We did this trip in February 2012 with a couple of friends from the “Photo Syndicate”, and it all started in Hanoi. Then we moved down through Vietnam to Hue, Hoi An and Ho Chi Minh City. From there on to Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and finally to Bangkok in Thailand, and after a few days to fly home to Denmark. Erik, my good friend, is also a photo freak like me, so the expectation was high for both good pictures and nice company.

In Hanoi we had ample opportunity to practice street photography. It was gray weather, and it rained a little the whole time. It was tolerable, but things always become a little more exciting, and one is more inspired when the weather is good. Well, those were some good days in Hanoi. From Hanoi we went out to Ha Long Bay, where we were going to sail for a couple of days and enjoy the fantastic limestone cliffs. It was a beautiful and relaxing boat trip, and one beautiful seascape picture followed another. But the weather here, like in Hanoi, was not too good. Maybe we should have waited 1-2 months for the trip. The very cloudy weather is typical for northern Vietnam until about April.

The trip went south to Hue. The biggest experience was that we went through the underground tunnels that Viet Cong soldiers dug when they had to get from north to south and back unseen during the Vietnam War. Our guide thought it was just right for me, and it was. But I am 1.90 meters tall and do not have a particularly flexible back. The soldiers, the tunnels were dug for, must have been a lot smaller than me, so when we came out into the light again, it only took me half an hour to straighten myself up again. And besides, I did not see much during the trip, because I walked with a bend in my hip of about 90 degrees and looked down at the ground. On to Hoi An in the former South with its historical buildings and colorful.

Then came the trip to Ho Chi Minh City or just Saigon, as many of the locals still affectionately call it. Communism has not yet fully taken hold in the country, where tourism makes up a large part of the income. My impression is that people lived a happy life here as in the rest of Vietnam. We took a day trip by boat on the Mekong River Delta, where there was a vibrant life with transport of both goods and people.

We were transported to Phnom Penh – an equally vibrant city as the Vietnamese ones, but Cambodia is a significantly poorer country. “Good old Pol Pot also had the great pleasure, in the latter half of the 1970s, of murdering about 25 percent of his population”. Everyone who had an education was brutally killed. You had to be a “simple” worker in crafts or agriculture to survive. We saw a school that was now a museum and a former prison. The philosophy was that you might as well convert the school into a prison when you no longer needed an education. We also visited the Killing Fields, where the killings took place. A tower filled with skulls documents the atrocities. Those experiences still haunt us, and it is still difficult for my wife to talk about them here in 2025.

The last part of the Cambodia visit was Angkor Wat, and it was a positive way to end the trip.  The temple, or the capital of a kingdom in the 12th century, was first rediscovered in the 19th century. It was fabulous to see how well preserved it is still, even though many of the buildings had almost merged with the surrounding jungle.

When we arrived at our hotel in Bangkok, we were not assigned rooms but suites – luxury apartments on the 25th floor. But what use is that when you are out in the city and taking pictures all the time. We walked around and enjoyed the vibrant city life, and we had a day trip to the floating market in Bangkok, where you can buy almost anything edible.

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