Phnom Pehn

We left the touristy town of Siem Reap that was surrounded by country side and ancient ruins and headed to Phnom Pehn, the capital of Cambodia. Like any capital city, Phnom Pehn was busy, bustling, and crowded. Our tour of the city began by visiting the royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. The entire complex was stunning and my favorite part of the city. Later that evening, we took a sunset cruise out to the Tonle Sap and Mekong Rivers. The sunset was beautiful and we enjoyed our first glimpse into life on the Mekong.

The next day, we toured the Genocide Museum which you can see at the end of the slide show. A former school, this building had been converted into a prison where the Khmer Rouge could torture their prisoners. The exhibits were very hard to walk through. One room had walls of "mug shot" style photos of a couple hundred of the 2 million that were killed while another room showed horrific paintings of torture. I didn't include any photos of the exhibits, just the building itself. Towards the end of their civil war, the Khmer Rouge gained control. The Khmer Rouge forced the people from the cities into the rural areas to become farmers. Their attempt at agricultural reform ironically lead to a famine. The most horrific part of the Khmer Rough was how they selected their victims. They would gather people and tell them they were rebuilding Cambodia and wanted the educated to be the new leaders. The educated were asked to step forward and once identified were later executed. It is easier to control the un-educated than educated. Combined with the genocide of the educated and other deaths under the Khmer Rouge during the 1970's, nearly 2 million people lost their lives, almost 1/3 of the population.

Siem Reap

Although centered heavily around tourism, we were able to gain some perspective into life in Siem Reap and Cambodia. Over 90% of Cambodians are Khmer, the main ethic group and 95% are Buddhist. When walking through the temples of Angkor, we would often see the local Khmer people making offerings of fruit or incense to the various Buddha statues.

Cambodians make, on average, slightly less than $2,500 a year. As we drove past the many small creeks, we would see the men and children out casting nets trying to catch fish or leading the cattle around. We also saw some rice fields and got to try rice right off the rice plant! After farming and the textile industry, tourism is the next biggest market. Almost all of the people that we have come in contact with were in the tourism industry. At each temple there were groups of children selling various trinkets and women selling scarves that would swarm around you trying to get you to buy whatever they could. It would have been nice to escape the touristy areas, but we just didn’t have time for that during this trip.

The pictures below are from around town and of a traditional Khmer music and dance show.

Tom's Favorites: Ta Prahm and Ta Som

This is our final post of the Angkor Temples! Ta Som and Ta Prahm were two of Tom's favorite temples. Over the centuries, the jungle had reclaimed the temples and trees began to grow over and on top of the temple ruins. Seeing such tall trees with large intertwining tangled roots growing on the temples was so neat! The trees seemed to be holding together the ruins, however, when the trees die or fall, they will likely take the ruins with them.

Cambodia is hot!

Cambodia is hot! And when I say hot, I mean that type of relentless heat and humidity that makes you retreat indoors during the hottest hours of the day. Cambodia has two seasons: wet and dry. We were there in November which is the first month of the dry season which runs through March. During the dry season, temperatures can reach up to 104 °F, but when we were there, it was in the mid to upper 90s and humid!

Having just arrived after the end of the rainy season, we could still see the effects of the heavy rains, mainly though the size of the main lake in Cambodia, Lake Tonle Sap. During the dry season, the lake is about 1,000 sq mi, but can reach 9,500 sq mi during the rainy season. As we flew into Siem Reap, we could see that much of the land was still flooded.

For those of you not familiar with Cambodia, it is sandwiched between Thailand and Vietnam with Laos to the north. Parts of Cambodia are a part of the Mekong Delta which extends down through Vietnam.

As I mentioned before, the Angkor Wat complex is huge! Here are pictures of Banteay Kdei, Banteay Samre, Banteay Srei, Prasat Kravan, Pre Rup, and Preah Khan. The pictures really can't do the temples justice. Hopefully we will have the chance to explain the meaning behind the individual pictures. Some of the temples started out a Buddhist, but when the Hindus took over, all the Buddha carvings were removed or changed into Hindu carvings, often ones of dancers. If you have any questions about specific pictures, please do not hesitate to ask!

Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom was an impressive complex of temples. Literally meaning great city, this complex built in the late 12th century covers an area of 9 km². The pictures below are of the five different sites within Angkor Thom.

When we first thought of coming to the Angkor temples, I thought, now would be a great time before it gets too touristy. There were more tourists there than I would have ever imagined. Not too many Americans or Europeans, but the Koreans and Chinese came by the bus loads. Our tour guide was funny and said they call the Koreans locusts because they are so loud.  The temples are still nice, bus it sure would have been nicer if we didn’t have to compete with throngs of other tourists!

Angkor Wat

The temples in Angkor (Siem Reap), Cambodia were absolutely amazing! They were so much larger and more complex than we could have ever imagined. We thought we would share pictures of the most iconic temple with you first, Angkor Wat. This stunning temple was built in the early 12th century as a state temple and capital city. Originally dedicated to Hindu god Vishnu, the temple is used today by Buddhists.

We got to tour all around inside the temple, admire the impressive engravings and carvings, and even got to go all the way to the top. We stayed to watch the sun set at the temple. As the sun lowered and hit the temple, it gave Angkor Wat a beautiful gold glow.

We talk more about Cambodia later, but for now, enjoy the pictures of Angkor Wat!

Kuala Lumpur

By the time we arrived in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, we were exhausted. Jet lag had finally set in and Tom's two weeks of 12 hour nights had finally caught up with him. Despite being exhausted and having limited time, we tried to see as much as we could. Burmese refugee friends had spent time in KL before coming to the US. I had been looking forward to Kuala Lumpur because most of my Our first stop was at the Kuala Lumpur tower which looks like the Seattle space needle. From here, we got great views of the city including Kuala Lumpur's iconic twin towers. Our ticket included admission to an "animal experience" which turned out to be animals kept in rather poor conditions so that was rather sad to see. However, I did get to hold 2 iguanas and the bigger one was just about the coolest and most beautiful lizard I have ever seen.

After that, we took a brief trip through China town. The tourist market had just about anything you could ever want. The sites, sounds, and colors were overwhelming in a fun way. I really wish we could have seen more, but we had to get up at 3:30am the next day so we went to bed early. Plus, the humidity was so intense so it was hard to have a long day. Enjoy the pictures!

Our Day in Singapore

Singapore reminds me of New York, only unimaginably humid, cleaner, safer, and friendlier. Singapore is such a safe city because the government imposes outrageous fines and penalties, so much so that people really don’t partake in crime. (Ex. About $800 for smoking in a no smoking zone or $400 for eating in the subway). At only 137 miles above the equator with a tropical rainforest climate, it was humid!

Singapore is a city, country and island all in one. About 6 million people live there, and are mainly of Chinese, Malay, or Indian decent. There are four official languages, of which English is one making it very easy to get around.
With Buddhism as the most common religion, I was surprised to see the city so decked out for Christmas. Beautiful blue and silver decorations lined the main streets while the different malls put out there own decorations. Speaking of malls, I’ve never seen so many in my life. Instead of streets lined with stores, they have streets lined with shopping malls!

In the evening, one of the men Tom had working with took us to the Singapore Flyer, which is like the London Eye. We had hoped to do the night safari, but on a rainy night, it was the perfect thing to do! Afterwards, he and his wife took us to a Mediterranean vegetarian restaurant, yummy! One day was definitely not enough here. If I’m lucky enough to come back, I hope to be able to go to their nature reserves.

The Gardens of Singapore

I finally got to see Singapore, where Tom has spent over 6 weeks combined this year. Our first stop was the botanical gardens. The gardens were so much larger than I expected. It was an enormous public park with many trails and had a smaller orchid garden. We really enjoyed seeing so many different types of plants. The diversity, patterns, and color among the plants was truly amazing.

Our biggest surprise of the morning was when we rounded a corner and saw a big monitor lizard on the trail! I think the one we saw was a water monitor (Varanus salvator). They can grow up to 10.5 ft, but the one we saw was between 5-6 ft. Water monitors are great swimmers and will eat everything from fidh to crabs to snakes and rodents. After we got over the surprise of seeing him and noticed the size of his claws, we left him alone as he swam away. We also saw a swan, beautiful humming bird, and a few curious squirrels.

The Beauty Below

It's been quite some time since my last post here and with a trip to South East Asia, I thought it would be the perfect time to start back up. I named my blog "On the Path Unwinding" after a verse of one of my favorite songs: Elton John's Circle of Life. One of the lines of the song says, "There is more to see than can ever be seen; more to do than can ever be done." I know I'll never get to see or do everything, but I can never pass up on opportunities like this trip to see so many new places.

While there is "more to see than can ever be seen," I I feel what you do see falls on what you choose to see. The views of flight from Dulles to Korea was quite amazing and unlike anything I had ever seen before. Once on the plane, almost everyone either pulled the window blind shut and tried to go to sleep or shut the window and started to watch movies. I did watch my share of movies, but I made sure to look out the window throughout the flight.

When flying from Dulles to Korea, the shortest path is over the frozen waters of the Arctic, northwestern Canada and the vast northeastern parts Russia. As the sun began to rise, you could see the ice breaking over the frozen arctic waters. Russia was the most amazing. Rivers that looked frozen in time meandered their way through the seemingly barren winter landscape. They created such amazing designs through the landscape; it really was quite stunning. I'll probably never get to those parts of the world, but at least I had the chance to see it from the air.

By the time the second flight from Korea to Singapore took off, it was already nighttime. I've never felt so close to the stars! I had a great view of Orion's Belt and the Gemini constellation for some time. I'm sure I had a great view of others, but I didn't know what I was looking at :)

There was one holy crap we are going to crash movement when the plane hit severe turbulence. Look at the last picture of the slide show and I think you will be able to tell when the pilots had to navigate through some challenging air.