BootsnAll Travel Network



Winter Vacation and Cambodia trip

I finished the semester in the first week of January and then made a visit to Indiana to see family and friends. Bonnie’s semester didn’t end until a week or two after mine so I went to the states alone. I was there when the first of one of the many winter storms came through and it impacted my travel coming back home. My flight departed late from Indianapolis because the jetways were frozen and they only had one that was working. So I missed my connection in D.C. and had to spend the night there. When I arrived in Beijing my bag was missing so I missed my connection to Nanning because I had to deal with reporting the bag missing so I had to spend the night in Beijing. I finally arrived in Nanning after almost 3 days of traveling and my bag arrived the next day. Bonnie and I had one day together before she left with her mother to go to Shenzhen for a few days. She took her mother to a couple theme parks (Windows on the World and Splendid China) and a couple other scenic spots in Shenzhen since her mother had never been there.

We spent Chinese New Year Eve at her mom’s house. The fireworks were everywhere but not quite as bad as previous years. The government has asked people not to set them off due to the impact on air quality. The air quality has been pretty bad here recently and on Chinese New Year Eve the AQI (air quality index) went up by over 200 points causing the air quality to be very bad. In the past the air quality in Nanning has been pretty good and has only recently been a problem. The air in the university is better than most places in town I think but I did buy some masks for us to wear when we go out when the air is bad. There is a website that publishes the AQI and is updated several times during the day.

On February 9, we left Nanning and went to Siem Reap in Cambodia with a change of planes in Guangzhou. We stayed in Siem Reap for 4 nights and saw many ancient Khmer temples including Angkor Wat. The temples were amazing but after 3 days of looking at them I was on temple overload. See pictures by clicking on the link over to the right. We then took a bus for a 6 hour ride to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia where we visited the royal palace, the national museum, one of the famous “killing fields” and a famous prison from the Khmer Rouge era. There wasn’t a lot to see at the “killing field” but the audio narrative on the personal audio player made it a very somber experience. In addition to mass graves we saw a tree that was used to smash children against for quick killing. They held the children by the legs and swung their bodies so their heads smashed into the tree trunk. It never ceases to amaze me how cruel humans can be to each other. They killed the children of “traitors” because they didn’t want any family members remaining that might seek revenge. The Cambodian people seem to be so easy going that they just accept whatever comes their way. Cambodia is very underdeveloped and seems to be about 70 years behind the U.S. The highway between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh was a poorly constructed two lane road with a few stretches of it being dirt. The roads in Siem Reap were very poor and there was heavy dust everywhere being kicked up from the roads. Phnom Penh roads were better in town. Tourism is the second largest industry after textiles and it seemed the number of tourists was pretty high relative to the local population. It’s a very cheap country to visit; we paid $20 to $30 per night for simple but clean rooms with private bathrooms in hostels and the $30 room included a nice free breakfast. Food was very inexpensive as it is easy to get by for $3 to $7 per person per meal. Most restaurants offered a variety of local and western food.

After spending 3 nights in Phnom Penh we headed back to Siem Reap for two more days and then flew back to Guangzhou. It was about 85F when we left and it was about 48F in Guangzhou. The airport in Guangzhou apparently doesn’t have heat and it was only about 60F in the airport. We didn’t really have much in the way of warm clothes with us and we almost froze during our 7+ hour layover waiting for our flight back to Nanning. It has been very cold in Nanning since we returned home going down to 30F last night which is the coldest I’ve ever seen here. Even with the heat on in the apartment we can only get the temperature up to about 64F.

The spring semester starts next week so it’s time to go back to work. Until next time….



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