I’ve spent the last few days here in Siem Reap and it’s really hot.
I don’t like it when I have to do my blog on a very hot day but I’ve liked it when it’s night time because its’ cooled down by then.
When we were walking around at the night market I saw these little carved animals and Buddhas that looked really cool and I bought three of them. One was a Buddha, one was a panther and the other was a deer.
I’ve been swimming in the pool alot lately and its’ cooled me down more than the sun can heat me up, and when you get in the pool after a 9 hour walk\drive it is like licking an icecream and playing computer games after you’ve done 1 hour of chores for you mum.
I can now hold my breath for 15 seconds under water and I can swim a length under water too.
As you know I am going to be learning how to scuba dive in Belize so I’ve been practicing holding my breath alot to get used to the under water realm, and getting my lungs better at holding more air for a longer time.
Anyways, when we were walking along the side of the river we saw 2 kids and a mother sleeping on the side of the road, yet people in NZ think they’re poor. Man, people in this world right now are just not noticing the people that are living in the cracks of the deep unkind world of selfish people that just want money.
Siem Reap is very dusty and dirty but I like it in a way because it has its own personality.
Today we got up at 4:30am to go and watch the sun rise at Angkor Wat.
Angkor Wat is a massive city and when it was still a home for people it was the largest city in the world.
We had a tuk-tuk driver drive us around all day and when we came back from every temple he was asleep in the back of his tuk-tuk and we had to wake him up. This is roughly a count of how many people and vehicles were there, 1,000, 2,000 miss a few 999,000, 1,000,000.
When the sun came up it looked like a red fire ball that was getting closer by the minute.
The temple had five pillars and there was one high one and four little ones. The highest one represents the most sacred mountain in the Hindu world and the four little ones represent the four ones that stand tall beside it.
We had to leave really quick so we wouldn’t get smothered by people and at the next temple it was quiet.
The next temple was called Bayon and I liked it the most because it was like a labyrinth. You had to go right and then left, then right and then straight. It was cool because it was shaded from the sun.
The tuk-tuk driver took us in a big arc around a 1/4 of a1/4 of the temples in the area of Angkor Wat.
My favorite things of the day were how good the people that lived there were at carving in the walls and how good they were at building the temples. That was 900 years ago and if somebody were to attack the main temple it would still hold up.
I woke up and I knew we would be in Siem Reap by nightfall. Siem Reap is in Cambodia. We were leaving Greenleaf Guesthouse that morning and the owners of the greenleaf were waving back at us as we were driving away to the train station.
We were at the train station on the seat when our train arrived. When we got on we found our seats and an old lady gave me a bag of sweet tamarinds. They were so nice and I tried to sleep on the train but it didn’t work.
When we got to Bangkok we had to wait 5 hours for our flight to go to Siem Reap and on the way to getting to our flight we got a tiny packet of food for 95 baht. This is much more than we are used to paying for food in Thailand. When we were going though the security check they took away my knife and sling shot but we still got on the plane.
When we felt we were just leveling off on the plane we went down to Siem Reap airport.
We landed in Siem Reap airport and went breezing through immigration and customs and then we went out the doors to our taxi driver and got driven home to the awesomest hotel ever. This hotel is awesome because It has a POOL!!!! And this is because it is super hot here.
We started at 3:00 for our half day tour to the bat cave and heaps of other places. We started at the hotel and drove to the springs. There were heaps of people there so we didn’t swim. Joe told us that we would come back soon so we carried on to the temple.
At the temple there was a flight of stairs going down in to a cave. We went down them and at the bottom Joe made me put out my hand and he put a tiny cave frog on it. He turned him upside down and stroked him on his under belly and he froze. He was playing dead and it was really cool but on we went into the other side of the cave.
There were alot of bats on the other side of the cave and at one point I got to hold a scorpion spider. A scorpion spider can’t bite but the centipede can. The centipede that I was holding was poisonous and it had so many legs it was crazy and myself and Dad went right to the back of the cave where bats were hanging and they were flying around us like they were magic. We had to go soon so we headed for the back entrance to the truck.
We went to the big bat cave now and sadly we weren’t allowed to go in to the bat cave or else the bats wouldn’t come out at night. Here are some photos of the bats coming out of their cave. The hawks and falcons catch some of the bats but there are about 2,000,000 bats that fly out of the cave every night so it doesn’t really make a difference.
After that we drove to the springs. It was geting dark but we still went swimming in the DARK!!! It was really refreshing and then we went home, ate a great dinner and went to bed happy. 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 :-):-) Lukoia Coffey over and out.:-)
Yesterday I woke up and I realised we were going on a full day tour. I was excited but we were going at 8:00 so I ate breakfast really fast and got on the truck.
We took off towards Khao Yai national park. On the way to the park I met a photographer on the truck, she was cool. Her name was Nora. We stopped on a corner up in the park and saw a huge Hornbill. Hornbills are tropical birds. (hornbills are the kings of the tropical forest). Then we were going up the hill in the truck to the lookout to look over Pak Chong and when we got there 2 monkeys were crossing the road. Myself, Dad and Helen went down to have a look at the monkeys while the other pepole went to look out over the town. The monkeys had a red behind and brown face of tough fur and their species are called pig tailed macaques.
After looking for a while we saw one in the tree beside us and then we went back to the truck to put on our socks. (socks are white socks that go up to just under your knee to protect people from leechs and ticks). Ticks bury themselves in your skin and leechs dig their teeth in your skin and suck your blood. You have to burn them off with a lighter. Luckily I didn’t get any leechs but I did get a few ticks. I had to pull them off with my fingers.
After a 2 hour walk in the jungle we had lunch and got in the truck to go to Hew Suwat water fall. The water fall was really high. It was creepy when we went to the top and at the bottom of the water fall we took a photo of us all standing under the water fall on a rock.
Afterwards, we took the truck and went elephant sighting. I got to stand on the top of the truck, it felt like a computer game dodging the branches. Dad got hit in the face while he was telling me to look out for branches. It was fun up there but we didn’t find any wild elephants so we headed for home.
This is a list of anamals that we saw.
Pig tailed Macaque.
Water monitor.
Poisonous catterpillers.
Small Lizards.
Gibbons.
Spiders
Deer
And
HORNBILLS!!!!!
The jungle was misty and cool. I liked my day looking for animals and was really tired when we got home.
Yesterday we arrived in Ayatthaya and went to the RUINS. The ruins looked awesome when we were walking around the outskirts of them. When we were walking on the right side of the ruins we found an old tower built of bricks. It had a door way and when we were going in, Dad said “look out for snakes”. There weren’t any snakes but there were BATS!!!!!!!!!!! They looked so cool, hanging up side down. They were scared of us so we went to the left side of the ruins.
We went to the counter and paid to get into the actual ruins of Wat Mahathat. When we went in I kept on thinking that I would find a secret passage way that would lead me to a forgotten kings chamber or something like that. On the way around the ruins we saw a Buddha half overgrown by a huge tree. We took a photo of myself and Helen kneeling right beside it.
But my favourite part of the day was when we went to the biggest temple in Thailand, Wat Ratcha Burana and got to go inside and see were the actual king was buried. We went up a big flight of stairs and into the temple. On the wall it said that the king and his brother killed each other dueling on the backs of elephants for who would become king. The king got buried in the middle of the temple. We went down to were the king got buried but he wasn’t there. The walls of his tomb were painted red and were lined with paper thin gold. We stood inside his tomb and we all felt a strong sense of energy from inside the tomb. By the way, the temple is 3,982 years old!!!! The ruins were a highlight of the trip so far and I can’t wait until we see more. We went back to our room and took off to dream land. In the morning we got a tuk-tuk to the train station and got on our train to Pak Chong and Khao Yai national park. Tomorrow we go into the park and look for wild animals. By the way, we had our first rain in two and a half weeks\our first rain since we’ve been in Thailand. Lukoia Coffey over and out
