Spent the last day in Siem Reap visiting some of the temples of Angkor Thom (Great City). Beautiful all around (with lots of shade, thankfully). The Eastern entrance to Angkor Thom. (East represents the rising sun, or life) The Royal Palace

Royal Palace. This is where the purely symbolic king hangs. Detail of the spire with four faces pointing in each direction of the compass. Craziest neatest tree I’ve seen: Cannonball tree (Couroupita guinesis) Silver Pagoda (if you’re wondering, the floor was silver)

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia (and the most populated city). On the particular stretch of street where we’re staying, you can get a a view of the Mekong River, a tuk tuk available for hire every 3 feet, special “happy” pizza, beer, a massage, DVDs of movies not yet on video for $1.50, and some [...]

By this time in our journey we were getting a tad exhausted: from the heat, from the malarone (anti-malaria drug), and from all the temples. So. Many. Temples. Really, you could spend months in Cambodia to see them all. So we asked our guide to pick “just one more” for the day and she chose [...]

Flew into Siem Reap (the nicest airport yet) and dropped off our bags at the hotel and hit the road for Angkor Wat. Aside from the hordes of tourists, this temple city from the 12th century (and featured on the flag of Cambodia), was neat enough. I’ll be honest, it was so hot, it was [...]

Tuk tuk Coke Laos flag Evening by the Nam Khan river We woke up to greet the monks at 5:45 am, and this time we had sticky rice to give for the Alms Ceremony.

At 5:45 every morning, the monks gather and walk through Luang Prabang for the Alms ceremony. In this Buddhist tradition, lay people offer food to the monks (sticky rice). We traveled down the Mekong River to the steep limestone cliffs overlooking the Mekong and Nam Ou rivers, home to the Tham Pak Ou Caves.