Siem Reap - Day 1

I'm going to write my Siem Reap posts chronologically as we experienced everything, and go day-by-day. We did and saw SO much that this is really the only way I can remember and explain everything. 

Our morning began with a hearty all-you-can eat breakfast buffet at the hotel. Followed by Elodie making friends with the girl playing music in the lobby (which then became a daily ritual), and feeding elephants outside the first temple. Then it was a full day of sightseeing!

Angkor, in Cambodia's northern province of Siem Reap, is one of the most important archaeological sites of Southeast Asia. It extends over 250 square miles, and consists of numerous temples, structures, and monuments. It contains the magnificent remains of the different capitals of the Khmer Empire, from the 9th to the 15th centuries. Most temples are constructed from sandstone and include a phenomenal amount of detail.

Our first site was Angkor Thom, the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer empire. It was established in the late 12th century by King Jayavarman VII. It's a walled and moated royal city, and includes some of Angkor's greatest temples. There are five entrances (gates) to this city. Each gate is crowned with 4 giant faces.

What I found especially crazy is that these gates are OLD! But yet, bikes, cars, buses, and even elephants are allowed to go through them. You can touch anything, climb on anything, basically do whatever you want to capture a photo. It's seriously only a matter of time before these gates (and all the temples for that matter!) are destroyed and just crumble.

The first temple we saw was The Bayon. It was built in the late 12th century as the official state temple of the Mahayana Buddhist King Jayavarman VII. Standing in the exact center of the walled city, it represents the intersection of heaven and earth. This temple's most distinctive feature is the multitude of massive stone faces on many of the towers. It actually has 49 towers with smiling faces.... 182 faces total (although today you can only see 177 of them). All the faces were considered compassionate faces of Buddha of King Jayavaraman VII himself. It was the first Buddhist mountain temple ever built.

This temple was just enormous, with so much to see and explore. I'm so glad we had a tour guide, otherwise we might have gotten lost inside there. The faces on the towers were just exquisite. So much detail in every single one of them.

We saw the Elephant's Terrace on our drive to the next temple. This wall is an impressive 8-ft tall by 980-ft long terrace wall adorned with carved elephants. The terrace served as a viewing platform for royal parties, from which the king could view his audience.

Next up: Ta Keo. This temple is tall, rising 21.6 meters (71ft?), making it one of the tallest buildings at Angkor. So there is quite the staircase to climb if you want to get to the top. It's not a popular temple, and actually we didn't even go inside. We just stopped at the side of the road to take pictures and get a brief explanation. Our tour guide said that legend has it that the temple was never fully completed because of superstition amongst the people following a lightening strike on the central tower. They believed the whole building brought bad luck. Today, hardly anyone climbs the stairs to the top (except maybe a few tourists) because if you do, you'll have bad luck.

4 sites down, 2 more to go (for day 1 anyway)! And this next one was one of our favorites.  

Ta Promh was created in 1186 by King Jayavarman VII. It has been left in much the same condition in which it was found. It's a pretty amazing site - surrounded by the jungle, and trees even growing out of the ruins. Have you seen the movie Tomb Raider? The movie was actually filmed here! Because of the photogenic scenery of the temple and being the site of the famous movie, it's one of the most popular temples in the area.

 

 

The two huge trees above are just examples of what we saw inside. There were many more! I love the face peeking out of the overgrown tree... makes you wonder what else is underneath.

Our last temple of the day was the famous Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat was built in the late 12th century for the king, as his state temple and capital city. It's the best preserved temple, and the only one to have remained a significant religious center. This temple has become the symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and is the country's prime attraction for visitors. Our tour guide said this is the largest religious monument in the world.

 

It's amazing how much detail went into creating these impressive gates, walls, and temples. I only wish more was being done to restore, preserve, and cherish these beautiful buildings.

Hanoi Video

Our Hanoi experience wrapped up in a quick 30-second video. This is us trying to cross the street in Old Quarter.



Did you notice the crash that happened in front of us, just a few feet away? Yikes.

Hanoi, Vietnam

We spent our last day and a half in Vietnam exploring the city of Hanoi. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, and the second largest city in the country.

I read an article describing Hanoi as, "the most beautiful city in all of Asia." I strongly disagree with this statement. It took us about an hour to get from the airport to our hotel in the heart of Hanoi (the Old Quarter). The drive allowed us to see a huge variety of things - farmers tending to their fields, rivers, old buildings, shacks, new buildings, trash everywhere, and even numerous people selling things along the highways. The drive was actually not pleasant at all. The roads were incredibly bumpy, and that topped with stop-and-go traffic with motorbikes and people everywhere all over the streets accounted for Elodie throwing up all over me in the car. Not a pleasant start to our trip in Hanoi.

The city itself was interesting, and overall not what I expected it to be. The narrow streets are filled with shops, restaurants, motorbikes, cars, and people. The bustling city was constantly filled with the noisy sounds of honking - all day AND all night long. You seriously couldn't even walk down the street without feeling like you were going to be hit by motorbike. And the smell.... ohhh the nauseating smell that made me sick to my stomach every time we walked outside is hard for me to even describe. The smell of an overcrowded city - people, food, trash, and major exhaust fumes. Our tour guide said there are about 7-million people living in Hanoi, and about 4 million of them have motorbikes. It was overwhelming.

Notice the chaos of power lines in the photo above. This was a pretty common site throughout the city.

Our hotel was in the Old Quarter, which is where we spent the majority of our time. Old Quarter means "Ancient Quarter" or "36 streets." The 36 little streets are each named for a commodity once sold by all of the businesses on that street. So each street had merchants and households which specialized in a particular trade, such as medicine, copper, chicken, silk, jewelry, etc. It was an interesting area, with a lot of history and cheap shopping (but you always have to bargain).

It was certainly a city filled with history, and despite the overwhelming crowds and fumes there was a lot to see. You could look in almost every direction and see women carrying the traditional Vietnamese baskets over their shoulders or even on their heads. It was also common to see women on bikes filled with produce, looking to sell their goods to local vendors. 

Hoan Kiem Lake sits near the Old Quarter, and is one of the major scenic spots in the city. It's a city focal point and remains "the very heart of life in Hanoi." There is some legend about a giant turtle presenting the emperor with a magic sword to defeat Chinese invaders, which is why this lake is named "Hoan Kiem" or "restored sword." Ngoc Son Temple sits on an islet at the end of the lake. I read that certain parts of the structure date back to 1225.

Luckily Hanoi is very compact, so we were able to see all of the major sites in a day. We hired a personal tour guide and driver, who took us around everywhere. There is not a subway system here, so hiring a driver was well worth it, especially because it was cold and rainy.

Our site-seeing adventure began at the Hanoi Hilton. Don't let the name deceive you, this is not a hotel. It's actually Hoa Lo Prison, the prison that housed many American prisoners during the Vietnam War. The prison actually still displays John McCain's uniform from the day he was captured. Needless to say, it was a depressing site.

Next we visited Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum - the massive tribute to the most famous leader in Vietnam. It's the city's most visited site and "sacred place." We were told that Ho Chi Minh wanted to be cremated after death.  Instead of adhering to his wishes the people embalmed his body and placed him on display for all eternity in a glass tomb.  Nice way of showing their respect, huh?  In fact, they view his tomb as so sacred that they don't allow young children inside. So because we had Elodie, we couldn't go inside - but that's ok, I didn't really want to see his body anyway. Kind of creepy if you ask me. Anyway, the Mausoleum is only open in the mornings, from 8-11am. Our tour guide said this is because in order to preserve his body, they have to keep it cold the majority of the day - so there's only a 3 hour window where his body is actually put on display.

A short walk further you come across a bright yellow building known as the Governor's Palace. Unfortunately, you're not allowed inside this building. Behind the wooded park next to this yellow building sits Ho Chi Minh's house on stilts. Our tour guide said that Ho Chi Minh used to live in the Governor's Palace, but he didn't like it because it was built by the French and he thought it was too elegant for his simple lifestyle. So that's why he build the small and simple house on stilts next door to it.

Next, we visited the One Pillar Pagoda, which has a historical significance to the city dating back to 1049; and the Tran Quoc pagoda, which is the foremost symbol of Buddhism in the country. These were just two quick stops, so I don't have much to say about them because I don't know much about them!

After a short car ride across the city, we arrived at the Temple of Literature. It was built in 1070 and was formerly the site of one of the oldest universities in Vietnam. It's now a tribute to Confucius and used as a Confucian temple. The landmark has numerous pavilions and courtyards, and stone turtles.

We ended our evening with a tour around the Old Quarter in a cyclo (like a rickshaw) and a show at the Water Puppet Theatre. The traditional Vietnamese water puppet show dates back numerous centuries. There are several short performances or "Acts" throughout the entire show, each with it's own song, dance, and theme. Each Act revolves around a different Vietnamese lifestyle and includes performances such as: fishing, tending to the rice fields, dragon dancing, cultural dances, etc. Tickets only cost between $3-5, with numerous show times each day (but believe it or not, they sell out quickly!). We didn't get any good photos from the show ourselves, so the photo below is from here.

Wow, I know that was a lot of information. Thanks for reading. :)

I'm sure you could sense a tone throughout this post, because I didn't really like Vietnam all that much. But all in all, I'm glad we went. It was definitely a good cultural and eye-opening experience. My favorite part (of course) was the food. Vietnamese is ranked right up there with Italian & Indian on my list of favorite cuisines. Pho = the best soup EVER! I better be able to find this when we're back in the U.S.

Halong Bay, Vietnam

Since we stayed in Nagoya for the holidays so that Joe could work while his co-workers were all on vacation, we took off the week after New Years when everyone was back in the office for our own holiday vacation. We went to Vietnam and Cambodia. We did and experienced so much in both countries that I'll have to write a few posts to cover it all.

We had a direct flight from Nagoya to Hanoi, Vietnam for a 4-day vacation before we continued our adventure in Cambodia. The first thing on our agenda in northern Vietnam was Halong Bay. We took a 2-day, 1-night cruise through Bhaya Cruises.

It was a 3.5-hour shuttle bus ride from Hanoi to Halong Bay - this was the most difficult part of the whole trip. The roads in Vietnam are not nice. It's not like we were cruising 70mph down the highway to get there. Instead, we were going maybe anywhere between 25-40mph, down bumpy roads and through sketchy areas. Elodie and I get car sick, so it's fortunate that we both survived the trip without getting sick. So when all the cruise websites advertise that it's a "comfortable drive," know that's a big fat lie. Our driver on the way there reeked of smoke, and kept the windows down for most of the trip. The temps were in the upper 40's and low 50's, so having wind blowing on you for 3 and a half hours was not pleasant. The three of us cuddled up in the back seat, wearing our winter hats and as many layers as we had brought with us. And that's another thing, northern Vietnam in the winter is COLD. I don't know why weather.com advertised that it was 65+ degrees and sunny... because it was low 50's MAX and overcast and rainy the whole time. So needless to say, we did not pack appropriately. The first thing we did when we arrived at our hotel was go out and buy winter hats.

Ok, on the bright side, we really enjoyed our cruise. It was a small boat, but luckily Elodie and I felt great the whole trip. The bay was always smooth, so that helped immensely. In the picture below, our boat is the one on the right. You can also see a picture of our bed, Elodie's bed, and our private balcony (only 2 rooms on the entire boat had private balconies! Yep, we felt pretty special).

The website pretty much sums up the entire cruise experience, "The bay is dominated by more than 1,600 limestone karsts and islets which rise out of the waters of the bay to heights of up to 100 meters (330 feet) and the numerous caves and grottos spread throughout the bay. Abundant scenic beauty, archeological and geological significance, cultural and historical connections, fresh seafood and proximity to international gateways make Halong Bay one of Vietnam’s most popular places to visit."

The cruise provided a variety of activities in the 2-day itinerary. On the first day, we visited the Vung Vieng fishing village by local rowing boat. A tour guide did all the labor, so we just had to sit back, relax, and enjoy the sites. It's amazing how this fishing village (in the middle of nowhere) has a community of homes, a pearl farm, and even a school. We were able to get off the boat at their "Welcome Center" to buy souvenirs and take a quick look around.

Can you see the fishing village nestled in there?

This small village was complete with dogs and even monkeys!

What I can't forget to mention is the food! The food on this cruise was outstanding. On our first day we had a Vietnamese buffet lunch, which was complete with fresh seafood, stir-fried dishes, stews, and my favorite Vietnamese dish - Pho (noodle soup). Even our picky little eater was a fan of this buffet! Dinner was a 5-course meal, which was also incredible. I chose baked fresh fish from Halong Bay, and Joe had the beef - both were amazing! And of course the meals are included in the cruise price, so it makes it that much better. ;)

They chef even hosted a cooking activity where we were able to learn how to make some traditional Vietnamese dishes, and sample them too!

After dinner, there was a squid fishing activity that Joe went to. No one caught any squid, but someone did catch an octopus! We were docked at this point, and the slight rocking movement was starting to get to me, so sadly I missed all night activities because I went to bed when Elodie did!

We started the second day exploring the famous Surprise Cave. It's one of the most spectacular and largest caves in all of Halong Bay.  There are 3 chambers within this cave to explore. I read that it's over 10,000 square meters (107,600 square feet?)

Our pictures inside didn't turn out that great, so I borrowed this image from here.

With over 2,000 limestone cliffs formed over millions of years, this really is a beautiful bay. Halong Bay is one of the top tourist activities in Northern Vietnam, so there are several cruise companies to choose from that offer several different itineraries. Most companies offer even longer cruise options, but I think the 2-day/1-night cruise was plenty long enough.

Another thing I have to mention is how wonderful the cruise staff was. We were the only couple on board to have a baby, and they were more than willing to entertain her. They played with her and even carried her through the caves so we could take pictures and enjoy the sites. The service was truly out of this world, and it made our cruise experience that much better.

You can see all of our Vietnam photos on our shutterfly page.

Two Feet

Photo by Kurosaki Etsuko and designed by Yumi Murray.