Phnom Penh City Tour - Imperial Palace

So we are going to skip ahead to real time for a bit (we'll come back to you Marine Corps Ball and Nagasaki, no worries! LOL) because we just returned from an amazingly awesome beyond words, whirlwind trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (formerly known as Saigon). We've been traveling around Japan quite a bit but have been wanting to branch out to some other countries for a while since we are so close. We were only able to take off for 7 days total so we did as much as we could. We will have to break the blog down into bits and pieces to fit it all in.

First off, we can't complain about the price of our plane tickets. We used our United air miles and so we got into Cambodia and out of Vietnam for only $30 each!!!! The bus ride between countries was only $13/apiece so travel costs were so minimal!

To get going, we had to drive about 3 hours to the Fukuoka Airport and out of there we flew to Bangkok, about a 6 hour flight. And can I just say that Thai Airways is AMAZING. Wow, you can absolutely tell a tremendous difference in service and care.  Anyways, from there we flew another hour-ish to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia.

We were picked up by our hotel via Tuk Tuk, the main form of transportation in the city. And wow. I cannot even begin to describe the traffic in this place. No one abides by road rules or anything. It's incredibly scary and we found that we didn't really want to walk anywhere because it was too frightening, LOL. You get used to it for sure, but I'm glad we had good Tuk Tuk drivers throughout our stay who knew how to navigate through the craziness. :)

This is a Tuk Tuk

Our hotel was really nice... cheap for sure at $30/night. :) It included breakfast every morning and free  wireless. It was awesome and the folks at reception were super friendly and organized our bus ride to Vietnam later in the week.

The view from our breakfast table - the entire downstairs was open air with lots of plants and water fountains. It was hot and a bit humid in Cambodia. It probably hit 90F each day and this wasn't even their summer! But, the sun was GLORIOUS and felt so amazing!

Joel's breakfast croissant

My breakfast - fried chicken and noodles. There was fresh fruit too, which was so delicious!

So, for our first day, we planned a city tour trip with a local tour group, Mango Cambodia. Our guide, Chamruen, was AWESOME! He was very knowledgeable and answered all of our questions openly and honestly. He is studying to be a lawyer and hopes to move to the States when he is done with school.

Here's Chamreun with a gift we presented to the "head monk" at a Buddhist monastery. He taught us how to behave appropriately and show respect and we were blessed by the monk and splashed with water, ha ha!

Here is the group (of Thai women actually) that followed us in paying their respects to the monk. Apparently, these monks are not permitted to cook their own food or buy their own supplies so all of it is provided by folks in the community.

We were able to visit the Imperial Palace and these guys were playing some music out front.

Buddhism is the predominant religion in Cambodia

Within the ground are many shrines, lots of history, museums, and the home of the king and his family. The king doesn't really rule the country, he is more of a figure head.

Lots and lots of Buddha's

We weren't permitted to actually enter into the royal home but we allowed to gaze upon it... apparently the royal family doesn't go out a whole lot

Random guardian figure

Elephants were a huge part of Cambodian culture

This is a Bodhi tree. It's really unique looking with lots of symbolism for the Buddhist religion as it is the tree under which Buddha is said to have reached enlightenment

This was only the very beginning of our first day! There's so much more!! :)