Astounding Asia By Easton

What a culture shock! Arriving in south east Asia for the first time without knowing what to expect at all.

Vietnam was our very first country in Asia so the culture shock was huge. Especially because we were starting our journey in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh). Saigon is a city with 9 million people and 7 million people ride motorbikes. It makes it super hard to cross the roads. There aren't many stop lights either and nobody obeys the rules of the road anyways. Mine and probably my family's favourite thing was how cheap things were, it was crazy cheap and the markets have everything with lots of fake brands. We also liked the temples, they have really cool designs, architecture and statues. Monks usually live in monasteries at a lot of the temples. They always wear orange robe type things. The idea of Monks is that they show they you don't need all of the gadgets and things that we have, so the idea is we only need the basic things to live with. But we did see a lot of Monks with cameras and cell phones and a few motorbikes. Buddhist males must become a Monk for a certain amount of time. The rules of Monks probably used to be more strict and but they still have less stuff than regular Vietnamese people, they get most of their food and supplies free from donations. For food they walk down the street in the morning and are given spoonfuls of sticky rice which I tried is not bad. For their supplies, you can buy a bucket of supplies like the cleaning buckets we have at home that is full of flip flops and daily necessities which are donated to the temples for the monks. It might not be a bad idea to become a Monk if you like to get free things and like to be respected because Monks get a lot of respect. My favorite two cities in Vietnam were Hoi An and Saigon. We learnt a lot about the American War and my favourite tour was of the Cu Chi tunnels where the Vietnamese hid during the war. They were so tiny and we got to crawl in them but only the tourist ones because the real ones are way too small for a regular north American.

Cambodia was very sad and very cool. Cambodia was very sad because of the genocide and the killing fields. We did the audio tour of the killing fields in Phnom Penh. It was so sad that my sister had to take her headphones off half way through. But some one really smart said if you don't learn from the past the future is bound to repeat itself. Cambodia is cool because of Angkor Wat. There is so many temples that have vines and are falling down and look like temples off of Indiana Jones or Tomb Raider. Oh wait, Tomb Raider was filmed at one of the temples with vines growing up and down it. I found myself a few times running up and down and around the temples pretending to dodge things like Indiana Jones would. There is so much to see at Angkor Wat that I ended up actually taking over 2000 photos. Another reason Cambodia is sad is because of the American War and how many bombs were dropped and the astonishing number of land mines planted. A huge amount of land mines still explode hurting farmers, children playing and even animals, we saw a picture of an elephant with three legs because it stepped on a land mine. All together Cambodia is a great beautiful country but you have to be careful and stay on the paths also make sure you stop on the side of the road by Angkor Wat where they boil and make palm candy you can try and buy.

Laos was very laid back but they did have the best market because of all the food where we ate supper for cheap and stuff to buy. We rented two seater bicycles, me and my mom had our own and Elyssa and Dad shared one. I sat on the back seat of mine and pedaled, it was so hard but really fun.

Thailand was exciting, thrilling and like Laos it was laid back, Bangkok was creepy and cool though. Bangkok has everything you want good and bad and also has three of the biggest malls in the world. We also went to the movie premiere of the The Avengers in the coolest Emperor seating. Thailand was exciting because we went to Chang Mai where we went elephant riding. It was extremely fun and we had to learn the basic commands which are in the Karen hill tribe language. We controlled our own elephants and it was so fun. We went to the Burma border where we ate dinner for $4, saw the White Temple which had photos of Michael Jackson, Angry Birds, different logos, horror movie characters and super heroes which represent the evils of the world. We also got to see the Opium museum where we learnt about the opium trade and how they smoked it, it was disgusting. We then went to the islands and southern beaches. Phuket was like our Mexico to Europeans and Australians so it is very expensive. It was creepy though because of the Ladyboys asking if I wanted a massage. My favourite part of Thailand was the elephant riding.

Hong Kong also has everything and I think it must be like New York. It is very expensive and all the new gadgets come out here before anywhere else in the world. We went to Hong Kong Disneyland which was missing a lot of California's Disneyland rides. Real Chinese food is so good, me and my Dad went for it twice and my sister tried it once. She did not like the three dishes we ordered though. Hong Kong was nice for a week just for a change.

We all loved south east Asia so much.