After leaving Vietnam Cindy and I, along with sister Janet and friend Mary Ann spent four days in Siem Reap, Cambodia touring the UNESCO World Heritage site of Angkor Wat and the other Angkor monuments. We signed up for a REI Extension that explored Angkor Wat, the fortified city of Angkor Thom and the town of Siem Reap.
Angkor Wat in the morning.The crowds show up for sunrise at Angkor Wat.It’s a steep climb to the top of Angkor Wat.Cindy, Mary Ann and JanetLong carved galleys show battle scenes.
The remarkable Bayon Temple, adorned by over 200 smiling stone faces created in the likeness of a Khmer King.
Here and there in the temples our guide pointed out areas where the builders had not completed carvings, according to him, once a king died work ceased on his temple and the new king wanted his own temple started.
Unfinished carvings.
He Ta Prohm Temple or “old Brahma” temple is squeezed by the roots of enormous trees and gigantic creepers.
Tourists line up to get a photo at the doorway used in the Tomb Raider movie.
On our last day in Siem Reap, we visited the Artesians Angkor workshop and market in Siem Reap. They train Cambodians in traditional Khmer crafts of stone and wood carving, painting on statues and on silk, lacquering, and silver plating.
Nearly fifty years after his death, Hồ Chí Minh is a still a strong presence in Vietnam.
Cindy’s wanted to do the “Hike, Bike, and Kayak in Vietnam” Sierra Club trip since she heard about it four years ago. It’s fifteen days in northern Vietnam from the big city of Hanoi, to the mountains of Sa Pa and the water of Ha Long Bay.
We arrived in Hanoi on October 19, On the way to our hotel, we had our first taste of Hanoi traffic.
Cars ride the center lane, every other inch of space is used by the beeping mopeds.
Hanoi is over a thousand years old, and has an estimated 7.7 million people in the municipal area, with about 3.5 million in the metro area, it’s dense with people, shops and mopeds!
We stayed in the Old Quarter whose narrow streets are lined with small stores, each street traditionally sold one type of merchandise, if you want banners there’s a street for that, if you need housewares, that’s on another street.
Old Quarter shop specializing in banners.Another old Quarter shop specializes in housewares.The power and communications wires are an engineer’s nightmare.Architectural remnants of the French occupation of Vietnam are everywhere in Hanoi.
From Hanoi we traveled to Sa Pa, a resort town in the mountains. The highlight was a bike ride starting at top of the highest pass in Viet Nam, Tram Tom Pass. It was a down hill coast for ten miles! Then a ride through the countryside to the small working-class town of Tam Duong where we were the only Westerners.
Getting ready for our ten-mile high-speed downhill coast.We visited the local market in Tam Duong to get stuff for our dinner
We rode through rice fields.Cindy got a chance to meet the kids at a school that was on our bike route.Everywhere on our route, rice was put out in the sun to dry.
Most of our travel was by chartered bus, but one night we took the overnight train back to Hanoi, our sleeper berths had four bunks each. The tour leader later asked if we’d have been open to having two overnight trains on the trip, we all agreed that once was enough.
Cindy navigates the sleeper car aisle.
We then traveled to the Halong Bay area. Halong Bay, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The bay, part of the Gulf of Tonkin, is filled with limestone karsts, giving an otherworldly look to the bay.
We did a lot of kayaking in the Halong bays.Sunrise in the bay.We stayed on this classic Halong Bay yacht a couple nights.Our Sierra Club travel pals and guides.
To wrap things up we returned to Hanoi for a final night before the group either headed home or on to other places. Cindy and I, along with my sister Janet and friend Mary Ann who toured Vietnam with the Sierra Club group, went to Siem Reap Cambodia to tour the temples at Angkor Wat. (I’ll write about that later.)
