A Day in Cholon

My friend, Thi Bay, came up from Cantho (Mekong Delta) to spend the weekend in Ho Chi Minh City. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to see of the tourist attractions of HCMC. Thi Bay’s friend, Elizabeth, joined us for the day and the three of us went around exploring the city.

After breakfast, we decided to drive out to Cholon (district 5) and visit the must sees of that area. Cholon is the bustling Chinese part of HCMC, it also happens to be the place where Kevin was born!

We started at the Quan Am Pagoda which features great carvings and statues made even more beautiful by the constant thick cloud of incense. After admiring the magic of the Pagoda, we made our way through crazy traffic to the big Cholon market. The market has everything one could ever want, well, almost everything. It is no problem getting dry fish, medicinal mushrooms or a “North Face” backpack, but when it comes to simple body lotion, that’s a different story. It turns out that in Vietnam, body lotions are mixed with some suspicious sounding skin whitening chemicals.

We gave up on the lotion search and sat down for a yummy Che!

As you’ve probably noticed, there hasn’t been a lot of writing going on here at AsiaSteps over the past several months. That’s not to say that nothing has been going on in our exploration of Asia or Asian culture. On the contrary, Tamar and I have experienced many blog-worthy events, tastings, art and the like but we’ve just been so busy with other things that it’s been hard to jump back into the blogging. It’s tough to find the perfect subject to write about when you’ve been away from the blog for so long.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the perfect subject to blog about will never be found so here is something that at least caught my attention and something that appealed to my love for animals…the hairy-nosed otter! A couple of these folks were just sighted in Vietnam after many years. Here’s a link with another hairy-nosed otter photo from the Phnom Tamau Wildlife Sanctuary where we visited last January

I’ve never written about otters before so it’s not a subject I’m prepared to expand on here. But the fact that these guys have particularly hairy noses definitely makes me question my previous views regarding the amount of hair normal otters have on their noses.

Tamar and I also like hearing about nature sanctuaries like U Minh Ha National Park and we’re curious about these places. Perhaps we’ll swing by on our next trip.

So, when is our next trip and where will we go? We’re working on that right now!

Deer and Monkey Go Head to Head over Bananas

We’ve uploaded some new photos from the Royal Palace of Cambodia, The Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary near Phnom Penh as well as our Boat trip to Chau Doc, Vietnam.

At 8:30am we were picked up by Monin, a tuk-tuk driver who was recommended to us. We drove 2 hours south of Phom Penh to the Phnom Tamao Wildlife Sanctuary where we fed deer and monkeys who roam freely and ate from our hands. These and other animals, many of them wounded, like lions, tigers, bears, elephants and birds were rescued from poachers and are being cared for at the sanctuary.

We then went to the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek where 17,000 detainees of the Khmer Rouge were systematically executed. A glass tower of 8,000 skulls stands before an otherwise peaceful and scenic rural landscape as a reminder of the atrocities committed there.

Back in Phnom Penh we met with Charis and Stuart, both Americans living and working in Cambodia. They took us out to a cool, modern bar/restaurant called Metro where we dined on a variety of Asian tapas. A pleasant walk along the Tonle Sap River led us to a night market where fried spiders, beetles, crickets, larvae, and tiny birds are sold to be eaten. We ended the wonderful evening at a monthly dance party at Elsewhere, a beautiful garden venue with a pool surrounded by lush local vegetation and people sipping cocktails.