Cambodia Trip: Siem Reap!

Today we travelled to another city, Siem Reap. We took a plane and it was about 45 minutes. The airport wasn't as crazy as I thought it would be. All 11 of us were able to get through pretty quickly. The plane was very smooth and I actually took a little nap during it! So we arrived at the airport in Siem Reap, met our guide, and we were off to our hotel. We are lunch here at the hotel, got settled in, then headed out for more adventures.

The first thing on the list was to visit an old Monastery, where monks live. This was so interesting. Like I've said before, 90% of the population is Buddist so we were able to go and see where the monks live and worship. Our wonderful tour guide explained a lot about what the buildings mean and the culture and history but there were tons of kids around and I got a little distracted..

Because come on, how cute are they?!

We were allowed to take pictures of anything around the Monasteries. Our guide encouraged us to go up to monks and talk to them and have our pictures taken.

Women aren't allowed to touch the monks so that's why we're not standing close. Our guide informed us that boys are allowed to become monks whenever they want. We saw some kids that were younger than 10. There are also nuns which are pretty much women monks in the Buddist religion. They also shave their head and wear white. Our guide said it's smarter for them to become nuns when they're older than 50 because it's safer.

We left this monastery and went to another. Our tour guide was a monk for 10 years so he knows a lot about it. This one was very very beautiful and there was a school in it for the younger monks so there was a lot more of the younger ones.

This are smaller Stuppas (which are like graves). Our guide said this is like a local cemetery. There were Stuppas everywhere!

Here's a picture of me, Sherry, my grandma, and Tony all in front of the old entrance to an old temple. Very beautiful.

This is a 16 year old boy we met. I forget his name because it was kind of a hard one to pronounce. He said that his family made him come be a monk which is pretty common for most of the boys there. He hadn't been there for long either. We kind of compared this to when parents send their children off to military school. He was very shy but also very kind.

So we left the monastery and decided to take a trip to the crocodile farm. (Sounds cooler than it was). We say tonzzzz of crocodiles but learned nothing about them.. Basically we learned that they keep them for about 15 years then use their meat and skins to make money.

There was about 15 areas like the first one with crocodiles piled on top of each other. It was a little stinky too..

So we left and went to an amazing restaurant. It was open a little bit and there was a wonderful breeze coming through.

Grandma and I had beef wrapped in bacon, sushi, Japanese gyoza, and each had a mango smoothie. It was so delicious.

This is Yali. She was adopted about the same time as Clare and her family is also on this trip. Her sister was also adopted from here, not sure when, but she's with us too. Yali is 14, shy, but super sweet. I was trying to take a picture of the restaurant sign but she hopped in front and I'm glad she did.

So after dinner we went to the night market. It's a street filled with street merchants, a lot like the ones I've been to in Mexico. We shopped around and found some cool stuff.