Erik'sTravel

Rather than provide extensive descriptions of what I saw in Kuala Lumpur in separate posts, I figured it would be more digestible to simply provide one brief post of my trip highlights. So, here it is. The Petronas Twin Towers are the largest twin buildings in the world and dominate the KL skyline.  They remind me of two oversized minarets, but these minarets are beacons of capitalism towering toward the heavens, perhaps representing the religion in the 21st Century that the majority of humans really worship in their heart of hearts--though few explicitly admit it. I stood outside this beautiful temple near Chinatown, and while I was taking this picture, unable to enter the grounds due to COVID, a man in his 30s came up to me and asked me if I wanted a tour.  I discovered it wasn't a religious temple at all.  It was the Chan She Yuen Clan Ancestral Hall .  It was built in 1906 to honor all Chinese residents of Kuala Lumpur with the last names Chan, Chun, or Tan. ...

  Last post of my Cambodian trip.  It seemed crazy to omit a UNESCO World Heritage Site from my blog, so here's a brief entry about Sambor Prei Kuk and its dozens of temples and ancient structures. The site dates back to the late 6th Century--centuries older than Angkor Wat.  This temple complex has been identified as the lost city of Isanapura, capital city of the Chenla civilization, which pre-dates the Angkor Khmer period. These temples are located halfway between Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) and Phnom Penh.  I had flown to Siem Reap, but there were no flights back to Phnom Penh on the day I needed to get back, so I booked a car and driver and arranged a stop at the Sambor Prei Kuk complex along the way.  There are several clusters of temples and I visited two of the largest.  The temples are still in the renovation process, but several are reasonably intact. The site contains unique constructions, primarily Hindu in nature. There are religious monuments, stat...

In an earlier post here, I showed the Choeung Ek Genocide Center, the Cambodian Killing Fields near Phnom Penh. While that was the largest of the Killing Fields during the 1975-1979 Khmer Rouge reign of terror, it was certainly not the only one in the nation.  There are approximately 100 Killing Field sites that have been identified throughout Cambodia where approximately 1.7 million people were murdered--an astonishing 21% of the nation's population at that time. When I finished visiting the Angkor Wat temple complex, I made a request of my driver that we stop at the Siem Reap Museum, near the site of the main Killing Field at Cambodia's 2nd largest city.  He seemed surprised that after exploring the marvels of human creativity, spirituality and achievement at Angkor Wat I would would want to visit on the same day a place that recorded the depths of human depravity.  I don't think anyone visits this museum anymore.  The woman in the ticket booth was reclining on a h...

The Phnom Penh Central Market is about as cool a market as I've ever visited.  The Art Deco structure was built in the 1930s by the French colonial overlords and looks like something straight out of Hollywood casting of that era. The market contains thousands of stalls with every kind of consumer item and foodstuff you could ever wish for--and a few that some would avoid at all costs.  My travels gravitate toward museums, architecture, history, exploring cuisine, addictions (in other words, "bookstores"), and lounging in the pool. But commerce is an extraordinary mirror into the soul of a nation and I am fascinated by visiting markets too, and visiting The P.P. Central Market is a super way to get a quick feel of the essence of Cambodia. 

  Because of COVID and other factors, still not many international tourists in Cambodia or at Angkor Wat.  But, there seemed to be a fair amount of Cambodians visiting and many of them were dressed in their traditional finery. And what were they doing in their beautiful clothes?  Posing for pictures: hundreds and thousands of pictures. Many of the subjects seemed to be accompanied by professional photographers who were setting them up in all sorts of serious poses.  I jumped in and took pictures too as everyone seemed happy that a bespectacled man from abroad was interested in taking their photograph as well.  The group of six ladies you see above, were particularly pleased when I asked if I could take a picture and they displayed their most-noble pose and they thanked me for snapping a photo of them--in the elaborate photographic studio of Angkor Wat.

  Ta Prohm Temple is definitely my favorite temple beyond main Angkor Wat.  When the entire archeological complex was "discovered" by the French in the 19th Century, most of it was in ruins and they embarked on a decades-long restoration project.  Though the French are no longer in charge of Cambodia, constant restoration efforts are continuing at the Angkor complex to make sure the temples survive into the next decades. The French made a brilliant decision when they started their restoration to keep one of the temples in the semi-ruined state that they found the entire site.  They chose Ta Prohm to keep in a semi-ruined state, though some restoration is constantly done there, just to keep the structures from completely falling down. Ta Prohm is somewhat unique also, in that, while parts of it served as a temple, the majority of the structure served as a monastery and has a distinctive design as opposed to what one would find at more-standard temples.    Ta...