Grasshopper Adventures: Saigon Bicycle Food Tour to the Cambodian Market

Get on, losers, we're bicycling through hidden Saigon to the Cambodian market!

Last weekend Sieu and I had a great experience: we participated in a bicycle ride around Ho Chi Minh City that featured some great food, exciting alleyways, and awesome local areas. We went down hems barely wider than our handlebars, we crossed massive rivers of evening rush hour traffic, and we cycled through the city's biggest (and most fragrant!) flower market, all in the name of exercise, exploration, and eats.

But best of all, our mid-trip destination was the exhilarating dinner and snack stop in the Cambodian market in District 10, about 1/3 of the way through our 3 hour and 15 minute trek.

Because of COVID, Grasshopper Adventures has moved more of a focus on day trips of varying kinds. It's a genuine pleasure to explore more of this city, which hides a lot of what makes it unique inside twisting alleys (hems) and dense, crowded local markets. In olden times, this company (which operates in several SE Asian countries) specializes in longer trips, but these local ones are a fantastic way to explore your own backyard and appreciate the complexity and energy of this dynamic city.

On their evening foodie tour (which is 20km, or about 11.8 miles), you'll get an up-close-and-personal experience that you won't soon forget.

Click on through to see our route and more pics of the market!

He's Come Undone (33rd-Year Edition)

I can't articulate WHY... but this speaks to me.

Real talk.

For a while in 2016, it indeed looked like I'd come undone. A better metaphor is that it was like being unmoored and lost at sea.

Unmooring a vessel means to lift up the anchor and release ties to the dock, releasing it to the weather, the sea, and the skill of the crew. It's always the start of any journey, and no ship leaves dock without a destination. I unmoored myself from Chicago when I left to travel abroad. The thing about journeys is that, when you have a stated end goal, your journey will end in either success or failure.

In other words, becoming unmoored is the first step to achieving your dreams. However, being unmoored is also the first step in getting truly lost.

This year, I ran into some headwinds at sea.

I had a series of jobs that I didn't like. I felt like my real talents were going to waste, but wasn't always able to articulate those talents in a way that made sense, to myself or employers. I attempted to start a few businesses, and was marginally successful in one of them. I got a job I loved, and then got fired from when I demanded a contract (oof, disheartening - she operated in America, FYI). I followed a lot of irrational hope, in hindsight.

In the meantime, all my internal plans were in disarray.

Cambodia: Phare, the Cambodian Circus

After our fantastic Indian dinner at Curry Walla, we availed ourselves of one of Siem Reap's most highly flaunted attractions - Phare, the Cambodian circus.

Cambodia: Amateur Foodies Run Amok

Oh... rice. Hello.

The food and drink we enjoyed in Cambodia was enjoyable, but not life-changingly memorable... with three very notable exceptions.

Rice is THE primary crop here (and pepper, if you go to the Kampot region) and, with the kingdom still in a rather steep process of post-war recovery, frankly the cheapest - the result is the "rice with stuff" syndrome, but kind of bland. Rice with chicken. Rice with pork. Rice with beans. There's not much deviation. I've had these dishes hundreds of times before in Vietnam. In many ways, it was staples, and not much else... the 'meat and potatoes' of SE Asia, the 'bread and butter,' but not much in the way of a historical 'jam' to spread on top. In other words, it was good and nourishing but kind of boring - although you probably could have guessed I'd say that, after spending some time exploring the ridiculously intricate palette of Vietnamese culinary traditions.

But... BUT. He said, Three Things! Three Really Great Things! Read on to see just what I did think was AMAZING, and what I'll do again in a heartbeat next time I'm in Siem Reap.

Cambodia: Temples Grandes

Honestly? There's so little I can say about the Angkor temple complex that I haven't already mentioned: it's vast, jungle-y, ancient, and absurdly intricate. It may not be as great a mystery as Easter Island, or the perfect geometry of the Great Pyramids, but it's more than enough for me to take hundreds and hundreds of pictures (which, by the way, are turning out pretty good! I LOVE having a smartphone!) and provide commentary so obvious that a manatee could have written it.

But let's be real... when did not having anything original to say ever stop me?

This is just a smidgen of the central part of the complex. For scale, Angkor Wat is 3 km wide.

Let's look at more pretty things that humans were able to do without computers...

Picture-heavy post ahead!

Cambodia: Siem Reap After Dark

The days were hot, but the nights were cool. So cool!

Siem Reap has, as I've noted, a substantial tourism industry, and at the heart of it (for the younguns, at least) lies Pub Street and the compact but energetic bar scene in the city's core. There are all kinds of venues, for all kinds of people, but the tourist and expat reigns supreme.

Sadly, we didn't go to a Cambodian bar (technically I suppose they're all Cambodian, but you get the idea), but the nights we spent hopping between western-style pubs an clubs were relaxing and fun - just like the rest of the city.

Cambodia: Angkor Wat Short Circuits My Brain

The next afternoon we secured a tuk tuk to Angkor Wat, which lies about 15 minutes from the city center.

You can buy passes for 1 day, 3 days, or 7 days. 7 days seemed excessive, but there's really just too much cool stuff for 1 day, including temples of all descriptions (those descriptions being square, stone, jungle-y, and headless), hundreds of square miles of jungle, ruins, and tourists. So many tourists! The 3 day pass, sold for 40 USD, was a good fit for our plans.

Tuk tuk tours are generally divided into two main offerings: the large circuit and the small circuit.

Cambodia: The Sideshow of Siem Reap

Our next destination was Siem Reap, which I discovered was more than just the gateway to Angkor Wat. The city was a fascinating place in and of itself.

After the speed boat ride, we alighted on a red, sandy dock area, climbing some crumbling steps past the throngs of tuk tuk drivers and children hoping to carry luggage and score a dollar. Getting situated in the tuk tuk we'd reserved (but paying an additional ), we pulled out of the lot and onto the main road, a gravel affair running along the top of a sort-of berm. To either side were planks leading to houses, which rose on stilts above the rice paddies and marshy land that led off into the distance.

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Cool. Cool cool cool.

About 5 minutes into our trip I had the best surprise of my trip - Chris pulled up in a tuk tuk next to me! He signaled we follow him. I had the absolute honor to say, "Follow that tuk tuk!," and only discovered when we got back to Chris' house that he'd said the same thing to his tuk tuk, but wearing his Indiana Jones hat. Scout badge to Chris.

Cambodia: Waterworld

After taking in the cities, towns, countryside, and sheer scale of the lakes and rivers we traversed the next day, I find it's true - there's (yet) another world that exists on Cambodia's lakes and rivers, and Erin and I got to see it all firsthand as we took a speedboat ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap.

From modern construction to traditional rural houses and dense riverside populations to the shifting patchwork of floating communities, the experience was leaps and bounds more interesting than what we would have gotten on a bus ride. The skies were perfect, the sun was sunny, and for six hours we lounged and watched a new world unfold around us.

Cambodia: There and Back Again

Ah, Cambodge! What can I say about you that hasn't been said a thousand times before?! Well, maybe a few words. If you insist, Internet, if you insist.

I will never get tired of taking pictures of palm trees. NEVER.

I absolutely loved my Tet vacation to Vietnam's southwestern neighbor, the Kingdom of Cambodia. This was my first time just goin' to another country, checkin' it out, you know. This entailed all sorts of new things like border crossings and currency exchange.

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I mean, look how close I am to Cambodia! I'm practically there already, might as well go see what's what, right?

I've got a ton of photos, so consider these next few entries in the blog my finally getting down on paper the memories, moments, sights, musings, and observations that I made over the course of 8 days in early 2014.

One more thing - I wanted to add some more history into these, but virtually everything I learned was after I visited. To give you a sense of me when I took these pictures, I'll keep the historical commentary short and relevant, and try and let my pictures speak for themselves.

So dim the lights, make yourself some rice dish or whatever you're into right now, and click through...

My 2014 New Year's Resolutions

A funny reminder that no one's perfect. Resolution time!

[Edit: hey, check out how I did on these goals in my 2014 Post-Mortem!]

Hello, my friends. Again, welcome to 2014!

What a crazy, wild year it's been. Not just for me, either, it seems - I've seen many, many social media updates marking what an exciting year it's been for my family and friends.

In 2013 I completed a TEFL certificate, moved to Vietnam, started (and maintained, in possibly the biggest surprise of the year!) a personal travel blog, and started a new job in a new field. I've been medically stable and, besides a few speedbumps due to a new climate and environment, am in fairly good health. My 30's are kicking ass and taking names so far. Here's to keeping that momentum for next year!

With the new year comes the Western tradition of New Year's Resolutions. As I look to the next few years of my master plan, I've come up with the following list of things I want to work on this year. Some are already underway, and some will take more work, but all of them are goals that I have for 2014.

Go big or go home...!

What is Tet, and Why Am I Preparing For It?

The blog post pretty much says it all! What the heck is Tet, and with so much time off, why am I doing anything but laying around eating banh mi and re-watching Fringe?

So first, I guess:

What is Tet?

Tet is the Vietnamese lunar new year. It is considered the first day of spring in Vietnam and, because it's a lunar holiday, happens on a different date each year - usually the end of January and the beginning of February. While it's also celebrated in Cambodia, the tour books all say it's a pretty fun time to visit - very colorful. Staying in Vietnam for the Tet holiday is problematic for a couple reasons.