Saigon to Siem Reap - Vietnam and Cambodia

Saigon to Siem Reap - Vietnam and Cambodia

Jean and the First Course

The Final Course

 The night before our first overland trip, we have dinner in the Veranda Restaurant on the ship. We have a tasting menu, designed to showcase some of the better Chinese wines. The dinner is hosted by a trade sales manager who handles the export of the Chinese wines to London as well as throughout Asia. The wines are quite good, and designed to compete with French wines (so they will be quite costly if they ever come to the States). The “Chairman’s Reserve” has recently competed well in a blind taste-test against comparable French wines. The menu is excellent, six courses. This is the start of several days of over-the-top sightseeing and special meals. We return to our room to review the luggage we will be taking with us. After six weeks on the ship, we will be away for three days and two nights. We will be traveling with a group of 30 passengers from the ship.

Country of Motor Scooters

 
 The ship docks in Phu My, largely a container port some 45 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City. It takes our group close to 2 hours to make the trip. The speed limit has been lowered to allow large vehicles like buses, automobiles, and trucks to share the same two-lane road with the hundreds of motor scooters.

Water Puppets

History Museum

Our guide assures us that citizens of southern Vietnam still call the city Saigon. Our first stop in Saigon is the historical museum. At the museum, we are treated to a water puppet show. The puppeteers stand behind a screen and manipulate the puppets that seem to dance on the water. The puppets include dragons, fairies, babies, and acrobats. After the puppet show, we stop for photos at Reunification Hall - the former Presidential Palace of South Vietnam - where the war was ended in 1975 as the South fell to the North. After that, we see a 300 year-old Chinese temple, this one honoring the goddess of the sea - since the Chinese came by boat. Next a stop at a lacquer ware factory before lunch.

Temple of the Sea Goddess

Ceramic Wall Details at Temple

Vietnamese Dancers

Town Hall

We have an extensive buffet at the Hotel Majestic while we are entertained by dancers, musicians, and singers - performing traditional Vietnamese pieces. After lunch we have photo stops at a number of French Colonial buildings - the City Hall, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the old post office. We stop at the Rex hotel to have Vietnamese coffee - a favorite watering hole for war reporters before the fall of Saigon. The bar is on the 5th floor of the Rex hotel - a rooftop with lovely views. Vietnamese coffee has condensed milk and ice added to the coffee. (Don’t dismiss it until you’ve tried it.) Soon its off to the airport for our flight to Cambodia.

Enjoying Vietnamese Coffee

Train Station

Notre Dame in Saigon

The flight is delayed, while they swap out airplanes, so it is after 6:00 PM before we are flying into Siem Reap in Cambodia. There is an enormous lake just south of the city, the largest fresh water lake in Southeast Asia. In the rainy season (fortunately already concluded), the lake expands to reach all the way to Phnom Penh. The trip by speedboat between the two cities would take 5 hours. We make the flight from Saigon to Siem Reap in less than an hour. The airport is new, with a terminal that looks like a resort hotel. The city is clearly preparing for a large increase in tourists. Already, many tourists come from Korea, Japan, and throughout Southeast Asia. We stay at the Sokha Angkor Resort, with large lovely rooms, several restaurants and bars, a saltwater swimming pool, and a friendly staff. The company handling our tour, performs the legwork with customs - obtaining Cambodian visas and other documentation. We have brought two passport pictures, necessary to complete the task.

Tomorrow we will visit the many temples in the area.