Day 7 - Chumree-uhp lee-uh (Goodbye)

We have spent one week in Cambodia and throughout our stay, the group has really enjoyed eating Khmer cuisine, so much that we couldn't think of no better way to begin to draw our trip to a close than learning to cook Khmer cuisine ourselves.  So, we started our final day with a trip to the Cooks in Tuk Tuks cooking class where we learned hands on how to cook Khmer cuisine. Working in two teams we prepared Banana Flower Salad and Fish Amok. For dessert we made Sweet Potato, Sago and Coconut.  The experience provided us with an opportunity to develop our culinary skills and on top of that we enjoyed a delicious meal we were proud to say we had made ourselves.

After lunch, we visited the jungle temple of Ta Prohm.  Featured in the movie Tomb Raider, Ta Prohm is about 20 minutes from Angkor Wat.  On our way there we passed by/through Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, the Bayon and the Elephant terrace.  Our visit to Ta Prohm was our final opportunity to marvel at the former splendor of this great civilization.

After taking some final pictures, we boarded the bus for the short ten minute trip to the airport and our return flight to Singapore.

We returned home from our excursion a changed group.  Our experiences provided us with an opportunity for personal growth  and development as global citizens.  The time we spent together reinforced existing relationships and helped to build new ones.  While the trip may have only lasted a week,  the memories will last a lifetime!

Day 6 - Angkor Wat

Bloggers : ALL members of the excursion contributed to today's post.

Our day exploring exploring Khmer culture and history began with a trip to the Angkor National Museum in Siem Reap.  At the museum, we were accompanied by a local archaeologist who showed us through a number of exhibition halls where we learned about the ancient Khmer Empire.  We learned much about their gods and the history of the temples. 

We then visited Angkor Wat where the hot midday sun could not keep us from exploring the ancient ruins.  We took a lot of pictures while we were there and marvelled at the architecture. 

After lunch, we visited Angkor Thom and visited the Bayon temple.  One of the unique features of the Bayon are the carved faces which face the four cardinal directions.  Our final stop of the day was a trip to Phnom Bakheng where we watched a beautiful sunset over the Tonle Sap lake.

It was a difficult climb to the peak of this hilltop temple, particularly so for Hyun Jae, who badly sprained her ankle on the first day of the trip and has been on crutches ever since.  But just like every other day of the trip, Hyun Jae has persevered and has never let her injury get in the way of her fully participation in the trip.  Her determination has truly been an inspiration to us all. 

 
Following the sunset, we returned to the hotel, had a quick shower and went out for the evening to have some dinner on Pub Street and to do some souvenir shopping at the Night Market.  Just like every other day, we've gone pretty much non-stop from early morning until late at night and have made the most of our time in Cambodia.

Day 5 - Don't "Bug" Us, We're Sleeping!

Bloggers: Moaz Q., Mark H., Pavi S., Will X.
 

After eating breakfast this morning, we checked out of our hotel in Phnom Penh that we had stayed in for 4 days and started out on a long 6-hour bus ride to Siem Reap. Due to the incredibly long duration of our journey, we decided to stop twice on the way. 

 About an hour and a half into the trip we stopped to eat crickets and spiders. A number of people in our group were terribly afraid of eating these creatures (mainly the girls who were screaming) however, once they tried eating the spiders and crickets, most of them found them to be extremely delicious. 

It was a great experience for most of us as we had never eaten crickets or spiders before. The second stop in our journey was at a pleasant looking restaurant where we stayed for about an hour to eat lunch. We finally reached Siem Reap at around 5 p.m. in the evening and decided to rest in our new hotel for a short period of time. At 7:30 p.m., we rented Tuk-Tuks from our hotel and went to “Pub Street” which is a famous food street here in Siem Reap. We split up into 4 groups and each of the groups decided to eat at a certain restaurant in the Pub Street area. As has been the case for most part of the trip, the food was extremely tasty and everybody was satisfied. 

Early tomorrow morning we will be going to the Angkor Wat National Museum which promises to be a really exciting experience, so we are definitely looking forward to it.  After that, it’s on to the temples of Angkor Wat.  You can learn all the details of our visit to Angkor Wat in our next blog post.