The Two Wheels of Sài Gòn

When one arrives in Sài Gòn (aka Ho Chi Minh City), the first thing that pops out is the sheer number of scooters that city has. If the city has 10 million people living within its boundaries, I believe there are at least 5 million scooters. They are everywhere! They are about 20 to 1 ratio with respect to car numbers.

They deliver food, transport people, took us from A to B, drive on footpaths and they will "almost kill you" at least once everyday whilst crossing the street.  

The picture above is from our first day here and the sound of scooters was overwhelming. The smoke of all the two wheelers will force you to wear your N95 mask and the toot-toot & beep-beep will force you to plug your fingers in your ears! Mad!  

Even in the little alleyways, all we see are the scooters & flags of Viet Nam!

These scooters are considered small vans in Viet Nam. We saw one guy transferring a washing machine on a scooter. 

And another guy (probably a gardener), transferring a lawn-mower on his scooter. 

The guys on Grab were brilliant though. One could get stuck in traffic for long, but the Grab guys always had their way around everything. Buses, trucks, other scooters and cars, just make sure you have built your heart of steel.

We did get stuck in the 31st December traffic, but everyone was stuck, so no worries & smile at the camera! :-) 

And on the motorways, the scooter traffic keeps itself away from the main car traffic. The city has different lanes for scooters in the central town area too. 

Here we are trying to go through two buses! Not for the faint hearted! 

There can be times when walking could be quicker than the scooters!

We did find some cool bicycles around the city too. This name sounds familiar, however shouldn't it be called "X.com" now? 

And some cool Italian bicycles too. 

Cambodia - Dec'24

 

After spending sometime in Thailand, we crossed the border on foot and went to Cambodia. It was an easy border crossing. 

Note: If you apply for your Cambodia VISA online it costs $36, however if you come to the border and then apply for the VISA, it will cost you $30. So if you want to save 20% on the VISA fee, please walk to the border without an online VISA. 

We were in a small van with 5 other Europeans.

The Krong Poi Pet Thai-Cambodia border is pretty crowded and things happened quite haphazardly. 

We ended up in Siem Reap safely and successfully. Pub Street of Siem Reap offers decent food, music and beers. 

We have now understood that every South East Asian city has a hippie/ traveler street. If one is craving for pizza, pasta, burgers or wants a break fromAsian food, then they can head here. :-) 

We visited the Angkor museum before visiting the Angkor Wat the next day. 

There were lots of Hindu idols and scriptures in this museum. 

We realised that, just the Angkor Wat temple site is a huge place. And, the complete Angkor Old City was a 400 sq kms site. We were excited to visit it the next day.

Again the cleanliness and no-honking was a lovely surprise for us. 

We left our hotel at 4:30 AM in the morning to reach Angkor Wat and be the first to see the sunrise. 

Note: The best way to visit the old city of Angkor is to get a TukTuk, which is actually a trolly stuck behind a scooter and it will cost you $20 for the whole day!

Our hotel was good at pushing us to wake us up and dragging us out of our beds. Angkor Wat does look beautiful when the sun was about to rise and we were lucky to be in the first row. 

A lot of people brought massive fancy cameras and lenses. We made some friends and they were pretty decent iPhone cameramen. ;-) 

As we looked back at where we were standing, there were hundreds of people there, as the sun came up. 

As we walked into the Wat, we saw the vastness of the place.

The symmetry of the place was unbelievable.

It felt like we were in the 10th century. It in fact is a ruin and has been kept as a ruin since many decades.

I loved how they had built this temple in the 10 century, knowing that we would visit it in 2024. How did they know that? Just how? 

From Angkor, our driver took us to Bayon. We also saw the Amritmanthan where the Asuras and Devas churned Amrit from the sea. 

A lot of countries have been helping Cambodia to safeguard and renovate the temples.

I loved the face of the kings on the temples.

Again, it feels like they built these massive temples and then just didn't take care of them. 

There was another temple taken care by the Indian government and the ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) has been helping Cambodia to rebuilding and renovation. This was the Ta Prohm temple, also know as the Tomb Raider Temple. 

The temple is extremely old and now, nature has taken over this temple. 

I also think, this temple wasn't completed. Some of the drawing seems to be just drawing and the carvings were unfortunately never completed. 

Mother nature rules here. 

You can walk from one section to another and it feels like a broken Hollywood site.

Some sections are still okay to walk along though.

I loved this photo where the tree is towering over everything. In few centuries, even the wall that is standing at the back will fall. 

As the sun came up in the sky, the heat became almost unbearable and we asked our guy to take us to the last temple. Banteay Kdei Temple was our last however one of the largest after Angkor.

One must try to take the day slow and I would suggest people to do these temples over 3-4 days. 

The ruins are absolutely stunning. 

We then left Siem Reap and went to Phnom Penh. 

The National Museum of Cambodia was lovely. They also had a lot of idols from Siem Reap here. 

I especially loved the idols of Kauravas and Pandavs.

It was beautiful and pretty lovely garden too.

We also visited the Prison-21 in Phnom Penh (Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum). This was a prison and a torture camp for the people who didn't agree with the Communist Pol Pot regime on Cambodia. It was really tragic place to visit. However, the people of Phnom Penh don't ignore their history and want everyone to understand the mistakes made by previous leader and want the next generation to learn from those mistakes.

These were the last 14 prisoners left in the prison camp 21, when the Communist regime was toppled in 1979. 

Few of the guys who survived the regime wrote their tales. 

This was quite a moving place. But sometimes it's important for us to visit such places and learn from them. 

Note: Please get an audio guide for this visit. 

We then visited the Choeung Ek Genocidal Centre, also known as the Killing Fields of Cambodia. This was the scariest of times for Cambodians and it was very enlightening to see that we now have peace in the country and the people are moving forward. 

Note: Please get an audio guide for this visit. 

The memorial was beautiful from afar. 

These were the fields where the Khmer Rouge killed people just because they could. Some of the stories we heard during our visit were extremely moving. 

There was a tree, where the mothers and their kids were separated. And because the bullets were expensive the kids were killed by banging their heads on this tree. I haven't heard of such cruelty ever in my life. 

Tribute to those who lost their lives and family members during this time.

Some of the human heads that were found here.

We came back to the town and prepared for our next journey. For almost the whole journey, we both were quiet and just remember what would have happened during those years and how 33% of the population of a country was genocidally killed by the Khmer Rouge dictators.

Thailand's growth and its obsession for cleanliness

We recently completed our travels in Thailand and their obsession for cleanliness is mind boggling. They are remarkably looking at every fallen leaf and picking it up from the streets and pavements to make everything spic and span all the time. 

We saw these elephants (video above) en route to the hotel and even they were walking on clean pavements.

 We reached Krabi, it is a small beach town and if you see the cleanliness here, it is pretty exceptional.  

We then jumped on a mini truck ride to our hotel and the streets in the town were outstanding well kept and didn't bump into any pot holes. As people of Indian origin and with British passports, this was a new thing for us! 

Even the Highways are astonishingly of Western European standards, and in some cases better than European standards. However, in England we do see filth along the motorways, over here; we didn't see any garbage on multiple bus rides that we took. 

Even in Bangkok, that is a very busy city; probably the busiest in South East Asia, they were able to keep pavements clean for people to park their bikes and get some sort of dinner sorted. Also the restaurants haven't encroached on to the pavements. 

In Chiang Mai, we visited the Royal Gardens and they were spectacularly manicured gardens and looked extraordinary during our visit. 

When visiting the White Temple of Chiang Rai, the whole journey looked like a movie set coming into the temple. Also within the temple, there was hardly any dirt or garbage seen anywhere. 

If one visits the temples in India, they feel like a dumping ground and around the temples one would see the temple offerings were thrown in heaps. Why? 

Now that was around the touristy area. When we took the train and came into Bangkok, the station is ready for the next level of growth. They have their main railway station Krung Thep Aphiwat Central Terminal ready for the high speed railway. 

This station is better equipped than any Indian Train station or airport. India is doomed. Thailand is about 15-20 years ahead of India. How did India lose the race to Thailand? 

And within the Bangkok city they have exceptionally well maintained parks and canal systems. People with kids and with grandparents jogging and running in early mornings & evenings. Can anyone show me one city in India with such clean canals or river systems? 

These parks (Lumphini Park's video above) then get full in the evenings with people doing their exercises and enjoying their time with each other. It's an easy & cheaper way to create a healthier society. People of all capabilities and ages visit these parks to exercise. Indian government has no interest in making lives of the citizens healthier & the politicians are more corrupt than the British when they ruled India! 

Even the malls are more aesthetic than the Indian malls.

....and better looking and more posh. 

Those who say "India is growing" are as delusional as the cows grazing grass in the fields. The other countries have already grown and have surpassed India by decades. All India can do is dream about their past and gloat about it.