Cambodian housing

Phnom Penh. Cambodians are extremely freindly and helpful. My estimate is that 90% of them live in what we would call an impovershed condition. The city is both beautiful and horrifyingly dirty. The apartment building below was right beside our hotel. Bars in the windows instead of glass (too hot) and the sidewalks assumed the role of sewers and places to leave ALL your garbage. The smell was 3-dimensional.
These houses are a 10 minute walk from downtown.

But, really, everyone was happy and curious about my green and blue eyed kids and we always felt safe and welcome.

The many faces of Bayon

This is Cody helping me choose a 'Bayon face' painting. See if you can spot the likenesses in the following images.
I 'liberated' this image from National Geographic.com It's similar to a picture I remember from a late 70's issue. But, in 2003, they cleared the vines in order to prevent further weathering and disintegration. So we didn't actually get to see it.

But we did see all of these.

There are 8 faces in this image. Can you 'see' all of them? Click to enlarge.

Angkor Wat: Part 1

We framed our Cambodia trip around two goals: Angkor Wat and time at the beach. When I was a kid, the Angkor Wat complex was a semi-mythical, other-worldly kind of place, particularly because it was scraped out of 800 year's worth of jungle growth, 200 years ago.

Abandoned and misunderstood for centuries, Angkor Wat is absolutely fascinating.

We arrived late in the afternoon, just in time for the sunset ceremony. There were about 500 other tourists on top of this temple with us.
About 25 degrees at 6:00 pm.
The warm, orange glow of the sun setting.

And the sun going down again for the day, as it has on this temple for the past 365,000 days.

This event really set the mood for two days of temple climbing and tomb raiding in plus 30 degree, blue sky days.

Scenes from the front seat

These people passed us, on their way to prepare dinner for us...
...followed by the people who had the dishes to cook and serve dinner...

...and here's dinner.

Green and Orange

Bangkok 2009

We stopped in Bangkok again on our way to Cambodia. Fascinating city: 12,000,000 people, trailing London and Paris in tourism. We took a canal tour for an hour through a very small part of the city. Here's what we saw:

As in all cultures, some people live like this...

...while others live like this.

Mt. Everest

Winter Break, 2009. Teaching and living overseas has been great. We particularly enjoy holiday breaks. Almost all of our peers are going somewhere in the next three weeks: Thailand, South Africa, Korea, Greece, Turkey, Kuala Lumpur, France, and Switzerland, and lots are going back to the States.

The group below are going to Base Camp: Everest. They are prepared to hike 7-8 hours a day, for a week, until they they get to 18,000 feet. And then hike out. In the cold. At altitude. Not our idea of a holiday.

Incomplete

Dec 11, 2009

Greetings. Edna just got home. It is 4:40 pm. The kids and I have been here since noon. We are now officially on "Winter Break!" Three weeks with which to do as little or as much as we like.

It's been -20 here at night and it rarely gets above -10 during the day. Phnom Penh, Cambodia, is one hour ahead of us and the average temperature is +25. That's a 40 degree spread and in approximately 48 hours, we will be there. So as soon as we get back we'll post some pictures and some stories.

The pictures below were taken a few hours drive from here. I'll let wikipedia take over:

The Issyk kurgan, in south-eastern Kazakhstan, less than 20 km east from the Talgar alluvial fan, near Issyk, is a burial mound discovered in 1969. It has a height of six meters and a circumference of sixty meters. It is dated to the 4th or 3rd century BC.

Situated in what was at the time eastern Scythia, just north of Sogdiana, the burial contained a skeleton of uncertain sex, in all probability an 18-year-old Saka (Scythian) prince or princess, interred with warrior's equipment, variously dubbed "golden man" or "golden princess," and with rich funerary goods, including 4,000 gold ornaments.Right now we are getting ready to go out for dinner to a Uiger restaraunt. Never pass up a Uiger meal; it's fantastic food.

So, Merry Christmas to all! Happy Birthday to brothers John and Hank. Congratulations, again, to Hilda and Waldo (looking forward to the reunion next summer). Russ: why'd you sell your horses? Sue: Happy--Boxing Day--Birthday; we'll face west, from a beach on the Gulf of Thailand, and hoist a pint for you. Who'd I forget? Oh, yeah: Happy Birthday George, his son Dan, and our niece/cousin, Courtney. Also, Marja, her daughter Tracy, son Ryan, and nephews Curtis and Dale--all December babies. That's a lot of birthdays for one month. And, of course, Jocelyn; she's 7 whole days old!

Happy Holidays to all. We'll check in again in a few weeks.

The Riot at the Hyatt

We had our year end/Christmas dinner last night at the Hyatt. About 150 staff members were there. The food was fantastic and the music was great. One more week of school and then we get 3 weeks off.
I've never been in a Hyatt Hotel anywhere else in the world, so maybe someone out there can corroborate something for me--we had a drink in the upstairs lounge before going in for dinner. I had a whiskey and Edna had a glass of wine: $45. Our friends had one whiskey, one gin and tonic, and one martini: 17,000 Tenge ($105).

Ah, Kazakhstan--the land of contrasts.

A Sheep for Liam

This entry is for our nephew Liam. We just skyped with him and his family, explaining that we weren't at school today (Friday, Nov 27th) because it's a national holiday here: Kurban ayt. It's a muslim holiday that reminds people to be thankful for all blessings and to be especially mindful of the poor.

If you can afford it, you're compelled to buy three sheep: keep one for yourself and deliver the other two to people who are poor. There's also a connection to father Abraham and the sacrifice he offered after God spared Isaac's life.

So there were a lot of nervous sheep for sale in the city today. Some of them were taken away live, some were slaughtered right on the curb, and at least two in our neighbourhood were taken out back, dying by lethal 'lead poisoning' if I still accurately recognize the sound of gunfire (within city limits).

So, Liam, unlike the people below, we just couldn't get them into our backseat. Do you know how many air fresheners we'd have to buy? And besides, we don't have enough seat belts. Also, I don't think your mother would approve of the graphic method with which they would have been, how can I say, dispatched to the great wool basket in the sky. Baaa-ad joke?

Tonight, however, we're going to have dinner in an Uzbek(istan) restaraunt, where we'll be sure to pick wool out of our teeth. See you next summer.

Halloween 2009

Halloween must necessarily begin with the ritualistic disemboweling of the pumpkin. We live in a fairly sheltered, westernized, housing community, but a few of the locals cast side-long glances at us and our blatant waste of a natural resource--they eat them, we use them for decoration.

These three Korean kids get the candy concept, but not the costume part.

A Canadian witch, an Uzbek-American witch, and Paulina (don't know where she's from).

A Dutch-American family hosted an afternoon Halloween party the next day. Quite fun.

Because Halloween comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, caramel or candy apples (known as toffee apples outside North America) are a common Halloween treat made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, sometimes followed by rolling them in nuts. Sorry. I couldn't help myself.

Luxury Hotel?

Just in case someone thought that hotels in Kazakhstan might be similar to hotels in North America--well some are but this one wasn't!! This is the "hotel" that we stayed at in the National Park. They advertise this place!!!

This was the main meeting room and they would of cooked dinner for us but the menu was a little questionable--fish head soup--and after I saw the kitchen--we made the right decision.

We had this room with 3 beds and not a whole lot more--the selling feature was indoor plumbing. The bathroom was down a very steep set of stairs, past the communal wash sink, through the porch to a very cold, cold bathroom. Not the end of the world but the price for these accommodations was a little high but they had us cornered on this one. We were in the middle of nowhere.

I think they were making silage for the winter. There were some sheep behind the house that were looking a little hungry. Beside the sheep, there was a laundry room and it did have a washing machine--I was very impressed but I am not sure if it was working.

Sand and snow angels.

In Almaty, we can make snow angels and sand angels.

The Singing Sands Pt. 1

This is one of the Singing Sand Dunes. It's a site inside Altyn-Emil National Park, about 400km from our house. We had to pay for a guide to be with us at all times, for safety and for directions. We drove about 300kms inside the park and we didn't see one other vehicle. Why didn't we see anyone? Because the park is 520,000 hectares in size. Isn't that a million acres? In the exact centre of this image are three tiny dots. Those are our 4x4's. That's how high we are, standing on a sand dune.

We walked along this ridge of sand, single-file, so that we could get to...

...this peak. On the way there, we heard the sand singing. (More about that later.)

Those 'ants' in the upper left corner are us, walking back. Even though it is a desert setting, there is an enormous river in the valley below--kind of like the Nile.