Caitlin had the incredible idea that we should spoil ourselves and move over to a fancy hotel with a spa for the last two nights of our trip. She was actually wonderfully kind and gifted me one of those nights as a start-of-grad-school present! After nearly five weeks of sleeping in hostels, homestays, and cheap …
Tonle Sap is the largest lake in Southeast Asia and is home to a number of floating villages. Like much of Cambodian history, the events leading to the villages being formed here are not a happy tale. People of Vietnamese descent in Cambodia were deported to Vietnam during the Khmer Rouge's reign. Because of this, …
Continue reading Visiting the floating village of Kompong Khleang
On Wednesday, Caitlin and I planned our day around watching the sunset from the Pre Rup temple in Angkor Park. We wanted a second day of exploring the temples in the park first, but we didn't want to exhaust ourselves to the extent that we did on Monday. Because of this, we went for a …
Today, Caitlin and I took a short day trip to see the sights at Phnom Kulen National Park. This park is about an hour and a half away from Siem Reap's town center over some very rough roads (I was actually told not to go there by my hotel concierge because it's so rough), and …
Today, I stepped foot in one of the places I've been dreaming of seeing for years: Angkor Archaeological Park! This UNESCO Heritage Site contains the remains of a number of the capitals of the Khmer Empire from the 9th through the 15th centuries. This was actually the largest pre-industrial city in the world! I've drooled …
Caitlin's flight got in at 9:30 this morning, and I went along with the hotel tuk-tuk driver to pick her up. Once she'd settled into the hotel, we took a trip into the city to check out the Old Market. This was a covered market selling everything from clothes to souvenirs to food to kitchen …
I joined in on one of Phong Nha Discovery Tours' excursions to Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park today. This park consists of old karst mountains and at least 300 caves, many of which are open for visitors to explore. We started off with a walk through the Botanic Garden. Our destination here was the Thac …
About a 40-minute drive from my homestay in Tam Coc is the Bai Dinh Pagoda. This is apparently Southeast Asia’s largest Buddhist complex, and it includes several temples and more than 500 carved statues of Buddha. This is a modern pagoda with elements that are, in fact, still under construction - though it incorporates some …
Trang An Boat TourAfter breakfast this morning, I took a taxi to one of the biggest tourist destinations in the Ninh Binh province: the Trang An Boat Tour. This is a three-hour ecotourism boat ride that takes you down rivers, past steep limestone mountains, to various temples, and through a number of caves. There are …
One of the stops I've been most excited to get to is Ninh Binh, where I had read about stunning landscapes and access to rural Vietnam. This morning, I hopped on a train that carried me from Hanoi to Ninh Binh, and then I took a taxi to the town of Tam Coc within the …
Journeying Jasmine 