I've been thinking about the length of these emails. For those that are new my travelogue emails, they're long, eh? I've scanned through the previous ones, and I've come to lay the blame on their length on our nicknames. Henceforth, Scarfgirl will be referred to as Sg, BFF will continue to be referred to as BFF since its only 3 letters long, and "The Muse formerly known as Momma Hen" will now be referred to simply by "µ", which for the uninformed is the greek letter mu.

The street sale ended up being typical of Southeast Asia; everything was either too ugly or too small. I'm talking about the clothes, not the people. That would just be mean. The only impressive  thing was how quick everything was taken down and covered as the police drove by while we were walking along the street. One quick yell from a clothes seller, probably saying "police" or something in vietnamese (we'll never know since I'll never be able to reproduce those sounds, she might have just been clearing her throat of some phlegm), and within seconds everything was wrapped up in blankets and run into stores and vans. µ got it on video, but I'm not sure if you can tell what's going on.

The next day we went to the Dan Sinh market, where BFF and I were looking to get some sidebags. BFF cuz he's all about the fashion (I know you can't tell, but I'm being sarcastic right now) and myself cuz mine got stolen in Nha Trang. I found a small sidebag for 4 bucks, a replica of one that Americans used to hold their gas masks in. BFF found one he liked, but balked at the asking price of $12.50US, which seems pricey for a bag probably scavenged off the ground sometime after the war. We then walked to the camera place, where I was dismayed to find out that the Lomo camera that I was hoping to be repaired was in pieces; according to the store owners, the earliest they could fix it by was the following day, which wouldn't work since we would be on a bus leaving the city.

I make no pretense at being an actual "photographer." I know a bit about photography (adjust some dials and then press a button, remembering first to remove the lens cap) and I like looking at and taking pictures, so I place my photographic skills somewhere above "chimpanzee holding a rock" and below "people liking my pictures so much they pay me for them". However, in the past 3 years, I've almost always had a camera in my bag with me. A lot of times it was the only thing in my bag. To be a complete sap for a moment, I felt somehow incomplete walking around without a camera to take pictures with. I decided I was on a mission to find the Dorothy Boyd camera to my Jerry Mcguire (Yes, I had to IMDB Jerry McGuire to find the name of Renee Zellwegger's character). Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration. Since I currently have no access to cash outside of the benevolence of µ, I didn't need to find the camera that "completes" me, which would probably be a Hasselblad medium format camera. I would be happy with an old, but working (read:cheap) 35mm or medium format camera that wouldn't extend my tab on µ's account.

I found plenty of old and working cameras in Saigon, but aside from the Lomo, I didn't find anything that came (relatively) cheap. Oh well, maybe in Cambodia. Probably the only time I'll ever say that. After a quick meal of pho and some pastries, we walked to the War Remnants Museum, set up to memorialize and remember the actions of foreign military on the Vietnamese people. Its quite a thing to see a museum from such a different perspective than what I'm used to, which is usually "America, America, we're the greatest". 

If you can allow me a slight side, most of the time there is little reflection involved when it comes to food. Unless it involves Schwartz's smoked meat sandwiches, Tianjin's "The Rib Place", or the previously mentioned Nha Trang street seafood, any reflection regarding food can generally be summed up in the following maxim; Good/Edible food=Happy Steve, as well as the converse Bad/Overly priced food=Unhappy Steve. Seeing as thus far we've been basing our travels around food (no point denying this), there has been little need for any deep reflection. However, when going through the War Remnants museum, one is forced to reflect. I can't believe that one can go through the War Remnants museum without being affected.

And one is constantly reminded that war is an ugly thing. Graphic photographs and descriptions bring you close to what was going on at that time. The devastation wreaked on the country and its civilians were enormous. Its quite incredible to look back at the places and people we visited in the previous days and to see how in one or two generations the change that has taken place. Its another thing to read comments and captions recalling "the victorious effort to liberate south Vietnam from its oppressors" and then look around now to see Vietnam striving to increase foreign tourism, and to see little children who should be playing with their friends but whose time is spent trailing tourists asking for money.

I found it interesting that sandwiched between exhibits on the debilitating effects of Agent Orange, guns used by foreign military, photographs documenting massacres by American troops on villagers and depictions of torture cells and prisons was an exhibit by a Japanese woman named Iwasaki Chihiro (http://www.chihiro.jp/english/chihiro/works.htm), who was an activist for peace and painted beautiful watercolours of children. I found myself walking back and forth, seeing the best and worst of human nature. On one side of the building were pictures of the aftermath of Agent Orange; children of exposed parents, born with such incredible deformities it broke your see proof that people could create such a compound that causes so much pain and hardship. 60 feet away on the opposite side are paintings on walls depicting the hope and beauty in children. I wondered if I was ready for the stories of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.

After another round of cheap fruit shakes and dinner, we relaxed at Sozo Cafe, a business created to help families break the cycle of debt and to teach them usable skills. True to form, we bought all the discounted cookies could afford ("Which cookies should we buy, the white chocolate chunk, the raisin ones... um, lets get the ones that are broken already, I think they're 50% off") and spent the next bit just hanging out and talking.

Our bus left early in the morning to Phnom Penh, and true to form, we stopped every hour or so along the way. We initially planned on getting the Cambodia visa ourselves, to save $5US as opposed to going through the travel agency. We relented at the border after the tour agency guy on the bus told us of all the potential hassle that could happen. Afterwards, we were thankful we didn't try to do it on our own. From the border it was about 2 hours to Phnom Penh, and what a 2 hours it was. I've never been to India, but we all agree what we saw outside the bus windows was what we picture India to be like, minus the uh, billion or so people. Dusty roads, motorcycles, vans with 20-30 people packed in/on them, utter chaos in other words. The countryside was mostly unused, but the biggest shock was pulling into Phnom Penh. Picture an utter mass of people, food/market stalls, loud noises, and then 5 minutes later it looked like we hit the suburbs. Gas stations nicer than ones in the US, mobile phone stores, toyotas and Lexuses all around. It was odd.

For dinner, we sampled some sub-par cambodian food (Üh, if I wanted meat in teriyaki sauce, I would have gone to Japan"), and befriended the beautiful Swedish twins sitting beside us and then one of kids selling copied books on the street. Regrettably, I denied the twins' invitation to try some of their food (it looked a better than what we had), so we were left reminiscing about how great Vietnamese food is. We then treated Vhana, the bookseller, to a chicken dinner and sat and chatted with him. And when I say "we", I mean µ and BFF, since I was tired and close to falling asleep at the Happy Herb Pizza place (be careful of what you order). Vhana just about stole µ's heart with his smile and his story, adding to the total number of children we've met that we want to take back with us. I'm not sure of the total now, but its above one and somewhere less than ten.

Yesterday we took in Tuol Sleng museum, also known as the S-21 prison, one of the secret ones that the Khmer Rouge set up in a former high school. This along with the War Remnants museum ranks as the top worst things I've ever seen. Over the course of its use, S-21 prison had 20,000 inmates, and all but 7 were executed. What made this place even more tragic was the Khmer Rouge's choice to precisely catalogue everything. There are rooms filled with the portrait shots of every inmate, along with the people that worked at the prison. Its easy to walk through these rooms and to not let your eyes focus on anything; its a strenuous exercise to force yourself to look at all the faces, to see each of them for what they were/are: people. Across their eyes you can see the gamut of emotions, but mostly you see fear. From there you walk through the former cells and see the bars that held each prisoner down; you can see the implements of torture as well as pictures of inmates after they've been tortured and paintings depicting the acts. There are biographies from relatives of inmates, as well as a small collection of skulls. Its not an easy place to walk through.

That was yesterday. Since then I've bought a camera and we've moved on to another city. In the interests of length and subject matter, I'm going to leave those matters to the next email. I'm having a hard time writing about else, since I'm still trying to process what I've seen at the War Remnants Museum and at S-21.