On the road to Cambodia part two - Phnom Penh

After a hard negotiations over the cost to get me from Ibis to my hotel I talked a Tuk-tuk driver down from $3.00 to $2.50..  I always tell people you have to keep prices in context and $50 cents shouldn't be a big deal

Tuk-tuk's and drivers

but to a person earning a couple dollars a day it is. So keep the expected bargaining light and friendly, treat it as a game and with that in mind  when he got me to the hotel I paid his original asking price of $3.00.

My hotel is the Blue tongue, you know the hotel behind the Walkabout Bar.  A bit about the Walkabout soon but first I'm going to talk about the Blue Tongue.  I've stayed there numerous times over the past few years, Filipino managed and a wonderful room with a balcony for $35.00.  Still Filipino managed but they got rid of the nice Filipino's  and kept the mean ones, raised the price of the room, dropped the free breakfast and won't allow any visitors in your room.  Ka damn, just like the last time I went to mom's.

Anyway, I was there and it's in a good location on a street with a lot of nightlife or day life if you're inclined and decided to stay for a day or two. As I mentioned its behind the Walkabout Bar, a Phnom Penh stable for years, booze, babes and recorded rock playing 24/7.  Beer prices are reasonable as is the price of food and for such a raggedy looking place the food is pretty darn good.   Remembering this is an old school place, open air, pool tables, darts and ladies trying to earn a living and guys trying to help them. Across the street from it is a German biker bar named The Lone Brothers Bar, that I've written about before. The hard rock music blaring but was a little disappointed as there was no friendly female wait staff to play with, just a couple big German guys dressed in leathers with their large bikes parked in the front yard of the bar.

On a previous post http://dougsasia.blogspot.com/2012/05/saigon-thaos-to-german-biker-bar-in.html  if you scroll down about to the middle of it - my writing and photos on The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng Museum documenting the evil of Pol Pot's regime.

The next afternoon walked over to the riverfront area, the city has done a nice job of redoing the walk way along the river into a park with Sisowath Quay on the other side. Sisowath Quay is lined with restaurants, guest houses and shops of all kinds.One of the restaurants I enjoy is the Riverside Bistro on the Quay and street 146 offering western and Cambodian food and Angkor beer.

So now you have had your exercise and you have a full tummy you can visit the Night Market further up the

night market dinning

Quay at about street 108. However, on your way up or back take a walk down the bar street, 136 or any other streets in that area to take a peak the bar culture of the area.  A good one is Sharky Bar, live music on some nights, good food, try an English meat pie, reasonably priced drinks and a few wondering women seeking their next income stream.  In the area you'll see bar's with names like Candy Bar, Mr. Butterfly, Red Bar and too many others to mention and with each the main attraction is booze and women.

My repaired leg was giving me problems and decided to scratch the trip to Siem Reap and Angkor Wat but still had a few days.  Tried to extend my stay at the Tongue but they turned me away so I went shopping for a nice place to hide out in for a couple days and found it, The Splash Inn. Small classy place in a walled compound and you guessed it a pool with a room larger than my apartment in California, seating area with comfy couches, sunny balcony overlooking the pool, great bed, and for my entertainment pleasure an umpteen inch flat screen TV with a CD player.

All things must come to an end so before I know it I'm back on the Ibis traveling back to Saigon. The trip back only took 6 hours, guess less traffic and I had no need for a Tuk-tuk as I trundled off the Ibis in Sai Gon, as its just a short walk across 23-9 park to my room. 


ferry crossing at Neak Luong:

vendors and ferry passengers

river drive in bike wash

 
                                                                                                                               

bus on ferry

home made power chair

vendors heading to the ferry

                                               



       




   around Phnom Penh:
                                                                                                             
         

bamboo bikes

North Korea Embassy - extolling the Kim Jong's

fireman napping in ready

Thanks for taking another Cambodia trip with me, Doug.

Covet action quarterly, fall 1997, regarding Cambodia

"Are you like me and can never get enough"(thanks David Letterman), of South east Asia politics, then the following will awe and amaze you.  Most of us know Pol Pot was evil but it's surprising how behind the scenes their were a lot of players who really weren't supporters but covertly offered him their support, including the USA, as a means to accomplish there own goals. Overlooking the destruction Pol Pot was inflicting on Cambodia and  the subsequent genocide he endorsed to use his military might to meet there own objectives.  

excerpted from

US intervention in Cambodia from bombs to ballots

by David Roberts

Covert Action Quarterly Fall 1997

 

There was little room for irony in Washington this summer as Congress puffed itself up with outrage over possible foreign influence in the US electoral process. "The American people have the right to know" intoned Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), "and we have the highest duty to determine whether there was a concerted plan by foreign governments to infiltrate our electoral process.''

Applied to the US, the rhetoric is melodramatic and hypocritical; used to describe the US role in Cambodia, it is glaringly inadequate. The legacy of US interference is written in blood and misery across the map of Cambodia. Although the bombing has stopped, and the world has a "new order," the US is still interfering in the domestic affairs of this small nation. And elections are only one part of the strategy.

On the surface, the recent ouster of Norodom Ranariddh, the leader of the UNCINPEC (National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia) royalists, by his coalition partner Hun Sen, head of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), seems a straightforward enough violation of democratic practice; it also appears to have little relationship to Washington. But the surface in Cambodia is shallow indeed and the roots of this coup lie deep and entangled with a history of US interference spanning almost three decades.

Although the US weapons of choice are now dollars and ballots, in the 1970s, they were bombs and troops. Then, as the war in Vietnam spilled across its borders, the US under Nixon and Kissinger launched "secret" and murderous air attacks on Cambodia's eastern border in its effort to wipe out Vietnamese communists. When revelations of this violation of a neutral country reached the anti-war movement and sparked public protest, the US temporarily halted the bombings and deployed a covert army of ground troops. But as soon as the political heat died, the bombers flew again and rained down the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on a country which had no quarrel with the US.

Apart from killing innumerable Cambodians and returning parts of Cambodia to the Stone Age, Washington's military and political intervention had other, long-lasting consequences. In March 1970, just after US ground troops invaded, a ClA-backed coup deposed King Norodom Sihanouk. His pro-Washington replacement, Lon Nol, who ruled from 1970 to 1975, was a weak, corrupt despot rejected by much of the nation. Antagonism to his regime, outrage over US bombing, and the starvation and destruction which flowed from Washington's policies in Southeast Asia breathed new life into Cambodia's Khmer Rouge. From the jungle where it had been banished by Sihanouk in the 1960s, the movement rapidly built popular support.

Out of the inferno of civil war and foreign invasion, the Khmer Rouge and its leader, Pol Pot, gained strength and in April 1975 took power. Declaring "Year Zero," they closed down Cambodia and began dragging the country back to a pre-industrial era devoid of the foreign influence they blamed for the country's woes. In the process, Pol Pot split Cambodian society in two. His "new" people were those the regime distrusted: educated professionals who had lived cozy lives in Phnom Penh and members of the former government. Corrupt and corrupting, they were executed by the thousands. The second group, the "old," were rural peasants whose lives were romantically seen as hard but honest and who were to be more trusted because they were uncorrupted by modern city life and Western influences. To prevent their contamination, Pol Pot ordered the abolition of memory. Money and medicine were abolished. The national bank was blown up. The library, repository of much of Cambodia's precious history, was turned into a pig-sty The Catholic cathedral was razed to the ground, and Cambodia's ancient religion of Buddhism was outlawed.

Then came the genocide. Under the pretext of US bombings, the Khmer Rouge emptied the capital, Phnom Penh, which was swollen with refugees. Leaving behind homes and possessions, up to 1.5 million people were expelled to a countryside devastated by "secret" bombing, invasion, and five years of civil war between the troops of Lon Nol and Pol Pot. One journalist at the time described the evacuation as the greatest caravan of human misery the world has ever seen."

In the three years and eight months that followed, Cambodia entered the darkest period of its history and experienced a unique, horrific auto-genocide. Looking to explain why its impractical, flawed, and intellectually bankrupt revolution had gone asunder, the Khmer Rouge, like so many before them created "enemies within" and accused its terrified victims of being CIA, KGB, or sometimes both. People suspected of "crimes" against the Khmer Rouge organization, who perhaps wore glasses or spoke foreign languages, were often sent to a small converted school in Phnom Penh where Pol Pot's henchmen extracted false confessions and imposed sentences. Of the 20,000 who entered Tuol Sleng, seven survived. One, an artist, Heng Nath, whose work appears on this page, painted recollections of cruelty that beggar belief. The images haunt the tragic, dilapidated school: Scorpions are coaxed from a box next to a woman as her nipples are pinched with pliers; a man suspended up side down in water is electrocuted; prisoners are forced to eat their own excrement. The reign of terror, slavery, overwork and starvation that spread throughout the country claimed between one and two million lives.

 

Helping Pol Pot

With the regime enjoying tacit economic, political and military support from China, it looked as if the horror would end only when there was no one left alive to blame. By 1977, even as Cambodia descended into chaos, some of Pol Pot's troops along the border with Vietnam had been sporadically murdering, looting, and raping Vietnamese villagers. Then, on Christmas Day 1978, Pol Pot's vast and grisly social experiment came to an abrupt end. The People's Army of Vietnam, in response to growing attacks by Khmer Rouge Eastern Zone cadre, entered Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge was by this stage in such disarray that the People's Army, despite being unprepared for such an operation, pushed Pol Pot's "army of genocide" to Thailand on Cambodia's western border, and deposed the brutal dictator.

With assistance from Vietnam, Pen Sovann and Heng Samrin became heads of Cambodia's defacto government until Hun Sen took over in 1985. At 35, he was the youngest prime minister in the world and was supported politically and economically by Hanoi. Vietnamese civil administrators quickly withdrew, but elements of the army remained to help defend the population from Pol Pot's forces. The People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (PRPK- later the CPP) inherited a country in ruin; the nation lacked the most basic infrastructure-money, health care and transportation networks had all but ceased to exist; most of the country's human resources, doctors, teachers, engineers had been slaughtered or died of malnutrition and overwork in the agrarian "experiment" gone grotesquely wrong.

But over the next decade, rather than provide desperately needed aid, the West and China, led by Washington, withheld assistance and instead pumped aid, money, and arms, often through Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) conduits, to the Khmer Rouge and its newfound "allies" in the refugee camps in Thailand. Also withheld was formal recognition and a UN seat, without which Cambodia could not get the development aid so crucial to the mammoth task of rebuilding from the ruins of Year Zero. To this date, it retains the ignominious distinction of being the only country in the world to have been denied development aid by the UN. Instead, the world body surrendered to superpower realpolitic while thousands more Cambodians died in floods and famine.

Not satisfied with an aid embargo, Washington continued to demonize and punish both Cambodia and Vietnam. Humiliated by losing to a Third World peasant guerrilla army, Washington saw its chance to extend the war and elicit revenge by isolating Vietnam and punishing poor Cambodia, whose only mistake, as award winning British journalist John Pilger once wrote, was having liberators from the wrong side of the Cold War.

 

US Intervention

For more than a decade, the Khmer Rouge, protected by Western and Chinese antagonism to the Hun Sen government, continued to wage guerrilla war from its bases on the Thai border. Then, with the end of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and Vietnam backed away from supporting Hun Sen. The Khmer Rouge, however, supplemented continuing international support from the US, China and Thailand with extensive logging and gem mining from its resource-rich control zones on its western border with Thailand. A tortuous peace process-originally blocked by secret US diplomacy because the deal didn't suit Washington's interests-resulted in the establishment of the most comprehensive, intrusive, and expensive UN peacekeeping operation to date. From November 1991, the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) employed over 22,000 people including more than 6,000 civilians, and carried out staggeringly successful elections against enormous odds in a hostile, complex, and demanding environment. About a month before the elections, amid claims of UN partisanship, the Khmer Rouge withdrew its participation in the elections. Nonetheless, the polling took place from May 23 to 28, 1993, against a backdrop of intimidation and threats of violence by Pol Pot and his guerrillas.

The charge that elements of the UN were partisan was accurate, but the victim was not the Khmer Rouge. The October 1991 Paris Peace Accords that paved the way for the giant peacekeeping force had been skewed from the beginning. Washington, along with Beijing, had consistently influenced the Accords to marginalize Hun Sen's CPP, which (in various guises) had controlled Phnom Penh since 1979. Both China and the US also insisted on including the Khmer Rouge in any peace plan. Thus, allegations that the UN and US were trying to exclude the Khmer Rouge neither follows precedent, nor explains the covert political machinations that characterized aspects of the peacekeeping operation.

US intervention in the electoral process itself was multifaceted, although not necessarily coordinated. It was guided by Washington's desire to extend the Cold War demonization of Vietnam and Cambodia into the post-Cold War order. Since Vietnam-after ousting the genocidal Pol Pot-had helped install the predecessors of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP), Washington extended its animus to Han Sen. While around the world, far worse rulers basked in US warmth, Cambodia became a special target. Again, its involvement was an accident of geography, as it had been in the late 1960s and early 1970s when US bombers illegally flattened its eastern border in pursuit of Vietnamese communists.

The politics of punishment that characterized the 1980s also marked part of the UN peacekeeping operation in Cambodia. Unfortunately, the few official government sources corroborating this agenda do so with tantalizing slips of intention, rather than direct admissions. However, information assembled from a wide variety of non-governmental sources, from researchers and aid workers, and from documents leaked from UNTAC show where, how, and by whom US influence over the Cambodian election process was exerted.

 

*****

 

The War On Vietnam Prolonged

... more than two decades of US foreign policy in the region using both covert operations and overt pressure. In the 1980s when all foreign aid to Cambodia was embargoed, the US tried to isolate Phnom Penh and Hanoi, to eliminate the CPP and its political predecessors, and to continue punishing Hanoi. The goal, noted journalist John Pilger, was to sweep "away the last vestiges of Vietnam's humiliation of the US, with the aim of overseeing a pro-American anti-Vietnamese, IMF-indebted regime in Phnom Penh"

But even more destructive than under mining reconstruction efforts in this war ravaged country were efforts by Washington-with Western complicity and extensive Chinese military and diplomatic aid- to restore the Khmer Rouge to diplomatic credibility and military prowess. US and

Chinese vetoes in the UN Security Council ensured that the Khmer Rouge, and not the de facto regime in Phnom Penh, held Cambodia's UN seat. Washington also established the Kampuchea Emergency Group and its successor the Kampuchea Working Group which established links with the Khmer Rouge and other groups, and helped funnel information, aid, cash, and weapons 67 Facilitated by representatives who would later join the Info-Ed division in the UN peacekeeping operation, this clandestine operation worked to shore up Pol Pot's forces.

By consistently supporting Pol Pot and torpedoing regional deals that might have ended the conflict and condemned the Khmer Rouge to isolation and ineffectiveness, the US guaranteed continuing conflict and instability. Meanwhile ClA-led disinformation campaigns ensured that Phnom Penh would remain in near virtual diplomatic, political, and economic isolation for over a decade. And when the end of the Cold War appeared inevitable and the tepid as Raul support for the US and China's onerous intervention in Cambodia began to wane, Washington, along with its more powerful allies in Beijing, sought to control any peace deal. "The reason for the inventing of the Peace Process " Vickery reminds us, "was not to marginalize the Khmer Rouge, nor to end a war, but to forestall the danger of a [CPP] victory, or its recognition. The peace deal removed the last of Vietnam's troops-which had been defending Cambodians from the marauding Khmer Rouge-and ensured that the CPP lost more weapons than the guerrillas. While a 70 percent cut across all parties seemed fair in principle, in practice, the Khmer Rouge could conceal its weapons in remote mountain and jungle hideaways while the government had to surrender its arms stored in garrisons. Even Sihanouk took umbrage, advising Hun Sen to "surrender your worst weapons and give your ill-trained, poorly motivated troops to UNTAC for demobilization because otherwise there will be no balance between you and the Khmer Rouge ... [and] there has to be balance before there can be peace."

Ultimately the plan to destroy the CPP failed, but not for want of trying. The 1993 Cambodian elections suggested strongly that Washington, in pursuit of its foreign policy goals, sabotaged free and fair elections, even when run by the United Nations. Having weakened Phnom Penhs position, and compromised Vietnams sup port for its former allies with promises of "normalization" in return for cooperation, the final stages of the operation to punish both Vietnam and Cambodia were little more than war by other means.

If the hypocrisy was not so appalling, Cambodians might be cheered to hear the halls of the US Congress ring with condemnation of foreign interference in an electoral process. But while the scandal in the US surrounding campaign contributions is mainly a melodrama of political posturing, in Cambodia the result of interference in the electoral process is a tragedy of horrific proportion. The unstable coalition the US and others forced on Cambodia has promoted infighting and crushed development.

Again, the Cambodian people are the losers, victims of policies created thousands of miles away by comfortable bureaucrats who have turned a blind eye to consequences of three decades of devastating interference. In the 1970s, the US anti war movement helped stop the bombing that was surely not a secret from those on whom destruction rained.

In mid-l990, Americans who penetrated the mist of media propaganda demanded that President Bush stop aid to the monsters of Pol Pot's creation. But while many Americans joined cause with the Cambodian people, Washington embraced the demon of revenge. US cynicism to ward Cambodia and its own people ironically parallels that of the Khmer Rouge during the Pol Pot regime to the Khmer innocents: "Preserve them, no profit. Kill them, no loss.''

---

So you think your underpaid - Cambodian garment works strike January 2014

Nationwide strike of the GMAC (Garment Manufactures of Cambodia) effecting 400 factories and 400,000 workers.They were seeking an increase in the minimum wage of $80.00 a month to $160.00 but the government countered with an increase of only $95.00 a month.

Amplifying  the situation the 10,000 plus striking workers joined forces with the governments political opposition group  CNRP (Cambodian National Rescue Party) protesting in Freedom park calling for a fresh national election and PM Hun Sen to step down.

You can see by my photos this unrest wasn't just contained to Freedom park, many roads where shut down by the glut of protesters.

While from what I saw it was peaceful but as you can see on the right, the police were gearing up in a not very peaceful manner. Ultimately killing 5 protesters last Friday  (3/1/2014) resulting in the CNPR cancelling it's upcoming major rally.

The major assault against  the protesters was by the militarises highly armed elite unit, probably something like the guys in my photo.  Armed and personally protected by bullet proof vests, visored helmets and hand held Lexan shields.

Some of the major brands effected that are manufactured in Cambodia are  Puma, adidas, Nike, Gap - including Old Navy and Banana Republic and that bargain basement super retailer Walmart.

Keeping in mind it's not unusual for a Cambodian garment worker to put in a 72 hour work week, so you can see even at $160.00 a week it's a bad pay situation for the worker. Though the corporations manufacturing product here and stock holders of the companies I listed are big winners.

On the road to Cambodia - part One

I'm always looking for the best travel options at a reasonable price.  So when I came across Giant Ibis Transport I had to give them a shot. Billing themselves as a the only luxury bus service plying the

Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Penh route and other points with in Cambodia. With a fleet of new

buses with unique amenities there competition doesn't offer.

Was thinking of a visit to Phnom Penh and maybe on to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat and this would be a good opportunity to try out the Giant Ibis. Oh, and alone the way I also learned Giant Ibis is not just a bus company but the name of the national bird of Cambodia and an endangered species with less than 250 birds remaining.  I know this number because I believe the bus company drove one of there buses to the Giant Ibis' habitat in the north of Cambodia and in Lao and counted them.  The 250 number was given to me by the bus company but said nothing about there effort to count them but are active in efforts to preserve the bird. 

For a seat from HCM to Phnom Penh the cost is$18.00 which is higher than the other guys like Sapaco, Mai Linh or Mekong Express. Though, Giant Ibis try's to offset this premium  by offering  WI-FI, extended leg room (didn't find that to be the case in my seat), GPS (never lose a bus that way) and other stuff that sounds good like seat belts but unless your a safety freak you'll probably find it too uncomfortable to use.  

Unlike there competition they have no on board rest rooms, though they stop frequently for that purpose.  Anyway, must add, not on their list of amenities but should be is their friendly and courteous staff.  Also, they hand out pastry's and a bottle of water, nice.

A couple days after purchasing my ticket I walked down hem (alley) 120, crossed Le Lai St, walked across park 23-9 to Giant Ibis’s office on Pham Nhu Lao Street for my 8:30 departure.  The bus pulled up on the park side of Pham Nhu Lao Street across from their office at 8:15 and soon we were motoring across Sai Gon. 

Due mostly to traffic in Sai Gon it took us close to 7 hours to make the 6 hour trip, pretty much takes care of a day. If your ultimate destination is Siem Reap they offer a night bus out of Phnom Penh to get you the rest of the way.  In route our bus made restroom stops every hour or so and a 30 minute stop for lunch at the border.  Lunch is in a newly opened spiffy, cheap but good, fast service restaurant.


Done eating and looking for that new Rolex or a case of Chivas you'll find them in the newly created duty free style mall shops by the restaurant.   Then it’s off to Vietnamese and Cambodian customs and emigrations.

Unlike entering Vietnam where you have to acquire a visa in advance, Cambodia's entry visa is on demand. Meaning you can get one at the port of entry.  Cambodian visas through the bus company cost $25.00 and I think buying it on your own cost $20.00, though it’s well worth the $5.00 to have the bus company take care of it for you.  Other carriers I've used in the past fill out the forms for you but with Giant you need to do it you’re self.

In this case as you leave Sai Gon they pass out emigration and custom forms which you complete and place them along with the $25.00 visa fee in your passport, the bus guy picks them up from everyone, once at the boarder he passes them in mass to emigrations. Once your visa and the rest of your group’s visas have the appropriate stamps from emigrations, again in mass they call out your name, individually handing them back. Now all that’s left is the emigration door checker who checks your visa for the stamps and its back to the bus. 

In days of yore the place for buses was by the Central Market, Psar Thmel. Now a days with so many private bus operations, your bus could arrive or leave from just about anywhere around the city.

So it's a good idea to ask exactly where the bus will drop you off and where you pick it up.  Giant Ibis is located by the Night Market so it's easy to find.

 Pulled into Phnom Penh around 4:00 pm so it was still light out, hate having to find my way around at a new destination 

in the dark..

When you hop down from the bus you will be greeted by a bevy of tuk tuk drivers, motor bike pulled passenger trailer that will carry you on. Ask a price to your destination, respond with a lower price and establish what the ride will cost and all the while trying to figure out if the guy really knows where he is taking you.

Climb on and welcome to Phnom Penh.

                            

Typhoon vs hurricane and more hard times in Asia

                                            

How about the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon. 

Both are tropical weather systems with their difference being  in what part of the planet they happen in.

Tropical weather systems that happen in the Atlantic basin with winds in excess of 74 miles an hour are hurricanes while this occurrence in the northwest Pacific / west of the international date line are Typhoons.

Typhoon Haiyan (going on now) due it's intensity is in it's own class and weather services are classifying it as a super typhoon due to it's intensity with sustained wind speeds in excess of 175 miles per hour and gusts of over 200 miles an hour, yikes.  For me it's hard to put this in perspective so I got in my truck and at 50 I stuck my head out the window and in my mind multiplied it by four, yup, yikes again. Compared to a class 5 hurricane  such as Sandy, with winds of 156 miles per hour and over.

With winds of the magnitude of typhoon Haiyan, combined with heavy rain and breaking surf of over 20 foot that just struck in the Philippines I just can't imagine what the survivors in places like Tacloban are feeling like. Families and friends unaccounted for, lack of proper drinking water, food shortages, home and all their possessions gone and surrounded with the mass destruction the typhoon left in its wake.

Haiyan's storm tract had it coming to shore in the northern part of Vietnam and heading for the China border.  It is said that Vietnam evacuated over 500,000 people from the path of the storm and so far only 6 deaths are reported dead and another 8 from a fishing boat along with the boat are missing.  On land fall the typhoons winds had diminished to the 100 miles per hour range, while dropping 4 to 8 inches of rain.  Though thinking back on my car experiment, even at 50 miles my eyes were watering, so 100 is still a very impressive number and 4 to 8 inches of rain in one shot is big.  I'm not that familiar with the north of Vietnam but if Saigon received rain in that volume the only way to get around most of the city would be by boat.                                                                

After injuring my leg 8 months ago in Saigon.

Not fully recovered and walking most of the time unassisted but carry my cane on longer jaunts.  Interesting in that I was very self conscious of using my cane or even carrying it but people don't seem to notice if I have it or not. 

It might be due to the style or lack of style of my cane.  It's an old rugged looking family heirloom I talked my mom into giving me.  Well really didn't have to talk her into it but need to calm her suspicious of why her avid runner son had interest in an old ragged looking cane. Then remembering when it was time to head back to California and asking my son how I should carry it back and his reply - "just carry it". What a joke I thought it was until the TSA man asked if I could make it through the security check without it, little did I know how this was a harbinger of the future of when I would really need it to get around. 

My cane came to the USA from Europe when my great grandfather emigrated to America.  Our roots are in Scotland, so it could be from their.  In my mind it is from Scotland and I can see great grandfather trudging from glen to glen in search of a sturdy and straight tree branch from the crotch of  a hardwood tree. No thought to it's appearance but just something practical to help support him as I'm using it now.  I know very little about my relatives back in the old country, I like the ring of that - "old country" dramatic sounding isn't it, so I might write a book about them and not have to worry about the facts getting in the way of a good story because all my family is gone and so are the facts.

Lets get back to me - in case you weren't aware I injured my leg exercising at 9-23 park in Saigon in February.  Unlike many I thought I could power through the injury but after a week of my exercising regime I had to give up as I was hardly able to use my leg, which as you might know makes walking a real challenge, especially on or along the street of Saigon.

Bound and determined to find some relief without tossing in the proverbial towel and heading back to medicare land and to be Obama Care for you youngsters. I visited expat doctor Padro at Family Medical Care and he was all that a GP should be.  Referred me to some French orthopedic guy in the same group and as Dr. Pedro was all he should be the doctor was all he shouldn't be. While confirming all the stereotypes I knew of French and their behavior.

Though still with a firm grip on that towel, I decided to give acupuncture a try.  Two weeks and about the same amount of dollars spent and very little relief so I tossed that towel as hard as I could and booked a flight back to the US of A on Cathay Pacific.

A new ortho guy and a course of physical therapy but with no results, then an MRI and the diagnoses is AVN (avascular necrosis) lack of blood flow to my hip joint.  So go visit a another orthopedic surgeon for a second opinion, takes an ex-ray and says there really wasn't a need for the MRI it was very clear from the ex-ray it was AVN and my hip joint was a mess.  The only fix option was to operate and replace the damaged hip a new one.

About three months ago I had the surgery, recovery for a couple days in the hospital after, then home with a walker which I used for a month or so, and all the time intensive physical therapy.  I'm still doing the exercises the physical therapists prescribed combined with walking a good part of most days with very little pain.

We will see how good I really am doing as I'm off to Saigon soon and will be flying back from Bangkok in a few months or so.  Much shorter than my annual trek but should amount to a few interesting stories.  

Soon will be writing about Vietnam visa's and my quest for a better lodging option then my rented room in Saigon. If you have any thoughts about lodging options by the month, drop me a note or make comment on the blog, thanks.
    

A look at Saigon with photos

One of the questions I'm most often asked is "when I visit Saigon - what attractions "are must see's"   My reply is that the must see's is the daily life of the city and the daily life of the Vietnamese people. Grab yourself a street corner and watch what goes on around you, get bored take a walk, hire a cyclo or a motorbike to drive you around.   Though, if you go for a cyclo or a motorbike make sure you negotiate a price before mounting up.  My self I like walking but carry a business card from the place I'm staying and when I tire or get hopelessly lost I grab a taxi or a motorbike and hire them to take me to the address on the card.

Whatever, take your time and do a lot of gawking, Saigon is like unfolding an onion, it's multi-layers of things that some times are not what they seem or there's more to it than you thought.  I still walk down street I thought I knew and make new discoveries.

The following photos and some examples.  

Note:  click on an image to expand it and at the bottom you will thumbnails of the photos - 

streetside mechanics

Banana motorbiking

What a smile

Drive- in fruit market

Fresh fruit snacks on a roll

hem - Pham Nhu Lao backpackers area

Vietnamese girls bedecked in traditional ao dai's

quickly disappearing French colonial architecture  

cyclo mounted tourist

hem

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 vendor, peddling her wares 

               

coconuts 

low tech alley eatery - specializing in - you may have guessed it eggs