Cu Chi Tunnels, Vietnam!

So I'm finally posting my 'Nam pics! Vietnam was my favorite country on my trip, i can't really explain why though. maybe it was that the group was great, the guide was great, the food was great, and everything we did was so fun! These photos are from my visit to the Cu Chi Tunnels, where the Viet Cong lived during the Vietnam War. The tunnels are tiny, maybe 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide! The hidden entrances were even smaller, I was the only one that could fit! We also saw all the different ways that they trapped American soldiers, everything looked pretty lethal.

More Beach Photos

Here are 2 more photos from the beach in Cambodia. The second one is for my parents, in case they were wondering!

The Beach

These photos are from Sihanoukville, Cambodia. We went there in the last few days of the Cambodia trip. I already talked about the beach in an earlier post, so these pictures are from the snorkeling trip we took. The boat in the photos is the same boat we took to get to the little island in the Gulf of Thailand, it's pretty legit. It took an hour to get there, and we stopped in the middle to snorkel and I took some photos of the boat. We got to the island and had a really good lunch on the beach. the boat ride back to the mainland took 3 HOURS and the waves were really intense so everyone was feeling sick. I was so happy to be back on solid ground by the end!

Banteay Srei

So these photos are of my favorite Angkor temple, Banteay Srei. It is the only temple in Angkor that wasn't built by a monarch. Yajnavaraha, a councillor/doctor to a king with an even longer name, Rajendravarman, built in 967 (pre-Angkor Wat) and dedicated it to Shiva. The temple is actually on the dividing line between the temples dedicated to Vishnu and those to Shiva.
The best part about Banteay Srei is that it's made of red sandstone (all the other Angkor temples are made of grey sandstone). Red sandstone is a lot harder than grey sandstone, so the intricate carvings all over the temple look gorgeous and brand new!

This photo is from the Bayon Temple in Angkor. This temple is an example of Baroque Angkor Architecture. it was built by Jayavarman VII in the middle of Angkor Thom, his capital city. He changed the main religion from Hinduism to Buddhism, which was a pretty big deal back then. This is a photo of one of many giant faces of Buddha all over the temple, it's at least 10 feet tall! Also, all the giant faces (there are at least 200) are different!

My Favorite Relief

This photo is of a wall right next to the Procession of Elephants relief wall. I was walking by and I didn't really notice this wall because it looked normal from a quick glance. When I was walking back I looked again and saw the most adorable little brick in the wall with a relief of 3 people carved into it.

(All of the stones have holes in them so the Khmer people could carry them to the building site with bamboo rods)

Angkor Info

I know a lot of these photos are from Angkor Wat, it was my favorite part of Cambodia! Roisin, another volunteer from MaD, and I decided to go one weekend. I volunteered to read the guidebook and point out all of the important facts as we visited.

First of all, Angkor is HUGE! There are so many temples, at least 100. The biggest one of course is Angkor Wat. it was built in 1135 by Suryavarman II. He was a usurper (he killed his uncle to become king) so he had to prove that he was legit. hence, he built Angkor Wat. It was dedicated to Vishnu, the top Hindu god. The reasoning was that Sury II was more legit if he had the the most important god representing him. It's made of laterite and sandstone. Laterite is a type of stone that's really malleable and easy to cut when it first comes out of the ground, but hardens as it ages and is exposed to oxygen.

Angkor is an example of classical Khmer architecture and is composed of 5 "pinecone towers" (I don't remember the Khmer name for them). The middle, and largest, represents Mt. Meru, which is like Mt. Olympus for Hindus. Mt. Meru is supposedly located north of the Himalayas. It has 7 rings circling it, 4 other mountains around it. It also sits on top of 3 pedestals. All of this is represented in Angkor Wat.

There are some cool things about its architecture and construction too. It faces west, unlike regular Hindu temples which face east. This is because Sury II wanted Angkor Wat as a temple as well as a mausoleum. In the Hindu religion, the land of the dead is to the west, so Sury II wanted easy access. Because Sury II needed it to buried in, it was finished in only 35 years! At the time in Europe, they were building cathedrals that were half the size of Angkor Wat and took more than 200 years to complete!

Angkor Wat floats! The area that it was built in is all swamp, so to solve the problem of the temple falling to peices and sinking, the architects decided to build a ginormous moat around it to stabilize the ground under Angkor Wat. So when it rains the water goes into the ground, but when the dry season comes, the ground doesn't dry up and destabilize Angkor. The architects wetre pretty much geniuses.

Anyways, here are some photos!

Churning of the Sea of Milk

This photo is of me on the eastern wall of Angkor Wat, next to the famous bas relief, "The Churning of the Sea of Milk". The story behind it is that the Gods wanted eternal life, Amrita, which was under the Sea of Milk. The Gods (Devas) told the Demons (Asuras) that they would get some of the Amrita if they helped them. The Devas and Asuras both took an end of a Naga (a snake) named Vasuki and wrapped it around Mount Mandara (which was in the middle of the Sea of Milk). This churned the sea so that the Devas could get to the bottom and reach the Amrita. When they got the Amrita, Apsaras, or celestial dancers, were born as well. But in the end, the Devas didn't share the Amrita with the Asuras anyways.

The 91 Asuras on the relief symbolize the 91 days between the winter solstice and spring equinox in March, while the 88 Devas represent the 88 days to the summer solstice after the equinox!

This is what I remember from the guidebook, so the story might be a little off.

I'm Back!

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the long wait! I know I haven't been very regular with my blog posting, but from now on I'm going to try to post a photo from my trip every day!



The first photo is of me in front of Angkor Wat. (the second time I went) We woke up at like 3 AM and went to see the sun rise behind the temple. The first time I went for sunrise, I forgot my camera and couldn't stay awake, so this time I made sure I went to bed early and remembered to bring my camera with a full charge!

Don't forget to double-click to see the photo in full quality!

Cambodia

Cambodia's great, I was volunteering for 3 weeks in Siem Reap and it was alright. I know it was for a great cause and everything, but the guy in charge, Phil, just was really arrogant and it was really hard to meet other volunteers. That plus some other thing made it difficult to really enjoy volunteering.

Then I met up with my intrepid group and we went to Kompong Cham and stayed a night in this little village. We hiked like and hour uphill to get to this awesome waterfall. I swam and then saw a vine and decided to try and swing from it. It didn't seem very slippery when I first grabbed it, but then when I pushed off to swing, my hands totally slipped and I fell into the rocks! it was great! But I'm ok, just messed up a few toes, I have 8 more where they came from anyways. after that and the home stay, we went to Sihanoukville, where i am now. we went to the public beach yesterday and it was crap.so today we went to the private one, it's owned by a hotel, and we had a good time. yesterday we went snorkeling. we went out on this dinky boat, very authentic, to some islands in the Gulf of Thailand. we got to the beach on the island and went swimming. i didn't realize there were these big rocks under the water (they were laterite too, the extra hard stone used to build angkor wat) and i slashed my foot open. to add to that, my phone fell in the water!

we also went to the market today. it was alright, but there were some hilarious shirts in English. one said "Don't mafia. Me violate probation!" hilar and a half. i was going to get it but it looked ugly on, too much side ruching.

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Omg

I just had legit Cambodian Barbecue, which included eating snake, ostrich, and crocodile, yum!

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thailand pics

homemade chopsticks!

Bamboo rafting

Cambodia

Wow. So much has happened in the last week. I'm in Cambodia now and for the next 3 weeks, I'' be staying at the MAD (make a difference)for good House. It's a house owned by the Starling family who decided to move to Cambodia and adopt orphans. There are 8 orphans and I teach them English in the afternoons with Sofi, the Starling's 17 year old daughter. It's very different than what I thought it would be, but I'm having a lot of fun!

Backtracking to Thailand, it was awesome! We took an overnight train to Chiang Mai (in the north). We stayed there for 2 nights. During the day, we went to a Thai cooking school where I learned how to make Cashew Chicken, Spring Rolls, and Coconut Milk Soup. We all went to the local market and got ingredients and learned abou the local fruits and vegetables. I tried a silkworm. It was disgusting! That night, we went to a Thai Boxing match. It got really intense and a little bloody, but it was cool.

After Chiang Mai, we drove into the mountains in the back of a pickup truck, which was definitely an adventure. Then we stopped at a local place for lunch and the trekking began. Since it's the rainy season, there was so much mud! Going uphill wasn't so bad, except for my poor calves! But on the downhill I was slipping and sliding everywhere! Over the three deays of trekking, we swam at a waterfall, rode elephants, and went bamboo rafting! We slept in these really cool huts in the hilltribe villages and our guides made us real, authentic thai food for dinner and sometimes lunch. When we got back to Chiang Mai, we took bikes all around town and then hopped on another overnight train back to Bangkok, where I met up with my parents and had dinner with them. Then my parents and I flew to Cambodia and now I'm here!

Later on I'll post pictures of the past week!

I'm here!

Today is day 2 of my trip. Yesterday we were free to walk around Bangkok on our own, which I did. At first I got totally lost with the map that the hotel gave me, especially because random Thai people on the street would see me walking around with a map and try to give me directions. So then I finally realized that I have google maps on my phone with a gps which tells me exactly where I am and where I shold be going. So, armed with my phone, I figured out Bangkok. I went to the National Gallery, which was ok. I was walking around the museum and I saw The Haywain by John Constable, except it wasn't by John Constable, so there was really original and quality art there. Then I made my way to the National Museum. They were doing construction, so the one building that was open was just a walkthrough of Thai history through diaramas. There were a ton of battles so all the diaramas were people swordfighting on top of elephants. That seems like it would be really difficult, because what if the elephant decides to go to the bathroom, or sees a peanut on the ground? Anyways, last night the group met up for the first time! Including the guide, there are 4 of us, but we're meeting someone else in Chiang Mai, so that's 5. It's a little less that I expected, but smaller groups can move around much more easily, so it'll be fun. My roommate's name is Gemma, she's from Scotland and is 23, her accent is hilarious, I can understand what she's saying about 60% of the time. So anyways, last night we went out for thai food on Kao Sarn road, which is really famous and way crowded. I got pad thai, which was delicious, the other girl on my trip, Juliana (she's Portugese but from Australia), got cashew chicken, which was awesome too. Our guide, Chai, is from Thailand and is not a pro at speaking English at all, but he can translate everything into Thai, which is useful. So I won't be updating for a few days because we leave for Chiang Mai and the 3 day hilltribe trek tonight and I doubt that there will be any computers in the mountains. Wish me luck!

Thailand on Monday!!

News!

So I have good news! I'm finally figuring out what I'll be doing after Asia. I get back on October 31st, so I have to do something! I spoke with my gap year counselor, Joanna, and she said that someone was looking for an intern for LILLY PULITZER! In MANHATTAN! For 3 MONTHS! I'm so excited! The internship is in the marketing and licensing office which is what I want to be doing when I'm older. If I get the internship (fingers crossed!), I would start in November and finish at the end of January. After that, I might do another internship in Tel Aviv or London for a month or two, and then go on a GVI (Global Vision International) program in the Seychelles! The GVI program is 5, 8, or 10 weeks long and involves scuba diving, marine research, and wildlife conservation. I've never done anything like that before so I'm way excited. So this itinerary is Plan A. I'm working on Plan B now, so it might include the scuba diving in the fall or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, but Plan A and B are based on whether or not I'll be in New York for the rest of the fall. I can't believe I'm leaving on Monday!

First Post!

Hi! So I've just created my new blog and I'm so ready to leave for Thailand! But there's tons of stuff that I need to do first. Get everything on the checklist that I don't already have, make sure all my visa stuff is ready, get immunized, etc. Now that I have a blog I feel like I'm so close to starting my year!