Not far to the South of Siem Reap is Tonle Sap Lake. Being of comparable size to the great lakes in the U.S., this lake is the biggest lake in Southeast Asia. Sitting at one of the Northern most points of this lake is one of the floating villages. This is an actual small town that is floating a few hundred meters off shore. Its population is mostly fishermen, but it also has all of the normal small-town trappings like a supermarket, restaurants, even a pagoda, all floating out there in the lake.
Angkor Wat is perhaps, behind the Great Wall of China, the most recognizable landmark in all of East Asia. But despite its fame, is actually one of the smaller members in a much bigger complex of temples. Angkor is an area of about 20 square miles, containing more than 200 temples. Angkor Wat is special amongst these temples because it is perhaps the best preserved. This is thanks in part of the giant moat that surrounds the temple, keeping the jungle from swallowing it back up like so many of the other temples in Angkor.
Going to Cambodia is a lot like going to a strip club – you better arrive with a fat stack of ones. Trip Advisor ranked Siem Reap as the #1 destination in Asia last year. The Khmer new year was just 2 weeks ago and Siem Reap apparently received roughly 300,000 international visitors in addition to 1,000,000 domestic visitors (in that week alone) who all came to take part in the giant party that was being held in Angkor Wat and the surrounding temple complexes.
Hội An was a very important trading post of the old world. It was the opinion of most Chinese and Japanese merchants that Hội An was the best trading post in Southeast Asia, if not Asia at large. However, thanks to a treaty signed with the colonizing French, Đà Nẵng eventually became the port of choice in lieu of Hội An. Also, due to a build up of silt at the mouth of the river, Hội An became all but inaccessible to the large ships that used to frequent its docks. The effect of this was isolation. The ancient town of Hội An was all but forgotten about during Vietnam’s tumultuous next 200 years.
Travel plans! On this trip, we'll be visiting Da Nang, Hoi An (in Vietnam), Siem Reap, and Phnom Penh (in Cambodia). Included in these destinations will be Angkor Wat and the Killing Fields in Cambodia, as well as a legendary lantern lighting festival in the backwaters of central Vietnam.
With the 40-year anniversary of the end of the war between Vietnam and America in a few days, the timing of this was fortuitous. Our story begins with a dinner, as many of my stories do. One of my former students, Linh (pronounced “ling’), had invited me to have dinner with her and her family. Soon they would be leaving for Newfoundland, Canada. They would be living in a small college town on the Eastern coast while her husband, Dzung (pronounced “zoong”), earned his Ph.D. At the end of this dinner they invited us to come to Bac Ninh Province (just North of Hanoi) to have a large dinner with their extended family.
Yeah. Gross, right? Vietnam has a lot to offer to the dark side of the culinary world and I’m doing my best to try all the weird cultural dishes I can whilst I am here. This week’s dish is a beating snake heart. Also included in this post will be snake organs, bones, skin, and poisonous stomach bile.
It was good to get back home so that I could start making money instead of spending it. Spring has come to Hanoi. With summer just around the corner the streets are now littered with the flip-flops of small children and we are receiving more rain than I thought possible. One rainy Tuesday morning around 6am I woke up to my phone ringing.
Thanks to some crafty plane ticket booking strategies, we ended up with a very extended layover in Kuala Lumpur (or KL, as the cool kids call it). I was pretty overwhelmed by all the American food chains that populated the airport. It had been a long time since I’d seen a Johnny Rocket’s. But eventually we found our way out of the airport to the train that would take us into KL.
Our last night in Indonesia was spent in Bali. We had about half a day to spend in Bali and we chose to spend it visiting the magnificent cliffs and precariously placed temples of Uluwatu on the Southern most point of the island. It is also known for it’s gargantuan waves, which were, even in the low season, and even from our high vantage point, quite impressive.
