We focused our sightseeing in HCMC on visits to Vietnamese memorials that commemorate what they call the American War. We just had two days in the city, so we spent most of our time visiting the Reunification Palace, where the South Vietnamese conceded defeat to the Viet Cong in 1975, the War Remnants Museum, with many terrifying photos from the war, especially of the damage caused by napalm and Agent Orange, and the Cuchi Tunnels, a hand-dug network of about 75 miles of tunnels where the Viet Cong hid out and from which they also launched attacks. Neither of us learned very much in school about the Vietnam War, and it was really interesting, and saddening, to learn about it from the Vietnamese perspective, and right where much of the fighting actually took place.

The highlight of our visit to HCMC, though, was a big night out with our friends Scott and Cesar. Scott and I went to college together, and although we haven’t really kept in touch, I knew from Facebook that he and his soon-to-be husband Cesar were living in HCMC. It was amazing and so fun to walk through the door of their beautiful home and hug Scott after more than 11 years since we’d last seen each other, and it was wonderful to meet Cesar, too. We had fun swapping travel stories, but best of all, as locals they showed us a side of HCMC we never would have found on our own. We had dinner out in a lovely old renovated home with plate after plate of yummy Vietnamese food–fish in passion fruit sauce, beef cooked in a clay pot, crunchy fried tofu, and stir-fried greens with garlic, among others. Out of all of the places we’re traveling to, I was most looking forward to the food in Vietnam, and our dinner out with Scott and Cesar did not disappoint.

After dinner they took us out for drinks at Chill Skybar, a swanky outdoor place at the top of one of HCMC’s new high rises. Scott pointed out all of the new buildings added to the skyline since he and Cesar first moved to HCMC several years ago, and Cesar snapped a picture of Scott, John and me with the skyline in the background. From our smiles you can see that we were having a great night!

One of the most perplexing things we learned from Scott and Cesar that night is that Vietnam is a Footloose kind of place. Except for a few bars and clubs that have the necessary permits, in most public places dancing is prohibited. Scott pointed out that many people still “table dance,” which is definitely not dancing on top of a table but rather people standing around their cocktail tables individually bopping in a white man’s overbite from When Harry Met Sally sort of way. I wish we’d gotten a picture or video of it.

It was a great night out!  Next up, Hoi An…

Sex tourism and prostitution remain significant challenges for Cambodia.  Starting in the early 1990s, when the country opened up to foreigners for the first time in twenty years (following the end of the Cold War and the ouster of the Vietnamese from Cambodia, who had ruled the country since they invaded in the 1970s to overthrow the Khmer Rouge), Cambodia gained a “reputation” as a place where pedophiles could abuse children without repercussions.  Over the last couple of decades, responding to pressure from the international community, the Cambodian government has cracked down on pedophilia, but children continue to be trafficked and sold by organized pedophile rings.  Women and teenage girls are also commonly trafficked into prostitution–after they have been tricked into leaving their homes for the promise of better economic opportunities in urban areas, where they might expect they’ll work in textile or garment factories, they are sold into sexual slavery.

With rampant corruption in the police force and extensive poverty, the NGOs fighting human trafficking and sexual abuse and violence in Cambodia face many challenges.  They also must confront cultural and religious traditions that often lead victims to believe they have deserved their lot in life.  Still, we were greatly inspired by the dedication that the NGO workers showed in taking on these challenges, and we hope to continue to support their efforts and raise awareness about their work once we’re back home.

The next morning things took on a much more somber tone when we drove out to visit the Killing Fields, an area outside of Phnom Penh where the Khmer Rouge took its prisoners to be tortured and executed, often being bludgeoned to death to save on bullets, and sometimes even being buried alive. Our audio guides allowed each of us to take in the experience on our own, as we listened to the disturbing history of the place and stories from some of the Khmer Rouge survivors. Between 1975-1979, the Khmer Rouge terrorized and devastated Cambodia, killing up to two million people and relocating all urban dwellers to forced labor camps in the rice paddies.  Anyone wearing glasses, speaking a foreign language, or working in a profession like medicine or law was put to death.  Supposedly, the Khmer Rouge envisioned an agricultural “paradise” where the people would live uncomplicated lives, just surviving from the land. In reality, people were sick and starving to death from being forced to work in the fields all day long with practically nothing to eat.

At the Killing Fields, where the bodies of 17,000 men, women, and children that were
executed during the genocide were later found buried in mass graves (there are hundreds  more sites like it around the country), a large glass stupa has been built in memorial to those killed. The stupa houses more than 8,000 skulls from the Killing Fields. It was an eerie visit, and incomprehensible, especially to think that many members of the Khmer Rouge continue to serve in the government today.

From the Killing Fields, we headed back to the city to visit the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. We hired a guide to take us around the museum, not realizing at first that she was a survivor of the genocide. The museum is housed in a former high school that was later used by the Khmer Rouge as a prison and torture center.  After being tortured for information on dissidents, the prisoners were generally taken to the Killing Fields to be executed. Our guide was a remarkable woman and shared her personal story with us as she showed us around. Her father had been a member of parliament and her mother a French teacher, and since they belonged to the educated class, both were executed by the Khmer Rouge. During the genocide, our guide was separated from her siblings and sent to a work camp. Miraculously, her brother and sister also survived the genocide, with her sister having been selected to nanny for a Khmer Rouge family, which saved her from being killed. Our guide got teary-eyed as she told us about her family, as did we. After the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, took over the government, and threw out the Khmer Rouge, our guide made her way back to Phnom Penh to return to her family’s home, but the government said it belonged to the state now, and sent her away. She managed to find her sister and brother over the next few years, and now she works in the museum as a way of processing the horror. She was so kind, and although it was incredibly sad, we really appreciated her sharing her story so openly with us.

In many ways, it seems that Cambodia has worked hard to overcome its past. Phnom Penh is bustling, and it’s hard to imagine that just 35 years ago, at the height of the Khmer Rouge, its population dwindled to about 1,000, as city dwellers were forcibly relocated to rural work camps, and all educated people were killed. Still, 75% of the country continues to survive from farming, and students attend school just for morning or afternoon shifts, as there aren’t enough classrooms and teachers for kids to attend school all day long. Health care is poor, and many people lack access to clean water, and trafficking and prostitution, which I’ll write more about in the next post, remain huge problems. Despite all of that, all of the people we met there were so kind, and we look forward to following along with Cambodia’s growth over the coming years.

From the Hiroshima train station, we took the local trolley to the Peace Memorial Park and made our way to the building that’s now called the A-Bomb Dome. It was originally built in 1914 as an exhibition hall, but by the time of WWII, the government was using it to house the local public works administration. When the bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, it exploded almost directly over the building. You’d think that would mean the building would have been decimated, but although I’m a little shaky on the science behind it, it seems that the energy released by the bomb pressed down on the building instead of blasting it apart, so that while fire ravaged it, the walls weren’t knocked down (i.e., pushed apart) by the blast. In the end, it was the only building left standing near the center of the bomb blast. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996.

A few years after the war ended, the Japanese parliament declared Hiroshima a “city of peace,” and since that time, Hiroshima has worked to promote peace while also advocating for the abolishment of nuclear weapons. The Peace Memorial Museum, on the grounds of the Peace Memorial Park, opened in 1955 to tell the story of Japan’s involvement in WWII, including its aggression in East and Southeast Asia, and how the U.S. was drawn into the war through the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and ultimately the history of the development of the nuclear bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how and why those sites were chosen. We learned a great deal about the Asia-Pacific side of WWII, and of the horror of the bomb.

After leaving the museum we lightened things up by heading off in search of a traditional Hiroshima lunch–okonomiyaki–a layered dish of crepe-like batter, cabbage, noodles, egg and pork that’s cooked on a griddle and then smothered in a tangy barbecue-like sauce. You eat it right off the griddle surface using a small spatula.

Then it was time to catch the ferry to Miyajima, a small island off the coast of Hiroshima where we’d be staying for the night. To Shinto believers, it’s considered a sacred island, and it’s famous for its Itsukushima Shrine and the orange Torii Gate that marks the entrance to the shrine from the sea. It’s a quiet and beautiful place, and we spent the night in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn with tatami floors, sliding doors, and thin mattresses on the floor to sleep on. For some reason the layout of the room reminded me of a cabin on a cruise ship, but then it kind of felt like a sleepover party to spend the night on our side-by-side mattresses on the floor.

In the morning we visited the shrine and then took the cable car up to Mount Misen, the highest point on the island. The cable car leaves you with just a 30-minute hike to the top (as opposed to a 3-hour hike if you started from the bottom of the mountain), but, as usual on this trip, it was HOT and HUMID outside. John and I were already sweating through our clothes when we exited the cable car, even before we started the 30-minute hike. Meanwhile, the Japanese ladies that we saw on the trail were sweat-free, in full make-up, dresses, and high heels. I don’t know quite how the Japanese ladies do it, but they always manage to look totally put together. It was a beautiful day, and the views from the top of Mount Misen over the Inland Sea were pretty spectacular, with islands dotting the water. It looked just like the Japan you see in paintings.

Then it was time to make our way back to Hiroshima and board the bullet train bound for Kobe. We arrived back at the Injays’ place just in time for a taco dinner–yum! Next up…John’s favorite experience of the trip!

Three days later, about an hour or so outside of the “small” city of Datong, we visited another portion of the Great Wall. Before leaving home, we happened to read an article by Nicholas Kristof about places to go in 2012 to understand the world, and without it I’m pretty sure we never would have heard of Datong. Although it’s about the size of metropolitan Minneapolis, in China Datong is considered a small city. The only part about it that seemed small to us was the airport—it had just one gate. Clearly most people in Datong aren’t flying. That’s when we started to realize that there is a lot more to China than we had caught a glimpse of in Beijing. During our travels we kept hearing China referred to as a developing country. “Developing country?” I thought. “Hmm. Not quite like Ethiopia, though, right?” I wondered to myself. Well maybe not quite. But as we learned a hint of in and around Datong, China has a lot more layers than we initially realized. Beijing is a huge, modern city that in many ways feels very familiar. The city of Datong seemed big, for sure, with apartment blocks seemingly stretching miles in every direction, but the feeling about it was far less familiar.

Overall, Datong was an interesting and somewhat bewildering place.  Its original name, when it was founded in 200 BC, was Pingcheng, but in 1048 AD it was renamed as Datong—meaning “Peaceful Place”—in the hopes that the name change would stop the Mongolians from continually attacking it (that didn’t work, as we learned).
These days, the city is still not very peaceful, since there is construction going on pretty much everywhere. The old city was being razed so that it could be newly constructed from the ground up to look old.  Ancient-looking city walls had been recreated on two sides of the city and were currently under construction on the other two sides. The old brick homes in the center of town were being demolished after residents were “encouraged” to relocate to new apartment buildings outside of the soon-to-be walled part of the city.
Temples had been rebuilt to look old, a mosque had been moved to a more “convenient” location, and the owners of a hotel building that had been deemed too tall had agreed to chop the top half off of the building so as to comply with the new zoning requirements.
All of the construction gave what should have been the old section of Datong almost a Disneyland quality—it felt like the old city was being reconstructed as a tourist amusement park, with everything built to look old but most of it being brand new. It seemed so strange to us, being from a place that in comparison has such a short history and in recompense reveres anything old.

When we headed out of Datong to a nearby section of the Great Wall, we finally could really feel that we were in a developing country. We stopped in a small village about seven or eight miles from the border of Inner Mongolia, and it was fascinating. Here was the China that I had been waiting to see. The villagers used outdoor wells with hand pumps to get water—just like the ones I had seen in Ethiopia—although here each household had its own well right in the yard. In the small green spaces around their wells most families were growing sunflowers (for their seeds) and other crops. There was electricity, and also a large signboard explaining in comic-book-style pictures and words the one-child policy, with a scary picture towards the end of a woman who had violated the policy being carted off to jail. The village seemed to have maybe one hundred or so tightly clustered homes, many of which were apparently built with bricks that had been pilfered from the Great Wall surrounding the city. According to our guidebook, Mao Zedong encouraged this practice.

While visiting the (non-reconstructed) wall here, we learned that when it was first built, it was really just a linkage between the individual walls that surrounded and protected cities across China. Over time the wall was extended and fortified into what we think of today. But in this village, which was apparently a fortress town on the border centuries ago, we could see the wall in its original form, built from mud bricks, with an inner wall surrounding the town and then the Great Wall extending from it as far as we could see. The gate to the inner wall, rebuilt and strengthened during the Ming Dynasty about 500 or so years ago, looked like it was at least thirty feet thick. It made me wonder what the village was like in its heyday hundreds of years ago, as compared to the rural farming community that it is today. We walked the short walk from one end of the town to the other and asked our guide questions about the villagers’ way of life. Looking through the window of one of the homes (with the villagers looking right back and apparently commenting on our strangely pale skin), our guide pointed out a kitchen table/common space/bed that is typical to rural homes in the area. It was essentially a large wooden tabletop covered in plastic that is used as the family’s seating area and surface for eating meals during the daytime and place to sleep during the night. It looked very hard and definitely no more comfortable than sleeping on the floor.

Seeing this village was definitely my favorite part of our trip to China—it felt like we got to see real life there, as opposed to the uniform city life in Beijing and Shanghai, where we almost could have been in any large and modern city in the world. It sparked our curiosity and made us realize that there’s a lot more to China than what we usually hear about at home. Thanks, Nicholas Kristof!

I’ve always assumed that getting a massage is an inherently self-indulgent act. I suppose that in the process I’m helping someone to make a living. But not until we got to Chiang Mai did I learn that I could be charitably minded while being pampered at the same time. Sounds too good to be true, right?! Well, at the women’s prison in Chiang Mai, they provide training opportunities so the inmates can learn different skills during their time behind bars, in an effort to reduce recidivism rates and provide the women with a means to support themselves following their release. Some of the women learn food preparation, some learn to make crafts, and some are trained in Thai massage. At the training facility, for about $6, you can get an hour-long traditional Thai massage from a non-violent offender scheduled to be released in six months or less.  Sign me up! The fee for the massage goes into a savings fund that is apportioned to the inmates upon their release, to provide them with start up funds to get back on their feet.

The training facility and massage center are located across the street from the main prison building. When I arrived, I could hear loudspeakers broadcasting announcements in Thai inside the prison walls. I wondered what was being said as I passed through the door into the massage center. I was led into a bright, clean room with several massage tables as well as a few pedicure-style loungers where they do reflexology. For Thai massage, you remain fully dressed, but you need to be wearing something really loose and comfortable, so they handed me a set of clothing and sent me into the changing room. The pants were easy to figure out–they were more or less like drawstring cotton pajama bottoms. The top I had a little more trouble with. It looked like one of those dressing gowns they give you to wear at the doctor’s office for an exam. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to tie it in the front or back so I just did like I do at the doctor and tied it in the back. When I came out of the changing room and saw some of the other ladies ready for their massages, I saw I’d gotten it backwards, so I turned it around and did my best to tie it properly. But there were lots of ties and I basically made a mess of it. The massage therapist-inmates giggled at how I’d tied my top and then they sorted it out and re-tied
it correctly for me.

When they start the massage, the first thing they do is wash your feet. In Thailand, feet and shoes are seen as unclean, and before you enter any building you’re supposed to take your shoes off–whether it’s a temple, hotel, pharmacy, or mini-mart, you’ll see a pile of shoes outside.  So I guess before they started the massage they wanted to make sure my feet were clean. The foot bath was refreshing–it’s SO hot and humid here!–and then I laid down on the table for my massage. Never having had a Thai massage before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Our friend Cate described it as “yoga with two people,” which is totally accurate. There were three other ladies in the room with me also getting massages at the same time, and it seemed our therapist-inmates took us through the prescribed series of movements in unison.  You start on your back and they manipulate and contort and twist your legs in all different directions to stretch them out. I had my eyes closed, but I could tell at one point she was pulling on my legs by holding one of my feet in each hand while simultaneously pushing on my thigh with one of her feet to stretch out my hip. All of the stretching was great, but I wished they would hold the poses for a little longer–instead they go through the movements in quick succession. Then she moved on to push and pull at my arms and finally yanked me into a cobra position while she pulled my arms straight back to stretch my lower back. That kind of hurt.

They’re also real big on cracking all of your joints. As she worked on my arms and legs, she cracked all of the knuckles in my fingers and toes. I guess I should have been expecting it, then, when she had me sit up and place my hands behind my head, and then she pulled at my elbows, twisted me around and WHAM! my back cracked. She tried to crack my neck, too, which is all messed up from carrying my large backpack, but it resisted. All of the knots in it pretty much aren’t allowing it to move at all.

I was kind of in a daze after the back-cracking and somewhat relieved that the hour was over. What I’d heard was true–Thai massage is not the pleasant, soothing, sleep-inducing Swedish massage I’m used to at home–it was a little painful and more like a workout session than a time for relaxation. After it was all over, they gave me a cup of tea to revive me, and once I’d changed back into my street clothes it was time to go.

I’d been curious to see what a Thai massage was like, so it felt great that I got to try it out while being lucky enough to support a worthwhile initiative at the same time. But I’m not sure I’ll be going back for another Thai massage–maybe next time we can just eat in the prison cafe or buy some of the inmates’ crafts!

Thailand is a land of contradiction when it comes to the Asian elephant. On the one hand, elephants are revered, sometimes religiously, for how they have helped shape and develop Thailand into what it is today.  On the other hand, domesticated elephants have no more rights than any other domesticated animal in Thailand.  In the eyes of the law, they are no different than a dog, mule, or other animal one might have use for when working the land.  Further, the process of domesticating a wild elephant, while steeped in Thai tradition, is a very harsh and violent process.  It’s been interesting, and somewhat heartbreaking, to learn about these contradictions and the plight of the Asian elephant in Thailand today.

There used to be over 100,000 Asian elephants in Thailand.  Now, that number has dwindled to less than 5,000.  While many of these elephants are protected as an endangered species in the wild, about 3000 of these elephants are domesticated and do not enjoy the same protections as their in-the-wild counterparts.  To further complicate matters, domesticated elephants are having a hard time finding work.  Logging, the primary job (and a dangerous one) for domesticated elephants in Thailand, was outlawed in 1989, as the removal of the rain forest was proven to worsen the flooding that occurs in Thailand each rainy season.  As a result of the logging ban, tourism has become the only means by which elephant caretakers, or mahouts, can make a living with their animals.  This has placed many a domesticated elephant out of the forest and into the city, where they work on busy streets for tourist dollars.  A hard and often times abusive life for these creatures.

Enter Elephant Nature Park.  Elephant Nature Park is an organization dedicated to saving the Asian elephant.  Started by, Sangduen Chailert (she goes by Lek, which means “small” in Thai – she’s a tiny lady!) in the 1990s, Elephant Nature Park provides a natural habitat for abused and injured domesticated elephants, and works toward the ultimate goal of releasing re-habilitated elephants back into the wild.  Shelley and I spent the day at Elephant Nature Park, and it was an amazing experience.

Although Elephant Nature Park uses tourism dollars to further their mission of saving the elephant, you won’t enjoy elephant rides or circus shows here.  Volunteers come to work at the park for weeks at a time and ENP uses its guests as helpers to both feed and bathe the elephants.  That’s exactly what Shelley and me were able to do on the day we visited the park!

At bath time, people splash water on the elephants from both sides, so you had to be careful or risk getting soaked by a bucket of water from another visitor.  Shelley figured that out a little too late…

The elephants are huge, but unless they trumpet, they hardly make a sound.  Several times during the day we found that an elephant had snuck up on us from behind looking for something to eat.  We were both amazed (and a little intimidated) at how close we were able to get to these powerful creatures.  Here are a couple of videos of Shelley feeding the elephants up close.  Pretty amazing.

Elephant Nuzzles Shelley Looking for Food

Shelley Feeds the Elephants

The Thai office opened about ten years ago in Bangkok, with the goal of rescuing girls who had been sex trafficked.  But the organization quickly realized that many of the girls being trafficked were coming from the rural hill tribes in northern Thailand–the reason being that the girls–and their families–faced economic vulnerability due to their lack of citizenship rights.  So the organization changed course and relocated its operations to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, where it helps members of the hill tribes obtain proof of citizenship.

The hill tribes are groups of ethnic minorities that live across national borders in the highlands of southeast Asia.  Each has its own customs, clothing, language, and religion, and they generally live traditional lifestyles focused on agriculture.  In Thailand, there are six major hill tribes–the Mien, Hmong, Lisu, Karen, Lahu and Akha–and they number somewhere between 600,000 to 1 million people.  Some of the hill tribe groups have come to Thailand in the past few decades, in many cases fleeing as refugees from Burma, but many of the hill tribe groups have been living in Thailand for over a century.

Under Thai law, members of hill tribes are eligible for Thai citizenship, yet many lack documentation establishing that they are citizens, and obtaining the documentation requires financial resources and enough education to navigate Thailand’s complex rules and regulations.  But without proof of citizenship (in the form of a certificate of citizenship and a Thai ID card), hill tribe members are considered to be living illegally in Thailand, and they cannot work or own land.  They are also not permitted to travel outside of their home districts, have limited access to education, and no access to healthcare.  As a result, hill tribe members lacking proof of citizenship are essentially trapped into a cycle of poverty.  This poverty makes them especially vulnerable to trafficking or other forms of abuse or exploitation.  Helping members of the hill tribes to obtain proof of citizenship is a preventative measure that can reduce this vulnerability.

The human rights organization we met with has a staff of Thai lawyers and social workers who assist members of the hill tribes with navigating the bureaucratic maze to obtain proof of citizenship.  The organization gave us a short presentation about their work, and we had a chance to ask questions, as well as meet the staff, many of whom are themselves members of hill tribes.  To date, the organization has secured citizenship rights for more than 10,000 hill tribe members.

John and I were really moved and impressed by the staff and the work they are doing.  If you’d like any more information about this organization or if you’re interested in supporting their work, please send me a private note and I’ll be happy to connect you with them.  We haven’t mentioned them by name in this post due to the sensitive nature of their work.