We're home!

We left Bangkok on Thursday morning and arrived at Sara's just after midnight on Friday morning, with the time differences our way home, door to door, was about 32 hours. We were shattered. We spent the weekend with Sara and drove from Portland to home Monday morning. For some reason it is taking me a long time to get over the time differences but I am somehow managing. As I write it is Christmas morning. We are meeting the Zinkes for lunch at 1:30 today and we will all come here for dessert. I made pumpkin pie. This morning for breakfast I made biscuits and opened some homemade jam. I opened a quart of canned peaches from our tree and opened some homemade grape juice. It seems appropriate to have homemade things on Christmas, don't know why. I do feel a bit like eating in a restaurant on Christmas day isn't a good thing to do, but Charlynn works and shouldn't have to cook on this time off and I'm so jet lagged I just can't cook. So, we will eat out and not have to cook or clean up.I am so grateful to have friends to spend Christmas with now that you girls are gone. I guess my Christmas wish is to spend next Christmas with one of you! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Dad enjoying a free foot massage at the Changi Airport, Singapore, on our way home.

Ox cart in Nepal.

Miscellaneous pictures from our trip.

Angkor Wat

Children playing in some vines at the back of Angkor Wat. They were singing in Cambodian too and it was very nice.

Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat, Cambodia.

Mango shake in Siem Reap Cambodia.

We ate at this small restaurant at the night market and the food was very good. The mango shakes we had were excellent. The next day we went back in the heat of the afternoon for another shake and I asked the woman if I could watch her make it. She took fresh fruit, sugar, sweetened condensed milk, ice and enough water to blend it with. She put lots of fruit. I'll try it at home with berries, bananas, etc. Hope mine will be as tasty.

Angkor Wat.

Rules at Angkor Wat.

The architecture is fabulous, of course, but the frosting on the cake is the art inside, outside, up and down and around---everywhere.

Inside a hall in Angkor Wat.

A nice young couple from Shanghai took our picture with our camera and we took their picture with their camera!

Angkok literally means "Capitol City" or "Holy City", Khmer refers to the dominant ethnic group in modern and ancient Cambodia. In it's modern usage, "Angkor" has come to refer to the capital city of the Khmer Empire that existed in the area of Cambodia between the 9th and 12 centuries AD, as well as to the empire itself. The temple ruins in the area of Siem Reap are the remnents of the Angkorian capitals, and represent the pinnacle of the ancient Khmer architecture, art and civilization.

At the height, the Age of Angkor was a time when the capital area contained more than a million people when Khmer kings constructed vast waterworks and grand temples and when Angkor's military, economic and cultural dominance held sway over the area of modern Cambodia as well as much of Thailand.

The above was copied from a visitor guide, Siem Rap Angkor.

It is awsome, impressive...I am at a loss of words really, to describe what we saw today. Fantastic, I am so glad we came here and saw what we saw. I'll post a few more pictures then we're heading out for dinner.

Wat? ANOTHER Wat? Angkor Wat that is, the Grandaddy of them all.

The entrance to the main temple. Today was a holiday (National Human Rights Day) so there were many Cambodians out, which was nice to see. Probably first on the list would be large groups of Japanese tourists. We often had to wait for entire groups of them to take their pictures and move on before we could get the pictures we wanted. It is such a large place though that finally we went off in different directions so we didn't have much problem with them.

The moat around Angkor Wat.

Our bathroom!

The shower is to the left. A fountain is in the middle with the water going to a pond below the shower, fountain and sink. The toilet is to the right, out of the picture, in a separate room.

Our room.

Terasse des Elephants (hotel where we're staying in Siem Reap, Cambodia). The pool and a lovely garden area are on the rooftop of the hotel. There isn't an elevator here and the rooftop is on the 5th floor.

Money DOES buy happiness.

We survived the 9 hr bus trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap. They were old busses and the a.c. didn't work real well and it was very hot. They stopped for an hour for lunch and 30 minutes for dinner and it took longer than an hour for immigration so we actually weren't on the road for the entire 9 hours. FYI they drive on the right in Cambodia and left in Thailand. Right in Burma. The scenery through Thailand and Cambodia was rice fields, rice fields and more rice fields. Green and pretty. Some rice was ripe for harvesting and they do it by hand, no monster rice harvesters like in California. I'm pretty sure they don't have airplanes for seeding and fertilizing either!

I had emailed a hotel the night before we left to ask for a room and they emailed back but I didn't get it until after we arrived here, that they were full so we arrived with no place to stay. The tuk tuk driver suggested a place and it was nice, we stayed there. Of course they charged us more for the tuk tuk drivers commission but at least we had a place to stay. It was nice except the bed was as hard as a rock so this morning we decided to look for another place and found this one, Terrasse des Elephants, right on street smack dab in the middle of town. We are so lucky. I went exploring after I went swimming and there is a large indoor market on the street next to the hotel. About two blocks away is a sign for the night market and I'm sure we'll go there tonight. Couldn't have found a hotel in a better location.

On the way to the bus station last night the bus went down the main street where the 5 star hotels were and it was like driving down a major hotel street in any city USA with all the beautiful Christmas decorations. I was so surprised that a Cambodia city was so advanced.

During the trip through immigration (leaving Thailand and entering Cambodia) it was very hot and tiring. I can see why people use airplanes instead of busses! But people up in the air don't see all the interesting things we people on the ground see. Anyway when we bought our bus ticket we didn't expect to have a guide to guide us through the entire process. He was Cambodian and spoke English quite well and having him was wonderful, it would have been difficult without him for sure. From Cambodia immigration to the bus station they had us get on a free for tourists Cambodian government bus. It took about 5 minutes. Our guide was a mid 20 something. Of course we all know the terrible history of Pol Pot but I was quite surprised to hear him ask if we had heard of Pol Pot. We all shook our heads yes and then he said, "We don't know why he did what he did. Maybe he wants to be some kind of fucking god. That's all we can think of, some kind of fucking god." His language was harsh but understandable when I've read that it will take generations for Cambodians to recover from the shock of what happened to every single family in Cambodia during the reign of Pol Pot and his henchmen. Our guide said that before after the war the population of Cambodia was reduced my many million people. Tortured terribly and killed. I can hardly bear to even think of it. I walked by several bookstores today and there are many books on their terrible time and I just could not even read one. It seems like maybe the people don't want the world to forget their sadness. Maybe by not forgetting it can't happen again?

Anyway, I'll post some pictures of our hotel. Like I say, Money does buy happiness, but actually, this hotel is not expensive compared to U.S. prices. Our room includes breakfast, which we haven't had here yet so can't report on that. We have a flat screen television and internet in the room. As you'll see, a very unusual bathroom area.

Well, I will post some pictures next.