Day 64 – Leaving on a jet plane

So we were at the airport in Bangkok waiting for our flight. Kate’s purchase of Pong the elephant inspired a flurry of “Travels with Little Bear” shots. Basically for some time I’ve been wanting to take shots of my oldest toy Little Bear (whom I’ve had since an infant) traveling the world. Similar to those garden gnome type shots. I unfortunately forgot to bring him along the first few days, but then midway through the trip I started snapping far too many shots. I’m going to start a separate Flickr set of just these. With the addition of Pong, Kate started getting into it the last day.  I took this one of Little Bear waiting near the gate.

 

And this one of Pong, which turned out to be the better shot.

Day 63 – Out to pasture

Our last day in Siem Reap was fairly relaxing. We took the weaving class and then came back for lunch and massages before heading to the airport. Not much in the way of photo opportunities, but on the tuk tuk to the Silk Factory we passed by quite a bit of livestock. They all look terribly emaciated. I don’t know if they fatten up during the rainy season or if this is normal.

Day 62 – Sunset on Tonlé Sap

We ran the total gamut of historical and cultural experiences in Cambodia today. We started at temples with unbelievable ornate carvings likes Banteay Srey. Then we stopped at the landmine museum and their organization that is helping clear mines and unexploded ordinance from fields throughout Cambodia. We stopped along the road to see a local woman making palm sugar and got to see their house on stilts where they power their few electrical appliances (TV and DVD player) with a car battery. We visited Artisans Angkor where they teach locals to hand craft all the statues, carvings, woodwork and any number of touristy good and weave silk textiles. Finally in the evening we went to Tonlé Sap which is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.

In the dry season it’s only a meter deep, about 3 1/2 feet. During the rainy season it rises up to as much as 30 feet deep. Throughout the lake is a large Vietnamese immigrant community living in house boats. We went out on a boat at sunset.

 

Kate and I both felt a little like interlopers here though. We weren’t really going to their community to buy anything or help them in any way. We were just kind of gawking at their lifestyle.

Day 61 – Angkor Thom

The Angkor complex is unbelievable. So many amazing things to see and photograph. I probably took over 1000 photos there alone that I’ve weeded down to a slightly more manageable 500+ which will eventually inundate my flickr page.

This is the first place we visited that day, Angkor Thom, which is the temple they’ve left overrun with tree roots and growth meant to simulate how it looked when archaeologists first arrived to excavate and restore the temples.

Day 60 – Apsara

Most of the first day in Cambodia was eaten up getting from Kanchanaburi to Bangkok airport and then to flying to Siem Reap. Customs in Cambodia was a little daunting. There was a long counter – about 20 or 30 feet – with about 15 guys in military uniforms seated in a row. It reminded me of the table in Dr. Strangelove. You handed your passport to the first guy at the far left. He tossed it to someone to a few guys down. He looked it over, worked some mojo, and passed it to the next guy a few down. The whole process took about 15 minutes. When they finally handed me my passport I noticed that they’d misspelled my name on my visa. They left out the L in Beazley. I didn’t want that to potentially cause any trouble, so I pointed it out to the guy who’d handed it to me on the far right. He took it away, chastising one of the guys somewhere in the middle. They stared at for another 10 minutes or so before finally passing it back with parts of my name whited-out and corrected on the visa.

Anyway, later that evening we went to the Temple Restaurant for an Apsara dancing show. The Apsara dancers are outfitted like the women on the Angkor Wat temple ruins and do traditional Cambodian dances. It was a really great show.

Day 59 – Whistling the Colonel Bogey March

Aside from Angkor Wat, one of the reasons I thought we should opt for the particular trip we did was the stop on the Thai-Burmese Railway and visits to the River Kwai bridge and museums relating to the construction. Riding the local train to the stop where one of the main encampments was a lengthy and uncomfortable trip — which makes it infinitely worse for the POWs who had to trek there to work. Here’s the cliff-side S curve along the railway and a resort of some sorts that’s taken up the location of one of the camps. They had one of the watch towers remaining or reconstructed nearby. We also saw a rather large bomb crater just off where the tracks currently run. We weren’t certain if it was a near-miss or if they had to move them after the fact.

Day 58 – Erawan National Park

The bus rid from Ayatthaya took longer than anticipated so we didn’t have as much time in Erawan National Park as we would have liked to enjoy the scenic vistas. By the time we got to the top level of the seven falls, they were blowing the whistle to start people back down the trail. This is the view at the top.