That one time we went to Thailand & Cambodia like 8 months ago

It is general conference time again... and I had a sudden realization this weekend (although, I've been consciously aware of it for some time) that we were in Cambodia for the last general conference, so its been six months since we traveled, and I've never blogged about it. So here it goes. I'll try to keep the words to a minimum and focus on pictures.

Part 1: Taipei, Taiwan

We had an 8 hour layover from JFK to Bangkok in Taiwan, and there was no-way-Jose I was going to  sit in an Airport for 8 hours when I could be out exploring a country I've never been to before. Even if I didn't have more than a few hours to do it. So we took a bus into the city, had some lady circle some things on a map for us, bought a subway pass, and walked out into cold, rainy, wet, Taiwan.

Mengjia Longshan Temple

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Still no idea who that is, but we went to go see his statue!

The Temple!! The church next door was a much needed respite from the pouring rain.

Taipei 101 - once the world's tallest building - couldn't see the top due to the clouds.

More of the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

Dumpling pic. The amount of sleep we have gotten is starting to show. 

More Mengjia Longshan Temple

Mengjia Longshan Temple Chant- this was going on the entire time we were there

Random Drum Performance in the Park

Part 2: Bangkok, Thailand aka the city of scammers

We were in Bangkok for only about 48 hours. On the first day, we went to Erawan National Park- a mountain with several waterfalls & pools along the trail up. You can swim in them, and they are magical looking. If you've ever seen those videos of people sticking their feet in tubs of water with the tiny fish in them that eat at the dead skin at the bottoms of their feet... those same fish were in these pools but they were like full grown and nibbling at your... everywhere. Kinda freaky. But still cool. On the second day of Bangkok, we visited a lot of Buddhist temples, ate some good food, and got scammed by a lot of tuk-tuk drivers. Apparently, there are a lot of tailors/jewelers/tourist trap people that will give gas stamps to tuk-tuk drivers if they bring tourists to them. So naturally, we got dragged to a lot of those, even if we specifically told them no. We even bought a suit from a really nice Indian guy who said it was Armani quality! Go figure! We tried to go to the royal palace, but all of the tuk-tuk drivers tricked us and told us "It's closed in the morning- go later in the afternoon" or "It's closed today- the Monks always have a holiday on Friday" and we totally believed them!! They were all so nice! Ha. We will NOT go back to Thailand without a Thai speaker to guide us!! It was beautiful, but it was nuts!!

Erawan Falls

The scab eating fish!!

More Erawan

I love the birds. 

Every time we saw a new Buddha, our Tuk-Tuk driver would say, "Ohhh you are so lucky! This is the (some obscure reason why this buddha is special) Buddha!" Later, after we figured out our tuk-tuk drivers were scamming us, we made up our own reasons why these Buddha's were so special. We were lucky to see this Buddha because it is the "Buddha that is formed from the tears of all the scammed tourists of Bangkok"

Matt gets a new suit!!

"Ohh you are so lucky! You can say that you have seen the Buddha with the thickest golden toenails!"

More Erawan

Seriously so beautiful!!

We took a little river rafting trip

And rode an elephant!

At some point, our guide (who was riding where Matthew was at the beginning) hopped off and invited us to get down on the Elephant's neck. Which was absolutely terrifying. 

 The look on my face is deceptive. I was terrified.

"Ohhh you are so lucky! You can tell all your friends that you saw the Buddha that was the inspiration for the "Paint me like one of your French models" scene from the Titanic!"

Our Tuk-Tuk driver was so nice to let us pose in his cab. Even though he was scamming us. We even tipped him SO good. 

"Ohhh, you are so lucky! You can tell all of your friends that you got to see the Buddha that is 99.2874% gold instead of 100%!! So lucky!!"

Standing outside of the Thai Royal Palace. We didn't end up getting to go inside since it was "Closed in the morning" and "Closed all day" and by the time we figured out we were getting scammed it was too late!!

But at least I met a cool new friend outside the palace!

"Ohhh you are SO lucky!! You got to see the buddha that... the buddha that.... um I think this Buddha is the one that is completely full of unicorn droppings! That's it! You are so lucky!!"

Creeper

Ringing the gong of scamming sorrow

Thailand was pretty cool though. 

Part 3: Battambang, Cambodia

We took a bus to the Thai-Cambodia border, and there hired a car to drive us the rest of the way to Battambang. Battambang is not a big tourist location. We went there because Matt served there, and we primarily wanted to meet with some of the people he taught, and explore the area. It was a beautiful little town! It has grown a lot since Matt served there, but it was still so fun to see the sweet members that lived there.

Some new (to me, not to Matt) friends on the Bamboo Railway

Chilling with my homie in Primary

THE BAT CAVES. Every night, the bats exit this cave at sundown. It takes roughly an hour for all of them to get out. There are SO many. 

On the mountain above the bat caves, you can go down to some of the caves were people were killed during the Khmer Rouge. These are pieces of clothing found after the war was over. 

Chilling with our monkey friends.

Battambang means "The Lost Stick." This statue is called "loktadambangkragnoung" which means "Grandfather with the lost stick" No idea what this means, but here's us with Grandpa!

Lots of people bring food offerings to grandpa, and I asked our friends what happens to all the food that people leave there, and one of our friends promptly hopped off the tuk tuk, and grabbed us an apple and some bananas, and said "Me and grandfather... we are friends. He wouldn't mind."

Part 4: Siem Reap, Cambodia

Siem Reap is like the mecca of hipsters and weirdos. Lots of earthy people and dreds awaited us when we arrived. In Battambang, we were the only white people... like at all, and here it was expected. It is a tourist city, entirely because of Angkor Wat. If you've never heard of Angkor Wat, google it. Think: tomb raider and King Louie's palace from the Jungle Book. Ancient Ruins of 12th Century Cambodian civilization, inaccessible to the world because of the Khmer Rouge until the 1980's, so the world is really just now understanding what it is. I thought it was particularly interesting how "new" it was, because usually when you go visit these kind of sites, there are barriers everywhere, preventing people from touching ancient artifacts and structures to preserve them for all time. There were few if any of these barriers. You could climb all over the place, touch anything, etc. And despite my complaints of all the tourists... it was freaking cool. (get ready for a picture over load)

 Random, headless figure at Angkor Wat

The ancient Cambodians loved their dangerous stairs of death.

I'm getting really good at these "copying of statues" things

At least these stairs of death have handrails

Nasty popsicle break.

So the thing to do... is to go to Angkor Wat and watch the sunrise come over the top. However, this time of the year it is SO smoggy in the morning, that we didn't even see it when the sunrise happened, which was a bummer. This is the only sunrise picture we got, and its not the actual central part of Angkor Wat. Oh well. 

Hanging with our Monk friends.

There are many temple sites around Angkor Wat, this one was my favorite- Ta Prohm. Random old trees growing everywhere- on top of buildings, through buildings... etc

Also in Siem Reap, we got to go Zip Lining! Was RIDICULOUS.

Hawt.

One one of the days we were in Siem Reap, it was just too hot after a morning of exploring, so we went down to the lobby of our hotel and found out that there was an escape room nearby- we've never done one of these before, but we needed an escape from the heat so we did it! And it was seriously the funnest thing ever!

Part 5: Phnom Penh

Our final stop was Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. We originally planned on driving, but we found a last minute flight for $25 each... best 50 bucks we've ever spent. Saved us a 4-hour Indiana-Jones-Ride-esque bus ride. Phnom Penh is busy and crowded and dirty and smells. But it was also pretty great.

First Stop: Cambodia Royal Palace

One of Matt's former mission companions drove us to a temple outside of Phnom Penh that supposedly houses one of Buddha's bones. We had a fun time speculating which bone it was... 

Testing out the selfie stick

The long stairs up to the temple

Lotus Fruit on the drive up

Lots of squinting

Afterwards we had a lovely lunch... of an entire chicken. 

Like... the whole thing.

More squinting. Very sunny. 

Matt & Seiha

Matt & another mission companion- Dina.

Life is great when you have friends with motor cycles. 

And when they let you try to ride them. 

One of our days in Phenom Penh, we visited several Khmer Rouge Genocide Memorial sites, including the Choeung Ek Genocide Museum and the Tuol Sleng (S-21) Genocide Museum. It was a humbling, gut-wrenching, and emotional day as we learned about the barbaric atrocities committed during the Khmer Rouge. It was both baffling and enraging. This is not a well-known event in history, despite the fact that it is so very similar to other genocides the world has witnessed. If you have never heard of it, I encourage you to google it or read up on it. 

The Killing Fields. We are told that new bones resurface weekly. 

One of my favorite parts though, was getting to meet the people that Matt taught on his mission! Although I understood zero of what they were saying, they were such cool and humble people, and are keeping the church strong in Cambodia!

We felt very blessed to be able to visit such a beautiful country and meet some amazing people. We live in a seriously beautiful world.