Well I’ve been home for about 10 days.  It is very weird to be home.  It sort of feels like everything stayed the same, but I’ve changed so I don’t really fit in anymore.  It’s very bizarre!

I got really sick when I first got home.  (I think it might have been a virus or something I picked up on my travels.  Swimming in the Mekong was probably not the best idea, but who knows where I picked up the bug.)  Anyways, I spent the first 4 days at home with a high temperature and some stomache problems.  But I’m all better now.

My friend, Amanda, got married a few days after I got home.  I was a bridesmaid, so it was great spending some time with her and her family.  I’m really glad I got to be a part of her special day.  I also got to see her son, Logan, for the first time.  I still can’t believe Amanda has a baby, and he’s almost a year old already!  (It feels like everyone is married and has kids at home.)

I’ve basically been bumming around my parent’s house.  (It’s a bit hard getting around without a car.)  So it is a big change from my normal fast pace life.  But I have been able to spend a little bit of time with my friends too.  I’ve been able to hang out with Joe, Katie, and Amanda.  Plus we had a nice family bbq/swim for Father’s Day.  It was really nice being able to spend time with my parents, sisters, cousins, aunts, and uncles.

Anyways, not much has been happening, but I have been stocking up on all the fun camping stuff that I’ll need on my Africa trip.  I’m so excited! July 26th (the day I leave for Kenya) seems like a long way off, but I’m sure it will sneak up on me fast.

This was my last day of traveling, so I decided to make the most of it.  After breakfast at the hotel, I walked to the Reunification Palace.  (It was about a mile away, but the hotel workers were certain I wouldn’t be able to walk that far.  They tried to convince me to take a taxi.  Well, I proved them wrong!) 

The palace looked very boring.  It is basically just a concert block, and it looks like any government building in the US.  So, I didn’t bother with the tour.  I walked on to the War Remnants Museum.  The museum is mainly just very graphic pictures from the war.  It was really sad and depressing.  (At one point they had babies bodie, that were killed by Agent Orange foating in jars.  That was way too morbid for me!)  A few of the captions really made me mad though.  In one picture there were 2 white men holding heads from decapitated bodies.  The caption said something like, “This picture was taken to show US Soliders how to behave.  These are model soliders to the US.  They believe in defacing and brutalizing their victims.”  Obivously, many horrible and tragic things happened there, but I didn’t think all the propaganda was necessary.

After the museum, I walked to a market.  In the LP it sounded like it would be a good place to go shopping, but it was really just food.  Since it was about 100 degrees and there was a lot of raw-unrefrigerated meat there, I did a really quick walk through of the market.

Then I got my final massage of this trip.  (How sad!)  I went to a place called Chinese Traditional Medical Institute.  They have blind massuses doing Chinese massage.  It was a really nice massage, but she used a Chinese oil of my back that really burned.  (It honestly felt like I was on fire.)  But after a few minutes the burning feeling went away and I was totally relaxed.

After the massage, I went to another market.  This one was awesome!  It was full of silk, lacquer stuff, purses, shoes, foods etc.  I bought a few things and had a very fresh lunch (1 lady was butchering the chicken a few aisles away and another lady was making the noodles by hand a few stalls down).  

After that I had to say goodbye to HCM and head to the airport.  My trip was awesome.  I was really sad it was over, but I’m so excited to see my family and friends!   

Because I only have a few days left in Vietnam before I go home, I decided to book some day trips and see as much of Southern Vietnam as I can. (I can’t believe I’ll be home on June 6th. It’s crazy!) Anyways, on Saturday I booked a 1 day trip to the Mekong Delta. The van came to my hotel and picked me up at 8:00am. It was about a 2 hour drive out to the Mekong. (There are about 18 million people living on or near the Mekong. It is really important to Vietnam.)

Our trip started with a nice boat ride around the Mekong and some of the small canals. The canals were so beautiful. It felt like we were on a jungle safari ride at Disney World or something. We stopped at a place where they make coconut candie and honey. The candie was so delicious and it is basically 100% pure coconut made by hand. We also sampled some delicious tea. (It was jasmine tea with honey and fresh kumquat juice squeezed in. Yummy!)

We got back on the boat and drove around some more, and then stopped for lunch at a little restraunt on the river. It was pretty good, but the portions were tiny! (Good thing we had all those coconut candies.) Unfortunately it started raining while we were eating lunch, so we had a wet boat ride afterwards.

The next thing on the agenda was being paddled around in small canoes by some local people. (We even got to wear those pointed straw hats. How funny!) It was really pretty, but I was sure we were going to tip over and have a little swim in the Mekong. We stopped at one more place to sample many different kinds of tropical fruit. We had papaya, dragon fruit, pineapple, banana, a weird grapefruit, and some jack fruit. (I love trying all these different things!) Then it was just the bus ride back to town.

In the evening I did a bit of window shopping and had dinner at the same street restraunt as the night before (it wasn’t as good this time).

On Sunday, I went with the same tour group (Happy Tours) to the Cu Chi Tunnels. These are some of the tunnels that the Viet Cong used during the war. The tunnels go for more than 130 miles, and there are 3 levels in most places. I can’t believe they were able to live in them for 20+ years (from about 1948 to 1975). I don’t think I could have lasted 1 night!

It was very interesting to see how they lived, and all of the weapons they could create out of bamboo and shrapnal. (Our guide had been in the Southern Vietnam army for 6 years and had done some army training in the US, so he was very interesting to listen to!) At the end of the tour we got to go into one of the tunnels. It was so tiny, that I only made it about 3 feet in before clasturphobia kicked in, and then I had to turn around. At the end of one of the tunnels you can see the tiny cave/room that the V.C. general lived in for 26 years. It was insanely small!

After the tour we went back to the Happy Tour office and had lunch. I was exhausted, so I went and got a pedicure (only $1.25) did a bit of window shopping and than relaxed at the hotel for a whille.

For dinner that night I decided to use a recommendation from my Lonely Planet Book. It was a great restraunt supporting an awesome cause.  They take street kids and orphans and train them in cooking and waitressing.  They also make sure that all the kids get an education and they teach them English.  It was an awesome restraunt.  The food was great and it was probably the best service I have ever received.  You could tell that they really take their jobs seriously and take pride in their work!

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone in MN, in 2 days!

Today was another LONG travel day.  We left the hotel at 7:00am and set off for the border crossing.  The bus was 100x nicer than our mini-bus, so we were all happy.  (It even had working a.c.!  Amazing!)

It was about 4 hours to the Cambodia/Vietnam border, where we had lunch.  Then we had to carry our huge packs around for about 45 minutes, while we waited in lines, filled out paperwork etc.  (I think I’m going to need another massage!)  I’m glad we had Nak with us, because there were some con-men inside the Vietnam building.  They were wearing uniforms and asking for people’s passports.  About 10 people (not in our group) gave them their passports.  The men won’t give them back and demanded about $100 from them.  (Luckily Nak had warned us about that.)

We got to Ho Chi Minh in the late afternoon, and I just hung out at the hotel for a while.  (I get my own room for the next 3 days! Yeah!)  Then, I found a travel agent to do a day trip to the Mekong Delta with.  (There are 100’s of travel agents all around the backpacker area.  It’s really hard to choose which one to go through.) 

My group is meeting up for our final dinner tonight, and then I’m on my own for the next 3 days.  (5 members of our group stayed in Cambodia, so we said good bye to them yesterday.)  We ate dinner at a little restraunt on the street.  It was surprisingly good food!  And then we had a drink and said goodbye to each other.

We left the beach pretty early in the morning.  (By now I’m used to early mornings.  It’s a luxury to sleep in until 7:00.)  After breakfast, we had our last ride in the mini-bus. Yeah!! (It was really just a van with 4 bench seats crammed in.  There was no leg room and it had bad suspension, so we were always glad to get out of it.  We had been riding in it almost everyday for the past 10 days.)

Anyways, we got back to Phnom Penh in the early afternoon, so I had a little time to find an Internet cafe, do some shopping at the Central Market, and have lunch.  Then we set off on our half day tour of Phnom Pehn. 

First we went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda (the pagoda is on the palace grounds).  It was pretty cool to look around, but they wouldn’t let us take any pictures so we were all a bit annoyed.  (You couldn’t even take a picture of the gardens or the outside of the buildings.)  The Silver Pagoda was pretty neat.  The entire floor is made out of pure silver tiles and the pagoda houses about 1,000 buddha statues.  Some of the statutes were really crazy.  One was made out of 200 lbs of gold and had huge diamonds all over it.  The biggest diamond was about 40+ carats! 

After the palace, we made a brief stop at the National Museum.  (It closed at 5:00, so we were all sad that we couldn’t spend more time there.)  The museum mainly has Hindu and Buddhist statues inside it.  (Cambodia’s national religion is sort of a mix of the 2.) The statues mainly came from around Angkor Wat, so it was really cool to see!

After taking a sort break at the hotel, we took tuk tuks to the FCC for dinner.  It was in a great location, right on the edge of the river.  They had great food, but it was really expensive.  ($10.00 for dinner and a drink in Cambodia, is crazy!) 

After dinner I had another mini adventure- I was kidnapped by a tuk-tuk driver!  We had hired drivers to take us on the day trip, drive us to dinner, and then drive us back to the hotel.  As we were walking out of the restraunt, I asked Nak (our leader) which tuk-tuk was ours.  He pointed to one, so me and 3 other people climbed in.  After we were sitting there he told us it was the wrong one, so we tried to climb out.  The driver didn’t like that, so he took off.  Carly and Prue jumped out while he was still going slow, but Tom and I were stuck inside.  We kept yelling at him to stop, but he wouldn’t.  Then Tom asked him where he was taking us, since we hadn’t told him which hotel we were at.  It turned out that he knew where we were staying and took us straight back to the hotel.  But we were a bit freaked out at first! 

Traveling is never dull!

Since we were staying on a farm for the night, we all woke up bright and early (the roosters made sure of that).  We had a breakfast of french bread and tea.  (Because France used to have control over Cambodia, they have french bread everywhere.  We have had big loaves of french bread almost every day we’ve been here.)  After breakfast, we gave the host family some gifts that we had bought them (chopsticks, plates, and some toys for the kids).  And then we set off for the beach.

It was sunny and hot all morning long, but as soon as we pulled up to our hotel near the beach it started to rain.  So we hung out and used the Internet.  Then for dinner we went to a place that had Sri Lankian food (sort of bizarre) but it was really yummy. 

The next day we woke up bright and early and set off for our boat tour (that we had booked the night before).  Tom, Prue, Rianna, Kay, Sky, Hannah, Jen, Kim, Carly, and Me went out into the ocean in a tiny little wooden boat that didn’t even have any seats.  It was a pretty calm ride out to our first snorkeling spot.  Unfortunately, it was low tide, so we couldn’t really see anything and the water was really cloudy.

After our breif snorkeling stop, we went to Bamboo Island.  (There are 100’s of islands around Cambodia and Bamboo Island is the only one with any buildings or accomadtions on it.)  We spent a relaxing morning floating around in the ocean, while our crew members were busy cooking lunch for us.  We had grilled baracuda, salad, and of course french bread for lunch.  The fish was so fresh, that even I liked it! (Normally I hate fish, so it was quite a surprise that I liked baracuda.) 

After our little picnic on the beach, we walked to the other side of the island.  There we did some more swimming and had a few beers at the cute little bar.  (The island was almost empty, since it is low-season.  So it felt like we basically had the whole ocean to ourselves.) 

But since it is rainy season, the dark clouds rolled in at around 1:00 and we set off in our boat to get back to shore.  Fortunately, it didn’t rain hard just a little sprinkle. But it was a much rougher ride back to shore.  The waves were crashing on our boat, and it felt like our tiny boat was going to be capsized.  (Actually after we got used to it, it was a fun ride.  Sort of felt like we were on a ride at an amusement park or something.)  Because of the waves and the rain, we had to cancel our second snorkeling stop.  But it was still a really fun day on the ocean.

Later that afternoon, I decided to go back to Seeing Hands Massage (where the blind people give you massages) and have another fabulous shiatsu massage.  (They have 3 locations for Seeing Hands: Seim Reap, Phnom Phen, and Sihanoukville.  I might have to try out all 3!)  It was a terrific massage!  Then I had dinner at Holy Cow restraunt.  It was very delicious. I love how all of the food is so fresh.  It tastes like they just picked all of the vegtables and herbs that day.

Since I was exploring on my own for the evening, I thought it would be fun to see a movie at the open air movie theater.  (It is like a drive-in movie, but without the cars.)  The only way to get around Sihanokville is to flag down a moped taxi.  (Which is basically a guy driving a moped and wearing a baseball cap.  The hat distinguishes him as a taxi, sort of strange!) Anyways, I was on the back of this guys moped, and he started drive down a dark deserted road.  (That’s when I freaked out, and realzied that this probably wasn’t a good idea. But don’t worry nothing happened.)  Anyways, the driver got very lost and I ended up getting a tour all around Sihanoukville.  We finally found the movie theater, but it turned out that it was closed down.  So he had to take me all the way back to my hotel.  It was my mini adventure for the night!