Christmas in Cambodia

After, what felt like a really long flight, we made it to Cambodia!!!! We were in Siem Reap

Going into this trip knowing very little about Cambodia, I was quite surprised at what I saw. We arrived at night, so we could not really take in all of our surroundings, however we were able to see the bright lights of the MANY 5 star hotels. I had heard that Cambodia was a beautiful country, and now after seeing it, I agree. However, there was a greater focus on tourism than I would have ever thought. Everywhere you looked there was a hotel, the next one nicer than the first. Regardless, our time in Cambodia was great!!! A good example is our hotel. The pic below is the front of our hotel. It was extremely nice inside, probably the nicest hotel we had on our whole trip. However, when I looked out past the gates of the hotel, to the left and right, the hotel seemed out of place. The streests, as you can see, were basically dirt roads, buidlings were barely standing straight, it seemed to be a rather poor area of town. And yet, here stood this magnificant, easily 4-5 star hotel, right in the middle of it all.

Well below is our group. There were six of us in total, all of which are teachers in Korea.

This was our van shot on the first day in Cambodia.
Our first stop was the Angkor Wat temples. The pictures don't really do these sights much justice, as it was so mch beautiful in person. In the Khmer language, Angkor means city and Wat means temple, a good description of Angkor Wat itself, as there was much to see.


The detail in some of the temples was amazing... look really close. What do you see? Yup two monkey's cleaning each other. This picture was zoomed in a lot, but as you can see, the one below is not as close, it really shows the detail a bit better.

The amzing thing about these carvings is that they all have a meaning. They are not just a bunch of random drawings, they actaully represent certain people, the king, some of the king's interest, etc...

Below is the carving of the three-headed elephant.

We couldn't resist the group photo...

At the Bayon temple in Angkor Wat we saw the smiling Buddha. Apparently this is a popular place for tourist to take their picture, so, why not...



More temple....

Below I thought was a really nice picture. There were many monks around the temples, and this looked like such a peaceful shot.

The next day we went to another temple, where Trevor and I got lost from our group for about 15-20 mins. Trevor got surrounded by the local children trying to sell stuff to him, and of course its really hard to say no to these kids, so as our group moved forward, we remianed in the same spot. Now I know that 15-20mins doesn't seem like a long time to be lost, but when you see these temples, there are many many ways to go through them and tour around, I got a little worried, but we found them. Our tour guide was releaved when we all met up again...

Below is our our guide playing a Cambodian instrument that some of the local people were selling inside the temple.

This temple was the same temple used in the movie Tomb Raider, which our tour guide liked to mention quite often.. hahah but apparently all the local people really liked having the movie filmed there as it created more jobs for many people, as well as it brought more to their economy, both of which are obviously good. This temple had all of these really REALLY big trees growing in, on and around it. You've never seen big trees, until you've seen these...
This is a popular spot for couples to stand and take their picture, so being the only couple in the group, we did.
While we waited for our tour guide, we met some local children, who spoke English. We were able to learn a bit about them as well as learn some Khmer language from them. It was a really fun experience to meet these kids. They seemed really well behaved and really just seemed interested in us. We gave them some candy, which I think they really liked, because we ran into them later and they asked for more....

The War Museum was after lunch. It was interesting to see some of the history of Cambodia. There were even some areas fenced off, as they apparently contained real landmines, that had not been set off. This is actually still a problem in Cambodia, and many people, innocent people, have come in contact with these bombs, and have lost limbs and even lives. In the lonely planet guide, some advice it gave was, if you need to go to the bathroom, and there are no toilets, don't be too modest and go to far into the woods, because you may find a landmine, there is nothing wrong with going just at the side of the road....

Christmas day, was a great day; we got to ride an elephant!!!! I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty scared. It was something that both of us really wanted to do, but when we got close to the elephant I got really nervous. Once I was on, I felt ok, as Trevor was pretty calm which helped me calm down. I felt kind of bad for the elephant, because she had to take us up a pretty big hill. Along the way we had to pass other elephants who were on their way down, which made me a tad nervous, but we got to the top of the hill to see Phenom Bakheng, where we sat to watch the sunset.

Phenom Bakheng was very tall, but we climed it!!! I look really smal but you can see me on there (Pink top black pants) The climb was well worth it!! The sunset was amazing. You could see forever before the sun started to go down, but as soon as it was down, we had to move quickly. We had a good climb down ahead of us and it got dark really quickly.Earlier that day we learned a little more about Cambodian history and the whole Pol Pot regime. Below is a small board that was up, showing all of the innocent people that lost their lives during that time (1975-79). There was also a small Pagoda type building with glass on the sides. Inside were the skulls and bones of many of the people killed by Pol Pot. It was a hard thing to read about and see.

On our last day in Cambodia, we had some free time before heading to Vietnam, so we decided to walk around town a little. Below is a picture of the middle of a park, four lions, I think representing North, East, South, West.

After the park we did some more shopping then found a little restaurant to have lunch in. Overall, Cambodia was a great experience. Although we did see and experience a lot of poverty, which was a hard thing to see, we also learned a lot and were able to really enjoy and appreciate such a beautiful country.

The last picture I took in Vietnam was of this post in the street. It says, "May Peace Prevail On Earth". After learning so much about Cambodia and Vietnam, I thought this post was something that more people should be looking at and really thinking about.