23 February 2013

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!! :)

02 February 2013

Mount Misen Hike

We could keep going with all of the other places we went while in Okinawa, but we think it's time to move on to some of the other things we were able to do before the end of 2012... but one final image from Okinawa: JELLYFISH. Yes, tis true, we ate jellyfish. It was cooked/boiled a tad and smothered in some type of Italian dressing... tasted kind of like gummy bears with that kind of texture too. Ick. Worth doing once to say you did it. Never again.


So moving on: y'all have already seen pics from our couple of other visits to Miyajima Island, but back in October, we went specifically to hike while it was still pleasant outside and the fall foliage was in full color (and of course, to eat oysters, always Miyajima to eat fresh oysters). There's a cable car option to take to the top of Mount Misen, but we opted to tough it out and do the hike, which turned out to be a little over a mile. Doesn't sound like much, but let me tell you, a mile straight up a mountain feels like a marathon, LOL!

It's so funny to me - Joel and I feel like we're in pretty good shape, but man, when it comes to some of these steep, uphill, stair climbing type hikes, we get worn out FAST! But, all these older Japanese folks just truck it up the mountain-side like it's nothing. When we hear them coming behind us, we act like we're going strong and not out of breath, but as soon as they pass us (we lie to ourselves that "allowing" them to pass us doesn't really give us away), we stop for a rest and to catch our breath! The things we do to save our image... :)

Gotta have a picture of the giant Torii Gate from the ferry

Grilled oysters!

Fried oysters!




Largest rice spoon in the world

We had to stop and take pictures of all the beautiful trees... it was a great time of year to come to the Island

Getting distracted on our way to the mountain... this statue was several hundred thousand dollars!

Nice to know that if we run a little, we can cut 3 minutes off our time to the mountain, LOL

These are nice stairs here at the start of the hike... it turns in to rock slabs, packed earth, and fallen trees in just a few seconds up

Koi pond

Nice benches to sit and enjoy the scenery

Lots of folks from base come here to get their family pictures taken at this time of year

Almost to the top!

Trust me, you want to chill when  you get to the top... you're tuckered out and the scenery is just stunning

I believe this picture is of Hiroshima
 
LOTS of islands
We stopped at the fire hall, which is practically at the top of the mountain... pretty cool, but SO smokey!



We followed these steps up a ways more to see shrines and such

More scenic shots from the hike down the mountain


We love to take pictures of Japanese signs... these two were on the train ride back to Iwakuni :-p
Well, would you?
 Japan is so fun. :)