Christmas in Cambodia

In front of a Souvenir shop where the goods were made by victims of landmines

Here's a shot from us walking into the Airport after landing. The flight from Ho Chi Mihn City was neat cuz we took this small two engine propeller plane that fit like 40 people. The flight was an hour long, and we got a little mini Kit Kat and fruit to tide us over.The Lin Ratanak Angkor

Here's a shot of our hotel, it was really, really nice. After being in Korea for 4 months it was nice to have a shower with good hard pressure, as well as standing in a bathtub to shower. It's nice to be able to step out of the shower and step on to a nice dry floor. The food was pretty good too. They also had a nice outdoor pool that was great for cooling off during tour breaks in the day. On our 2nd last night we got massauges in our room, not worth the 10 dollars.

The South Gate

These two pics were taken at the South gate, and was pretty much the first thing we saw walking into the Angkor Thom area of the Angkor temple comlexes. I didn't really realize how huge the whole Angkor area was, it was massive and very spread out through this jungle-like area. Definitely very neat.

The Banyon Temple

After walking through the South Gate we headed to the Banyon Temple, the walls of this temple were crazy!!! Huge sandstone walls covered with millions of intrericate carvings. Most of the walls had their own theme to them, one was of soldiers marching, another depicting worship inside the temple and another that we saw depicted a water scene complete with alligators eating people.

Who Likes Tourist Pictures?

This was a pic from our mini photo shoot with some people who work in the park and take pics with the tourist. This was taken on the top of the Banyon temple. They're dressed in the traditional garb, well except for the peacock guys on the ends...and the dude in the mask for that matter. Later that evening we went had had dinner at a restaurant where they did have people dressed like this doing traditional Cambodian folk dancing and little mini plays. It was pretty cool.

Trevor gets swarmed

In between temples there are these mini vendor villages where locals sell all sorts of crafts, like flutes, necklaces, bracelets, T-shirts, fans, guide books and silk goods. There most dangerous weapons are the children. These kids follow you almost relentlessly, pleading and begging you to buy something. They barder themselves and with each other at times. These three little girls all had sad looks on their faces and wouldn't let go of me. Even though I had already bought 5 bracelets from another vendor, I bought one more from each of them too. Scenes like this happened frequently in Cambodia and a little bit in Vietnam when you get out to the rural areas.

Entrance to Angkor Wat Temple

Angkor Wat Temple

Here's the pics from the namesake of the area Angkor Wat, probably the biggest temple system. It's surrounded by a giant mote which originally contained alligators and cobras, but the cobras are continually removed. The temple also had 4 libraries for monks, the King's family and for the King. It also had four swimming pools inside, pretty swank but hey he's a king right. We watched the sunset here, which was pretty cool, but I would have like to have spent a little more time here. We didn't get to check out the interior of the main temple, just the outside. That was it for the day as far as temple were concerned. As stated earlier that night we went and saw some traditional dancing.

Musicians injured by landmines

Julie and I fell behind the rest of the group because, yet again, I was mobbed by a group of villagers selling stuff. They ended up takin a right off the main path so we ended up walkin right past them, we were searching for them for a good 15min and eventually realized that they couldn't have made it as far as we were so we doubled back and found them at the enterance of the temple.

Me inside the trunk of a giant treeTrees over taking the temple

Ta Prom (Old Brahma)

These three pics above were taken in a set of temples about 15min drive North East of the Ankor Wat temples. It was actually a pretty cool area that was slowly getting destroyed by these monstrous trees. I believe they were Sandalwood Wood trees, but don't quote me on that, cuz our tour guide was a little bit hard to understand. Anyways part of Tomb Raider 1 was filmed here.

Mini Killing Fields Memorial

We took a brief temple break to check out the Cambodian war museum as well as a small memorial to victims of the many massacres that took place when the Pol Pot regime were in power. The museum was pretty crazy, there were lots of old rusted out tanks, anti-tank guns, and anti-aircraft guns. They also had tons of different military equipment all sorts of guns, uniforms, and rocket launchers. But the craziest thing was that they actually had two land mines inside the museum. Now I' don't know if they were fake or what, but our tour guide kept telling us not to walk close to there. Needless to say I didn't want to test them out. We probably spent 20 mins at the most here then we headed to the Killing field memorial, which I really wanted to see. They have a big me memorial for the victims in Phenom Phen, but since we weren't goin there, this was the best I'd get to see. The memorial was inside a buddhist temple where the monks worked to spread awareness of HIV and AIDS, they were really nice guys, one even let me use his bathroom, which I was very greatful for because it was an extreme emergency.

Petting an Elephant

As you can see by the picture Julie was a little bit affraid to be so close-up to the elephant. They were just little ones and they seemed pretty calm. It was awesomw to be able to get so close and pet it's trunk.

Elephant ride on X-mas

Instead of hiking the 15-20 minutes ups to Phnom Bakheng, we decided to splurge and pay the $15 each to ride the elephant up the hill. I mean why not? It was Christmas for cryin out loud. It was a nice peaceful ride up to watch the sunset, and I was amazed to see how many elephants they had runnin the circuit. On the way up we must've past about 8 or 9 other elephants, it was pretty cool.

Sunset @ Phnom Bakheng

We ended up watching the Christmas sunset at the top of a big hill NW of the Ankor Wat temple. We hiked up the 5 very steep storeys and got some good pictures of each other at the top of the temple. From the top of the temple you could get a pretty good veiw of the country side and some of the many other temples . What made even nicer was the fact that our tour guide played a traditional Cambodian instrument called a Tro U, a two string deal played with a bow almost like a cross between a banjo and a fiddle. It was a very peaceful sunset.

Downtown Siem Reap

The last day we left Cambodia at 5:00pm so we slept in a little and then went walking around the main drag. These last two pics were taken on a little bridge over the Seim Reap river. We ended up walking to a park, where there were these huge trees that were full of bats. Then we headed to a few souvenir places, but the prices were ridiculous when compared to the deals we got at the temples. When we left Cambodia it was in the mid-30's, I was sweatin' buckets. Fortuneately in was alot cooler in Hanoi, our next stop, there it was in the low to mid 20's. Once I get Julie's pics I post that blog, it might have to be a two-parter lots of pictures from Vietnam.