Saigon to Siem Reap

Cambodia!

The terrain is mostly the same as in Vietnam: rice, standing water, flat, hot and humid. There are however a few differences. To start, almost all the houses are on stilts:

Like in China, there are gates everywhere, except they look like this:

Also there are a lot of temples designed like this:

Cartoony looking Nagas and Buddhas everywhere

Essentially Cambodia is full of the same style of art, over and over:

Then we have Phnom Penh. The best difference between it and Saigon are that the people actually drive like reasonable human beings (except the bus drivers). Red lights are mostly obeyed and honking is mostly kept to a minimum. There are also Tuk Tuks everywhere.

While in Phnom Penh I went to visit some khmer rouge sites such as s-21 the school turned into a prison

as well as the killing fields, where most people from s-21 were executed

From there it was a few days to Siem Reap, mostly through terrain like this:

Angkor, the home of over a thousand temples and according to wikipedia over 2 million tourists a year (and so so many of them in large tour groups).

Interesting bits included the gates of Angkor Thom

The Bayon in Angkor Thom

Neak Pean

Ta Som

Banteay Srei

And of course Angkor Wat

The weirdest thing about Cambodia so far is that dollars are often preferred over the local Riel, but no one has any coins. This makes for some weird transactions when you're mixing two separate currencies, or you pay in dollars only to receive Riel as change.

Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City

After waiting a few days to get my Visa extended in Hoi An, I made my way west to the mountains and jungles of Vietnam to try to escape the ever present standing water and high humidity, though with little success. Nothing too exciting has happened since then. Still great food, terrible drivers, and no real places to camp (though partially because I was worried about UXO).

I started with My Son, which was a fairly unimpressive set of ruins, but it's supposed to be one of the best examples of that type of architecture:

The highlands of Vietnam are at least more interesting than the flatland by the coast

But the towns dotting the area don't have much more than the odd war memorial (usually accompanied by a Russian or Chinese tank)

The only major stop was Da Lat, which was having a cultural festival so the whole town was decorated with flowers, and it was also incredibly crowded.

After that it was on to Ho Chi Minh City, which has a number of interesting museums with lots of propaganda, and american tanks.

I also spent new years eve there, where they set off fireworks over the river. However, most of the riverfront is blocked off, so millions of people are all crammed into a small space, and people all take their motorcycles and just park them in the middle of the road, particularly on the bridges.