Vietnam to the Cambodian Border

After a bus, boat, van, floating hotel and missing passports, we made it to the Cambodian border. We filled our passports with a visa and a few more stamps and set off on a van to Phnom Penh. We ended up at the same guesthouse as Joyce, and we would stick together for a while after that; always an adventure with her. She also had picked up Niall, a fun Irishman, who we brought along as well. We stopped for some food and immediately saw an elephant strutting down the middle of the street - totally normal. 

It happened to be a week-long holiday in Cambodia, just the week we arrived. Tons of things were closed as it was just our luck. We checked out some temples from the outside, got some massages and walked through the night market. Our last day in Phnom Penh, we went to the killing fields and the S-21 Museum. The S-21 Museum was once a high school that was converted into a horrifying prison during the Khmer Rouge rule. It's wild to think about how recent in history this took place.

Amy in the Killing Fields.

S-21 Museum

This is the best view we could get without entering the temples.

As the town was mostly shutdown and lacking in both locals and tourists, we set off for Siem Reap albeit the warnings of terrible flooding. The adventures continued.

Last stop, Saigon!

Our last open-tour bus ticket was really a large van that left at 7am instead of an overnight. It was a good 7-hour trip, and an overnight would have been much more ideal. Amy and I split from the pack and headed down to Saigon on our own. 


Saigon was hot and humid and that traffic was unbelievable - and I thought LA was bad. It's just that rather than cars, the streets were flooded with motorbikes. 

Bikes come at you from every direction. I exercised extreme caution while crossing, and Amy and I often held hands running across the streets, dodging motorbikes. I felt like I was ten again. Finally, we dropped our bags at a guesthouse and wandered around the city. We checked out the night market and enjoyed some pho. 

The next day, we went to the Cu Chi Tunnels, shot some AK-47s and went to the War Remnants Museum - formerly known as the American War Museum. A lot of war-related sights for one day. in the morning, we checked out of our hotel and headed towards the Cambodian border.

We were a few hours into our first bus ride when we realized that our hotel didn't return our passports in exchange for the room key - 50% our own stupidity and 50% the hotel staff's. We scurried to the front of the bus and got the guide to work on sorting out the situation for us. We went on with our day, saw some floating markets went on a long boat ride up the Mekong, checked out a crocodile farm, a candy factory and spent a night on a floating hotel on the Mekong.

In the morning, we took a boat up to some village along the river - this is where, by some miracle, our passports showed up and we were finally reunited with them. 

We continued on the boat to the Cambodian border where we saw Joyce for the first time since Hoi An. We wouldn't let her go again.

On the Border at the DMZ

The last several weeks have been insanely busy and have flown by. December is already well on its way, not sure how that even happened.

Towards the end of November, I was able to make a trip to the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea. Good thing we went when we did, because a few days later, the tension shot up between NK and SK and things are still not exactly stable.

I probably should have posted about the DMZ closer to when it happened because I can't remember many of the facts anymore. It was a very interesting trip, worth one trek, but not a second. After teaching on Friday night, we took the KTX fast train to Seoul and finally settled into a seedy love motel around 2:30am - wake up call 7:00am. After Dunkin' Donuts coffee and a bagel, we headed for our tour bus with a bunch of other foreigners.

The DMZ goes 2km into North Korea and 2km into South Korea and is supposedly the most heavily militarized border in the world. Our first stop was Imjingak and the Bridge of Freedom at the edge of the DMZ, 2km from the actual North Korean border. Close to 13,000 prisoners crossed the bridge to "freedom" in 1953. They also had part of an old train with more than 1,000 bullets that was derailed in the war. There were some good touristy photo opps there and a small amusement park that I thought was abandoned until I saw the "Super Viking" swinging across the sky.

Next, we went to the Third Tunnel - North Korea had dug many tunnels with the plan of secretly attacking Seoul at some point. We weren't allowed to take photos in the tunnel area, but we did have some great hard-hats that we were required to wear. We looked unfathomably awesome. Some parts of the tunnel got pretty low, and the foreigners tend to be taller than 5 feet tall. I could hardly contain my laughter when every 3 seconds, on beat like a metronome, hard-hats would clink on the tunnel ceiling followed by a slight groan. I enjoyed it.

This full day tour was a long one! Next, we went to an observation point of North Korea that we weren't allowed to take photos at once you stepped foot over this line. It made no sense whatsoever, but I did, however, break the rules.  I accidentally took a picture on the wrong side of the line of someone getting busted for taking a picture on the wrong side of the line. We also stopped at Dorasan station, which is the last train stop in South Korea. They built it hoping that it would open up some railways into North Korea, but that didn't work out.

Finally, we made it to the actual border of North and South Korea - Panmunjom, or sometimes known as JSA (Joint Security Area). At that point, the tour was led by the US Army. We were able to cross the actual border within a building that was being guarded by ROK (Republic of Korea) soldiers. They just stood there with Ray-Ban-like aviator sunglasses on and did not move an inch, much like the guards outside Buckingham Palace.

It was a good trip, a long day and glad I did it once, but wouldn't sign up for it again. To keep things in the theme of "borders," we went to On The Border for dinner in Sincheon, near Hongdae - a good place to go out for a night in Seoul. Some of my other friends from Daegu had been in the area for The Flaming Lips show and we met up later on. The band turned up at the bar we were at, and I had a few words and a hand shake with the lead singer, Wayne Coyne. The rest of the night turned out to be one to remember forever. Thank you, Seoul. See you soon.

And for your ears: Lemon Jelly - "Spacewalk"


LEMON JELLY Spacewalk from Mario Cavalli on Vimeo.