On the Road with Brent & Erika

Before leaving Phnom Penh, Brent and I set up a meeting to tour the humanitarian aide organization Cambodian Children's Fund. One of the staff showed us around the facilities that house over 100 children, most of them found living off the city dump. We witnessed the living quarters, classrooms, the kitchen in action and an upstairs performance area where the children learn traditional music, dance and drama. Each child is fully vaccinated at the in-house clinic and has regular check-ups with doctors and dentists. After witnessing so much poverty in Cambodia (there were chilren sleeping in the streets near our hotel and countless beggars), it's good to know that there are ways for us to help back home through organizations such as this.


Upstairs classroom--the children attend four hours of public school as well as four hours of schooling at the center daily (you can see the performance stage behind the whiteboard).


Children at the computer lab

A four hour bus ride took us to Siem Reap, the small town outside of Angkor Wat. On the way, we stopped for a break and Brent ate a fried cricket and Ricky ate a beetle! I myself had a bag of cashew nuts.





Angkor Wat is the major site within Cambodia, if not all of Southeast Asia, and I was so excited to get to visit it. Actually Angkor Wat is only one of about 100 temples in the surrounding area but is the centerpiece. We visited 16 of these in two days. They were all built between the 9th and 13th centuries by the Khmer. We hired a tuk-tuk driver, John, for both days because the temples are rather spread apart. Some have been cleared of the encroaching jungle and others have not, leaving massive tree roots crawling over and slowly crushing the temples below.


The initial walk down this main path to Angkor Wat was awe-inspiring.


Female monk lighting incense before an altar in Angkor Wat


Monks walking the grounds


Three of over 200 faces at the Bayon temple within the ancient city of Angkor Thom


Example of the overtaking trees--the movie Tomb Raider was filmed here at the Ta Phrom temple (during the filming of which Angelina Jolie fell in love with her adopted Cambodian son Maddox, for those that read Us Weekly)


Another example of the crazy roots!


Sunset on the first day from a hilltop temple

On the second day with driver John, we woke up before dawn to see Angkor Wat in the early morning light. We also did some serious off-roading to get to two far away temples. John really earned his wages as the muddy, pot-holed dirt roads jostled our tuk-tuk (which is a covered cart on the back of a motorcycle) to the point of breaking some parts (oops!). But we were rewarded with some awesome lesser-visited temples, one of which we had to hike through the jungle to get to.


This little guy sat across from our table at breakfast.


Intricate carvings at our first temple on Day 2--the head near the top is about the size of a quarter to give you some perspective


This was on our jungle hike--we all took turns swinging!


This very unique temple was carved out from this riverbed.


Brent taking a rest after lunch


Ricky was visited by a special friend


Our trusty driver John


Lizard poised on my fingers at lunch


We briefly visited the land mine musuem where we met Poiy. As a young toddler, he was commanded to walk in front of Khmer soldiers to test the roads for mines. He stepped on one and had to have his leg amputated.

Ricky has longer to travel before returning to South Korea so he stayed in Cambodia instead of going on with us back to Bangkok. I was sad to say goodbye, but feel so blessed to have had this trip with both Ricky and my husband. For traveling non-stop together for about two months, we all got along so well. Ricky's so easy and fun to travel with! I will miss him more now than ever but have so many priceless memories. I love you, Ral!

It was fitting that the final bus trip was an arduous one--four bus changes with our big packs and awful road conditions. But I didn't mind too much because I was sentimental about it being our last. Now we are in Bangkok doing some final souvenir shopping and attempting to revert to Texas time before flying out tomorrow!! We retrieved from Bee a bag of unneeded items we had left with her at the beginning of the trip. At that point, she was six months pregnant. However, two days ago, she unexpectantly gave birth to her son, Thai, five weeks early. He is doing great, and because we needed to get our bag, we also had the privilege of meeting little Thai. What a blessing to their family!


The newest addition to Bee and Akido's family, Thai!

As crazy at it is, I have to return to work less than 12 hours after touching down at DFW. With a 12 hour time difference, this is going to make my first week in my new position at work quite interesting! I will be giving Starbucks a lot of business initially! We may pull an all-nighter tonight before our early morning departure in order to decrease our jetlag. Please pray for safe travels in our final leg of our journey. We'll post again when we get home with some good wrap-up and maybe a top 5/bottom 5 list!


What an interesting sign! We luckily didn't run into the shaven thief!

--Erika