Hello Hanoi!

The only flight leaving out of Siem Reap was late in the afternoon, unfortunately. As I said yesterday, there's not much to do in the town, other than browse around the markets, eat and drink, and....get a massage!! Why not?, we said. These services are extremely inexpensive in this area of the world. Keith opted for the Four Hand massage, and me, a pedicure. OK, so the pedicure was nothing to brag about - she didnt even scrub my feet and get the calluses off (believe me, the soles of my feet are not pretty after walking only in flip flops for 3 weeks). But, Keith's traditional Khumer massage by 2 people for a whole hour was only $10!! He said they had him in all kinds of contorted positions. I didnt ask too many questions.

Overall, I felt Cambodia was quite a sad place. The people there seem to be very desperate - for work, money, to buy their goods...anything. There was lots of begging in the streets and even when you're eating near the front of restaurants. Although the people werent too persistant. They do back off after you say 'no thanks' a couple of times, unlike other poor countries I've been to. And it's always little kids doing the begging - to tug at your heart even more. Because of the large amount of land mines that were placed in the ground during the wars on Cambodian territory, many people are left without legs or arms. You see lots of them in the streets begging. How else can they make a penny? It was really sad. Quite eye-opening.

Last night, we landed in Hanoi, Vietnam at about 8 pm. Before entering Vietnam, one has to either obtain a visa before arriving, or obtain a typed letter of permission from the Vietnam government. Since this trip was planned only a month before leaving, we could only get the letter of permission, and then you get the actual visa upon arrival. It costs $25 per person for the visa, and we had spent most of our dollars in Cambodia. We suddenly got really nervous since there were no ATMs in sight. Well, can you believe it, we had EXACTLY $50 in one dollar bills on us. No more, no less.

We left the airport via taxi with two Canadian friends that we met in the Siem Reap airport, Mike and Elana. They had been travelling for about 6 weeks already, and have learned the tricks of the trade as far as not getting screwed by people. Let me tell you, we haggled on the price of a cab for about 15 minutes before we left the airport. The travel book said it should cost only $10, by God, that's all we're paying. We settled on $12, and we were off to our hotel. Trying to be sneaky, the cab driver tries dropping us off at another hotel, that he obviously gets a commision through. This hotel didnt even have a name above the door, and a guy working there was in our face the second we pulled up. I'm telling you, you have to be really careful - really, really careful because these people (especially here in Vietnam apparently)will try to get you for all you're worth. Thank goodness our guide book warned us of these occurrances, but still!!

We finally get to our hotel, and dropped our stuff off upstairs. We tried to find an open restaurant with Mike and Elana, but ended up having to eat at a food stall - something I vowed never to do because this is how you get sick. I picked a little at the food, but opted for hunger instead. Then, of course, trying to settle the bill was another issue. They had tried adding things that we didnt order, and increasing the price of items, that we knew were less. Supposedly, there's even a "tourist menu" that some restaurants give you, whereby the prices are MUCH higher that what the locals eat - and you're getting the same thing!! Funny how things "work" over here... :) - Kate