Flashpacking

Before this trip, I had no idea there were levels of backpacking.  I naively assumed that anyone who traveled on a budget, stayed in hostels or cheap hotels, and presumably, carried a backpacking pack, was simply a backpacker. Turns out I'm wrong, and there are multiple levels of backpacking. I mainly seem to be a flashpacker. As in, while in Siem Reap I paid $9/night to stay in a new, spacious hotel with a pool and A/C when I could've been paying $3-4/night to sleep in a dorm room with no A/C (and certainly no pool).  To be fair, the only reason I could afford the more expensive hotel is because I was traveling with people and we split the cost of the room.

Backpacking levels can also be seen by method of transportation (bus, private taxi, train, boat, airplane); where one eats (street food, market food, grocery store, cafe, restaurant); and accompanying technology (digital camera, ipod, laptop); etc. I'm definitely a flashpacker in most of those categories, although I have taken every method of transportation listed and bought food from all those places listed.  In terms of technology though, I'm a true flashpacker - I have a laptop and I judge hotels by whether or not they have free wifi. Still, a hotel doesn't have to be that nice so long as I can use the internet without leaving my room.

The point is, the term "backpacking" encompasses a huge variety of people traveling in very different ways, but we all identify ourselves as backpackers because it's a mentality as much as a style of travel.
With the exception of technology, my flashpacking days will soon be over...no more free tuk-tuk rides into town, or late night dips in the pool. And that's cool. Once I'm on my own, my standards will go way down. At least, they'll go down for the next two weeks until I get to Singapore where will not be doing any sort of backpacking at all - I'll be checking into the five-star Marriott Hotel and living in luxury for 2.5 days (courtesy of Marriott Rewards points).

But hey, I deserve it - I've been backpacking in some capacity for over three months now, and in Israel I'll be living on a kibbutz so I deserve a few days of non-backpacking, non-flashpacking travel.  Overall though, I've definitely been converted into a hard-core flashpacker, and it's now my preferred way to travel.

Angkor Wat at sunrise

Tuol Sleng and the Killing Fields

It's always interesting to learn about a place, an event, or a historical period in time and then go see it (or what's left) for yourself. I suppose I've been doing a lot of that since I started this trip, but today was the first time that I've visited a place where I could remember, in acute detail, the hard facts and accompanying philosophical arguments surrounding this particular place and event. As I mentioned before, I have studied genocide in depth, and the Cambodian Genocide is no exception. To me, it is the most fascinating example of genocide perpetrated in modern times, in that it was the most radical attempt by an internal government to reorganize a society from the ground up. Cambodia may have been following in the footsteps of Lenin and Mao, but the Khmer Rouge took it much futher than those leaders ever did, and at a much quicker pace.


Today we went to Tuol Sleng Prison Musem (also known as S-21) and the Killing Fields. Before the war, Tuol Sleng was a high school. The Khmer Rouge turned it into their main prison; thousands of Cambodians were tortured and killed there. The bodies were then shipped to the killing fields (about 20 kilometers outside Phnom Penh) and disposed of in mass graves. The prison has been left pretty much as it was in 1979, which is interesting and disturbing at the same time.

The killing fields were more difficult for me to see...there were over 8,000 bodies just dumped into mass graves (now the bones are housed in a temple). I suppose it reminds me quite a bit of the Holocaust, although there's I don't need to relate the horrors of the Khmer Rouge to any other regime in order to feel depressed and disgusted by what they did.

Tuol Sleng Prison

prisoner bed, pillow and shackle left untouched

pictures of tortured prisoners

cells

Mekong Delta

floating down the Mekong

very relaxing

Vietnamese coffee...I could drink it every morning

early morning on the way to the floating market

Cai Be floating market

Goodbye Vietnam

Tonight is my last night in Vietnam. I'm sad to be leaving the country, but excited to continue my travel adventures.
We're leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for Phnom Penh. In anticipation of the long bus ride, I'm forgoing my picture editing and blog writing activities tonight so that I'll have something to occupy my time on the bus tomorrow. So the final Vietnam blog post will be up tomorrow night.

Goodbye Vietnam, Hello Cambodia!

 

last dinner in Vietnam with Megan and Kelly. street food rocks!

Saigon

I've been in Saigon for a few days now, and I definitely like it a lot better than Hanoi. The people are friendlier, the food is much better, and the weather is nicer. That being said, I'm glad I spent a lot of time in Hanoi because I got to experience a more traditional lifestyle. But Saigon is better.


On Wednesday day I did a tour to the Cao Dai Holy See in Tay Ninh and the Cu Chi tunnels. Cao Dai is a fairly new religion that takes aspects of Buddhism and Confucianism and Taoism. The religion is also structured similarly to Catholicism with an hierarchical leadership such as a Pope and Bishops. They pray four times a day, and visitors are allowed to watch from a balcony above. We arrived at the temple before the service started so I had time to walk around the temple and surrounding area. The temple itself looks kind of like something you'd see at Disneyworld. It is extremely colorful with lots of statues and ornate details. The service started at noon and we stayed for the first half of it. The part I saw mainly consisted of everyone walking to their places, sitting down, and then bowing to the ground every once in a while. There was music but no talking. I'm not sure if that part came after I left, or if there's no talking at all during the service.

In the afternoon we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels. The tunnels were built by guerillas living in the South, but who fought for the North during the Vietnam War. These tunnels were way more touristy than the tunnels I saw in the DMZ tour near Hue. But, it was still cool because the Cu Chi tunnels are now part of a park run by the Vietnamese Army and they have set up lots of exhibits that show how the guerillas lived and fought. Tourists can even shoot a variety of guns at the shooting range!

Yesterday, Megan and I went to three museums: Reunification Palace, Ho Chi Minh City Museum (this one was by accident), and the War Remnants Museum. It was a very informative day. Of course, most of the information was very biased against the U.S. but that didn't surprise or bother me much.

At the War Remnants museum I did start to feel guilty about what our country did, especially after the exhibit on the horrors of Agent Orange. But then I saw a comment from an official commission saying the U.S. perpetrated genocide against the Vietnamese, and that just made me angry. While the U.S. most certainly committed terrible war crimes against the Vietnamese, it did not commit genocide. Genocide is a subject I've studied in depth, and I know all the commonly accepted definitions. Not only do America's actions in the war not fit the parameters of genocide, but calling the Vietnam War a genocide undermines the legitimacy of the real genocides that have been committed (Holocaust, Khmer Rouge, Darfur, etc). Anyway, enough of that. Overall, I thought the museum was very well thought out, except for the fact that there was no A/C. That seemed like a bit of an oversight considering the average temperature year-round in Saigon is around 85 degrees.

Beating Snake Heart

On my last night in Hanoi, five of us went to Le Mat, or Snake Village. We saw some poisonous snakes and then ate one for dinner. Okay, I actually didn't eat the snake for dinner but I watched Megan, Tej and Bich eat it. Here's a video of the snake heart, still pumping, about 15 minutes after the snake had been killed. Someone is supposed to eat the heart and drink the blood but we were all too grossed out.