April 23, 2015 by carrievijil

Ziplining through Angkor Wat

What I Saw:

I saw Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom and monkeys while ziplining.

My Favorite Part of the Day:

My favorite part of the day was going on the old bridge and going on the ziplines.

What I Learned Today:

I learned that a female snake is called Nagini. Nagini is the name of Voldemort’s giant snake. It’s very hot and there are lots of spiders, tarantulas, and Daddy Long Legs., Angkor Wat is almost 1,000 years old. It took 10,000 people to make it. It has lots of four face statues, known as Face Towers. The faces portray Jayavaman.

April 21, 2015 by carrievijil

Conquering Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom

April 20,2015

Yesterday was a fun, but VERY HOT day. We spent the morning exploring the Angkor temple complex outside of Siem Reap. We had intended to spend most of the day here, but it was truly unbearably hot! I’m not sure of the actual temperature, but it had to be at least 100 degrees and much of the area is directly in the sun. After about 4 hours, we were all ready to get back to the pool.

We started off the day going through Angkor Wat. We originally thought we might try to make it there for sunrise, but we weren’t exactly early birds, so we got there around 8:00 am instead. In hindsight, we definitely should have goen first thing in the a.m. to avoid the heat and spend a little more time there. The temple itself was really cool. The Cambodian temples are much different than the Chinese or Vietnamese temples that we have been seeing, so it was great to see something different. The other difference at Angkor is that the temples are not “restored” like many of them in China. You can see where they have fixed some places (and there is tons of ongoing restoration), but you can also see the ruins and what has been destroyed over the past 1,000 years. We took tons of pictures, but it’s impossible to get pictures that capture how amazing it really is to see it in person.

In the tuk tuk

Angkor Wat

After spending some time going through Angkor Wat, we went over to the bigger temple complex, Angkor Thom. There are several temples inside of this complex that were really cool. Some are in better repair than others and some don’t allow kids, so we didn’t get to go through all of them. We thought that Angkor Thom was even cooler than Angkor Wat because you are able to actually climb around in the temple and explore the area.

World Heritage Site

Angkor Thom

Vijils at Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom

Vijils at Angkor Thom

Angkor Thom

Adam and Hayden had fun playing “Indiana Jones” inside of the temples! We did lots of exploring and adventuring during the day. Hayden had a great time finding the hidden doors and avoiding booby traps. lol

Hayden ” Indiana Jones” Vijil

Adam “Indiana Jones” Vijil

There were a few other areas that we explored before we gave up because we were SO HOT! It is really cool to see how old the building are and to see that first hand. There are lots of areas were the trees have grown over the buildings and into the walls.

Baphuon

Face Tower gate

Banyon Trees

It’s HOT!

April 20, 2015 by carrievijil

Flying High in Cambodia

April 19, 2015

Well, it has been an amazing 3 days so far in Siem Reap, Cam. Although we had to cut our time short here (due to the Visa incident stranding us in Hanoi, Vietnam), we still got to do just about everything that we had planned and tomorrow we will explore the Angkor complex. We did miss out on Phnom Phen where we wanted to visit the Killing Fields, but we decided to spend more our time in Siem Reap instead. We had also already done quite a bit of learning about wars in Vietnam, so Hayden would probably be a little overloaded learning about more fighting/killing. After a 14 hour bus ride (yes, 14 HOURS!) from Ho Chi Minh, we made it to our hotel at about 9:00 pm on Friday night (4/17). We spent Saturday hanging out by the pool and Hayden made a few friends while we were down there.

While we were checking into the hotel, we saw a brochure for “Flight of the Gibbon” and told Hayden about zip lining. He’s not normally a super adventurous kid (never been a fan of rollercoasters or scary stuff), but for some reason he was super excited about the idea of zip lining. We have been working to get him to try new things, so we jumped on the opportunity to try something new that he was excited about. We went first thing the next morning. The facility is inside of the Angkor park, surrounded by jungle. We got there first thing because we knew it would be hot later in the day.

They started by suiting us up and getting ready to go!

The Flying Vijils

Ready to zipline

I kept thinking that Hayden may get a little nervous, but he never even flinched! We went through the first few lines and he went all by himself! Here is a video of him going: (for anyone that is not a fan of Back to the Future”, the “they found me” reference is from the first movie…lol

There were a total of 10 zip lines and 4 suspension bridges that were all a ton of fun. We had a blast and Hayden is already pumped for another zipline trip!

Ready to go!!

We were able to get some really cool videos with the Go Pro camera…here is Adam on the longest zip line (about 900 feet)

At the highest point (where the video above started,), there is a treehouse that had awesome views of the jungle. We stayed up there for a while to cool off and relax before we went down the last three zip lines.