not a very white christmas

sitting back here in my little tatami room (struggling to stay warm with one little heater), makes me long to be back in the warmth of cambodia. not only was it warm because of the weather, but also the cambodian people. we stayed at this amazing guest house tucked away into the smaller streets of siem reap. so even though we were thousands of miles away from home during the holidays it really felt like we had a home at Peace of Angkor Villa. i traveled with mr. isaac arnquist and ms. courtney humm. although courtney didn't join isaac and i exactly on schedule (check out her blog for details on the mishap), we managed to do the most with the time we had in cambodia.



we viewed several of the major temples including Angkor Wat (the big kahoona), Bayon, and Ta Phrom. Ta Phrom was by far my favorite. the 1,000 year old temple has been taken-over by the jungle that lore says "wants to protect its gods by destroying them." and all the while i couldn't help but feel like we were in a movie walking around the mixing of ancient ruins and jungle. anyone ever seen "Tomb-Raider"? that was pretty much what we experienced there. we also experienced a pretty amazing sunset at Angkor Wat.





visiting the "killing fields" near phnom pehn was a rather sobering experience. the site contains about 800 mass graves of the thousands of Cambodians murdered there by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970's. you can still see the effects of the regime by seeing people on the streets who are missing limbs due to landmines. there is hope amidst the dispair though. we had the pleasure of listening to the musical stlylings of several men, who were victims of the landmines, on three different occasions. the first time was christmas at our guesthouse, then we (by chance) saw the same band at a temple a few days later, and then again on new year's eve. i especially enjoyed the bollywood-esque songs sung by the man pictured on the left.




and then we took a boat ride back to siem reap from phnom pehn. all i'm going to say about that is that we rode on top of a boat that i believe was not meant to have people on top of it...for about 6 hours. we made it though! and to meet us at the end (this is a common sight in Cambodia) were men just waiting to "hook us up" with a tuk-tuk ride back into the city.



after about one week in cambodge (as it's called by the colonial french), we headed back to thailand to finish up our holiday. after saying our farewell to courtney, isaac and i hurried to the train station to catch the overnight train/bus/boat/ferry to the island of Koh Phangan. the long trip it took to get to "paradise" was definitely worth it. we stayed on a nothern beach called Haad Mae Haad. it had it's own little bay and barbeque's every night. one of the most exciting things about where we stayed though was the TV. yep, that's right, we watched TV in Thailand. don't worry though, that's not all we did.



isaac and i took the PADI open water diver 4-day training course. at first i felt really uneasy breathing underwater. i wrote in my journal after the first day of being in the water that "there was a point when i thought: i can't do this. this is completely unnatural. i am not a fish. get me out of here, i am going to die." but after those initial fears, i soon became somewhat of a fish and breathing underwater because like second nature. and we saw some amazing creatures including sting-rays, barracudas, and parrot fish (they are the rainbow ones). unfortunately though, i don't have an underwater camera to capture (or prove) that i actaully did scuba-dive. ah, but i do have a picture of isaac and i shortly after completing our final dive with our scuba-master. so there.