December 25, 2010
At the beach we got a paddle boat.(we rented it). First boom steered and me and mom paddled with our legs. Then Alice wanted to steer, so I got on the back of the boat and Alice steered. Mom said we would go to a fishing village that was on a coast in sight. We paddled for a long time, an acational jet ski would zoom past us. Mom told us the village was poor and caught fish and sold them for money. When we got super close to the village we saw dead fish floating in the water. There were boat’s with huge piles of nets on them, the moaters were a long stick with a michene on top and 3 blades at the end. Some of the houses were on stilts on the beach, some were on stilts in the water. There were children leaning out of windows to shout hello to us. Men were on boats that were leaving port. We drove thru the village 1 last time, then we turned around and went home.
Love Griffin.
PS; I wrote this myself, and, MERRY CRIST MAS.
PPS Here's a video of us paddle boating at the fishing village: Click here
December 23, 2010
It was hard for us to leave exciting Phnom Penh, even with the lure of the Cambodian beaches as the next stop. At the end of a long drive to the southern coast, we got to Sihanouk Ville on the Gulf of Thailand. It’s a seedy beach town that’s just figuring out if it’s capable of shouldering a real estate boom. It’s building beach-side buildings, but often without buyers.
Still, you can see the appeal. Scuba divers love it there. The beaches are pretty white and not crowded at all. There’s lots of hotels for backpackers and Cambodian women/older girls for leering, old Western men. Ken walked by himself through the streets of one beach town and was offered both drugs and hookers, just in the 5 minutes it took to drop off our laundry.
We stayed in a lovely, sprawling, uncrowded resort where we could lay under straw umbrellas with no other people obstructing the water, 10 feet in front of us.
December 23, 2010
About an hour outside of Phnom Penh, a small mountain has a royal property named Oudong on top with multiple royal shrines. You have to climb up many steps to reach the top. One shrine is a Buddhist temple where they claim to have a hair of Buddha inside. There were many women and a couple Buddhist nuns leading a prayer outside.
Click here to see video.
The other shrines held the former Cambodian kings’ cremated bodies inside, one shrine per king. The shrines were large with detailed sculptures on the outside, and clearly had a former heyday, even if they were rough, worn out, and unguarded now.
It is said that a giant 5-headed snake Hindu mythology calls Naga was going to come out of a hole and bring Cambodia great power, world domination, and prosperity. The Chinese heard about this hole when they visited Oudong and got scared. So, the Chinese built a Buddha on top of the Naga hole. The Chinese thought that the devout Buddhist Cambodians would never move the Buddha because you're not allowed to move Buddhas, as Buddhists. Our guide seemed both amused by the story and a little bit regretful at a lost opportunity for Cambodian power.
