Cambodia Trip Day 10

Today we would head back to Phnom Penh before flying back home the next day. That morning I shot a few pictures of the sunrise from the beach. Some of them should be good.

We boarded the boat back to the mainland which was the first part of our journey that day. The waters weren’t as calm as they were during the trip over, so it was rough and wavy ride back. We then missed our 2pm bus because it left at or a little before 1:45pm. Gotta love Cambodia LOL. Luckily we were able to get seats on a 5:30pm bus because no taxis were available to take us to Phnom Penh. That could of got interesting with us schedule to fly back to the states the next day…

Once we reached Phnom Penh, Sam, our tuk tuk driver from earlier in the trip, picked us up and drove us to the Cody’s place where we stayed our last night.

Traveling back to the U.S. of A. the next day…it was a great trip. Recap coming soon…

Fred

Cambodia Trip Days 8 and 9

After a good breakfast we were off to catch our boat to Monkey Island resort on Koh Rong Island. A representative from monkey picked us up in order to escort us from the mainland to the island. As we were riding to the boat Mickey, our guide, informed us about the island and the activities on Koh Rong. The island is basically untouched by human hands and there are only a few bungalow type resorts along the coast of the island along with some small villages. The island is about the size of Hong Kong and there will soon be some developmental projects on the island including an international airport. We had thoughts of hiking through the jungle on the island but that was quickly halted once Mickey told us there are king cobras, boa constrictors, pythons, and quite a few poisonous species of spiders and scorpions on the island. Just the beach for me!

The boat ride was about 2 hours since the boat basically crawled through the water LOL. We could have easily gotten to the island in 30-40 minutes by speed boat….but we’re on vacation, so no rush. The ride was beautiful though. We passed many other islands, which also have minimal or no development on them.

As we approached Koh Rong, I could see the white sand beach along with the bungalows lining the coastline. It was a beautiful sight. Once we reached the island we navigated our way to the beach on the shaky and still under construction pier. Monkey Island was then only a short walk from the pier, and after we checked in, we were escorted to our bungalow. The bungalow is very basic but it had all we would need for a few relaxing days on the beach. It was situated only about 20 meters back from the beach and we could hear the waves crashing against the coastline from the bungalow. The staff at monkey, other vacationers, and Khmer people on the island were all very friendly and our stay on the island was a great way to finish off our trip.

After a good night rest, I woke up to the sound of waves crashing against the beach. I can’t think of too many things better than that to wake up to. After a nice breakfast while overlooking the beach, we spent most of the day relaxing in hammocks on the beach. Life’s good!

That night one of the staff members put on a fire show. This was the first time I had seen a fire show and it was quite impressive. I got a few good shots of it.

I will definitely return to Koh Rong one day…hopefully before too much development has been done. It is an amazing place to relax and get away from many things.

Fred

Cambodia Trip Day 7

Another road trip…we first had a flight back to Phnom Penh then a taxi to Sihanoukville, which is a city on the coast of Cambodia. We were only going to be in Sihanoukville for one night before heading to Monkey Island bungalows on Koh Rong Island.

The flight was smooth and the taxi ride was smoother than the ride from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap. The main road from Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville is freshly paved and there wasn’t as many villages along the side of the road during the drive. We drove past many mountains which provided great scenery during the drive and was a nice break from being in the city.

As we were getting close to the coastline, I could smell the fresh ocean water. It reminded me of being back in Tampa. Once we reached our hotel we quickly changed and walked to Sokha beach to relax and catch the sunset. The water was the perfect temperature and the sand is white. It Doesn’t get much better than that…

After getting some shots of the sunset, which was gorgeous, we boarded a tuk tuk back to the hotel for an amazing seafood dinner. We had been looking forward to dinner at our hotel since we had booked it. Coolabah is known for the seafood. I ordered a crab dish and Jeff ordered a seafood platter. Neither of us were disappointed.

We took a short walk around to see the night life around Sihanoukville, which was actually pretty dead that night. We had heard from multiple people that the nightlife around Sihanoukville is a lot of fun…oh well. Back to the hotel we went. It was time for some rest after a travel day…

Fred

Cambodia Trip Day 6

We ended up missing the sunrise over Angkor Wat. I didn’t set an alarm and my body wasn’t up until after the sun had already risen. Oh well…today we were scheduled for an ATV tour around Siem Reap. Since it was our last night in Siem Reap, after the tour we were planning on checking out the night scene on Pub Street, which we heard is a good time.

The ATV tour was fun and a great experience. We were the only two people on the tour so it had a more personal touch to it. Our tour lasted about 2 hours and we were able to see rural Siem Reap, visit an orphanage, and see another temple.

Rural Siem Reap is very nice. It was nice to experience something outside of the cities we had previously walked around. As we drove past house’s and towns, many of the kids would run out towards the road and wave at us. Very cool! I also enjoyed our visit to the orphanage since we were able to give a little to the kids. We were given a tour of the orphanage by one of the orphans. He did a great job of explaining how the orphanage operates and his English was excellent. I think he also spoke a few other languages and was studying to be a tour guide. He gave us a little insight about the orphanage and told us a little about his life. Very cool experience and we enjoyed donated some school supplies to them. These kids have so little yet they make the best out of the things they do have. After leaving the orphanage we drove past another temple, which was another amazing sight, then the tour was completed. The ATV tour was a lot of fun and probably one the greatest experiences I had while in Cambodia.

We next headed back to the hotel to get cleaned up from the dusty ATV riding, then ate and headed out to check out Pub Street. We met a group of people from many places around the world: Canada, London, France, Morocco, and Australia. The conversations we had with them were very interesting with most of them talking about their travels throughout the world. This definitely motivated me to make traveling more of a priority in my life. Many of them had plans or had been traveling for 4, 6, or even 8 months, whereas we were only traveling for not about two weeks….a very short time compared to them. Having commitments to things back home caused our trip to be this length, but I will hopefully be in a position to have longer trips to many more places in the future. Traveling opens your eyes to many different things. Different people, cultures, traditions, etc and it helps break the bubbles that we sometimes put ourselves in. There are many things, not only about others but also ourselves, that we can learn from traveling and being open minded to the experiences of how other people live throughout the world, whether we agree with it or not. Experiencing places you’ve never been is a great way to broaden our perspectives on life. I’m glad I was able to meet these people. It definitely motivated me to push myself to see and experience new places.

Fred

Cambodia Trip Day 5

Temple Day…Today we would be visiting one of the largest religious buildings/complexes in the world, Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is one of, if not, the main attraction to Cambodia. We had plans to tour a few temples that day, with Angkor Wat being the highlight. It was an early start that morning. We booked a tour guide along with a tuk tuk driver for the day. For the grand total of about $30 (we did tip more on top of that)…the prices here still amaze me. The tour guide ended up being a great idea because he was able to explain to us many things about the history of the temples that we were seeing along with showing us small details in the temples that we may not have seen otherwise.

Our first stop was Angkor Wat. The pictures that I had seen previously did not prepare me for the massiveness of it and the amazing engineering applied to the structure. The amount of detail applied to the many surfaces (walls, roofs, etc .) are mind blowing. It was hard to image the time and patience that was needed to build all of the structures there. Hopefully the pictures I shot can give people a glimpse of this amazing feat of engineering, but it is definitely something I would recommend seeing first hand in order to fully appreciate it. Sadly there are many signs of theft and destruction to Angkor Wat due to the many wars that have happen in Cambodia and the structure being unprotected over the years. I’m sure the structure was even more amazing in its prime after completion.

After shooting a lot of pictures we were off to the next temple, Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is where a portion of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider staring Angelina Jolie was filmed. It is another amazing temple and again it was hard to imagine the effort that it must have taken to build this temple. Nature has overtaken many portions of it which is evident by the massive trees that have grown over and on top of many potions of the temple. The trees add a uniqueness and beauty to this temple but also can and would destroy it without intervention. In many areas walls and roofs have collapse due to them not being able to support the weight of trees that were bearing down on them. Supports have been added to many areas of the temple in an attempt to prevent this from happening again. They are also in the process of restoring many areas of the temple.

Next was Bayon which is known for the “smiling Buddha’s”. Again, this temple is another amazing structure. I was beginning to see similarities in the architecture of these temples, even though many of them were built hundreds of years apart. Simple amazing!

After touring Bayon we were dropped off at our hotel. Our time was limited, so we were only able to tour three temples. We did plan on going back to Angkor Wat to shoot some pictures during the sunset. So we asked our tuk tuk driver to take us back and he agreed.

We grabbed some dinner then we were back in the tuk tuk heading to Angkor Wat. The sunset was very nice and I was able to get some good shots. Sunrise pictures would be much better but that would require being up sometime around 5am and we’ve heard that it gets really busy during sunrise at Angkor Wat. So we weren’t sure if we would make the trip or not.

All in all…a great day again.

Fred