A Three Hour Tour

The following is a shared journal entry:

November 5, 2005
Vietnam and Cambodia Schedule

So here comes post number one for today. First let us retrace our steps to yesterday to say that we both received ninety-five percent on our travel essays and ironically, for the first time on a Global Studies exam we both received the same grade, ninety-two percent. Yahoo!! We also took a picture with the interport student, who will be leaving us today. Trang is very sweet and she broke down into tears yesterday at pre-port.

Okay, so today at around eight thirty the pilot will board and the Explorer will begin a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour…

The winds they started getting rough,
The Explorer swayed and rocked.
For she turned and swerved on her way to Saigon,
On her way to Saigon, on her way to Saigon.
The ship sailed up the canal and docked at the docks called Nha Rong,
With Slim Shorty, and Kingston too,
The Academic Dean, and his wife,
The Notorious Voice, Kevin Murphy, and the Whittemores,
Here in Ho Chi Minh…

Actually the Explorer has a performance this morning to show off her abilities on sharp turns. We are told that this is something we absolutely cannot miss – we have seen her speed, now let’s see her flexibility.

The Saigon River is very, and I emphasize the word very, narrow, and there are many sharp angles to navigate. Apparently we will be so close to shore on either side as we cruise up the river that we could hold a conversation with the people on the banks! We had to navigate about one hour in Burma up the Yangon River, but it was much wider and not so much like a maze.

The crew will serve brunch on the pool deck from ten thirty to twelve thirty and then around one o’clock Megan and I will be whisked off the ship, hopefully it will be cleared by that time, to participate in the Temples and Churches field program. We will return around six and then spend the night packing and what not for CAMBODIA!

So no early rising tomorrow like in India. Our trip will depart at four o’clock in the afternoon with the most awesome group imaginable, Annie Cleveland who led the India trip, Professor Dunbar, Professor Collins and his wife, Professor Brice and his wife, Beth whose blog we also bookmarked for mom, and just in case you did not think that there were any students on this trip, Jackie who is part of our adopted family and Emily who was on the India trip, and probably the only other student on this trip who studies as much as us.

To make the rest of the itinerary a little easier to understand we are going to display it in a chart as opposed to a paragraph, and will also convert the hours from the twenty-four hour schedule to the twelve-hour schedule that you pollywogs use.

Sunday 06 November
4:00pm Depart Saigon port for Novotel Garden Plaza Hotel
5:00pm Arrive hotel, earl buffet dinner at hotel (includes one soft drink per person)
6:00pm Depart hotel for Tan Son Nhat airport
7:10pm Vietnam Airways Flight VN849 departs Saigon to Siem Reap
8:10pm VN849 arrives in Siem Reap
9:00pm Drive to Angkor Hotel
9:15pm Check in Hotel
Overnight at Angkor Hotel

Monday 07 November
5:00am Drive to Angkor Wat (optional sunrise tour)
5:15am Sunrise at Angkor Wat
7:00am Drive to Hotel
7:25am Breakfast at Hotel
8:15am Drive to Ta Prohm and visit Ta Prohm. Continue to Bayon via Ta Keo, Tommanon, Chaosay Tevoda, Elephant Terrace, Leper King Terraces and tour of Bayon and then South Gate of Angkor Thom.
12:15pm Lunch at Viroth’s Restaurant
1:45pm Drive to Angkor Wat
2:05pm Tour Angkor Wat until sunset
5:45pm Drive to Hotel
7:00pm Dinner at Bayon II with Cultural Dance Show
Overnight at Angkor Hotel

Tuesday 08 November
7:00am Breakfast at Hotel
8:00am Drive to Port
8:45am Boat Tour on Tonle Sap Lake to see floating homes and local village area
10:30am Drive to Hotel
11:00am Free at leisure
12:00pm Check out of rooms and lunch at Hotel
1:30pm Drive to Preah Khan
2:00pm Tour Preah Khan, Neak Pean, Ta Som, East Meborn, Pre Rup
5:15pm Depart to Airport
5:35pm Arrive airport
6:20pm Flight VN828 depart to Saigon (21 seats)
7:15pm Flight VN846 depart to Saigon (38 seats)
7:20pm VN828 Arrive in Saigon, transfer to the ship
8:35pm VN846 Arrive in Saigon, transfer to the ship
(We are not sure currently which flight we will be on for our return to Saigon and will probably not find out until just before boarding.)

So that is the schedule, busy for sure, but definitely a lot of fun. We cannot wait to go to Cambodia to see every angle of the ruins. We are getting ready for the diplomatic briefing before the Brekkie Barbie on the pool deck. We will pack our camera bags after posting this, change over a little bit of money, though US will work just fine, we would like to have some for the scrapbook as Burma was the first place that we did not even see the local currency, though many of the gray market vendors asked us if we were interested in exchanging.

We are making our way up the river, the spinning almost spinning like a top to double back on its course. And no stupas, boo hoo! Okay, so one more thing…we have lost three hours of Internet time since we bought our new account on October 23, 2005 for one hundred dollars, which is another four hours and ten minutes! Things just seem to be getting worse when it comes to communicating with home, and the absence of phone cards, and so until after Vietnam we only have seventeen minutes, possibly less if time keeps disappearing. We have a detailed account of the times it has been accessed and have detailed the discrepancies that happen to be occurring between midnight and four in the morning or at times when we are in class. Obviously someone has obtained our password, and something that I do not like about the new Internet system is that it remembers everyone’s username, which makes it easy to obtain someone’s password instead of both the password and the username. As you can imagine we are quite frustrated with this and will fight to get our time back. If, if time runs out before we get this resolved we will let you know that we will be signing off for a couple of days until we are reimbursed. Hopefully this will not happen, or we will purchase the thirty-five dollar plan, which is only like twenty minutes or something. Again, if this is not resolved before Hong Kong we will purchase the smallest plan imaginable to at least post about Cambodia and the schedule for our Xi’an and Beijing trip in Hong Kong like the one that appears here. So it may be a longer time between posts at least until after Hong Kong, but of course if you have a yellow calendar schedule than you know that things are going to be quite fast and furious.

Also we are rich, 15,600 dongs for one US dollar, so we now have 780,000 dongs!!!