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Var’s New Home & Other Stories
If you’re lucky enough to travel, meeting people from entirely different cultures, with entirely different lives, is one of the many privileges. It broadens the mind, is stimulating, educational and humbling, and puts our own lives into a different perspective. Here we continue our short series of posts telling the stories of some of the people we met on our recent tour of South East Asia. Life is never quite as straightforward as it seems: there is another side to every story. Sitting outside the floating house in Prek Toal and talking with a relaxed and disarmed Var, our guide and companion, was absolutely enlightening. His story is no doubt just…
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People, Food And Funny Words: Last Day In Cambodia
“Hi”, he says, his whole face illuminated by his broad smile, “how long you been in Cambodia”. “Four weeks now, we leave on Tuesday”, says Michaela, and adds in response to his next question, “Siem Reap, Tonle Sap, Battambang, Phnom Penh, Kampot and Kep”. He beams. “Thank you so much for visiting my country, I hope you like it” When we tell him just how much we have loved it, his smile nearly bursts out of his cheeks. He can’t say thank you enough times. Big smiles, friendly manner, gracious attitude….and there you have our experience of the people of Cambodia summed up in one brief exchange. Honestly, we haven’t…
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Seven Sultry Days In Siem Reap
It’s already getting warm long before first light as we head back towards Angkor Wat, the clock ticking towards 4.45am and the darkness heavy with sultry heat even before the birds are singing. Michaela’s trusty weather app says today will be 39C but will “feel like” 45C and it’s clear that the mercury’s journey up the thermometer has already started. We’re up at this hour for the classic sight of the sun rising behind the temple’s five towers, a must-do experience for all visitors to Siem Reap. As we leave the tuk-tuk and start the long walk through the grounds, a silent pilgrimage of other early risers makes its way towards…
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Into Cambodia: Siem Reap & Angkor Wat
Words. One of our airbnb hosts in Vietnam has left a review of us on the website, as they do. When Michaela runs the Vietnamese text through Google translate, the review consists of just three words: “clean tidy happy”. Well, it’s hardly an extended character reference but “clean tidy happy” is a description which we’ll readily accept as a compliment. And on the subject of words, I picked up a T-shirt in Hanoi which carries a slogan which just about sums up my entire life philosophy just now. It reads…”think global, drink local”. Yep, that just about says it all. As the end of our time in Vietnam approaches, we…
