Goooooood Morning, Vietnam!!

Xin Chào Ban Cua,

Speaking to you, live from 'the Land of Dragons': the land that fills up all your senses with the rumble of a million motorbikes in Hanoi, with the endless green rice fields in the countryside, with its noodle cart vendors on every street corner and the majestic natural beauty of Halong Bay.

A month has passed since I last sent you an update on my travels from the North of Thailand, when I was just about to cross the border into Myanmar for a short visit. At that time, I realised that I had absolutely no idea what the next month would bring for me and perhaps that's exactly what I like most about backpacking: you don't even know where you will be at the end of the day, who you'll meet or what you will do... and indeed, it will never turn out as you imagined it, but in the back of your head you just know it will probably turn out to be great :-)

The adventure continues and at about 09:00AM, the day after I posted my last message on this site, I found myself sitting at a small food stall just next to the bus station of Chiang Rai. The owner served me a plate of fried rice with chicken, put a set of fish sauce, chilly, and fresh herbs on the table and gave me a bowl of soup and a big pot of tea. After having paid her about 0,50 euro and a short and smooth bus-ride, I was ready to cross the border into Myanmar. Birma, as it was known during the British reign, had kept my imagination for a while: although I knew that the country has a very rich history and that it contains one of the most beautiful natural and cultural sites in the region, it seems that only a few people pay the country a visit. As I was preparing my trip, I soon found out why: the government, consisting of a so-called 'military junta', isn't exactly best friends with the West (inter alia because of gross human rights violations) and possibilities to visit the country are therefore limited. Your only option to visit some of the major attractions of the country is by flying into the capital (Rangoon) from Bangkok. Entering over-land is possible, but thanks to an efficient system of road-blocks, tourists are only allowed to visit one or two villages right across the border. In my case, I should consider myself 'lucky enough' to visit the border-town of Tachileik and after leaving my passport (another rather effective security-measure, I would say) at the border, I was allowed to spend 14 days in-and-around this very ordinary village of a few thousand inhabitants. Wanting to make the best of it, I checked in at the only guesthouse with an English-speaking manager, sorted out a bicycle and spent about three days riding around, speaking with as many locals as possible (about everything, excépt for politics of course!), visiting a few religious sites and tasting some 'Bama' dishes. Now that I'm writing this, I realise that it doesn't sound that special, but somehow, probably due to the intensity of the short visit and the feeling of being 'off-the-beaten-track' it has definitely made an impact and I truly enjoyed it!

I left Myanmar the way I entered it, took a picture at the 'Golden Triangle', where three countries come together (Thailand, Myanmar and Laos), visited the Opium Museum - that's what the Golden Triangle is really famous for and what's probably another reason that Myanmar is keeping its borders firmly shut - and at the end of the day, I entered Laos by crossing the Mekong river. 'Laidback Laos'..., yeah: I can confirm that the Laotians and their pace of living do meet the expectations. In short: the first bus I took in Laos came to a stop and when the inexperienced driver had tried to open the oil-reservoir in front of it, everything, yes: e-ve-ry-thing was covered in black, including my brand-new shirt... In the North of the country, I felt the time was right to finally learn how to drive a motor-bike (indeed: like father, like son...) and after a first session on a light bike with an American teaching me how to handle it, the second day I drove up to the Chinese border on a real off-road bike: whoo-hooooo!!! (have you seen 'the Motorcyle Diaries'....?? One day... :-D)

After spending a few days in an over-touristy Luang Prabang: getting my Vietnamese Visa done, wandering around, visiting one of its many traditional saunas, meeting up with fellow-travellers and getting inspired for new trips, I opened my mail-box to be surprised once more: "The Legal Aid of Cambodia - Dear Mr. Sprokkereef, I'm sorry for replying so late to your email, but we would be happy to have you as a legal intern for the period of May until July, could you please confirm?" ... Who'd expected that? At least not me! As I told you last time, I considered finding a suitable internship in Phnom Penh as a failed mission and I must admit that it took me a while to become as excited about it as I had been a few weeks before. But what a good news! On my previous visit to Phnom Penh. I was introduced to this NGO by Jessie, a Dutch law student and friend of mine who is working there as an intern at the moment. The Legal Aid of Cambodia provides free legal services to those who could otherwise not afford it and the section I'll be working for defends victims of the Khmer Rouge-regime at the Cambodia Tribunal (ECCC). Although I don't know the exact details of what I'll be doing, I will start on the 17th of May and I'm getting more and more excited about it since getting some working experience in this field of so-called 'Transitional Justice' was one of my personal goals for this year!!!

A change of plans, surely, but without a doubt I'll try to make the best out of the time before mid-May. With a Visa for Vietnam freshly stamped into my passport, I left Luang Prabang and went on a long bus-ride (as usual with more than one of my neighbours throwing up constantly... aren't they be used to it? :-S) through some beautiful forests towards Phonsavan, in the East of the country. First of all, the city is (at least regionally) well-known for its mysterious 'Plain of Jars'. Now, let's not get too excited about it: this UNESCO World Heritage Site is in fact not much more than a big field with loads of... well, stone 'jars', which were probably used as urns. Let's turn to something that is really worth mentioning now: did any of you hear about 'the Secret War'? Well, neither did I before visiting this part of Laos. The country got involved in the Vietnam War (1959-1975), so I learned, by choosing the side of North-Vietnam and allowing them to use its land as supplying route for the war against South-Vietnam. As a consequence, the United States bombed the East of Laos so heavily that it was hit by an average of one B-52 bombload every eigh minutes, 24 hours a day, every day between 1964 and 1973 and US bombers dropped more ordnance on Laos in this period than was dropped during the whole of the Second World War (!!!). These bombings were simply denied by the United States for a long time and it is hard to realise that a major part of the bombs (mostly cluster-bombs) were only dropped by pilots returning from Vietnam because they prefered to drop it randomly over Laos than to stand the risk of landing at their Army bases in Thailand... Even today, 35 years after the war, big parts of Laos are still covered with so-called Unexploded Ordnance (UXO), mostly unexploded cluster bombs ('bombies') and thousands of people have died or got seriously injured ever since: farmers stepping on them, children playing with them or others trying to dissolve the bombies to sell them as scrap in order to make a living... Sometimes, learning about sufferings like these puts everything all of a sudden in perspective.

Traveling overland to Vietnam turned about to be more easy than I had expected (several people had warned me about missing transport-connections and both drivers and government officials trying to rip you off - big time) and after a small detour to the city of Vinh, I arrived in the middle of the night with an Italian friend of mine at a guesthouse in the capital: Hanoi. One of the pleasures of arriving somewhere at that time of the day, actually comes the next morning when stepping out of your room and to see in what kind of place you've arrived :-) And for Hanoi it was a particularly sweet surprise: the city exactly lives up to your (romantic) expectations of an Asian capital: the sounds of commerce, the fresh food everywhere, the locals wearing their typical hats carrying their goods around, the streets filled with too many scooters, the undefined smells and all of this amidst an amazing setting of French architecture: I enjoyed every moment of my last week in Hanoi! During this week, I made a short and rainy trip (would you believe it, it actually gets cold in the North of Vietnam: why did I send home my jeans and sweater again?!) to the majestic and therefore famous Halong Bay with its thousands of karst islands and rock formations and I also met up with Michelle, a friend of mine from my exchange semester in Montréal, which came as a very pleasant surprise.

So here I am in Hue, the old capital of Vietnam just a few hours south of Hanoi, staying in what is without a doubt the best-value-for-money room I have stayed in so far: for 7USD/night I have a large and comfortable room, with a hot shower, cable tv and... even a computer with free internet: what else does a modern traveler need? ;-) Tomorrow, I will probably rent a 'moto' and explore the so-called 'Ho Chi Minh-Trail', which was used during the Vietnam war to smuggle arms from the north of the country to the south. My further plan is to continue traveling south, towards Saigon and to finish my Vietnam-trip by exploring the wonderful Mekong Delta. After that, I will travel to Phnom Penh in order to prepare for my internship: meeting up with my future coordinator, searching for a room, etcetera... But before I'll start to work, I will first meet my parents on the 1st of May in Kuala Lumpur and together we'll make a great trip of about two weeks throughout Malaysia and Indonesia, you can imagine that I'm really-really looking forward to seeing them again!!

Alright my friends, it's already well past 01:00AM, so let me speak with Robin Williams once more:

"Goooooooood morning Vietnam! It's 0100 hours. What does the "O" stand for?? O my God, it's early!"

Marijn