Cambodia

I think it’s safe to say that we’re all impressed with Cambodia.  Everything about it has been fantastic.  The people smile, they are friendly… They seem truly greatful to have visitors (spending $) to top it off, everything is crazy cheap, think .25$ beer, 2-4$ meals.  Our most expensive meal was actually breakfast in the hotel at 21$

It’s a little strange that they use USD as a currency yet have their own currency as riels. If your meal is $9.75 and you give them a 20$ bill they give you $10USD and 1000 riels as change.  Odd… To be sure

We visited soooo many temples I honestly lost track of which was which.  I hope to figure that out at home.  The temples are from the Khmer kings of the 12th century and onwards.  Amazingly detailed, and obviously falling down.  In many of the temples there were signs about what restoration work was done, by who, and how.  It was interesting to see so many different countries around the globe and what they had done to help Cambodia preserve this world heritage site.  Most of the “preservation” was actually wooden braces to try and keep pieces from falling.  “Knowing where to stop” had to be the hardest part for the people making the repairs.  It’s obvious they don’t want to “repair” as much as preserve 

We had a great tuk tuk driver for 2 days around the temples (cost = 35$)

On the last day of our tour it came a monsoonal downpour and the driver rolled down the sides and kept on going!

While in Angkor Wat, Sara found monkeys which was interesting until a second one showed up out of nowhere and she went screaming! “Dad you’ve tried to get me killed in 2 countries” 

Shortly after this picture was taken a gaggle of monkeys showed up and one decided to chase Ashley!  Of course we had no food so it took a second for her to realize this was all he wanted

Don’t let anyone fool you, 100 degrees in the daytime with 75-90% humidity is HOT! I thought Houston was hot… HA!!  

I now know where the yeti ppl got the idea, everywhere around here they have boxes that look exactly like non-fancy yeti’s.  Of course that makes perfect sense because it’s so hot, luckily cold drinking water is only 1$ or less for 1.5L

We went to the night market, where the price was completely dependent on your ability to negotiate and/or walk away Sara got a silver elephant charm for 50$-20$-5$-3$ final price!

We also walked to the aptly named “pub street” for dinner and took tuk tuk’s home for 1$

Pub street is nearly exactly what the strand in Galveston should (could) be, open to cars during the day but blocked off at night. Plenty of shops for shopping, bars for drinking and food places for eating.  The random tuktuk carts lined the ends of the street but not on the Main Street and they have about anything you could want to eat or drink.  Including an adult “ice cream” tuk tuk.  Think ice cream truck (in a tuk tuk) driving down the road playing music and ppl walking over to buy frozen drinks.  There was even a Volkswagen dune buggy conversion that used the engine to cook pizza!  

Gasoline for mopeds, tuk tuk’s etc is sold in water bottles on the side of the road everywhere

If China was the land of crazy driving, Cambodia has proven to be the land of 1 driving rule “whoever is bigger gets the right of way”. This makes it interesting to cross the street as there are no street lights nor stop signs I could see.  The idea is kinda like frogger, you just start walking and try to step behind the car/tuk tuk/moped/bike and not in front of it.

Entrance to Angkor Wat across a moat “seven oceans”

Angkor Wat (no we didn’t get up at 4:00 AM to get the sunrise pic across this pond like Aunt Pam would have 😃)

Some of the various carvings in Angkor Wat 

Obligatory selfie with a temple

Angkor Thom

Unknown temple entrance 😃 

Ta Prohm (hard to see scale but this tree is huge!)

Ta Prohm had so many huge trees, crazy to think what it must’ve been like to find this after being buried in the jungle for 100’s of years

The roads went through a lot of temple entrances and such 

This was an interesting temple, surrounded by water as well as quite a long walk Across a lowland to get here

Another temple entrance

Sara found an elephant!

More temples!

The tuk tuk bar!

3$ fish pedicures abounded 

We logged 22.5 miles and 62 flights of stairs.  I doubt the flights # since these stairs aren’t exactly code compliant!

ការលាក្នា lea