Saigon, Vietnam & Otres Beach, Cambodia

After two weeks of chasing kids and two weeks of herding cats, I was le tired.

Thankfully, next up on the docket was a three-day sightseeing adventure, followed immediately by a to-be-determined, nothing-yet-planned, whatever-I-felt-in-the-moment ladies choice.

Let’s start with the sightseeing cuz you know I like to keep things chronological.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.  Tall buildings.  Chain restaurants.  Westernized.  From my airport Uber ride, I knew I was in for something different.  Sure, you can still find noodles and soups and oodles of noodle soups, but it felt more like an American city……… just with less Starbucks, and more Trung Nguyen Legends: ‘the Energy Coffee that Changes Life’.

I checked into the Vitamin Smiles Hostel (known for the ‘best local breakfast on a 5^th floor rooftop’) and got my room key while fumbling through yet another conversation about Taylor Swift.  (To be honest, I thought I’d be spending MUCH more time talking about Donald Trump……… but when foreigners learn my name is Taylor, the only thing we seem to talk about is Tayla Sweet.  I really should study up on her early career, or learn some song titles or something, so I can add value.)

or at least figure out what’s happening here…

First up, city walking tour: party of one.  Gosh, I love when all the must-see attractions are clustered together in a nice, walkable loop!  Don’t you!?  The Central Post Office, Opera House and Notre Dame Cathedral (all with French colonial architecture) ……… Ho Chi Minh City Hall, Turtle Lake, and Independence Palace (South Vietnam’s wartime command center)……… Ben Thanh Market (where you should DEFinitely order a glass of mixed bean sweet soup for dessert) before conducting your own Saigon saison taste test at East West & Pasteur Street Brewing Companies.  (Pasteur Street mixes American craft brewing techniques with Vietnamese ingredients = GAME CHANGER.)

Besides strolling through Bui Vien Backpacker Street (home to SO MANY BARS WITH BLAST-A-HOLE-IN-YOUR-EARDRUM MUSIC……… and cockroaches), make sure to hit the War Remnants Museum as it’s my favorite museum in all of Vietnam.  Once known as the ‘Museum of Chinese & American War Crimes’, it narrates the Vietnam War through the eyes of the Vietnamese and it’s powerfully disturbing.

Once you move through the seized weapons of war (tanks and flame throwers and howitzers with exploding bullets), the first floor is dedicated to Vietnam’s allies around the world.  Campaign posters.  Peace demonstrations.  Pictures of US Air Force pilots who refused to fly, protestors who lit themselves on fire, and draft cards burned in bulk.  Then, it’s upstairs to take a closer look at the devastation and PANIC caused by the US military.

To say that the War Crimes and Agent Orange Aftermath Rooms are emotionally-stirring is not graphic enough.  The first-hand accounts are bone chillingly penetrating.  Pictures of mass graves, ashes in the shape of people, little kids being disemboweled and GIs’ pushing prisoners out of planes.  Mangrove forests decimated, farmlands poisoned by toxic chemicals, and physical deformities & genetic mutations spanning four generations and counting.

All that death & destruction some 40 odd years ago, and now (most) Vietnamese welcome Americans with open arms.  It’s baffling.  And inspiring.  Their focus on rebuilding instead of retaliating is quite beautiful.  As a country that’s been at war for 3300 out of its 4000-year history, the spirit and resilience of the Vietnamese people can be found in their focus on the future.  As one local put it, ‘the sad story belongs to the past’.

Continuing my Vietnamese education, I booked a half-day tour to the Cu Chi District to marvel at the 250-kilometer, multi-level, underground tunnel system used by the Viet Cong during the war.  Our guide showed us the different types of entryways, the ventilation system disguised as rodent holes, and the intricate booby traps made from spinning spikes & fishing hooks.

At the end of the tour, you could pay extra to shoot an AK-47 or an M-16………but it didn’t feel quite right (as the only American in my tour group) to fire an assault weapon on this hallowed ground.  Pro tip: if you’re American, make sure you’re not the ONLY American on a Cu Chi Tunnels tour.  The tour guide will speak directly TO you a disproportionate amount of the time, and you’ll feel the need to apologize to anyone who looks at you.  Soooooo, everyone.  All day.

those tunnels are T-I-G-H-T

but managable

getting in & out was a process

Crawling 100 METERS TOTAL, in that tunnel, felt like fifteen football fields to my knees and back.  The first 40m were altered for tourists (more lights, more room) but the last 60m were JUST as hot, dark and narrow as originally intended.  (Climbing up three-foot boulders…… just to slide down steep declines on your forearms.  IN the dark.  While sweating your nuts off.)

‘get me outta here’

fun fact: the Viet Cong used fireflies and rock wall odor to navigate in the dark

Sad to leave 50-cent motorbike Ubers and the best local breakfast in town (it really was amazing), I had to conclude my history lesson and figure out where the heck I was going next.  Intentionally left open as a ‘let’s try traditional backpacking for once!’, I didn’t love the idea of not having a plan got scared and applied to a bunch of jobs in southern Cambodia.  Everything from bartending on the beach, cleaning eco resorts, and brewing beer at Kampot’s largest nanobrewery……… to strapping elbow pads on little kids for a local skateboarding charity.

The only organization to give me a last-minute thumbs up was a marine conservation NGO (yay!) but they needed me to pay a volunteer fee AND get my scuba diving certification before I helped protect and preserve the ocean floor (oh).  Not able to justify a $650 price tag, I went back to Plan A and listened to what Kit Kat’s been telling me all along: I needed a break.

yes, please

I needed a minute to collect myself.  To recharge.  To take off my watch, take a deep breath, and reconnect with myself & my surroundings.  A mandatory timeout to tap back into the beauty all around me.

Sleeping in a tent or a 12-person mixed dormitory wouldn’t do.  Neither would taking the advice of a fellow backpacker and staying in this ‘cool pipe overlooking the beach’.  In the end, I wanted something clean, comfortable and private.  Nothing extravagant……… just somewhere I could sleep in, veg out, and watch two seasons of The Crown while eating oreos.  #priorities

Fourteen hours, 2 buses, and 4 tuk tuks later, I arrived at my beach bungalow in Otres Beach, Cambodia.  Since I touched down at 4:30 in the morning, the night shift kindly offered me a towel & let me camp out on the nice, cushioned beach chairs until check in.

Queen Elizabeth II was coronated at sunrise.  It was poetic.  God Save the Queen.

The 11 days that followed were indulgently long and full of absolutely nothing but my bed, the beach, and oreos.  With nothing to do and nowhere to be, my first-ever solo vacay was a triumph of laziness.  By day 6, I felt 100% rejuvenated and then had five more days to suntan, eat mangoes, and ask the hotel staff if I could help them rake the beach because they had these BIG ‘OLE RAKES that were DOUBLE THE SIZE of normal rakes.  Ugh, smooth like butta.

Day 9, I emerged from my self-reflection cocoon and booked a three-island boat tour to snorkel, cliff jump, and meet the adorable British Columbian retirees, Carolyn & Ray.  Koh Ta Kiev (the second stop) was a bonified shit show.  The tour guide popped a blood vessel in her eyeball after jumping off Elephant Rock (the 26-foot-high rock that looks EXACTLY like an elephant)……… and the captain fashioned her an unironic eye patch out of gauze and a beer can.

Arrrrrrrrrr you gonna finish the rest of the tour or do you need the hospital?

Other than that ONE excursion (and meeting Carolyn & Ray for dinner, live music, and a night market heyyyyyyy), I rented my third motorbike in three months, bribed two police officers to let me drive it without a Cambodian drivers’ license, and worked out two separate times at the Wonder Sport Ping Pong Club in downtown Sihanoukville.

With more floor space dedicated to ping pong tables than workout equipment, the gym left much to be desired…… but beggars can’t be choosers and I’m HIKING TO EVEREST BASE CAMP IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS.  I don’t CARE that all three stationary bikes and three out of four ellipticals are stuck on the highest (immovable) strength setting.  As long as there’s ONE, CREAKY CARDIO MACHINE that can support my body weight through two, thirty-minute sessions, I’ll be fine.

Is every man in Cambodia a ping pong champion?  Or was this a disproportionate sample size?  Unless……NO!  Was that the Olympic team!?  I mean, the writing was on the wall the whole time……

Wrapping up this beach bum getaway, there are only two other highlights worth mentioning.  ONE: I had a dream that I was shucking corn with Kelly Kapowski, and TWO: I got threaded by Beyoncé.

is there nothing you can’t do?

Now, you all know how bad I am at negotiating……… take that and multiply it by infinity and that’s how bad I am at saying ‘no’.  Think: female equivalent to Jim Carrey in Yes, Man.

WELL.  Flash forward to Otres Beach where ladies peddle handicrafts and massage services all day long.  Homemade bracelets, keychains, fruit, shrimp = ANYTHING YOU NEED and a LOT OF IT.

What’s the one thing every single lady offered me upon initial approach?  Leg hair threading.  One look at my legs and they’d plop their little stool down, hit me with some baby powder and start THREADING MY LEG HAIR.

‘Thanks for the demo but no thank you!  No thanks!  Ohhh, no thanks!  I know it’s hairy, but I’m good!’  To which, they’d reply, ‘no, you are NOT good!’  Haha……. well played, ladies.  But I still don’t need you to pluck my leg hairs one by one.

It was the same thing every day, all day.  Look at my legs –> sad face –> demo –> look at my pits –> sad face –> demo –> point to my bikini line –> sad face –> no demo but I always got an ‘ohhhhh, honeyyyyy, noooooo’.  After the 5-10-minute charade, I’d end up buying friendship bracelets for my non-existent friends just to create a diversion & get them up off my beach chair.

oh honey no

how do you live with yourself?

Was I developing a complex?  YES.  Were my legs THAT hairy?  No!  Just normal 3-to-4-day, afternoon shadow, winter hairy.  (Which doesn’t make sense in a tropical heatwave, but it’s MARCH and it’s supposed to be WINTER and I’m ALONE and GET OFF MY BACK, JEEZ.)

I’m proud of myself for lasting eight whole days before a VERY flamboyant young man named Beyoncé finally wore me down.  (And pointed out that after eight days of free demos…. my legs looked like Mark Wahlberg’s beard.  Patchy and unkempt, but still very very sexy.)

As soon as Beyoncé got the green light……… it was a FEEDING FRENZY.  Ladies appeared out of NOWHERE, descended like raptors, grabbed body parts and GOT BUSY.  Beyoncé and Mary each took a leg, two ladies on my right pit, one on my left, and Yie-Ya standing over me pointing to my bikini line.

pinkies up!

Never have I ever had an army of ladies (including Beyoncé) fight over who would get to thread my leg hair.  And my armpit hair.  And my bikini line.

One can only say ‘no’ so many times.  I mean, one of the ladies was already 80% done with my left armpit…… ugh, f*ck it.  LADIES!  (And Beyoncé…..)  MAKE ME LOOK PRETTY.

By the end of that eighth day, I got the following areas threaded: both legs, armpits, chin, stash, beard, and bikini line.  I looked like Mr. Bigglesworth.  AKA gorgeous.  Some would say too sexy.

I know, michelle.  I know.

PICTURE SLIDESHOW:

my new, sweet motorbike helmet

elephant rock

carolyn & ray from victoria, british columbia – love them

carolyn did an excellent job with the action shots

EXcellent job

i counted to 3 nine times.  i was petrified.

mixed bean sweet soup at the ben thanh market in saigon.  YUM.

maybe she’s born with it…..

maybe it’s armpit threading

see you next week

12 days in Siem Reap, Cambodia………. then it’s on to EVEREST.

xoxo,

She Gone Girl