Tonle Sap Lake And the Stilted Village

We spent the afternoon traveling out to Tonle Sap Lake which is one of the largest lakes in southeast Asia. This lake rises about 100 feet during the rainy season which means it floods tens of thousands of acres of land which then gradually become dry enough to plant rice. This is about two months into the dry season so part of the land is still flooded and part is rice fields. You can see in the photo where the water begins.
We rode on one of these boats with its crazy looking propeller down to the stilted village. There are actually more
than one of these villages but this one has about 2000 residents. It has its own primary and secondary schools (on stilts) a temple and some restaurants.
The people are fishermen and are poor but they were setting up for an Independence Day celebration (independence from the Khmer Rouge) and seemed to be having a good time.
We ended the day at sunset by the lake and then went back to Siem Reap Night Market for dinner.
Easy day today before we attend a traditional dinner and dance performance tonight.
Tomorrow we take a five hour bus ride to Phnom Pen.

Ancient Temples!

Today we visited the Preah Ko Temple, built in 821 AD, one of the earliest major temples of the Khmer empire. We once saw a synagogue in Prague that was built in the 1300s. By then, this temple was already 500 years old!
It was a moving experience to be in the presence of something so ancient. This is a very early temple in Cambodia's history. Much of the stonework was done with woodworking construction techniques--mortise and tenon window frames and doorways. Turned balusters of stone, rather than wood--how did they do that? Brick construction with decorative carved stone sections.
The stone they carved still looks brand new. Statues at the Greek Parthenon had been replaced after about 500 years.
The second temple was in the same area and was also built in the 800s. This is Joy and a watch guard elephant giving a Hi There to you folks from Great Bay!

For all homeowners

THIS is a fixer-upper!
(built in the year 821, it's entitled)

Unbelievable!

The temple compound of Angkor Wat is indeed beyond imagination! (it was built by a famous Cambodian king to celebrate his success.)
Built of perfectly fit stone, It is about a mile long and a mile wide with a maximum height of about 200 ft from the ground. It is surrounded by a double moat to symbolize two famous rivers in India.
It has a carved pictorial history that wraps a kilometer around the main building (!!!).

Anjolina Jolie Was Here

Siem Reap, Cambodia---Ta Phrom (Tomb Raiders filmed here). This temple is undergoing restoration. The jungle (trees) grew in between the tightly fit blocks and gradually pried them apart. ( also notice the stone mortise and tenon joint!)

The picture of monks is from Luang Prabang, Laos. They walk through the town at sunrise every morning accepting offerings of food for the day from bhuddist town's people.

No news today!

Just another breakfast in paradise.

Luang Prabang, Laos

We finally decided to take some time to catch up on e-mails and the blogs so here is a summary of the last few days.
Luang Prabang is in a mountainous area so the weather is nice and cool without being cold. Kind of like the White Mountains in summer. Our bungalow resort is about 15 minutes out of town on a dirt road and it is right on the river. Really beautiful setting.
New Years day several places were were closed so we took a 2 hour boat ride on a very small boat up to Pak Oh Caves which have been a sacred site in Laos since before Buddhism came to the country. Our boat driver had lots of good luck charms around his driver seat but we weren't too nervous as he scooted around the rocks and currents! The sort of spooky caves -there are two- hold thousands of buddha figures in every crevice. We got back just in time for a beautiful sunset.
Yesterday we took a trek with a small group into the Jungle (dry this time) and up to a waterfall. Guess which animal left this scat on the road?? We traveled through several Hmong villages. Check out the photos of them building a new house. These kids were happily playing marbles with bean seeds. The mountain scenery was outstanding. Since we were driven fairly high to begin the hike, it wasn't too strenuous - just right. On the return van trip we ran into two traffic jams. One was elephants returning home from their job at the elephant conservancy and the others were water buffalo who were just hanging out on the road.
We did spend New Years Eve here and there were some street parties going on but we never made it to midnight. We enjoyed sitting by the river,wandered the huge street market and had eaten dinner by 10:30.
Our experiences with Laotian food has been really mixed so we decided not to take a cooking class after all. Perhaps in Cambodia.
We have visited several of the temples with more to go and today we want to gets to the National Museum which was closed for New Years day.



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