Viet Nam and Cambodia with Kan Travel Service
I took my 16-year-old nephew, Xan, on a trip to Southeast Asia, his first to the area, in June ’07.
For our 16-day trip, I worked with Jim Kan of Kan Travel Service (Petoskey, MI; phone 231/347-8122 or e-mail jim@akantrav.com), who in turn worked with Leneya McCullough of Exotissimo Travel (in the U.S. at 1501 N. Broadway, Ste. 220, Walnut Creek, CA 94596; 925/937-4550, www.exotissimo.com). Exotissimo covers destinations in all of Southeast Asia, offering standard itineraries and independent, custom programs for “finicky” clients.
I made sure we saw all the important sights as well as some I had not seen on my previous six trips to Viet Nam and five to Cambodia.
In Hanoi, in addition to the water puppets, the Temple of Literature, the Ancient Quarter and Ho Chi Minh’s office and mausoleum, Xan discovered a new favorite, pho noodles. We also enjoyed a fine dining experience at Seasons of Hanoi (95B Quan Thanh; phone 04 843 5444), where an excellent meal for the two of us, including drinks, dessert and tip, cost less than $20.
Other Viet Nam destinations included Hue (where we took a cruise on the Perfume River) and Hoi An, both UNESCO World Heritage Site cities, plus Ho Chi Minh City, Danang and My Tho. (I taught school in My Tho a few years ago.) We attended a service at the Cao Dai Great Temple in Tay Ninh — very interesting! Cao Dai is a modern sect, a synthesis of Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist and Christian beliefs, with a little Islam thrown in for good measure.
In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, we saw the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda, which I’d never seen before. We visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum as well as the Killing Fields, where the display of a huge pile of skulls made quite an impression on Xan. Finally, we took a flight to Siem Reap to see Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat.
When I first visited Siem Reap in 1991, I found a sleepy little village with 3,000 to 5,000 people and one rundown hotel. Today it is a city of more than a million with many excellent hotels, including ours, the Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor (1 Vithei Charles de Gaulle, Khum Svay Dang Kum, Siem Reap, Kingdom of Cambodia; phone +885 63 963 888, fax 963 168 or visit http://siemreap.raffles.com). It’s still the best in town, now fully modernized and, for the room we had, charging $380 per day.
The entire cost of our trip, excluding air from the U.S., was $3,744 for the two of us.
JOHN W. CARPENTER
Walloon Lake, MI