Vietnam

Our first stop in a whirlwind tour of southern Vietnam was Hoi An.  It is a quaint, touristy area with seaside restaurants.  There were numerous vintage houses with Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese architecture, but what used to be living space of families descended from merchants was stripped of its intimacy by big tourist groups.

I was bullied into taking this photo (famous covered bridge)

Offerings at a temple

Confucian Temple

Confucian Temple

Eating what felt like the Vietnamese equivalent of Taiwanese 熱炒 rechao

Some gross miscalculations were made regarding our hostel on the island of Phu Quoc--including if anyone spoke English, when the power would be back on, and how we would pay.  We left the non-air-conditioned Sleep Box to hunt down the fish sauce factory, but it was closed to visitors because of COVID.  We still got to experience the fish sauce smells while walking lost through the fish market on the way.

Fish Sauce Factory

Lighthouse temple

Aquatopia, Vietnam

The next day we took the longest over water cable car in the world to what we thought would be a beach.  Instead, it was Asia's highest rated waterpark--lots of development of the area had happened in recent years.  My dad and I went on every single water attraction, even though his inner ear otoliths were fully dislodged by the end.  The scariest ride was a waterslide for which, after climbing up many stairs, we were weighed on a scale and put in a vertical tube with a glass door slid shut around us.  After an electronic voice counted down in Vietnamese, the bottom dropped out of the tube.

Mala Bay, Taiwan

It was a cultural experience going to a waterpark in Vietnam, especially because my first activity upon release from quarantine in Taiwan was a waterpark day in Taichung.  The Vietnamese choice of attire when attending a waterpark is very different than in the US.  Most people were wearing street clothes in the pools rather than bathing suits.  Not a single bikini, but we did see some sweatshirts and jeans, despite the 90 degree weather.  We even saw someone go down a waterslide in a mask.  The attractions were familiar, but there were no lounge chairs.  I got the sense that most of the people there did not know how to swim.  Compared to Vietnam, the Taiwanese waterpark was much more similar to an American waterpark.  Everyone was wearing bathing suits, although long-sleeve was the most common (for sun protection).  As well, the Taiwanese waterpark required swim caps for all rides, and life jackets for most.  At both Asian waterparks, there were extremely few apparent foreigners, maybe only a couple of foreign spouses at each.  I have an untethered, yet strong memory of standing at the entrance to a wave pool in China about ten years ago.  I was a skinny young teenager with extremely white skin wearing a bikini, and I remember feeling like that Chinese waterpark, while a mundane place for locals, was a deep cranny of China that saw very, very few foreigners.

馬拉灣, Taiwan

The entrance to the cable car was in an area called Sun Premier Villa Primavera.  It is an entire resort town built over the past couple years to resemble old Europe, complete with the prefab ruins of a colosseum.  The visitors' center reminded me of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, with faux columns and a painted on sky.  Driving down the cobblestone streets was rather eerie, however.  Every single brightly colored stucco building was still empty, with nothing but the remnants of construction materials to be seen behind the glass storefronts.

This dislodged a memory I had of a very similar resort that some friends took me to in China.  It was the exact same style of modern architecture modeled on ancient Rome, and it had the exact same feel of Chinese investment spent constructing a place that now seemed abandoned by all but a few tour buses.  Modern Asian luxury development will often use Western classical charm as their inspiration.  I've been to many a private residential community in China with a vaguely Italian-sounding name, gilded gates, and marble sculptures.  East Asian Studies scholars have written better pieces on how the values of creativity and imitation fit together in Chinese culture, but here's another extreme example of this concept:  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/tianducheng-paris-of-the-east-replica.

Phu Quoc Night Market

Our final South East Asia destination was Ho Chi Minh City.  This was a tactile history lesson on the Vietnam War, and how history is written by the victors.  There, the war is called the American War, or the Resistance War against the United States.  At the Presidential Palace/Independence Palace, we saw the gates through which a North Vietnamese tank crashed, symbolizing the Fall of Saigon/Liberation of Saigon in 1975.  We visited the War Remnants Museum, which powerfully documented war crimes during the Vietnam War/American War.  We also visited the Cu Chi village tunnels, which was a less academic but very hands-on tour of guerrilla warfare.  My mom managed to go twenty meters before her claustrophobia kicked in, all the while urging the Europeans in front of us to move faster.

Saigon Central Post Office

Hum Vegetarian Restaurant

Cambodia

My flight arrived earlier than my parents', so I got to experience taking the Phnom Penh city bus by myself to our picturesque hotel with multiple courtyards, cabanas, and pools.  The first day, we realized early on how itineraries could be disrupted by COVID changes when we arrived at the closed Royal Palace.

We then went to the National Museum, a gallery of ancient artifacts and sculptures wrapping around a tranquil courtyard, and the first of many non-air conditioned museums that would test my dad's constitution.

The art deco Central Market

 

After foot massages that evening, a local guide picked us up in a tuk-tuk to explore the city's food.  I loved Cambodian food--lots of curries served with limes and plates full of foraged leaves, as well as desserts made of glutinous rice, black sesame, coconut milk, and fruits.

Banana flower wrapped in sticky rice steamed in banana leaves

Lentil and fish paste curry on rice noodles, with raw greens

Thick coconut-based seafood curry

Curry; seafood salad on glass noodles

We ended the night at a rooftop bar.  I love rooftop and alfresco dining, but it feels rather rare in Taipei.  People always prefer to be inside in the air conditioning.  My foreign friends and I get strange looks when we ask to sit at a restaurant's one outdoor table.  I thought it was because of the humidity, but Phnom Penh was nearly as hot and even more humid than Taipei.  As our guide said, Cambodians love being outside.  I think maybe it has more to do with how Taipei residents show that they are "modern" or cosmopolitan, much along the lines of the argument that Lizzy van Leeuwen makes about the nouveau riche of Jakarta in her ethnography Lost in Mall.

The next day, we visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, which memorializes the human rights abuses and mass murder under the Khmer Rouge regime between 1975 and 1979.  The Khmer Rouge was a radical communist movement led by Pol Pot that briefly took over the government and has been blamed for around 2 million excess deaths, around one fourth of Cambodia's population during that time.  Their brutal policies involved forced relocation of Phnom Penh residents to the countryside as part of an extremist agrarian ideology.  The Tuol Sleng Museum joined the ranks of the most sobering exhibits I've ever visited, including the 9/11 Memorial in NYC, the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., and the National Civil Rights Museum where MLK was assassinated in Memphis.

On an architecture tour that same day, we saw the impact that forced urban relocation under the Khmer Rouge had on the modern culture of squatting in Phnom Penh.

Makeshift homes built in an old cathedral

Housing in/under a Buddhist temple

An old French colonial style hotel divided among families of squatters--and a cat

Cambodians put out little houses so the spirits will play on them instead of on their own houses' roofs

The two main branches of Buddhism are Theravada Buddhism (more common in Cambodia) and Mahayana Buddhism (more common in Taiwan).  Theravada Buddhist shrines will sometimes portray the Buddha as emaciated, whereas Mahayana Buddhism more commonly shows a fat, happy Buddha.  It is very common for a Cambodian man to spend time as a Buddhist monk, often when mourning his parents' death.  We saw many monks walking on the street (or riding on the back of a scooter) in their orange robes collecting alms.  They are highly respected in society and can even receive free higher education.  

Stupas holding the remains of the deceased

This rat saves lives by sniffing out abandoned land mines

Next, we went to the highly touristed, foodie town of Siam Reap.  It was highly walkable with a nightlife street; it almost felt like Florida.

From there, most travelers take a bus or tuk-tuk to Angkor Wat, but my family decided to bike.  The temples were astounding, formidable ruins surviving for the past thousand years while the jungle reclaimed the surrounding ancient city.  On our bike ride home, it started raining heavier than I've ever experienced in my life.  I could barely keep my eyes open to see the road in front of me.  It was almost hard to breathe through the pouring rain.  By the time we got back to our hotel's street, we were all happily biking through foot-deep puddles of warm water with the rest of traffic.  It was a highlight of the trip.

Before leaving Cambodia for Vietnam, we did a final food tour where we made fabulously fresh rice noodles from scratch.

A tuk-tuk