Upon finishing our stint volunteering for Marine Conservation Cambodia, we returned to the pleasant and funky riverside town of Kampot. First priority was we treating ourselves to several days of yummy Western meals at the plethora of ex-pat owned establishments to celebrate Christmastime. Although, in keeping with Jewish tradition, we did eat Chinese for Christmas dinner itself since most places were closed for staff holiday parties. 
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It was refreshing to be back on the bicycles after residing on a tiny island for over a month, so much so that we took an ambitious day ride to the top of Bokor Mountain on Christmas Eve. It was incredible to see the influence of elevation on nature as tropical forest featuring hornbills and gibbons gave way to foggy scrubland towards the chilly upper reaches of the oversized hill. It was strange to gaze down through breaks in the clouds to the sweaty flatlands 4,000 feet below. Even stranger still was the incongruent assortment of development capping the mountain. Originally a French Hill Station where the colonists would retreat from the lowland heat and humidity, many of the buildings later served as refuge from the enemy as Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces duked it out. We explored the shell of a once luxurious casino and a church that had been occupied by the opposing forces. 

Then, in stark contrast to the historical sites, we locked up our bikes in the corner of an expansive, multi-tiered, but completely empty parking lot, the likes we have not seen since leaving Suburbia USA. We wandered in to a massive casino hotel that would not look out of place in Vegas, except for the surprisingly small casino itself and the modestly dressed staff. While all of this felt oddly out-of-place for Cambodia, what really made us wonder what bizarre world we had stumbled upon was the Christmas festivities in the form of poorly executed gingerbread houses with styrofoam trimmings and Khmer employees awkwardly dressed as Santas and elves. If all of this doesn't sound so weird to you, consider that Cambodia is a poor, predominantly Buddhist country, so commercialized Christmas decorations are essentially non-existent there. 

​We weren't really sure what clientele Thansur Bokor Highland Resort was targeting, either with the Christmas gimmicks or with building the ridiculous resort in the first place. However, one thing was for sure. After "leasing" the entirety of Bokor National Park from the Cambodian government for 99 years, the Chinese-owned parent company Sokimex Group constructed what has to be the nicest and smoothest road in all of Cambodia in order to whisk guests straight to the casino's grand entrance. The national park signs have all been removed, so you would never know you were technically in a national park (unless of course you knew). Now with a full dose (overdose?) of "Christmas spirit" and the privatization of public land, we took full advantage of that pristine pavement to fly down the mountain in a fraction of the hours it took to huff our way to the top. 

Sadly, Bokor National Park is just one example of the trend of auctioning off of national parks to major developers as Cambodia's leaders seek to make the elite even richer in order to stay in power. For China in particular, Cambodia has recently become an alluring land of investment opportunities. The Thansur Bokor Highland Resort claims to be stewarding the park by providing increased enforcement personnel to patrol against illegal logging and poaching of the forest's many endangered species. On the other hand, they are depleting habitat with plans for a golf course, cable car, and water park, not to mention planting a monoculture of thousands of non-native trees to "complement the beauty" of the resort.

On Christmas Day, we celebrated with an evening boat cruise up the Praek Tuek Chhu River. We enjoyed the perspective of watching the sun set behind Bokor Mountain since we had just cycled up there the day before. However, the best part was seeing synchronized fire flies for the first time once it was fully dark. The insects tended to rest on vegetation instead of flying around, so large patches of trees and shrubs were covered with coordinated blinking. Appropriately, they really looked like twinkling Christmas lights!

The next day, we packed up and said goodbye to Kampot. Since it had been a few days since we had seen the ocean, we aimed for Ream Beach on the border of Ream National Park. The last few miles of riding were slow going on a rocky sandy track in the dark, but that only made our destination of Monkey Maya Hostel feel that much more remote and special. Fortunately, the dorm was full, as were the well-above-our-budget bungalows, so the owners were amenable to having us pitch our tent next to the beachside volleyball court. At dinner they introduced us to another cycling couple from Germany who had quite an adventure arriving to Monkey Maya earlier that morning. They had followed a road cutting through the national park, only to have it worsen and eventually disappear as it approached the coast. Once it was dark, they ended up sleeping on a random beach without camping gear or food while their reserved bungalow at Monkey Maya awaited them. In the morning, they pushed their bikes along the rocky coastline only to discover they had slept only 800 meters away from their goal!  

Very smartly, Monkey Maya offers a free beer to anyone who collects a rice sack of garbage off of the beach. Consequently, this was easily the cleanest beach we have seen our journey. Of course, when duty calls to drink free beer, we can be counted on. So we wiled away the day by picking the micro-trash out of the beautiful white sand that others skip over in an effort to fill their bags quickly, and dipped in the calm water when we got too sweaty. The isolation of the place induced relaxation, but that gave us space to contemplate our unstructured future, which led to a heated "discussion" over our hard-earned free beer with a stunning sunset backdrop. Matt commented, "Only we can find a way to make such a beautiful place so depressing." Nonetheless, we were grateful to have visited this newly "discovered" beach. We saw evidence that it is only a matter of time until other developments come in, and chances are high that they won't be as sensitivity-designed or responsibly-operated as Monkey Maya.

Things were easier in the morning as we became refocused on our short term plan of cycling to Otres Beach. The main area of "Otres 1" had a Wild West meets the beach feel to it with an eclectic range of establishments lining a rutted, bumpy, red dirt road. We got what we needed--lunch and info on boats to Koh Ta Kiev--and got out, retreating to more chill and inexpensive "Otres Village" set back from the beach. Although we didn't know it at the time, and neither did the place itself, Otres 1 qualified for "before it's gone" status. It may already be gone as I write this as government officials abruptly ordered the beachfront establishments to move off of the beach. Beaches are public property after all, unless of course you have deep pockets and know the right people. While it may be a seemingly arbitrary and ultimately discriminatory enforcement of the law, I don't see it as any great loss of an amazing place, although your average backpacker of Southeast Asia is certain to be heartbroken. However, given the choice, I would take a backpacker haven with laid-back independent businesses any day over another "soulless mega-resort," which is widely speculated to be the motivation of the sudden eviction notices.

The next morning we took a boat out to Koh Ta Kiev, one of the few islands in the Sihanoukville area not (currently) slated for exclusive luxury resort ruination. The boat dropped us off at our intended camping spot at The Last Point which we quickly concluded was no longer our intention. People had raved about this island and insisted that we go there, but our first impression was a non-existent beach with a surfline filled with litter and torn up sea grass. We knew we could do better and the hungover staff didn't mind in the least pointing out a trail through the forest to the other side of the island. The next spot of Coral Beach was buzzing and definitely the hip place to be on the island. We balked at the $25 rate for an otherwise enticing stilted bungalow and they were firm on the no camping policy. We had a similar experience at the next one down the beach called Ten103. We were almost ready to settle for an uninspiring but cheap shack, though at the most authentically Khmer establishment thus far--KTK Bungalows. Luckily, my stubborn thoroughness kicked in despite my exhaustion from being hit with a food-related stomach bug in the middle of the previous night. The last option, Crusoe Island, was rumored to be closed back on the mainland or we would have taken a boat directly to it in the first place. But what we found was fully operational and pretty close to perfect. However, we did appreciate our "discovery" even more after having walked the length of the island and investigated all other options. That method of multi-hour exploration wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for the loose sand with loaded backpacks in the mid-day heat while I suffered waves of nausea and cramps.

We began our Crusoe fantasy by staking down our tent for $2 per night on a rocky outcrop just above the high tide line with no other campers in sight. It was a short walk down the beach to the unexpectedly amazing restaurant and creatively designed hang out area. So then it was no surprise that we decided to stay a couple of extra days. We were so enamored with the place that we even offered to step in as the next round of volunteer staff for an extended stay, but the nice Khmer lady who owns it already had enough help for the foreseeable future. 

In keeping with tradition, we had a mellow New Year's Eve and fell asleep by ten to the bumping and thumping of concerts across the bay at Otres and Sihanoukville. A night swim amongst abundant bioluminescent plankton was the only fireworks show we needed to see anyway. It was an ideal last beach experience for the foreseeable future as our route would take us away from the immediate coastline after we returned to the mainland.

It seems like ages ago that Matt was exchanging bottles of his home brew for donations to the Before It's Gone Journey cause. At the same time, it feels like just yesterday that we hosted a farewell party with a "pop-up thrift store" of our stuff, pledging to set aside proceeds to fund environmental action on our travel. It took us over a year to stumble upon the right opportunity at the right time that was worthy of the generosity sourced from our Naturebridge community, but find it we eventually did. So we'll start this blog off with our appreciation of their sponsorship of our time at Marine Conservation Cambodia.

Last November and December, we took yet another pause in our cycling to spend five weeks volunteering for Marine Conservation Cambodia, based out of an up-and-coming beach resort area called Kep. As the name implies, MCC is a grassroots organization primarily focused on protecting a small section of Cambodia's coast from illegal fishing practices. Trawling in areas shallower than twenty meters, electric-shock fishing, and the collection of organisms with breathing-assistance (i.e. tube fishing) are all highly destructive, short-sighted, yet common harvesting methods that have been banned by Cambodian Fisheries Law. 

The catch (pun intended) is a lack of effective enforcement by Marine Police, who are actually paid off by local and Vietnamese fisherfolk to look the other way. When MCC set up shop just down the beach from a Marine Police outpost on the little island of Koh Seh a couple of years ago, they began picking up the enforcement slack. They conducted their own patrols led by local Khmer staff, confiscating illegal fishing apparatus and chasing boats out of areas that still had enough habitat left for a shot at recovery. This was not without some good ol' Wild West-style drama though. Those rascally Marine Police deployed their firearms (probably for the first time ever) with warning shots intended to scare off the MCC crew, claiming that the illegal boats were "under police protection." That does make for an awkward situation for sharing a tiny island, doesn't it?

Fortunately for the endangered seahorses and other incredible marine creatures not yet scooped up in a trawling net, English ex-pat Paul Ferber, the founder of MCC, is not so easily unsettled from his goal. The rationale for quite literally defending this small triangle in the Gulf of Thailand is to demonstrate that the simple act of enforcement of Cambodia's existing fisheries laws actually created relatively healthy marine ecosystems. And once that happens, everyone will want to have one, ideally spurring the government into nationwide action and thereby saving the future of Cambodia's biodiversity and preserving the livelihoods of small-scale lower-impact fisherfolk.

Of course, all of this silly conservation theory has to be proven effective again and again, and that is where MCC's volunteers come in. By conducting coral reef surveys and collecting data on MCC's flagship seahorse species, the citizen scientists have set a baseline for measuring progress, essentially creating dynamic "before and after pictures" of MCC's enforcement campaign. Monitoring the process of recovery also provides insights as to how quickly specific species recolonize their habitat after it's been decimated, and how successfully certain populations of organisms are able to rebound from human-caused catastrophe. Should this whole enforcement thing catch on in the region, this would be quite a valuable resource to inform other localized restoration efforts and management decisions going forward.

We personally did not get involved in wrangling any fish burglars (so sorry to disappoint you), but we heard that things got a lot more exciting on that front a couple of months after we left! Nonetheless, our experience had many positive aspects combined with some influential challenges that ultimately resulted in a memorable chapter of our journey with a complex aftertaste. That is if chapters had aftertastes. Well, you know what I mean...hopefully. Some examples include:

Shallow Water Diving--It was quite an adjustment to jump in to water that we could almost stand in for the duration of our dives. At times it resembled snorkeling with a scuba tank on. Too deep of a breathe could send you to the surface and a full exhale might have you clunking along the bottom. It was kind of claustrophobic! On the upside, a tank could last all afternoon with no need to conserve, or even check your air supply gauge for that matter. And given that our deepest moments were still above the 15-feet (3-meter) safety stop mark, we could surface as needed for a conversation with our dive buddy when underwater sign language got too confusing. Risk of decompression illness was nil, which made for a low-stress return to diving after my encounter with it a few months prior in Thailand.

seSeagrass is cool, really cool--As we had never spent time diving in the shallows before, this was our introduction to sea grass habitat and the surprisingly diverse collection of species it supports. Sea grass beds don't reveal their secrets easily though. At quick glance, it just appears to be a uniform patch of stubby green blades, kind of like a neglected underwater lawn. This feeling was enhanced by the nearly constant murkiness, the result of suspended sediment in the water from the illegal trawlers churning up the ocean floor just outside MCC's reach of protection. But we learned to appreciate the details while cruising slowly a couple of feet above the grass, and almost each dive revealed something new for us, whether it was the truly insect-like sea moth, adorable crocodile pipefish, or a tiny octopus. And it is only appropriate that these pastures of grass are where the horses of the sea like to hang out!

Spotting the Masters of Camouflage--Finding a sea horse is kind of like an underwater Easter egg hunt, a really hard one, or perhaps a Where's Waldo search if he were sporting a camouflage-printed scuba suit. But the rush of excitement is exactly the same when you do finally lock eyes on one. When Matt and I have dived together previously, I was usually the first one to point out the tiny nudibranchs and tricky scorpionfish. However, at MCC I simply could not spot "my own" sea horse. Once my dive partner (usually Matt but sometimes other volunteers) had already located one, I could hone in on it quickly though. At first, I figured I was just unlucky in that my designated search areas were barren of the sparsely populated critters, but as the weeks dragged on, the statistical odds of that actually being the case went down and down. Finally, it happened! "My" cute little juvenile was too small to be tagged with a non-toxic polymer tattoo for further individual study, but it sure posed for photos nicely so it's smug mug could be added to the citizen science driven database called iSeahorse. And after that encounter, the curse was broken and I began spotting seahorses on almost every dive.

100 dives under our weight belts--Through a combination of sea horse surveys, artificial coral reef maintenance (a.k.a. scrubbing over-abundant algae from rocks), and aimless exploration, we hit the milestone of 100 dives logged. It was only after the fact that we learned from the volunteer coordinator and dive master Amick that we tradition dictates the 100th dive is a naked one. Oh well...Maybe next time! I ended up with a few more dives than Matt overall since he struggled with ear infections for about half of the time we were there, a common ailment when spending so much time equalizing the ears in very warm shallow water that naturally harbors more bacteria.

​Island life--On Koh Seh we lived even more simply than our usual lifestyle while cycle touring. Our bungalow had a cement floor but loosely woven bamboo walls and thatched roof. Showers were of the bucket variety, meaning that we dumped a frugal amount of precious rainwater over our heads. We didn't have to make the typical lengthy decisions about when, where, and what to eat as delicious Khmer meals were provided on a general schedule in an open-sided communal bungalow. A noisy generator provided electricity from dusk to dawn and luxuriously powered a ceiling fan that sort of penetrated the mosquito net we slept under. We could technically connect to the Internet through a distant cellular network, but could rarely load any pages. That was usually just fine with us, as hammocks beckoned and a dip in the ocean was never more than a few steps away. We were close to nature and had no option but to be present in the moment. Except for all those nights we "escaped the island" while watching a movie on our laptop, but I digress. It actually felt unfamiliar to stay in a solid-walled, multi-storied building with running and water and wifi after we left. In fact, in five weeks, we only returned to the mainland for one weekend, so we really got the chance to settle in to the slower, relaxed pace that seems to be an inescapable characteristic of tropical islands.

The sunset ritual--One of my favorite things about the ocean is the sunsets in to it. The MCC base is east-facing, so it had fabulous sunrises that I never saw, save for a few times when I opened my eyes to beautiful colors filtering through the little gaps of our bungalow's woven bamboo wall and promptly fell back asleep, but I don't think that really counts. I don't really like sunrises anyway. Fortunately, it was only a three-minute walk over a minor hill to the other side of the island where a calm, quiet rocky shore provided the perfect place to watch the sunset. With cans of warm Black Panther "Foreign Export Stout" (certainly only distributed domestically) in hand, we made it to that spot every day and took a photo of each sunset, each one with its own mood shaped by the unique combination of meteorological forces at play each day. We usually had the west side of the island to ourselves, except for one constant companion: Jill the Jungle Dog. Part of the daily tradition was bracing ourselves for Jill to come tearing out of the forest for perhaps the most enthusiastic greeting we've ever had from a sweetheart of a canine (and that's saying a lot since I'm not really a dog lover). Due to a serious history of dog drama between MCC's multi-generational family of pit bulls and her, Jill lives a solitary life in the forest with occasional forays to the fringes of the MCC property until the pit bulls pick up her scent. She is free to roam, but I think she does get lonely.

A week with Liger Learning Center--Liger Learning Center is actually named in honor of Napoleon Dynamite's favorite animal, but that is only the first thing that makes it awesome. With the goal of empowering the most brilliant minds of Cambodia's disadvantaged youth to make a difference in their country, the middle school students learn primarily through implementing projects of their own design. Twelve lovely students and three of their wonderful teachers traveled from Phnom Penh to gain firsthand knowledge of the marine environment and the various threats to it. Many were thrilled to swim and snorkel in the ocean for the first time, but were just as enthusiastic to clean 250 pounds of garbage off the beach or examine algae and seagrass under a microscope. Their visit also served as the basis of submitting a proposal for a year-long project to develop alternative sustainable livelihoods for illegal fishers, one possibility being algae aquaculture. As this was our only exposure to the familiar world of environmental education since we began our travel in Asia, we thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the students and bonding with their American teachers. 

The Shoel (rhymes with stool)--Despite having seen a lot of marine debris--and litter on its way to becoming marine debris--at home and in our travels, it was still shocking to see the sheer volume of plastic products washing up on Koh Seh each day. A large garbage bag could be filled with styrofoam in a matter of minutes. Equally depressing was witnessing the black smoke of that garbage pile as it burned. We removed toxins from the sea in one form only to send them to the atmosphere in another, which of course will eventually fall back in to the sea. It was an unsavory and unhealthy catch-22. Sending the rubbish to the mainland would use additional fossil fuels and once there would also be burned, since Cambodia lacks the infrastructure and/or political willpower to deal with waste management in an organized way. (While cycling around Cambodia, we've smelled enough burning plastic to last a lifetime, or at least shorten it.) But without beach clean ups, the island would literally drown in plastic.

The only partial solution was to find a way to burn less plastic, and the only way to do that was to make the debris useful again. MCC diverts a fraction of the styrofoam infestation by shredding it for bean bag stuffing, but I was interested in the creative potential of all the shoes. Yes, shoes. The perimeter of the island was lined with hundreds upon hundreds of flip flops and sandals. The shoes had captivated the imagination of other volunteers too, ranging from a legendary decorative flip flop tree to an uncomfortable hammock. I opted for something basic but solid--a stool. Constructed of about fifty pieces of rejected footwear, "The Shoel" turned out to be a bit of a commitment by the time we collected, washed, drilled holes, and lashed them together with fishing rope also scavenged from the beach. With the (temporary?) success of The Shoel, I was ready to move on to a whole bench, but unfortunately I procrastinated until too close to our departure for that one.

If you can't stand the smoke, get off of the island--Unfortunately, the previously mentioned beach cleanup rubbish was just one source of smoke to fill our nostrils on Koh Seh. Perhaps the least offensive, but still overpowering, was piles of sea grass burned along the beach often filling up our cabin. The beach collected an unnatural amount of sea grass from the illegal trawlers uprooting it as they dragged their nets attached to heavy apparatus along the sea floor. Apparently, if the sea grass wasn't raked off the beach, it would cause a stinky mess of decomposition and its smoke was rumored to keep the mosquitos at bay. More constant was the cigarette smoke. We were in a small minority of non-smokers on the island, so it seemed that there was always someone puffing away upwind of us, which really limited our desire to be social. 

It's the simple things that make a difference--It was also really disappointing to find cigarette butts everywhere on the ground, even intentionally thrown onto the same beach and in to the same ocean that the people doing it were claiming to be protecting! The glaring hypocrisy really boggled our minds. As volunteers, we were actually paying a good chunk of money to pick up litter mostly created by people who were getting paid to be there. When we chose to collect and weigh the litter on a weekly basis, it ranged from three to seven pounds each time!

While it is normal to see butts and litter everywhere in Asia, we had falsely assumed that things would be different in this microcosm of environmental passion. And that's when we realized how our latent expectations had misled us. At least as of yet, MCC is not a broad marine conservation organization consistently concerned about the dispersed but constant threats of climate change, ocean acidification, bioaccumulation of toxins, marine debris, and so on. It is a marine protection organization focused specifically on the most immediate and direct threat of illegal fishing on local habitats and species. We understand it is a relatively young organization; we get that it is resource-strapped from being solely funded by volunteer fees; we know everything is an uphill battle in Cambodia. But none of that is an obstacle to keeping your toxic butt out of the sea or recycling your beer can instead of trying to burn it. As we see it, if you're going to forcefully stop impoverished fisherfolk from destroying the ocean, then you better being doing everything you can to not contribute to its demise either, especially when a starting point would be simply refraining from eating and drinking out of single-use plastic and styrofoam, as one example.

Since the lack of a general environmental ethic was undermining MCC's victories, at least in our eyes, we introduced a "how to walk our talk" initiative as diplomatically as we could. Staff and volunteers brainstormed ideas and got some of them underway. We fashioned lids on garbage cans to see if that helped with the litter problem. I got a compost system up and running that had fallen by the wayside, diverting a portion of the food waste from being dumped and/or burned. Matt nailed makeshift ashtrays to trees near the hammock hangout spots along the beach, where some but not all butts were then deposited. As it turned out, the containers were too big since folks then quickly filled them with empty beer cans and cigarette packaging. We hope we left some idea of accountability for personal actions and perhaps others will continue where we left off.

Perhaps as the strangest moment in our history of environmental activism, we were particularly proud of getting the momentum going on an "incinerator" as slightly better way to burn garbage. While it would not actually reach true incineration temperatures that would eliminate toxins in the burning material, the hope was it would burn faster and more thoroughly, thus reducing the island residents' overall exposure to the fumes and reducing the quantity of toxic ash that then had to be "disposed of." Paul had made the design, rocks for the walls had been hauled to the site, and the foundation had been laid by the time we left. MCC just needed enough money to buy more cement in order for the project to progress. 

We were happy to offer what we could to Marine Conservation Cambodia and we took away new knowledge and gained new skills. We enjoyed getting to know the multicultural and personality-diverse cast of characters on the island, made up of a constantly shifting collection of volunteers, longterm staff, and their kids. We're grateful to have had the opportunity of an experience different from anything else on our journey, even if it wasn't quite the right fit to settle in to for a longer stay. Never totally confident with how our efforts were being received, we were honored to have some people go out of their way to thank us when it was time to move on. Perhaps the best thank you came from the ocean. On the boat ride back to the mainland, we had our first and only sighting of some of the few dolphins still hanging on in these trouble waters.

We arrived to Cambodia's coast at Kep, a couple of weeks after our original plan that was made before my rim cracked in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Kep is an odd place in its modern incarnation, but its quirkiness is rooted in its history. It was first a beach resort town for the French and Cambodian elite from the turn of the 20th century until the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. The French colonial mansions as well as modernist villas were abruptly abandoned, later being stripped of nearly everything as impoverished local residents did whatever they could to survive during those years and through their aftermath. Kep is now on its way to thriving once again as one of the fastest growing areas for tourism, despite only having one small beach with white sand trucked over from Sihanoukville every couple of weeks. There is not a whole lot to do in Kep after gazing upon a collection of seaside statues, poking around the decaying shells of structures built for fancier times, and eating Kep's signature dish of blue crab cooked with local green pepper corns. That does make it ideal for relaxation though, and we found the perfect place to attempt this at a small hillside resort called Khmer Hands Bungalows. It is run as a social enterprise by an American-Khmer couple who provide disadvantaged youth with hospitality and English skills to open up further opportunities in life.

From Kep, we took a boat shuttle out to Koh Tonsay, a.k.a. Rabbit Island, to take the relaxing to the next level. It is not much more than a collection of basic bungalows run by several Khmer families on a tiny island in the Gulf of Thailand. While most people simply alternate between sitting on the beach, swimming, eating, and of course drinking, my idea of relaxing is catching up on this blog. I did at least bring my productivity to a hammock at the water's edge, so the office view was quite soothing as I typed away. That is, until the battery died mid-afternoon several hours before the generator was fired up for the evening. Then I was simply forced to enjoy a sunset and happy hour beers that were cheaper than those on the mainland.

After returning to the mainland from Rabbit Island, it wasn't long before we were headed out on another boat to a neighboring island in the gulf. In Kep, we had been in discussion with an organization called Marine Conservation Cambodia about the possibility of volunteering with them. They invited us to check out their research base on Koh Seh (Horse Island) for a few days to learn more about them. As the boat pulled in to the pier, we were greeted by a tribe of outgoing kids wearing homemade cardboard masks. We had happened to arrive just as Halloween festivities were, a trick or treat circuit to all of the bungalows, and a not-so-scary story campfire. Almost all of the kids had grown up in Cambodia, so the phrase "trick or treat" had to be explained to them. It didn't stick, so by the time they got to our bungalow, I had to prompt them with "What do you say?" while holding the candy bowl above my head. They all put on their sweetest smiles and in unison said, "Please!" It was perhaps the only time I have ever told a child not to say please! "Nope, don't say please, say trick or treat!" The evening was a great introduction to the island and we felt instantly absorbed into the family atmosphere.

The next couple of days we snorkeled along the reef, cleaned up a small section of the beach covered in plastic pollution from the Cambodian and Vietnamese mainlands, and chatted with the staff and volunteers on the island. We got a good vibe from it all so, while watching a brilliant sunset, we decided that we should commit at least a month of our journey to contributing to the efforts here in any way we could.

However, with limited internet connectivity on the island, we weren’t quite ready to jump in right away. We needed a bit of time to be ready to disconnect, so we returned to Kep. After a nice evening at the Treetop Bungalows, we cycled a couple of hours west to the riverside town of Kampot, a pleasant haven for a plethora of ex-pats to run restaurants and bars all catering to each other. Our visit coincided with the first annual Kampot Writers and Readers Festival so town was a little more lively than usual for that time of the year. In keeping with Cambodian style, it was still a laidback affair with loose organization, but in principle it was a really cool idea. After attending one disappointing session about travel writing, I decided that it wasn’t worth sparing the time to try the other events though. I had a lot of my own travel writing to catch up on!

We had picked some simple and cheap riverside bungalows a ways out of town center as a quiet place to work. It was peaceful for a couple of days, despite loud construction of new bungalows right next to ours beginning at 7am. Unfortunately, the weekend came around and an obnoxious group of partiers showed up that we dubbed “The Glitter People” as they were for some reason covered in silver glitter. The Glitter People joined the music pumping at the bungalow competitors next door, then returned in the middle of the night unable to remember which bungalow was theirs. We know this because a couple of them stood in front of ours and stupidly debated about whether or not their bungalow had two bikes parked in front of it….um, no dude, not your cabin.

We relocated into the town center the next morning, which allowed for several days of café hopping, literally spending all day working on the computer, only stretching the legs and getting a change of scenery as the next meal or snack time approached. We found the best spot for coffee, amazing mango and passionfruit sorbet, and even authentic Italian pasta and gnocchi cooked up along local food in a row of food stalls over the course of our daily wanderings. After a day or so of errands and shopping to prepare for the isolation of island living, we cycled back to Kep and headed out to Koh Seh to begin our month with Marine Conservation Cambodia.

Leaving Hoi An, we stopped at My Son ruins, a small complex of temples dedicated to worshipping the Hindu god Shiva. The site is thought to be the longest continuously inhabited place in Indochina as an integral part of the Champa kingdom that ruled what is now Central Vietnam from the 3rd to 17th centuries. It was designated a UNESCO site in 1999, despite extensive damage caused by US bombing of the Viet Cong hiding out there during the war. We noticed bomb craters were almost as numerous as the crumbled buildings glowing warmly in the evening light.

We were determined to get back into the hills on the Ho Chi Minh Highway, so from My Son we turned inland on one of those “short cuts that’s really a long cut” roads that Matt always digs up on his various route finding apps. It may not have been such slow going if the dirt road had not turned to puddles and mud in a heavy rainstorm the night before. Matt really prefers that I ride ahead of him, so I was the one to discover a deceptively deep puddle with some loose rocks on the bottom, enough to send my top-heavy big-booty bike careening into the mud. Of course, I went down with it and Matt safely documented from afar. Ok, he did get one boot muddy too while helping to extract my bike and me from our predicament.

A few more days of hot, hilly riding (what’s new?), and meeting some real characters along the way, brought us to the likeable city of Kon Tum. We encountered genuinely friendly people and lots of good street food, the two most important aspects of our travel at this point. That evening the streets echoed with deep drum beats while groups of adolescent boys roamed the streets and took over intersections for lion dances and fire-blowing performances. While watching one troupe perform in the courtyard of a mansion in exchange for a generous donation from the occupants, we learned that this was only the lead up to the actual Mid-Autumn Festival the next day.

Not wanting to miss out on even better festivities, we decided to stay an extra day in Kon Tum. The following night was more of the same lion dances, but with the addition of teams of performers snaking long, flowing dragon puppets through the streets. That alone was quite a feat since so many people turned out to watch from the seat of their motorbike that the streets were packed and intersections were at a stand still, but this appeared to just be part of the tradition. The festival is largely a celebration of children, who are given gifts of lanterns and fun masks to wear. In Kon Tum, bands of teens had crafted their own large-scale lanterns, the ever-popular minions included, which they paraded above the crowds like a low-tech Macy’s day parade. We also bought some of the traditional moon cakes from temporary stalls that reminded us of fireworks stands for 4th of July. The dense moon cakes were filled with a sweet paste and a hardened egg yolk in each half when split in half.

We continued south, overnighting in another fun city called Buon Ma Thuot, and passing by scenic Lak Lake, then arriving late in the day at the junction for Hwy 722, an alternative route to Dalat. The first ten miles of our ride the next morning took us on a gentle climb through coffeeland and poor communities, but the road was in solid shape even with a fun rope-pulled boat ferry crossing on a small river. Then it abruptly turned to dirt as it steeply ascended a hill that formed one side of the broad valley. The road soon narrowed to a deeply rutted footpath, which in and of itself would have been rideable except that it was made of a treacherous layer of extremely slippery compacted clay. We barely maintained enough traction to push forward and even then the wheels slipped out from underneath our bikes a few times.

How could this be the correct road? Our route apps insisted that it was, so I googled “Road 722 in Vietnam” to see if we could get more information on what lay ahead, optimistic that this was just a temporary inconvenience. Sure enough, a blog entry popped up written by some motorbikers who had similar ambitions as us, but sought out this road from the Dalat end. It took them seven hours to go 15 kilometers, mostly pushing their bikes through really rough conditions. And they were going downhill.

We had provisions to camp, which would be a given if we continued on. But after only covering one and a half miles in two hours and not really having any fun, we realized the scope of the adventure. It would be a real feat of endurance with some moments of misery to make it the 40ish miles with 5,000 feet of elevation gain to Dalat. Or we could turn around and take the regular road to Dalat, thus having more time to see more of Vietnam. As though it was sent to put an end to our indecision, it started to rain and the leeches came out. So... We reached the same town where we had started that morning in the pouring rain. We were muddy, soaked, and disheartened from not being hardcore, but still happy to be off that hellish trail marked as a highway on multiple maps.

Highway 725 proved to be a real road, even recently expanded and improved, so the 4,000-foot climb up to Dalat went quite smoothly. While the cool mountain climate requiring long-sleeves (or a winter jacket if you are Vietnamese) was indeed a nice relief from the heat, we were not particularly drawn to the city itself. The real charm of the area is in the outlying attractions, such as waterfalls, which we were not exactly motivated to ride to on the one rainy day we had for exploring. But since we had worked so hard to get up there, we had to at least see something exciting. This took the form of “The Crazy House”, a fanciful creation of a radical architect who seemingly sculpted buildings out of cement rather than constructed them. Dalat’s famed kitsch is popular with Chinese tourists, whom we followed on vine-shaped staircases that traversed steep rooftops while basking in the irony of a “natural theme to inspire people to be closer with nature” made entirely out of shoddily-painted concrete.

We actually much preferred the 100 Roofs Café, a lesser-known alternative with the same core concept as the Crazy House. We stumbled upon it by chance and almost passed it by since the tiny storefront did not reveal the vast multi-floor maze of dark rooms and narrow passageways inside. It would have been perfect for Halloween. We got an intimate tour from the daughter of the visionary architect, who is--not too surprisingly--friends with the creator of the Crazy House.

In the afternoon, we took shelter from the rain in Dalat’s extensive market, sampling strawberries and wine, local products that thrive in the otherwise pine-forested hilly terrain. A nice stop at Pongour Falls on the way out of town the next day rounded out our Dalat experience.

Next we were aiming for the one and only Ho Chi Minh City, more commonly called Saigon by the people who live there, albeit with a little bit of trepidation. We were able to take back roads for most of the way, rapidly descending into the heat once again.  Our route protected us from the worst of the traffic, but gazing across hazy valleys indicated we had not escaped HCMC’s notorious air pollution blowing inland. Out came the pollution masks for the first time since… I don’t know when.

Having arrived to Saigon first through an industrial zone and shipping port, we were pleasantly surprised with the feel of the city once we got into the heart of it. Referred to by numbered districts a la Hunger Games, we headed straight for District One and found an alley-based neighborhood with quieter guesthouses than the nearby backpacker district of Pham Ngu Lao, lazily known as PNL. The volume of traffic was certainly intense, but having already been subjected to two months of Vietnamese-style driving, it was not nearly as intimidating as we had been led to believe it would be. The one issue we really had was motorbikes honking us, as pedestrians, when they opted for the sidewalk over the road. Really? Where would they prefer us to walk, in the middle of the road?

After a few days of taking in Saigon, we concluded that it was like a Vietnamese version of New York City: real, gritty, edgy, bustling, essential to find your niche, but also possible to find anything you desire, such as… craft beer! Hands down the best craft beer we have sampled on this journey, we could have visited Pasteur Street Brewing Company every night if the ol’ travel budget allowed. It came as no surprise once we learned the brewmaster was previously brewing at Upslope in Boulder, Colorado. I was smitten with a passionfruit wheat and Matt loved the perfectly hoppy IPA.

Besides the best beer, we also found the best bike mechanic of our journey thus far. Van claims that the well-stocked, fairly-priced Saigon Bike Shop is only his hobby; his bread and butter comes from customizable bike tours of the Mekong Delta and beyond. We spent a day pampering the bikes with everything they needed except a good cleaning, then turned our attention towards various errands that I will spare you the details of in the city where you can find anything you desire. Including fresh-baked cream puffs and McDonald’s soft serve. Not that we would know from firsthand experience or anything…

One important errand worth noting was meeting up with Tieme, an ex-pat who cycled his way to Saigon from the Netherlands and had some amazing stories to tell over dinner one night. He also happened to hold the key to our future of travel: a non-expired ATM card. We had contacted him through the Warm Showers network to see if he could receive it for us. Little did we know that would involve tracking it down at an obscure post office location to be picked up in person. Dinner was the least we owed him for this essential favor!

All of our errands left us little time for sightseeing in Saigon, but we did make it to the hard-hitting exhibits of the War Remnants Museum one afternoon. In addition to an explicit overview of the American-Vietnam War, it also had an important display of the ongoing effects of Agent Orange exposure in Vietnamese society, and a moving collection of photographs taken by photojournalists from all sides who perished in the conflict.

We took comfort from this gravity with some seriously amazing street food, perhaps the best we have encountered in Vietnam, if not this trip, and that is saying a lot considering the time we spent in Thailand. It took a while for me to come around to Vietnamese food, but when I did, it was wholeheartedly. Bun thit nuong was a personal favorite of ours, made up of grilled pork over cold vermicelli rice noodles, garnished with cucumber, a selection of herbs, and mildly spicy fish sauce. Yes, folks, my husband loves things covered in fish sauce these days. Proof that travel is life-changing!

We could have spent another week in Saigon, ideally not running errands, but our visas were rapidly approaching an expiration date and we still had the whole Mekong Delta to see.

​Well, that just figures! We had just spent the morning in the market at Phong Nha town, stocking up on as much food as we thought we could fit in our panniers. We discovered the existence of some new items—instant chow (savory rice porridge) and canned stewed pork to be exact—and bought them in preparation of heading down the western branch of the Ho Chi Minh Highway. Highway seemed like a misnomer for this remote stretch of hilly terrain with very little in the way of food and lodging. But the scenery was reputed to be stunning.

While Matt was doing some maintenance work on the bikes that afternoon, he noticed a broken spoke on his rear wheel. This alone would not have been a big deal, but it was on the drive train side and we lacked the tools needed to remove the cassette. So did every bike/motorbike shop in town. He even tried some repair hack tutorials on YouTube to no avail. It seemed like a bad idea to head in to the middle of nowhere with a known mechanical issue, so we sadly crammed all of that food into our bags and rode to the coast instead. We were optimistic we could fix the problem in Dong Hoi. It was actually an ideal situation as we would get to check out an up-and-coming spot for tourism in its early stages, have a mini-beach vacation, then return to Phong Nha and carry on with the plan.

That optimism faded fast when the only promising bike shop in the city did not have the necessary tools to remove a cassette even though they sold new cassettes in their store. Nonetheless, we settled in to a new hostel called Beachside Backpackers where the awesome staff shuttled Matt around on the back of a motorbike with his wheel in hand to any and all bike and motorbike repair places. No luck. It seemed we would have to save the West Ho Chi Minh Highway for “another time” and continue down the coast.

The day we left Dong Hoi, we rode through a small desert on an empty road running parallel to the coast line and arrived at the Vinh Moc Tunnels shortly before they closed. We followed a local guide through the complex of tunnels dug for protection from the heavy bombing of the Demilitarized Zone during the American-Vietnam War. We learned about the ingenuity of designing the tunnels to evade detection while making them viable for long term occupancy. As we peered into alcoves that served as the living space for an entire family, it seemed surreal that this was a reality for Vietnamese just forty years before. And they were luckier than most.

From Vinh Moc, we continued south through rural areas abundant with two things: fields of family tombs and fields of sand. Apparently, many of the elaborate tombs are those of “Viet Kieu,” or Overseas Vietnamese, who wished to be buried in their homeland. As for the fields of sand, it seemed the only viable crop was cassava, which makes sense given its drought tolerance and ability to grow in nutrient-poor soil.

Reaching the next major city of Hue, Matt was able to find the long sought after tools to take off the cassette. After replacing the spoke, he was whisked away on the back of a motorbike to the wheel-truing specialist with a homemade truing machine. Quite ironically, by the time he got it fixed, we had cycled about the same distance as if we had stuck to our desired inland route. The main difference was that this was less remote should one broken spoke have led to more.

With the rest of our time in Hue, we walked around the old citadel, explored an extensive market, visited one of several Buddhist pagodas, and even an out-of-the-way elephant v. tiger fighting arena, thankfully now historical.
After Hue, we overnighted in an odd beach resort town popular with Vietnamese before tackling the famous Hoi Van pass topographically delineating the north and central regions of Vietnam. Climbing the pass felt pretty gradual after some of the hills inland and the view at the top was certainly worth it. However, we didn’t linger long since the obnoxious vendors wouldn’t leave us alone. We coasted down the other side and in to Da Nang. We didn’t see much of the city since we opted to cycle along a coastline that was obscured by major development, mostly under construction. It seems that Da Nang has plans to become the next big thing in resort world.

We arrived in Hoi An that evening, a destination we were both excited about and wary of given its recent surge in popularity. We had heard it was amazing and we had also heard it was way too touristy. The family running the Vesper Homestay was setting up an elaborate altar in the doorway the next morning as we were heading out to explore the town. Our curiosity was met with brief replies, but we pieced together the story. This was an offering to their ancestors to show gratitude for their ability to have recently purchased the business from the previous family. They would be having a house warming party in the afternoon and we could come, but the invitation sounded more obligatory than genuine.

While we were returning to out-of-town hotel that night, we realized we were on the wrong road and turned around. “Thank goodness!” I thought because there was some really bad karaoke going on. Once on the correct road, the karaoke got louder and louder, and loudest when we reached our place due to the unavoidable fact that it was at our place! The courtyard was literally trashed with empty beer bottles and wads of used napkins. There were still a few tables of partiers in the lobby-like living room. Our host family who was so nonchalant about us that morning was then quite jovial and outgoing, insisting that we take a seat with them for food and drink. Well, it would have been nice to know we were so welcome before we ate dinner in town… By the time we came downstairs the next morning, all evidence of the rager had been erased except for a stack of twelve empty cases of Tiger beer bottles. The best part was that the family had promptly returned to their awkwardly non-social MO!

We spent the day at a lovely beach just a couple of miles from Hoi An, perhaps not the most neutral place to ponder our strategy moving forward after having a wrench thrown in our plan. We had just learned from Hoi An’s top visa specialist, Mr. Hung, that renewing my visa for another month was going to be an expensive investment in money and time, $115 and 10 days to be exact. Allegedly, this was because of an unfortunate combination of having gotten it issued in Kunming, crossing the border at Lao Cai, flying in to Hanoi, and then renewing it there. Despite the fact that we were still in the same country, there are ridiculous laws governing visas being renewed in different regions of the country than they were issued from. So it would take a while to push my visa through the system via bribes to officials in Saigon, certainly a lot longer than we needed to spend in Hoi An.

Our other option was to ride to the nearest border with Cambodia. We would have to rush out of Hoi An and skip the rest of Vietnam, or pay for new pricey visas if we wished to return. In the end, the visa extension option won the debate with the justification that I could really use the time for writing projects, including catching up on our perpetually behind-the-times blog. We turned in my passport and moved to a more comfortable homestay since we were settling in for the long haul, or at least the longest we had stayed in one place continuously since arriving in Beijing over a year ago. So it’s particularly sad that within a few days, we were ready to be done with Hoi An.

Sure, it was quaint with all of the lanterns strung across the streets in Old Town and the decorative lights along the river at night. It was certainly more peaceful and bicycle-friendly with a fraction of the traffic and honking of elsewhere in Vietnam. But it was so obvious that the recent surge in mass tourism has created a dynamic quite frustrating for us as budget-obsessed bicycle travelers. While it is a fairly common practice for Vietnamese to try to charge tourists a higher price all over the country, usually making it clear you know the real rate is enough to get it, or pretty close to it. In Hoi An, there was a pervasive attitude that it was their right to charge tourists more than locals. They were actually offended when we requested to pay the real price. We could not even sit at a tiny plastic table on a tiny plastic chair to eat food cooked in makeshift kitchen on the sidewalk without paying more. We know, we watched very carefully when the Vietnamese paid. Bargaining is a part of travel, no doubt, but it became draining to do it for every little transaction. We try to shop in small locally-owned shops as a principle of responsible travel, but in Hoi An we were quoted more than double the price we had paid elsewhere for the same items. We actually sought out a chain mini-mart simply because it had price tags and a computerized check out system! Only in Hoi An…

Besides the overt “hello, buy something”, we got tired of the fake-friendly interactions where someone would strike up get-to-know-you conversation with a clear agenda of promoting their tour, tailor shop, hotel, or whatever place would give them a commission for getting us in the door. These folks were forward enough to sit down at our table without our invitation while we were eating previously mentioned street food at a higher price.

In December 2014, Travelfish.org wrote about a sleepy fishing village where "a Western face is still very much a novelty." We thought a ride out to Cam Tanh would make a nice change of pace from the money-grubbing vibe in Hoi An. Besides, it mentioned that residents would be happy to let you try paddling a coracle if you like, and that sounded pretty cool. Before we even reached the village proper, a woman on a motorbike was already recruiting us to come to her coracle tour business and tried to lead us all the way there. Once in the village, we could not pause for a photo without hearing the next “coracle experience” sales pitch from yet another operator. A simple, polite “no thank you” had no effect on deterring anyone, as we had since lost any interest simply from the volume of opportunities being persistently pushed on us. It’s like the tragedy of the commons is for real or something. Except there were plenty of tourists bobbing around in orange life vests and conical hats to suggest otherwise. I guess that Travelfish article needs to be updated less than a year after publishing. Hoi An is simply changing that fast.
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And then there were the flyer people…oh, wait…my husband was one of them. We relied on the saying “if you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em” to justify Matt joining a scrum of obnoxious bar flyer-hander-outers who collectively annoyed the crap out of every tourist in the Old Town each night. He made the big bucks of around $13 for a four-hour night, but perhaps the more valuable outcome was the rise in my productivity level without his constant company! While he didn’t exactly love harassing strangers to go to an unoriginal struggling bar, he did gain some interesting insights from being on the other side of the tourism scene. Plus, it made for great people watching and meeting some real characters.

Mr. Hung had worked his magic and my passport was returned with the all-important extension right on time. To add insult to injury, the tiny stamp granting me another 30 days was marked $10! If only it were that simple. With our Hoi An layover soon coming to an end, we became better at appreciating the positive aspects of our stay. We took the time to chat with the adorable mother and daughter team running the Ly Phuc Homestay and we actually got around to sitting out on the balcony of our room for a sunset happy hour. We ate a last meal at our regular spot of the central market food stalls where the dishes were always delicious with a fair advertised price. We didn’t even mind that every vendor hounded us upon setting food inside. Maybe we even kind of liked it.