Our Easy Riders dropped us in Saigon's backpacker district after a hairy ride through the city's rush hour of 2 million motorbikes and very few rules of the road.
We had just a couple of days to explore and relax before moving on. Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) seemed vast in comparison to the other towns and cities, but at least Hanoi had prepared us for the traffic and we'd had practice in crossing the road, Vietnamese style (ie walk slowly as if you aren't going to be run over by the traffic speeding towards you and miraculously you survive!).
Then it was time to say goodbye to Vietnam, and move on. We'd thoroughly enjoyed our three weeks and wished we'd had more time to explore the Mekong Delta and the South. Then it was just a hop skip and a jump (by air) to Phnom Penh and a very different city experience.
The hotel we'd booked online had not one, but two 24 hour bars and seemed to have a predominantly single male clientele... so we resolved to find somewhere else as soon as possible.
We only had a couple of days in PP, enough time to see the Royal Palace & Silver Pagoda, and to go out to the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The contrast of the serenity of the Royal Palace with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge were quite extreme. Incomprehensible. Sickening. And yet, horrors that are still repeated in other parts of the world. There were signs up in Tuol Sleng asking that people didn't laugh or make jokes while visiting. As if you could.
Back in Saigon I'd visited the War Remnants Museum, and been equally sickened by the evidence of American atrocities during the war.
Photos of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh.
We had just a couple of days to explore and relax before moving on. Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) seemed vast in comparison to the other towns and cities, but at least Hanoi had prepared us for the traffic and we'd had practice in crossing the road, Vietnamese style (ie walk slowly as if you aren't going to be run over by the traffic speeding towards you and miraculously you survive!).
Then it was time to say goodbye to Vietnam, and move on. We'd thoroughly enjoyed our three weeks and wished we'd had more time to explore the Mekong Delta and the South. Then it was just a hop skip and a jump (by air) to Phnom Penh and a very different city experience.
The hotel we'd booked online had not one, but two 24 hour bars and seemed to have a predominantly single male clientele... so we resolved to find somewhere else as soon as possible.
We only had a couple of days in PP, enough time to see the Royal Palace & Silver Pagoda, and to go out to the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. The contrast of the serenity of the Royal Palace with the horrors of the Khmer Rouge were quite extreme. Incomprehensible. Sickening. And yet, horrors that are still repeated in other parts of the world. There were signs up in Tuol Sleng asking that people didn't laugh or make jokes while visiting. As if you could.
Back in Saigon I'd visited the War Remnants Museum, and been equally sickened by the evidence of American atrocities during the war.
Photos of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh.
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