Phen it’s hard to image how it could be emptied of all its residents in three days, which is what happened when Pol Pot came to power in 1975.

If you can imagine a great big piece of land with a large body of water down the back you’ve pretty much got what the Killing Fields look like… what makes this different to just about any other piece of land you’ve been on is the 50 odd ditches all through it that were used as killing pits and mass graves! The major mass graves are identified and have markers with stories about it near it, however, it took me a while to realise that as we were guided through the field that all the other non-descript looking ditches at one time or another marked a place of death. It was truly horrific.

To say out morning was pretty emotionally draining is an understatement so we headed back to the hotel, freshened up (after a sneaky little nap!) and headed out to the Central Market for a little retail therapy! We got caught out by the afternoon storm so holed up at an ice-cream parlour and had a cup of coffee (and a sundae!) before setting out to check out a bit more of the city.

We’re back at the hotel now and are all ready for bed and a good night’s sleep – hey lady, you want nap? Yes I do!

More exploring in Phnom Phen tomorrow and then off to Siem Reap!

SQ 

Ok, go!

So we flew into Phnom Phen Sunday night and were greeted at the airport by our lovely Cambodian driver who whisked us away to our hotel. The first thing we noticed (besides the stifling humidity and the yelling taxi drivers) was the application (or lack-there-of) of road rules… Now there definitely are rules – we asked the driver – people generally just see them as a suggestion or at most a best-case scenario! Anyway, after a hair raising 30mins we arrived safely at our hotel (only because I had my eyes shut half the time), checked in and went out to explore the Night Markets in central Phnom Phen.

Now we all know that age old proverb that life’s not always about the destination, but the journey… getting to the markets was just that. We arrived knowing that traffic is chaotic and unpredictable and that you just need to be a little bit brave! Amy and I stood on a street corner for about five minutes waiting/ trying to cross the road…and the green man was flashing and everything! So after a few “ok, go!” moments we (Amy) haggled with a touk-touk driver to take us and we spent a pretty amazing couple of hours exploring.

I don’t think there could have been a better way to acquaint ourselves with the city, its people and how they live. These markets were packed – people swarming everywhere, having dinner with friends and doing a little friendly shopping. There was also a little bit of Phnom Phen Idol action happening… well that’s what we think it was, although it could have been a very public form of karaoke with no alcohol!!!

I’d love to tell you that we got right in, sat right down and devoured some tasty street food there and then… but we didn’t! There were a few reasons, the main one being Singapore Airlines had kept us full to bursting – honestly I think we were fed three times in eight hours – but if I’m completely honest, I was a little bit scared…

Now, I’m the kinda girl that – especially when it comes to eating – will try just about anything once, however, I think I’ve been pretty spoilt in the preparation standards that support this eating philosophy! Seeing how the food was stored and prepared was just a little too confronting for my first night in town and I really didn’t want to subject poor Amy to a sick SuziQ! But the smells were amazing and I’m determined to go back (maybe after a couple of pre-emptive Imodium tablets!) and give it a go!

After the markets we decided to stock up on bottled water and walk back to our hotel for a much needed sleep… Some of you will recall my emails from the USA last year where I told you about my “book smarts” translating into “street smarts” – well folks, this wasn’t just a one off event and since I’ve been here I’ve used my “street smarts” on a couple occasions!!! I’m sure Amy has a few lovely stories about some very “street dumbs” but she can tell you about that herself!

O what a beautiful Friday!

So I’m sitting here, in the early hours of Sunday morning, bags zipped ready for adventure and I thought I’d quickly tell you about my Friday…

It was a day of gastronomic delight. The girls from work and I finally checked out Laneway Bar for lunch and weren’t disappointed – at all! Having craved a little bit of grease all week I gave in to it and opted for the waygu burger. One of the girls had it too and described it perfectly – it is just enough, enough of everything. All the flavours were so simple, yet so full, and were perfectly balanced. I spent $22 (Total…I know, I thought it was pretty awesome considering we’re practically eating at the Euro!)got my yummy little burger, shoestring fries and a glass of wine and I was winning!

When it comes down to it I think it was the best quality experience (when you take price, taste and service into considering) you could possibly hope to get for a quick Friday lunch at work. The staff were fantastic – besides being amazingly quick, efficient and friendly – they knew their stuff, and suggested a fantastic glass of red to compliment my meal! If you work down that end of town, I would definitely recommend popping in and trying it.

After a great lunch I never expected to have an equally amazing dinner experience. The lovely Jenny had managed to get a table at the restaurant Conviction where rehabilitated convicts gaining fine dining chef and wait staff experience. I knew it was going to be an experience, and when I was presented the menu I knew it was going to be amazing…steak tartare was on the menu! Now whenever I see this wonderful dish on a menu, I usually order it. It’s so rare (pun intended!) to find this dish put up in Australia. I can understand why; although our eating culture has evolved at an exponential rate in the past couple of years, there still aren’t that many people who will order their steak rare (or blue). Taking this into consideration – it makes sense not offer up what is essentially an uncooked rissole minus the breadcrumbs! If you don’t know the dish – google it.

Two of us ordered the dish for entre and weren’t disappointed – it was divine. The steak was so finely diced and tender it melted in your mouth, the yoke was practically orange and the freshness and zing given by the cornichons , mustard, parsley and onion was just divine. The season was just right – I’m not sure if they used anchovies or salt and I’m not fussed either way! While we were all trying each other’s dishes, the boys were telling us of past tartare’s where all the seasoning elements were laid out separately and the yoke was from a quails egg – YUM! It wasn’t enough to make me disappointed in my entrée, but I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to enjoy my risotto – but it too was fantastic and truly surpassed my expectations!

Without waxing lyrically about what we ate I’m going to list it for you – if you can get yourself to Emporium, I’d recommend trying the restaurant before it turns back into Bistro three!

Who	Entrée	Main
Jenny	Stuffed zucchini flowers	Lamb mussaka
Nic	Steak tartare	Pork chop with Italian slaw
Nicky C	Duck parfait	Braised duck pie
SuziQ	Steak tartare	Mushroom risotto

   

 

 

All this amazing food was topped off with a lovely bottle (or two!) of Cape Barron GSM from McLaren Vale.

My recommendation – go with a group of people who don’t mind sharing their food!

My next instalment will be coming at you from Cambodia – I’m heading to the airport now!

Till next time, happy eating.

SQ