This is my last tdsycin Cambodia! I’m spending it in Siem Reap to explore Angkor Wat and all the other surrounding temples. There are actually so many temples that I’ll only be hitting the highlights. To see all of them you need a three day pass at the very least!

There it is! The iconic Angkor Wat. Probably the most famous of them all! I arrived to this view point probably around 5:30am after an early trip over from my hostel. We went to see the sunrise, but due to the weather it was a little disappointing. This picture is taken around midday.

My friends always wonders who take pictures of me. Today, I was exploring with two Americans from Colorado and a German fellow. The two Colorado kids we’re studying abroad at the University in Bangkok and came to Cambodia for a long weekend. So that explains how there are pictures of me. The other people took them. Also you can always ask a Chinese tourist anywhere.

It was a nice thing to be able to explore with the group, not only for the photos, but because we had a tuk tuk driver for the day and it cost $15 for the day whether you were a group of 4 or just by yourself. Luckily, I woke up at 4:30am and was able to ask around and join the group! So that was awfully nice of them to let me join!

These are on the inside of Angkor Wat our first temple of the day.

These next three monkeys were found posing in Bayon temples. Bayon was close to my favorite temple because of it’s awesome architecture. Lots of carved Buddha faces make it interesting as well. The Angkor area is actually made of up several different temples often with quite a distance in between. This is where the tuk tuk driver came in to get us here from the main Angkor Wat!

This is the temple Ta Prohm made famous my the movie Tomb Raider. This was one of my favorites because it was in, probably, my 4th grade social studies book that I first saw a picture of Angkor temples and Ta Prohm was the one featured. So I was able to fulfill traveling dreams inspire from way back.

Lastly, there was this nice lake. I don’t know a ton about it, but this is apparently where monks would bathe.

That’s it for now! Next up is making it into Thailand!

The two pictures here of tall ceremonial looking monuments are there to celebrate the countries Independence from France in 1953. The one taken at night is to celebrate the King who lead them to Independence, King Sihanouk.

The other picture at night is of some random temple in the city. There are so many temples everywhere so it really wasn’t that interesting to me. The last picture is on me at the end of a nice sunset cruise coming back to the city banks.

This is a picture of the Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh. It has never been used for an Olympics, but I do believe they have played world cup qualifying matches here. I went to visit and noticed they had a weight set inside the stadium. It was a simple set up. Just two bars a squat rack and a bench. So the next day I got out there and got in my first lift since leaving for Asia! It was great! I didn’t know how much I was lifting because of the kilogram to pounds conversion, but the local sure liked to watch.

These pictures were from the S21 prison. It was a high school turned into top secret torchering compound. Members of the military would be brought here to be torchered by Pol Pot’s evil regime. Most of them, if not killed here, were sent by truck to the killing fields.


These photos show the actually killing fields. There were mass graves where as many as 450 bodies were found. It one grave over a 100 bodies were found without heads. The picture of the tree was a particularly horrifying thing to see as you can tell by the sign next to it. After beating the babies to death they were thrown into the graves with there naked mothers and other children.


On a more relaxed note here are some creepy crawls and bugs I ate at a night market. Also pictured is me enjoying a local brew.

Next to come I venture, tomb raider style, into Siem Reap to explore Angkor Wat!

I started off on my adventures in Vietnam by taking a local bus to the Cu Chi tunnels. I met two Americans on the bus and had some good conversations. If was funny that they were Americans, but I’ll get to that soon. We had some good fun at a restaurant there. They had a Vietnamese friend with them which was so helpful when order food! I talked with him and got to learn a little about him and his culture, but the language barrier made it hard. The first sight was a temple honoring the fallen Vietnamese troops. The photos of inside the temple show small inscriptions all a crossed the walls. These are the names of the soldiers who died for their country, Vietnam.

 

 

One of the American guys was pretty into shooting. We had been in some national clay pigeon shooting competitions so he really geeked out over seeing some American Helicopters and tanks at the tunnels. There was also a shooting range and paintball games at the tunnels. He was pumped and was going to take some shots, but they happened to be out of bullets.

 

It was very cool to be able to crawl through the tunnels that the Vietcong had used against the US military. It was incredible to see the way they had to live during the war. The photo to the side shows an underground military meeting room also used for meals. I struggled to get through the tunnels and most of them had even been widen for the sake of tourists. Before the tour they had a video for us to watch. It was in black and white narrated by a Vietnamese women. The video was obviously pro-Vietcong and she was quoted saying, “American killer hero” several times. That’s when the other Americans I was with nudged each other. It was an awesome experience to see the perception of the actual people living there. Learned a lot more than I could ever learn in a history lesson!

 

This is a photo of some Pho. Pho is probably the most famous Vietnamese dish and this bowl here was absolutely delicious. It was near my hostel and I had noticed each time I passed that it was always busy. Seeing that I decided to eat here one night. It was so busy that I shared a table with three Chinese visitors who spoke no English. Despite no spoken words they taught me how to use chopsticks to enjoy my Pho the “proper way.” They used their phone translator to invite me to China to work on my chopstick skills more extensively.

 

 

My last night in Vietnam did not go as planned. I explored the nightlife as you can see in the videos above is quite wild! It was a lot of fun! Then I went to sign into my hostel. I had booked the hostel online and when I showed up the lady told me they were overbooked and my room had been given away. So I sat down to use their WiFi to figure out another plan. She came back over to me and told me that did actually indeed have a room! Then 10 minutes later she came back again to tell me that actually didn’t. It was roughly 11pm so I decided I might as well just leave the country after this.

I came up to a tour company just in time to book a ticket on a night sleeper bus headed to Cambodia that night at 12pm. So I got all my paperwork done and when it came time to pay I didn’t have enough for both the bus ticket and the visa. Of course the closet ATM didn’t work… I had to ask a Brit on the bus trip if he could spot me the money and I would pay him back when we were in Cambodia. Luckily, he was a nice guy and he spotted me. However, on the bus the driver insisted that we sleep two to a bed even though there was probably about have of the bus unoccupied. So I had to sleep with a guy, who I believe was from India, in this cramped space. I slept next to the window and he had the outside. Once we started moving I assumed he would move, but I couldn’t convince him. So my new pal and I got real close that night. The bus WiFi and power outlets didn’t work either. So I am left picture-less from this eventful night!

Next stop Cambodian adventures!