Cambodia! Cambodia! Scroll down, suckas!

I'm back, fools! Just so no-one feels like they're interrupting a conversation, here are both the summary and the scoop (2-in-1!) Being from Montreal, Quebec, I've been living in Chengdu, China for 5 months, teaching high school. I took my winter vacation and spent it in Vietnam. Now I'm back in Chengdu, back at school, back in the saddle and with a new apartment and a new roommate to boot. I've just posted my account of Phnom Penh down below. New Chengdu news will go up above.
Smurf you later,
Matthew

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

After a while in Saigon, I needed to find a way to renew my visa and a 3-day trip into the former kingdom of Cambodia was just the ticket (re-entry means a new visa, it's like pressing reboot on an old computer.)
Phnom Penh is smaller than Saigon, and different for many reasons, the obvious historical one being the rule of the Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian-Vietnamese war which ended it only 27 years ago. Meaning the entire country still has a good excuse for feeling a little shell-shocked. Despite this, it was actually a great place to be. (um... great place to be a rich tourist, anyway. Awkward.) The obvious cultural reason is the Hindu influence which is so obvious in Cambodia and so not in Vietnam, at the eastern border of the former Cham and Khmer empires. I spent most of my time walking around as much of the city as possible. An entire evening was spent playing guitar with the street kids. They proved more teachable than the Saigon kids, actually. I actually got them doing some hand percussion and a couple of them learned to strum on the beat. Ate Indian food twice. Andhra Pradesh food, specifically. In tourist parts of town everybody's hawking something, but they don't mind you not buying it if you play them a song. Everyone requested "Imagine", which seems fitting, although I'm sure it's just a clichéed coincidence. The hostels on Boeng Kak (lake) are gorgeous. Lastly, it's a little nauseating to be asked over and over if you want any "beautiful girls". Although speaking of beautiful girls (in a non human-trafficking sense) I spent some time with two cool Chilean sisters and an equally cool Brazilian (here).

Cao Daism and the Cu Chi Guerillas

Pictured is the temple of the Cao Dai holy see in Tay Ninh, near Saigon. The link above is a synopsis, their official page is here, but the most interesting bit is this: it's a religion founded in the 1920's that recognizes three saints (I kid you not): Confucius, Lao Tse, and SAINT VICTOR HUGO. Yes, the same Victor Hugo. After visiting the temple with some lovely English ladies I met on the bus, we went to see the Cu Chi Tunnels. Long story short, during the 1st and 2nd Indochina wars, the Cu Chi locals supported the Communists, and built a huge network of tunnels in the forest in which to travel around and hide from the huge amount of bombs that were dropped on them. 'Hardcore' really doesn't begin to describe it. 'Tiny tunnels with lots of booby traps' does, though. Picture.

The Heat is on in Saigon

For anyone who was ever in a highschool production of "Miss Saigon", the real thing is not quite the same. And since the war ended, it's "Miss Ho Chi Minh City" anyway. I spent almost a week here, split up with a trip to Cambodia to get a new visa.
-I'd read The Quiet American at Brendan's suggestion so it was fun to see landmarks from the book, like rue Catinat (now Dong Khoi) and the piers in Cholon.
-Cholon, a.k.a. District 5, a.k.a. Chinatown, is the absolute coolest for my money. I rode down there one evening from District 1 where I was staying (along with all the twentysomethings of Europe) and found a small and generous Chinese vegetarian restaurant which pretty much blew me away. Why?
-I had three recurring annoyances in Vietnam.
a) I couldn't speak the language (I hate that)
b) Unlike Chengdu, it seems to be an unavoidable Vietnamese custom to swindle tourists for all they're worth.
c) Where was all the vegetarian food?
So this restaurant was the answer to my prayers. Vegetarian delights, everyone spoke Chinese, and when they found out I did too, they straight up took away the English menu (complete with english prices) and gave me the real deal. Wonder of wonders, I was in District 5 heaven.
-Beautiful mazes of alleyways. Particularly in Cholon. you can walk in and just twist and turn past doorways in a meter-wide passage without hitting a real street for 10 minutes. I did though, get eventually kicked out by a Vietnamese guy (from Philadelphia but visiting family) who told me (in Philadelphia terms) that it wasn't exactly safe to be back there.
-I played some guitar with a lot of street vendor kids, which was great (picture). They weren't too disciplined, and preferred posing with it, but they were as enthusiastic as you could ask for. Later one evening, they saw me and offered me some of the snack they were eating, but the woman that sold it wouldn't sell it to me for the same price, so we left, and ran around the corner, and tried to send one kid back with some money to buy a piece. She saw through the ruse and yelled at him, though. Finally, they sent their sister and she pulled it off perfectly. Discount snack!

The pictures here are, in order: Benh Thanh Market by night. Barbers by a wall in District 3. The old Cathedral Duc Ba next to the new "Diamond Plaza". Street scene near rue Dong Khoi.