Jet lag

I've been away on a 2 week trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia and Koh Samui, Thailand.  We arrived back home last night. I slept about 4.5 hours and am waiting for the sun to come up so I can have a walk around the garden.  I'll be a general mess today with adjusting to the flip flop of day/night.  I'm looking forward to catching up on blogs I've missed while I've been gone.  In the meantime, I'll share a few photos. Hotel Khmer, Siem Reap.  Just seeing this photo brings back the glorious scent of the lobby.  The bowl on the lower right was filled with fresh ginger root and lemongrass.  The fragrance of the lemon grass permeated the lobby, and is said to repel mosquitos.  *We both got a few dozen mosquito bites along the way. The employees would rush to great us on our return throughout the visit with cold water and a chilled towel.  They were beyond wonderful!

First day, we wanted to take it on the easy side, so off to Angkor Botanical Garden. There was differing info on the size, I believe what we walked was around 15 hectacres. Loved all the ferns and orchids hanging on, well -just everywhere! 

From the palm garden. 

Things were not labeled, but I'm assuming this is Cyrtostachys Renda, red lipstick palm.  

Ugh, so gorgeous!

Their shade house went on & on, the orchids in here were labeled. It was overwhelmingly full of beautiful plants.

It was incredibly hot & humid for the entire 2 weeks we were away, it feels SO cold here.  I've gone from sweat drenched shorts & tanks to layers of clothing. Healthy snails and LARGE millipedes were plentiful. *There were street vendors selling seasoned snails for a nice snack - in the hot sun under plexiglass, did not try.  

However, I will miss having fresh fruit after every meal.  Dragonfruit, passionfruit, pineapple, mango and papaya were always available and delicious! *Also guava on this particular plate.

We lost track of the amount of smoothies that James consumed, hahaha. The prices there were extremely low, around 70 cents for a smoothie. 

Pineapples :)

I'm realizing now, I have too many photos to dump into one post.  I'll focus on Cambodia only. Second morning, we woke early to join a sunrise tour of Angkor Wat.  It is the world's largest religious structure sitting on 400 acres.  It was worth the 4 a.m. alarm.

The amount of detailed carvings still in tact was mind blowing.  And the amount of labor needed to mound dirt up around and around the structure to continue building it taller!

And onto my personal favorite of all the temples we explored, Ta Prohm.  Built in 1186, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the mother of King Jayavarman VII.  It is one of the few temples that had inscription with information about the inhabitants (80,000). The largest trees have been left (although the jungle has been cleared somewhat).  It has a very swallowed by the jungle appeal.  

The trees and their roots were just massive, jaw dropping!

Preah Kan Temple was a smaller linear temple also had the swallowed up in the jungle feel.

A naughty young monkey climbed in and jumped up on the Buddha during our tour.

A few random shots that I don't remember taking... *looking back on this, I believe this would've been the moat area around Prea Khan.  Some of the larger temples had repeating sections wall/moat/wall/moat/wall.

Green papaya salad, mmmm.

Night out.

A few street shots where the shop owners were plant people. 

Almost forgot, Nina the land mine sniffing rat!  They train and use African giant pouched (cheek pouches) rats to sniff out land mines. They are light enough to not trigger the mines.  The rat is given a treat, and the land mines are safely removed.  I'm not a rat fan, but she was quite cute and friendly.

And a parting bamboo pic. I'm so happy to be home, I missed my kids so much!  And, of course the garden which I'm rushing out to check on now.  I look forward to catching up with everyone.  :) 

Please forgive typos/mistakes-I'm rummy.