Kung Hei Fat Choi!!

We got back from Cambodia just in time for the beginning of Chinese New Year celebrations. Chinese New Year is Christmas, Easter, New Years, the Super Bowl, your birthday and any other celebration you can think of all rolled into one. It technically lasts for 15 days, but from what I could tell, the first 5 or so are the most important. It's a big deal for the workers in China because it is usually the only time that they will go home to see their families. It is also a time for people like John & I (because we are married) to give out Lai See or red envelopes. The red envelops have money in them and they are technically supposed to be given to unmarried people and children, but it also serves as a way to tip your doorman or housekeeper and people like that. It's stressful because whenever we came in or left the building, there were about 7 more doormen than usual who swarmed us shaking their fists in a begging motion chanting "Kung Hei Fat Choi", which basically means "happy new year", but in this context means "please give me a red envelope". I would get really uncomfortable and ended up giving 2-3 red envelopes to the same people over the course of Chinese New Year.

This year is the year of the Rat - I've heard different stories about how the animals in the Lunar calendar were selected, one of them has to do with a race to Buddha. Apparently, the Ox was winning the race to Buddha and the Rat was sitting on the Ox's back. Then right before the finish line, the Rat jumped off the back of the Ox and won the race. The year of the Rat is the first year in the lunar cycle, and the Ox is the second. I'm not sure if that is the real story, but I do know that there was a celebration of Rats EVERYWHERE and a huge effort to make them not look like sewer-dwellers.

It is also very popular for a Lion Dance and fireworks. Our apartment building had a lion dance I missed it because I was the sickest I've ever been in my life and couldn't get off the bathroom floor - but John took some pictures and said that the kids were mesmerized by the lion.

We then made our way down to Victoria Harbour to see the firework show. Hong Kong is famous for it's elaborate fireworks and we were not disappointed. Some of the fireworks were in the shape of Chinese characters, letters and numbers. Here are some pictures

Angkor, Cambodia

Having put the capital city Phnom Penh behind us, it was time to go to the place that was the reason for our trip, the ancient ruins of Angkor just outside Siem Reap.

I could barely contain my excitement as our cab passed the magnificent Angkor Wat on the way to our hotel. This was a place I had dreamed of coming to for years but figured I would never make it to. The fact that we were in Cambodia and would have a chance to climb around these great ruins seemed almost dream like.

The first day, Katie and I decided to go into town, rent a couple of bikes and ride over to Angkor Wat, the primary attraction in the ruins of Angkor and the temple that is considered one of the 7 man-made wonders of the world.

Siem Reap had the feel of a boom town, but retained lots of local South East Asian charm at the same time. The positive impact of the tourism industry was evident everywhere, and the local's pride for their country and their old temples was palpable. Instead of the animosity towards tourists that one can experience when travelling, the people were warm and welcoming. They loved talking to Katie and I to practice their English, although they were always very confused when we would tell them we live in Hong Kong. English is a critical skill for someone in Cambodia who wants to share in some of the profits of the local tourism industry.

Katie and I found a place to rent a couple of bikes for $4 and began our ride to Angkor Wat. The ride it self was a blast, as we shared the road with Tuk-tuks, motor bikes, and cars. All the fun we were having turned to fear as I broke the key off in the lock of our bike chain when we arrived at Angkor Wat. We decided to leave the locked bikes as is and explore Angkor Wat a bit. When we returned back to the bikes, we unsuccessfully tried to unlock the bike chain. A little girl came up to us to try to sell us some postcards when we showed her our problem. This was the first time we heard a word that Katie and I will probably be saying for the rest of our lives . . .

"Bahhh!!!" which Katie and I quickly understood to loosely mean "Damn it." Make a wrong turn in the car? Baahhh! Break a glass? Baahhh! You get the point.

But back to the story. The little girl after seeing our dilemma told a few other locals. It was not long before we had a whole audience for our bike lock problem. Luckily a bus driver was somehow able to get the lock free. The locals found Katie's "OH MY GOD!!" reaction hilarious and began repeating it to themselves, which in itself was hilarious. Experiences like this are why we travel. Anyways. Back to the temples. I won't bore you with too many details but basically Angkor is a huge series of temples (~120 in total) over 40 square miles that were the heart of the Khmer Empire from the 9th-12th centuries. Most of the buildings remaining are the temples which were made of more durable materials. Although Angkor Wat gets all the press, Katie and I found some of the others to be more impressive and or intriguing. See below for some of our favorites. We also had some time to visit the countryside that had beautiful rice paddies, stilted houses, and grazing water buffalo.
And a floating village on the Tonle Sap Lake . . .
Overall, Katie and I loved our trip and agree that Cambodia is one our favorite places we've ever travelled to.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia - Feb 08

In February Katie and I decided to go to a place that has had a prominent place within my imagination for years. After seeing photos of giant trees growing out of ancient temple ruins in National Geographic Traveler, this was near the top of my life's to do list but I was not confident I would ever lay my eyes upon it in person. As fate would have it, a job opportunity placed us no more than a 3 hour flight away.
Angkor Wat is an architectural wonder, a spiritual place, and one of the 7 man-made wonders of the world. I was expecting the ruins of these ancient cities of the Khmer Empire to astound me. What I was not expecting was to be profoundly impacted by an unbelievably kind, gentle and beautiful people. A people who went through an atrocious genocide at the hands of their own people that left approximately 2 million dead.


On our way to Angkor Wat, our trip started in Phomh Penh, Cambodia's capital city. The poverty in this city was very apparent. Some children in streets were naked, other people were wearing pajamas as their normal clothes, having no other options.
While in Phnom Penh we went to their palace, which having just gone to the Grand Palace in Bangkok a couple of weeks before, provided an interesting contrast. The Grand Palace was shiny, clean and new, while the Palace in Cambodia was noticibly more run down and dirty, especially inside the buildings.



We also went to a Wat, or temple that was in a park. This park was filled with extremely poor people who obviously had no place else to go. It was filled with garbage, and as we walked by, I watched an older woman finish something on a styrofoam plate and throw it into a bush despite a garbage can sitting only a few meters away. The park also had all sorts of monkeys that were playing an rummaging through the garbage. The temple itself was extremely strange(see picture below) and had someone sitting next to it who was obviously high on something. Definitely a little sketchy.

- Warning - History Alert - Warning -
To give you a bit more history on Cambodia and Phnom Penh, in the 1970's, while the US was at war in Vietnam and concerned about the Domino Theory regarding the spread of communism in South East Asia, a militia of rural Cambodians, led by Pol Pot, instituted a reign of terror over the small nation. Called the Khmer Rouge, this militia was mostly made up of boys between 12 and 16 years old. The US and France had a presence here, to try to prevent a civil war and the spread of Communism, but evacuated Phnom Penh as the Khmer Rouge's takeover of the capital city became inevitable. What happened over the next few years is one of the darker moments recent human history. The Khmer Rouge evacuated everyone from Phnom Penh to leave the city completely empty for over 4 years. They killed most professionals, academics and artists and forced the rest to work in rice fields in labor camps. Since most of the rice was sold to neighboring countries for guns and ammunition, many of the workers starved to death. Those who didn't were executed for such minor infractions as dropping their basket of rice they had harvested or being caught sneaking a little more food to fight off malnutrition. It was not until neighboring Vietnam came in and defeated the Khmer Rouge that this sad chapter came to a close.