Jenn and I just spent a month in Asia. We haven’t planned a trip of this length for a very, very long time. We used a travel agent VIVE to help plan the trip and it went pretty well. Our first week was in Combodia. After visiting Mayan temples, Angkor Wat joined the list of ancient places to visit. We stayed in Siem Reap at a lovely hotel, Shinta Mani. Our guide for the week, Bun, was very knowledgeable and incredibly helpful.

On to the Temples! Most of our time in Cambodia was spent at Angkor Wat and the nearby temples. The temples here were built generally between 800 and 1200 AD. I was a little surprised to learn that some had been built so ‘recently’. Many include what I would consider modern bricks in their construction (versus the large stone blocks seen in older construction). While the newer temples are Buddhist, the older ones are Hindu (and many of these have been converted- there have been Buddha statues added to many of the temples). They are covered in intricate carvings, and (maybe) kilometers of carved walls depicting stories from the Khmer Empire.

We also did a few cultural activities. We rode an ox cart into town one day and visited a local market. I got the feeling no one else rides an ox cart but the local market was very interesting. Our guide told us everyone was yelling out (in a local language) “the tourists are coming”. We had soup for breakfast at the market where our guide said this was his most common breakfast. We had sticky rice from a roadside vendor. We took a boat to Tonle Sap, the largest lake in Cambodia that in the rainy season can grow 4 times it’s size. Near the river the houses are on stilts because the water level change is so dramatic. On the lake itself are floating houses and villages.

I feel like we could have used a few more days in Siem Reap. We really enjoyed Cambodia and would love to go back some day. The people were really nice, the food was very good and we had a great time.