2014

June 2, 2014

Phenomenal day out

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Cambodia, phnom penh

As you can tell by the embarassing picture above, this is a much less depressing post. Ages ago, I saw a picture on Instagram of one of my friends dressed up in a traditional khmer dress and I immediately decided I was going to do the same when I got to Cambodia.

So fast forward to the present, where we are heading down to Sihanouk Boulevard, where the vegetarian restaurant we ate at the evening before is. We are craving the food once again, because we actually miss somewhat healthy food, so we go and I got a bagel with salmon and accidentally pick a cinnamon and raisin bagel because I think it’s a wholewheat bagel….FML. After that, we are on the look for a shop where I can get my picture taken (Sara doesn’t want to do it, but tags along anyway). We find a place and I am taken into a studio, where I get my hair and make-up done first. The lady uses white eyeshadow for powder, soo much blush, 5 kinds of eyeshadows on my eyes, a lot of brow- and eyeliner and massive false lashes! Oh, and lipstick and gloss. I look like a drag queen, and I am loving it. Then the make-up lady puts a massive wig-thing on the back of my head and starts combing my own hair over it. Then she takes out the clothes and jewelry – my favorite part! The dress is a corset that’s way too tight and a stiff piece of fabric that has to be folded for ages to make a skirt. And then she put heels on me. What a turn-off. A photographer comes in and takes pictures, but not before moving my body into these awkward poses for me.

Cue overload of me-pictures:

After this shamelessness I promise I won’t show you more pictures of my posing awkwardly in HD, but I will tell you that it would make you cringe.

Anyways, after taking the pictures, they take off the clothes and jewelry, let my hair down and takes the lashes off. The make-up is still there though, so I put on sunglasses and hope for the best. I end up getting the photos on my USB, as I can’t wait three days for Photoshopping to be done. We go back home (me still looking like a drag queen) and I shower. That just had to be done. Then we have lunch and later also dinner at the same restaurant where we had breakfast! We’re awful, we know. It’s called Vego by the way, and it has great salad.

Now it’s time to say goodbye to Phnom Penh and its three massive rainfalls a day. Sihanouk Ville, here we come!

June 2, 2014

Penhful day out

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Cambodia, Choeung Ek, khmer rouge, killing fields, phnom penh, S-21 security prison, tuol sleng

Phnom Penh is the capitol of Cambodia. 39 years ago, everyone living here was forced to leave their homes to start a new life in the countryside under the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot wanted a complete agrarian society, and all intellectuals (doctors, teachers ect.) and anyone who was weak or otherwise in the way, was promptly executed. One of the most popular places to visit in this city today, is the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, an old high school turned into the S-21 security prison and execution center. My source, Wikipedia, estimates that between 17,000-20,000 people were imprisoned in the 4 years it was running as a prison. People were usually charged with working with CIA or supporting the old Non Lol regime, and were tortured until they confessed. There can still be seen blood on the floors of the tiny cells and interrogation/torture rooms.

Furthermore, there is a museum with pictures of all the prisoners, their biographies, and a collection of skulls. There is a graveyard in the playground area for the 14 corpses that were found once the prison was shut down – pictures of some of the corpses hang in the rooms they were found in, like some of the torture rooms.

It’s a creepy experience walking into the empty interrogation rooms with blood on the floor, knowing how much suffering has happened happened in here. Even more so in the rooms with photographs on the wall, taken after the prison was shut down. You have to squeeze through a tiny brick cell to get to the narrow hallway between all the cells of the prisoners, and it feels awful knowing that this is where people were chained for 2-3 months before taken away.

At night, the guards would load trucks with prisoners, telling them that they were going to be moved. They drove 15 km before stopping at Choeung Ek: the killing fields.

With a speaker playing propaganda music to drown out the screams, people had their throats slit with palm bark, or were hit in the skull with different tools. No guns were used, as bullets were expensive. Then the corpses were dropped in open graves.

Visitors leave bracelets around the killing fields to pay their respects

This is the biggest one. There are two other preserved graves – the one of a 100 headless soldiers, and the one of a 100 naked women and children. While a lot of women were imprisoned and killed because they were thought to be working with CIA, a lot of them were killed because of a Khmer Rouge saying: “When you dig up grass, you must even remove the roots”
That meant that whenever a man was killed, his entire family should die too, to prevent someone wanting revenge.

The killing tree is right next to the women and children’s grave. Guards grabbed children by their feet and smashed their heads into the tree, leaving traces of blood, brains and hair in the bark to be found later on. The mother’s were often stripped naked and forced to watch, until they themselves were executed and thrown into the grave with their children.

Finally, a tall building is raised in the field as a memorial, and containing clothes, bones and skulls of found victims. Around 9,000 in total.

So, at least that what I understood from my audio guide. It is both depressing and interesting to see how something so awful has happened – and so recently! Despite all the bad things that has happened, it’s a peaceful day with butterflies flying around, flowers growing all over, and people showing their respect in one way or another. It’s kind of reassuring to experience how calm it can be after such a storm.

Bracelets on the Killing Tree. The one with the peace symbol seems very fitting

I wrote this a bit differently than I usually do, because I wanted to give people who know nothing about this part of Cambodia’s history a chance to understand what I am seeing today. I only really used Wikipedia because I’m lazy. But it’s definitely worth reading more about, especially what really happened in S-21! I recommend Survival in the killing fields by Hain Ngor, which is a great book by a doctor who pretended to be a taxi driver, survived three imprisonments and ended up winning an Oscar for a film about the dark years of Cambodia, but lost everything in the process. Less depressing post coming up.

May 30, 2014

Saigon or Ho Chi Minh City

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, Ho Chi Minh City, saigon, vietnam, war museum

No purse, no problem

We get in and, starving, so we drop our bags at Nhog Thao or whatever our hostel’s called, and our roommates, two guys from England, join us. They are all in the mood for Burger King, and I cannot turn down fastfood ever, so naturally we go there without a fight. After dinner, we go to Baskin Robbins and get ice cream for the walk home. We all hang out in the room before passing out.

The next day is our only day here in Saigon. While I am keen on the tunnels and shooting range, Sara doesn’t want to deal with hours of transportation, so we go to the War Museum and it’s awful. Not that it sucks, but there are so many pictures of corpses, dead babies, blown-up men, burned women and children born after the war with severe conditions because of the Agent Orange mist. I have to admit that I cry a few times. The worst picture is a closeup of a man who was victim of phosphorus bombs.

And there is a picture of a man blown to pieces in 2003, when he stepped on a mine. Which leads me to this disturbing fact:

So, yeah. My day has been depressing….until!

For a month now, we’ve been waiting for Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie to come out. It premieres today, so we get our tickets before the trip to the museum, so they won’t be sold out. It is such a great movie, I want to watch it again!

OK, time for bed. We’ve got an early bus to Phnom Penh, Cambodia tomorrow!

May 29, 2014

Nha Trang

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, beach, nha trang, scary stories, vietnam

When we arrive at 6 in the morning, having sweated and tried to sleep on the bumpy 12-hour busride, then carrying our bags 1 km down the road to our hostel and being met with a receptionist that doesn’t seem too friendly, I’m not really liking True Friends Inn. The room is small and the bathroom shitty. But when we go down to reception after a long nap and is offered sweet pineapple by a Vietnamese guy that speaks a little bit of Danish, I know we have come to the right place.

Nha Trang is a very touristy beach town. Not that I mind. I do mind that it’s full of Russians looking like they’re in a bad 80’s movie with their perms and floral dresses, approaching us and assuming we’re Russians too.

On our first day we do nothing but chill. We find a nice little sushi place for dinner where like 12 staff members enthusiastically shout “welcome!” at the same time when we come in. So funny.

We get back to our hostel and our roommates, three guys from Canada, grab some beers and start a drinking game in the reception. We go to Booze Cruise Bar and play drunk jenga and smoke hookah until sometime after 1 or 2 AM.

I am standing at a food stall across the street, when Sara suddenly starts feeling really ill. She has been playing pool with one of our roommates upstairs, and apparently she has taken a sip of a strangers drink. I buy her a 20.000 dong water and pay for an incredibly short cab ride home, which is 11.500 but the driver wants me to pay 50.000, and of course I start a fight with him while my roommates get Sara into bed, where she falls right asleep.

The next day we are both very hungover. We decide to just take a beach day, which is nice for a change.

With my sweet pineapple <3

Later, we meet Edda and go for Italian food and then to see the new X-Men movie. It’s decent, although it turns out that our popcorn are caramel popcorn instead of salted popcorn, which is quite a turnoff. I need salted popcorn when I’m at the Movies, and I find caramled popcorn absolutely disgusting.

We hop on a bus at 8 in the morning the next day, and stay on it for 12 hours. My main entertainment is a snoring lady next to me. We stop for food and bathroom breaks and I get pho and a fanclub of like 5 teenage girls working behind the counter where I order, pay and wait for food. They keep staring and giggling at me like I am the unicorn that they’ve always hoped to see. It’s awesome. Sara ruins my moment in the spotlight by pointing out that it’s just because I’m blond.

May 26, 2014

Hoi An

christinelouise Asia, NovaTOURient, Travel Talk 2014, Asia, cooking class, Hoi An, saltwater hostel, vietnam

As we get on the bus from Hue to Hoi An with Edda, the German girl, it starts raining. A lot. We drive for 4-5 hours, before we get to Saltwater Hostel, which opened less than a month ago.

We are really impressed with the place. While its location is so-so – quite a bikeride into town – it looks modern, appealing, and most of all, clean. The cleaning staff really works hard – I leave all of my belongings on my bed one day, and when I come back, my bed has been made, my stuff neatly placed on the bed, and there is a free pack of Mentos right next to my folded pile of clothes! Probably a mistake, so I eat it before anyone notices.
They also have a nice pool, and it’s very social. I recommend it to anyone going to Hoi An!

The day we arrive, they are doing their very first pubcrawl, and since we’re all about making history, we go. We only go to two bars, but I get very drunk. I mostly hang out with a German and an Irish guy, while Sara hangs out with a group of Danish guys that I seriously dislike for their need to be condescending, slut-shaming pricks. I am home at around 2.30, after dancing with an eccentric Vietnamese lady and being hit on a 10-year older English guy becomes too much to handle.

I stole this picture from Edda. She has a bunch of very silly pictures of me from that night, but I decided my drunk face is enough to share for now.

I wake up the next day very hungover. After a shower and breakfast, I immediately run up to my room to curl up in bed. Then we hang out at the pool until it’s time for a cooking class that the hostel helped us book. We ride on bikes to the local market, where a guy explains the different products we will be working with.

Then we ride out to the countryside with vegetable farms as far as the eye can see. The chef/teacher is fun. He makes us wear ugly hats, throw pancakes in the air and gives us yellow cards when we do somethig wrong. He also thinks I am 17, and says we should get married. Anyway, we make Hoi An springrolls, papaya salad, Vietnamese pancakes, and chicken in claypot.

Ingredients for Hoi An springrolls

While we sit down to enjoy our meals, we are enjoying the view of farmers tending their rice fields or picking basil and mint. As the sun is setting, we ride the bikes along the river back to the hostel, enjoying the breeze and the view. We are so full he might as well have rolled us back, though. It’s around 7 pm, and we pass out right away and don’t wake up until 9 the next morning.

We’ve heard that Hoi An is famous for replicating clothes from pictures for no money, so we ride the hostel’s free bikes into town, have a look at the big market, and then go to a tailor. I give them some pictures, and they give me a minimum price. It’sso expensive, I could’ve bought the stuff in the pictures at least twice. Edda is surprised too, and only gets one of her dresses shortened, while Sara gets a dress and a coat. We have to go back for a fitting at night, so we gp back to the hostel to relax a bit. Then, an hour before her fitting, we go into the town and see the Japanese bridge, all the lanterns and the shops. We sit at a café and have some cake and enjoy the beautiful, cozy little town.

The fitting is over quick, so we just walk around for a while, checking the shops out. When we get home, Sara and I want to get our open bus ticket to Nha Trang confirmed, but the receptionist who calls the bus company is told that we have to show up to do that – something the travel agent selling us the ticket insisted wasn’t necessary. With an hour until their closing time, we hop on bikes and drive the around 4 km to confirm our damn ticket, and then 4 km to go back. I am tired and have a headache, so I have a quick shower, a quick pack, and then I go to bed. Of course, some girls come into the room after midnight and start talking and rummaging through their bags, not giving a fuck that we are trying to sleep. Then, a guy starts puking in the bathroom – loudly! – for like 20 minutes. I wake up around ever 2 hours, pissed.

Our final day in Hoi An consists of a trip to the city to pick up Sara’s clothes, where the ladies at the shop also gets us some bags of coffee each when we ask which coffee is the best, then we ship some of Edda’s stuff home at the postoffice, and have vietnamese lunch at a small family home/café that the clothes ladies have recommended. We have White Rose dumplings, which is a Hoi An specialty. They don’t have a particularly strong taste, but they’re very good.

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