Today's the day!

So, today's the day that I leave London for a while. This is more of a test post for me - there (hopefully) will be far more interesting posts to come!

The adventure starts... First stop: Bali (via Dubai and Singapore).

 See you on the other side....

The Temples of Angkor

I had the most incredible day exploring the Temples of Angkor. I took a photography lesson with a photojournalist who lives in Siem Reap but works in war zones (he had just returned from Syria). It was brilliant to find out how my camera works, but more importantly he took us off the beaten track, visiting some temples where we were the only people there and even in the major temples he knew how to avoid the crowds and find the secret photo opportunities.

He took us to ten different temples through the day, and I apologise as I don't remember all of the names and do not know all of the history, but each was stunning in its own way. The temples were built by the Khmer Kings from ~800AD to ~1400AD, when the Khmer Empire was at its greatest - the equivalent of the Roman Empire, but in South East Asia. The temples were built as Hindu Temples, but converted to the Khmer version of Buddhist temples later. The Thais eventually overturned the city at Angkor in the 1400s and the temples were left to the monks and the elements. The temples weren't "discovered" by Europeans until the French found them in the 1860s, but with the civil wars through Cambodia through the 20th century the real work on the archeology and restoration of the area was stopped and started several times. 

There are hundreds of temples in the Angkor area, as Kings would build  temples as majestic homes and monuments for the royal court of the time, but also built other temples to honour their parents, grandparents and anyone else they felt deserved a temple. There are many temples yet to be explored, although the danger of land mines in the area is still a real threat.

The day started before dawn at Angkor Wat, which is known as the biggest religious building in the world. It was built in the early 1100s and it is known as heaven on earth. I can see why.

The beautiful reliefs run around the inside of the building for over 1km and tell many stories.

Apparently over 300,000 men and 6,000 elephants were used in its construction.

I don't know the names of the next few temples, but here are some of the images I took.

These carvings were chiselled into the curving brickwork, it was stunning.

This temple had not had any restoration work completed yet.

However they are doing a fantastic job of the restoration, painfully sorting and numbering the rubble, before reinstating the blocks of stone using the same methods where possible to keep authenticity (they are allowed to use cranes though instead of elephants).

This is Ta Prohm, made famous in Tomb Raider.

There were lots of other beautiful carvings and examples of the jungle taking over at other temples too:

I got wet feet a lot during the day!

I had to crawl into a tiny (very humid) space to find this lady, but she was worth it. Her red lipstick was applied by the Khmer Rouge during the civil war as a sign of disrespect.

The final temple complex was Angkor Thom, which is the biggest and greatest set of temples in the area. In fact the city measures over 10 square kilometres and had a population of over one million at its  height. The main temple is Bayon, which had 54 towers, each with four giant smiling faces at the top - it was out of this world.

The Temples of Angkor were meant to be the highlight of my trip and they certainly did not disappoint.

Ho Chi Minh City

I spent a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon as it is still widely known. It is a vibrant, noisy, international, big city and I had a great time here. It seems so much bigger than Hanoi, I can only relate this to the number of motorbikes, Hanoi has 2 million, Saigon has 5 million. The city is full of life and interesting places, here is a selection of my favourite photos:

I think my favourite building is the post office (really!). It was designed by Gustave Eiffel (your man who did that tower) and it was beautiful inside and out.

Check out the big portrait of Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho) on the far wall.

There were beautiful maps on the walls

And the old telephone booths had been turned into ATM booths - genius.

Ho Chi Minh appears throughout the city (and indeed Vietnam), here is a huge statue outside the People's Committee Building.

The Reunification Palace is also unsurprisingly patriotic, but I wasn't so keen on the style of the building - it was a weird mix of Soviet and French styles (not to be recommended for interior design), with huge imposing hallways and rooms, ornately decorated but with barely any furniture.

The most interesting parts (for me at least) were the helicopter on the roof and the "war rooms" in the basement (somewhat like the Cabinet War Rooms under Downing Street in London). 

And of course the motorbikes, mopeds and scooters were out in force throughout the city, these are some of my favourite photos:

Every hour is "rush hour" but nobody rushes.

It's incredible what can be transported on 2 wheels, this one isn't even that overloaded. Also, check out the woman feeding her baby on the back of the bike in the background.....

It is perfectly acceptable to drive on the pavement if the road is too busy or you need to go the wrong way down a one way street.

And when it rains in Saigon, it rains......

Vietnamese Temples

The Vietnamese don't appear to be as religious as some cultures, like the Balinese for example, but I have seen some beautiful, fascinating and interesting places of worship during my visit.

I visited the Cao Dai Holy See which is the great temple for the Cao Dai religion.  I think it is the most colourful temple I've ever seen. The Cao Dai religion was founded in 1926 and they draw philosophies and beliefs from almost every major religion in the world, including Buddhism, Spiritualism, Islam, Christianity and Hinduism.

The temple itself has a church-like front, mosque-like middle and pagoda at the end.

The whole building is watched over by the Devine eye (look on the inside of the triangles in the windows).

There are approximately 2 million followers in the world today, the worshippers at this site pray for 90 minutes 4 times a day (midnight, 6am, noon and 6pm).

It was a beautiful building, inside and out.

Next, I encountered this beautiful pagoda on my trip to the Mekong Delta.

It was also colourful, but more impressive were the three massive Buddha:

Standing

Sleeping

Laughing

The monks here also offer homes and education to disabled and needy children.

I also visited one of the larger pagodas in Ho Chi Minh City, the Jade Emperor Pagoda.

There were hundreds of turtles in this turtle soup (hopefully not actually turtle soup, which was on the menu in lots of places).

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Ho Chi Minh is most impressive from the outside, as all of the stone was imported from France when it was built in the 1880's. I also liked the Virgin Mary with her bowling ball and white dove/pigeon sheltering from the rain.

Cu Chi Tunnels and the War Museum

The Cu Chi tunnels were initially constructed in the 1940's but they are most famous for the role they played in the American (Vietnam) war. They were greatly expanded thought the 1960's to link villages and provide protection and communication for the Viet Cong (VC). My trip to the Cu Chi region was led by a tour guide who's family were members of the VC and had lived in the tunnels for years though the war. He spoke very passionately, although he tried to stick to the script he was clearly proud of the role his family had played in "outwitting" the enemy.

The tunnels at one point ran through a huge part of Southern Vietnam, from Saigon all the way to the Cambodian border - there was a 250km network in the Cu Chi region alone. The tunnel networks were sometimes three stories deep and sometimes people lived underground for weeks or months at a time. My guide demonstrated how to get into the hidden system:

Arms up, as you can't fit with arms at your side.

It was actually quite eerie walking through the jungle, as I could hear people firing the AK47s at the range. The VC became industrious as they did not have enough weapons of their own, they would use anything they could find from the enemy to make their own.

I did climb down through the shorter tunnel (20m long) and it was horrendous - hot and very narrow (almost hands and knees) - this one had even been enlarged for tourists:

The VC were difficult to fight in this area, as they could disappear and reappear from many locations whilst targeting enemy soldiers. The US eventually determined this whole area a free-fire zone, meaning no authorisation was required to shoot - anything that moved was assumed to be the VC. This area is widely known as "the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and devastated area in the history of warfare". Even today crop yields are low and continue to be affected by the tonnes of chemicals dumped on this area.

The VC used many techniques to avoid detection - washing in American soap so dogs could not locate them, disguising ventilation shafts (for oxygen and cooking smoke) with termite mounds and wearing shoes that left backwards footprints. They also built the most hideous traps, which had originally been designed to trap animals:

The "souvenir" trap - as once your foot goes in you can't get it out.....

The devastation, both to the people and the environment, in this area is unimaginable. And I didn't truly appreciate it until I visited the War Remnants Museum the next day.  Outside the museum there is a collection of tanks, guns, planes and helicopters (some trainee soldiers were enjoying the trip out too).

But the photographs on display inside were deeply disturbing. They were from international and Vietnamese photographers and they told horrific stories of war, torture and suffering (mostly against the Vietnamese, but some from the other side too). There were also photographs of the effects of the agent orange and other chemicals used - some of which were recent second/third generation sufferers. I don't think I have ever been so affected by a museum, it was very upsetting. Millions of Vietnamese people have been and continue to be killed or maimed by the war. It was in stark contrast to the relatively upbeat visit to Cu Chi, which championed the Vietnamese tenacity and spirit.