Taiwan

So our foray into South East Asia ended with a one day stopover in Taipei.



Taipei is very similar to Seoul, or rather, Taipei is what Seoul should be. It is much smaller, but it's very clean, the subways run every two minutes instead of every fifteen, and it had interesting architecture, not just the same building built thousands of times.

We arrived in the evening and went out to Taipei 101. The sun had set by the time we got there, and no matter how many times I tried, I just could not get a good picture of the damn building. I had to use a slow shutter speed, and there was nothing appropriate to place the camera on that wasn't behind a tree or in the middle of the road. I therefore have many shaky blurry pictures of the building.

The elevator ride up was pretty cool, since it took less than 30 seconds to go up 84 floors, and the view from the top was awesome. However, we were surrounded by Korean tourists, and all of them kept talking about how the 63 building and Namseong Tower were more impressive. I got some strange looks from people as they were talking about it and I just started laughing. Korean nationalism is wonderfully obtuse at times that it just has to make you laugh. Finally, one woman caught on that I understood what they were saying (in Korean naturally) and gave me a dirty look as she walked away.

After the Taipei 101, we made our way over to the nigt market, which was pretty cool, and had cool gizmos that made you say "ooh, I want that!" before realizing that you had absolutely no need for it whatsoever. It was also quite exciting, because every 10 minutes or so, all of the street vendors in the middle of the aisle would VERY RAPIDLY pack up their goods and run away or hide in another store to avoid the policemen walking around. After that, it was simply hotel, airport, back to the apartment. Upon our arrival, we found that Mina's mom had bought us a new large coffee table, filled our fridge with food, and bought an electric blanket. Very nice way to come back. It's nice to sleep in my own bed again as well. Too bad I have to start working again though.

That's it, that's the entirety of the trip. I was out of Korea for a month, so there was no way they can blame me for burning down Namdaemun, which might have happened had I been here. Koreans like blaming anything bad that happens on foreigners.

Cambodia

When last we left them, Stefan and Mina were tired of the cold and decided to head for Cambodia.



We finally got on a plane in Hanoi at 6pm after huge hassles from our hotel that I'm still dealing with, and arrived in Siem Riep which was a wonderful 30 degrees. We hopped into a taxi and headed for the main strip where we figured we would find a hotel easily. WRONG! It still being the Lunar New Year holiday, everyone was still on vacation in Cambodia and taking up all of the accommodations. We finally let our taxi driver go and started wandering around. A young guy offered to help us and grabbed a tuk-tuk driving us to all of the hotels he knew in the area. After more than an hour of riding around to completely full hotels, we finally stumbled across the Siem Reap Hostel which turned out to be incredible. It had a pool, pool table, free internet, brand new accommodations, book exchange, and everything else you could possibly want from a hostel. So after our really crappy day, we finally had a nice place to stay.

For the next two days we just went around Angkor Wat, which is a collection of temples that have slowly been reclaimed by the surrounding jungle. If you ever get a chance to go see it, I highly recommend it. All of the temples had something different to offer, and were all gorgeous.

On the second night we met up with Angela and Dawn, two of the girls I worked with at Suwon University, and then on the third day relaxed before heading to the floating village for sunset. The floating village itself was ok, but to get there we had to take a tuk-tuk through an area of the poorest people I have ever seen. Small naked children running around, and families of six living in what would generously be called a hut made mostly of corrugated iron and tarpaulin. Lots of children were also wearing "Be the Reds" t-shirts which is for the Korean Soccer team, which I assume couldn't be sold during the last world cup, so they just got sent to Cambodia as a donation. I also saw lots of old Korean buses which was amusing because they still had all of the old Korean directions on them. At the floating market, we were shown a fish farm and a "coconut" farm. We were wondering how hey could grow coconuts in the middle of the lake when we discovered that our guide had made a mistake and used the word "coconuts" instead of "CROCODILES" similar sounding I know, but not the same thing.

After Siem Reap, we headed to Sihanoukville with Dawn and Angela and just relaxed on the beach for a week. Nice sunsets, warm weather, fresh fruit and seafood, and just about everything else I wanted from the vacation. At the beach we also randomly ran into Jeff, who we knew was in the area, but could never get in touch with.

Dawn and Angela left a day before us, and we finally made our way to Phnom Penh for a couple of days. On our first night as we were going to dinner, we once again randomly ran into Dawn and Angela, and had a simultaneous "What the hell are you doing here?" We chatted with them until they had to leave for the airport, got up, walked around the corner, and ran into Frank, yet another person that we work with. We were tired, so we arranged to meet up the next day to do some stuff.

The next Day was depressing day. We got Frank from his hotel and went to Tuol Sleng which was the prison where over 7,000 people were imprisoned under the Khmer Rouge before being killed. It was really awful because they had pictures of a lot of the victims, and many of them were small children that had had the misfortune of being related to a person that knew had to do math or some other heresy. After that we hadn't been sufficiently depressed, so we went to the killing fields, where a lot of the prisoners from Tuol Sleng were actually executed. There you could see the piles of skulls of the victims, and as we were walking around we saw some human bones lying around that hadn't been collected yet. If you want creepy, this is the place to go. Thankfully it was a nice sunny day, and not a gloomy rainy evening.

After all of this death, we hadn't had enough destruction, so we headed to the range, which was actually on a special forces base. Frank chose to shoot an Uzi, and as he was setting up they asked "do you want to shoot a chicken?" Yes, that's right. Not only can you shoot fully automatic weapons, but you can shoot them at farm animals. frank politely declined and then enjoyed his Uzi time. We then looked back at the weapons menu to see that for a mere $200 we could shoot a bazooka, and for a mere $200 extra, we could shoot it at a cow. Ah, Cambodia, there's nowhere quite like it. I decided to simply toss a hand grenade, which was quite the experience. We got a nice explosion that everyone could enjoy, and I can now cross "Throw a hand grenade" off of my list of things to do.



I was only a little upset that they didn't offer me any livestock to throw it at. Maybe a goat or a duck? We left feeling great with the adrenaline rush that can only come with automatic weapons and high explosives. we spent the rest of the day relaxing and contemplating what we had done before separating.

The next morning, Mina and I headed back to Ho Chi Minh, where we just did a bit of shopping before heading to Taiwan.

Vietnam

So I'm back and alive, with only a slight case of food poisoning (damn Vietnamese hamburgers!) Ho Chi Minh was crazy when we first got there (on our second anniversary as it so happened). Our driver told us there were 7,000,000 people living in Ho Chi Minh, and 6,000,000 scooters.



When you try navigating the roads, it's very easy to believe. The fun part comes when you try to cross the road. There are no red lights in large portions of the city, so the scooters all just weave around each other and any pedestrians that may be in the way, or even the random car. You just have to walk out into the street and slowly make your way across looking out for the drivers going straight and looking to the right or left. We ended up in De Tham which is basically the Vietnamese version of Khaosan Road without the prostitutes and grunge. We spent a couple of days wandering around looking at things on bicycle taxis before heading to Mui Ne on a bus.



Our bus driver was very enamored of his horn. The following is an incomplete list of things he hoked at repeatedly over the four hour trip:
1. I'm turning
2. I'm going over a bridge
3. I'm going around a corner
4. I'm going to pass you
5. I'm passing you
6. I just passed you
7. I'm driving like an asshole
8. I'm driving straight not doing anything
9. I just drove over a small child on a moped
10. I just want to be me
This was all exacerbated by the fact that the horn button was broken and the driver had to prod a loose wire into a hole in the steering wheel in morse code fashion to make it work. This was bad enough, but every now and then he would drop it and release a massive blast that shook my molars.

Mui Ne was a nice beach strip with lots of windsurfing and kitesurfing, but no young people. It was full of old Russian and German couples, and a few young girls trying to find a rich old man. The beach was nice and relaxing though, which was exactly what I needed. There was also plenty of fresh seafood and Pho to go around to please even the pickiest of eaters.

After a few days in Mui Ne, we headed to Nha Trang on a thankfully horn-free bus. Nha Trang had a nice beach and we took a cool boat trip out to four of the outlying islands which included a floating bar, which was the ships captain grabbing a case of wine and jumping on a life preserver in the water while everyone floated around drinking the Vietnamese wine. If anyone ever offers you this substance, do yourself a favour and politely decline. Nha Trang also had awesome waves for jumping in which I haven't been able to do for quite some time.

Our last stop in Vietnam was Hanoi. We wanted to go to Halong Bay, but the weather was cold and foggy, which would make a two day sea trip miserable in our summer clothes. We caught the train at 4:30am on Tuesday, and it was scheduled to arrive in Hanoi at 12:00pm. The sign neglected to mention however that it would be 12:00pm THE NEXT DAY! So after a lovely 31 hour train ride we arrived in Hanoi just in time for Tet, but it was about 13 degrees, which was really cold for us since it had been 30 the day before. We did the whole Tet thing that night and decided to high-tail it out of Vietnam as quickly as possible. Hanoi was also deserted for the holiday, which I had not anticipated. I thought it would be a big party. WRONG! Everyone closed up shop and went to the country to see their family. That being said, Hanoi is a pretty city, and while chilly, we did have a good time looking around and not being bothered by beggars and Xe Om drivers. We finally left Vietnam having travelled by plane, boat, bus, taxi, xe om and cyclo and headed By Plane once more for Siem Reap in the hopes of warmer weather.