The personal authentic travels of a world-wide drifter, you'll always see pics of me at the locations being described (if the other blogs you're reading don't do that, odds are they were NEVER there, just saying…)
Yelp is NOT your go to app in either Australia or New Zealand. There’s SOME reviews, but not many. You’re going to want rely on Trip Advisor, which for some reason is preferred by the locals.
Aussie Food Products I like:
I’ve now spent 4 whole months in Australia and have discovered a few products/brands I wish I could find back home. Am listing them here, just because, and to remind myself (and my travel partner) for what to stock up on next time….
SO YUMMY! This Lentil soup is sold in the cold “prepared section” of either Woolworths or Coles depending on the town… I’ve noticed its rare for them BOTH to be carrying it, and I’ve not yet found a town where one or the other of them doesn’t have it — This includes New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT/Canberra, Queensland, and South Australia. All of the soups from this brand have nothing in them you can’t pronounce. The Lentil is vegetarian, low-fat, low cal, high fiber, and filling. It costs around $6.50 AUD/$4.68 USD for 2 servings of 200 calories each (or one big meal, about 400 calories) … which is a bit pricey for grocery store soup, but is SO good that if a restaurant were to serve it to you at twice the price, you’d be perfectly happy. AND it’s almost better cold than hot, in my opinion… so great to sip on hot Aussie days. Oh, and it’s KOSHER … the whole brand is (not that it’s important for me, but still… I have friends who do care). Their other soups are good… but this one is hands down my favorite… enough that I wish I could get it in the USA. I could live on this stuff.
Firstly, when it comes to flavored waters in Australia pretty everything is either lime, lemon or berry…. not a lot of flavor options. Only other options I’ve seen so far, which are MUCH harder to find are strawberry and peach.
And you need to be REALLY careful because Australia is FULL of flavored waters that say “no sugar,” but then you look and they’ve got artificial sweeteners in it… or it’ll say “no artificial sweeteners” and then they go and put in Stevia or some other “natural” no calorie sweetener … which science has proven are JUST as bad as for you as the fake ones — people who consume artificial sweeteners tend to be fatter than people who just consume sugar even when consuming the same amount of calories overall, something about it confuses your brain’s control over your metabolism. A sort of boy who cried wolf type phenomena
This brand is sort of cross between La Croix and that vitamin water … and can be kind of pricy as a result… I’m talking one bottles costs the same as La Croix 12 pack. It’s water with some flavor and a few vitamins thrown in, and nothing else. Their other flavors are also good, but this is my favorite.
A cheaper option is Mount Franklin’s … which also sells flavored water, but this one is a bit harder to find. For some reason small over price bottles of it in convenience stores, or impulse sections of grocery stores are fairly common, but BIG bottles of it in the water isles of same are HARD to find. My favorite flavor for this is the strawberry, but it’s impossible to find in large bottles (but the preferred flavor in small bottles in the refrigerated section that cost the same as the big ones).. not the lemon, or lime which are easier…. the flavor currently to look for in the BIG bottles which cost the same as the small ones (BOGGLE) is the mixed berry flavor
A third option, when I can’t find the other two, is this schweppes… which when they do have it is by far your cheapest option. Usually costs about $1.40 AUD which is also lemon or lime mostly… which I don’t like. I like the raspberry flavor, which is semi-common, or the peach, which is VERY rare.
My travel partner, LOVES this cereal. Its high in fiber, low in salt, free of all sorts of nasty chemicals and actually quite tasty. He lives on the stuff ,and I’ll occasionally steal a handful to chomp on as reasonably healthy snack food.
According to him, unlike the British version the Aussie version is low in salt. It also comes in apricot flavor, if you can find it. Wild berry is the common flavor.
Aussie audities to remember:
1) In Australia Distilled water is often called demineralized water, and instead of being in the baby aisle like in the states, it’s usually in the laundry isle (to use when ironing). Me, I use it for my Nettipot…. and NO they don’t sell it at the pharmacy… in fact at the pharmacy, which is where they sell the salts in measured packets, they have NO IDEA what you’d even use distilled water for. Here in Australia they just go through the whole hassle of boiling tap water for 5 minutes, letting it cool and then using it.
2) In Australia bread comes with butter. IF you order a deli sandwich with Italian salmi and mustard, or roast beef, etc., they’ll put butter on the bread… became … say it with me… “in Australia bread comes with butter.” You will need to say “NO BUTTER” when ordering sandwiches if you don’t want it.
New Zealand stuff:
firstly, most of what holds true in Australia is also true in NZ, and with the exception of my Lentil soup, most Aussie brands can be found in New Zealand
NZ again does not have distilled water at pharmacies… however it DOES has a brand of distilled water that’s sold in the bottled water aisle of many grocery stores
Fish in NZ is NOT sold filleted! It’s truly bizarre but fillet’s with no bones and no skin do NOT EXIST!!!! And when I bitched about it to locals they looked at me like I had screw loose (as in none of them knew it DOES exist in other countries).
My favorite ice cream bar brand (possibly ever), is THIS one. Both my travel partner and I were VERY sad when we left the country that we’d not be able to eat it again (and there wasn’t any in the airport, I SEARCHED for it). There are more than a few flavor options we were both bowled over by how good each of them was. And a lot of the flavors promoted are native to NZ and Australia tastes, like Doris Plum.
A trip to Bondi Beach is one of THE things to do if you’re visiting Sydney; for instance, if you look at TripAdvisor’s top things to do while in Sydney, a trip to Bondi is #2 on the list. It’s the nearest/best beachfront neighborhood to downtown Sydney and while the train doesn’t go the whole distance, there’s busses almost every five minutes to take you the rest of the way. That said, this is my SECOND year spending a few weeks in this neighborhood, so I’ve decided to update this post more than a bit, rather than do a 2nd post on the same subject
What most people miss when they come here are all the clues that tell those of us who are MOT “members of the tribe” that this is also one of THE most Jewish neighborhoods in all of Australia. For instance, the fact that almost every seller of Jewelry have stars of David for sale, as well as Chais, and Hamsas. Of course the latter, isn’t really a Jewish item as such, but rather a symbol that has been traced all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia, that is used by all the various religious groups of the area, and is sometimes referred to as either the hand of Fatima (for those who don’t know, the favorite daughter of Muhammad), Mary (Jesus’s mother), Miriam (sister of Moses), or just ‘the goddess’… But of course the evidence goes deeper than that.
This is now my second year of spending a few weeks in Bondi. Like I said in a previous post, the first time I came to Australia it was a fairly last-minute decision. I had contacted my travel buddy, who goes to Sydney (his hometown) almost every year during their summer months (Dec through March) in part so that he can spend Christmas with his mother, but also just to be there. His mother lives in a retirement village in the suburbs, so he opts to stay in an apartment rental in one of his old stomping grounds.
A mural adjacent to Bondi Beach, note my T-shirt, and my Chai necklace (which is also an AT-AT)
Now granted, on the day when I first arrived I didn’t know this… and my friend isn’t Jewish and was utterly oblivious to stuff like this, so he didn’t know either. Anyway, we took the train from the airport to Bondi Junction, at which point — because my friend seems to like to walk everywhere (even when lugging suitcases) we walked (suitcases in hand) to an eatery called Savta Cafe, which he said was supposed to be good. I was SO tired after my flight that my brain didn’t trigger to the fact that Savta was the Hebrew word for grandmother. That said, the menu made it pretty obvious that this was an Israeli restaurant — something my friend had not realized. I got very excited and ordered the Shakshouka, a dish invented by Tunisian Jews, and pretty common in Israel.
That said, it was not the best I’ve ever eaten (the excessive use of mushrooms confused me) but it was ok… After that we lugged the suitcases to his rented a ‘room in an apartment’ (but not an Airbnb) in an area called Bellevue Hill, right near St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, that is located just west of Bondi beach and just east of the Bondi Junction Train station — [The map refuses to embed, so please check the location via the link].
But ONE Israeli cafe does not a Jewish neighborhood necessarily make. The next hint however was SO in your face that I couldn’t possibly miss the implication. The next day he took me on a walk from our apartment to the beach, and we passed THIS house along the way…
Let’s Welcome Moshiach with acts of goodness and kindness
For those who don’t know who this guy is, his name is Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Many of his followers (I am not one) had actually believed that he was THE Moshiach, aka the Messiah, a concept that should not be confused with Jesus/Christ … even if the Chabad-Lubavitch (who can be referred to with either term) are the most Catholic of Jews — a concept too complex to explain here… at least until Schneerson died.
To tell you how Jewish I am, I’m one step away from Schneerson via more than a few people even though I am NOT one of his followers; most closely of whom was our family friend and cardiologist, Ira, (until he retired) who was flown in to also be part of Schneerson’s medical team before he died because Ira is widely recognized in the Jewish community not only as one of the best cardiologists in the country but also a Tsadik (a righteous man). [Personal story…. Ira came to my father’s funeral. After the service, he took me by the hands, looked me in the eye and told me how sorry he was to have been out-of-town during my father’s final days — and hence unable to help him personally, but told me that he called in regularly, and had heard via the nurses and doctors at the hospital how I had been at my father’s side every day from his admittance until he died… and he said to me, “Rebecca, you have raised the bar in terms of how a child should be with a sick parent.” … to this day it is probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, and just thinking about it makes me want to cry. The reason Ira is considered a real man of G-d, is because instead of going to synagogue and making himself the center of attention, he spends every sabbath quietly in the hospital, saving lives on the days when most doctors prefer to stay home.]
Anyway, the VERY public display of the Rebbe’s picture on the side of a home (see above) made me realize there must be Lubavitch in the neighborhood… but what I didn’t realize until I had actually been there a few days and explored the place was that it was ALSO spitting distance from The Central Synagogue, which is a modern orthodox congregation
AND Adath Yisroel Congregation / Tzemach Tzedek … (when looking at these maps, please note all the OTHER Jewish institutions that Google popped, assuming they were also of interest to me, when I searched the synagogues’ names
AND The Sephardi Synagogue
AND an easy walking distance from the Chabad-Lubavitch House
In fact, there turned out to be about EIGHT … EIGHT synagogues all within an easy walking distance of our apartment!!!! (Not to mention a bunch of other Jewish institutions)…. For those who are not Jewish, in all of Orlando Florida, I think there are maybe four synagogues scattered throughout the entire metropolitan area… miles apart (driving distance). Only THE MOST orthodox of Jewish neighborhoods, the ones where there are all sorts of guys walking around dressed like Jews (which the vast majority of Jews do NOT do) … have this many synagogues so close together…. (Orthodox Jews aren’t supposed to be exerting themselves on sabbath — day of rest — and they can’t ride on cars, busses, or on horses either for that matter … so they have to live an easy walking distance of their temples … which, unfortunately, made it easy for the Nazi’s to round them up… but that’s a different issue.) Speaking of my oblivious travel buddy… by the end of our few weeks in Bundi (a place mind you that he’d been to a thousand times before) I was finally able to teach him how to identify orthodox Jews by their tell tale clothing choices.
The next thing I discovered in Bondi was that there were actually quite a few Israeli restaurants, alongside Turkish and other middle eastern ones, which are also popular in the area.
The above restaurant is, Sabbaba (Hebrew slang, derived from the Arabic word tzababa, meaning “cool”, “great” or “ok”)– and not only did it have a COMPLETELY authentic Israeli style falafel sandwich, but the manager was Israeli (I spoke Hebrew with him) and they were serving MALT STAR (a non alcoholic beer that is almost ubiquitous in Israel, it’s a drink that the early Russian/Jewish settlers to what is now Israel brought with them from the slavic countries) to wash it down with!! (As it should be!) This turned out to be a local chain (there are a three of them scattered around Sydney,) but based on my experience the only one that had the Malt Star was in Bondi … which says something about this outlet’s clientele
About a block or so away from that I found a third Israeli place, called Lyfe Cafe (Life with a Y, again, think of the common Jewish Chai symbol often worn in place of a star of david — which means life) again the owner was an Israeli (and again, I spoke Hebrew with them) and I also tried their Shakshouka — a bit better than the last place, but still not “up to snuff” in my opinion.
While eating at Sabbaba the first time, I spotted a Kosher butcher, called, “Hadassa Kosher Butchery PTY Ltd” located RIGHT across the street from them, which I later learned was an ALL Kosher butcher, that cuts its own meat, while serving the diverse clientele that lives in Boni.
They cut their own meat!!! So rare in this day and age.
and just a shop or two down the street from that I found “Golds World of Judaica” where I ended up spending a few hundred dollars on Jewish/Australian souvenirs to give as gifts to friends, and of course for myself…
An Australian Kippah! Got more than few of these
Specifically they had fusion Jewish/Aboriginal Australian items, like the above kippot (about $18 USD each… over two years I think I bought about 16 of them, because everyone I had given one to GREATLY appreciated them), as well as Challah Covers.
During the few weeks I spent in Bondi on my visit a year later I came across Katzy’s Food World, which I didn’t realize was a Kosher restaurant till I got inside, located sort of Kiddy corner from Sabbaba.
This is a fleishig, or meat restaurant — note the chicken, burgers, and the ‘Reuben’ sandwich without Swiss cheese, and mayo instead of Russian dressing (WTF PEOPLE!!! THAT IS NOT A REUBEN!!!) on the menu?
When I was there, trying to decide what to eat, the girl working behind the counter told me that Katz’s for instance is FAMOUS for the kosher Aussie meat pies — which is sort of a laughable statement if you understand it, in large part because it’s one of the VERY few places in the whole country that has Aussie meat pies made with Kosher meat, in a kosher kitchen… and hence if you keep kosher and want to try an Aussie meat pie… this is most likely where you’ve gotta eat it. (They even serve sausage rolls… which I have a feeling are more ‘pigs in a blanket’, i.e., all beef hotdogs in pastry… than sausage rolls, because there’s no such thing as kosher pork.)
A mom trying to find a kosher Parve snack for her kids in a meat restaurant (??) — just looking at them I see multiple tell tale signs that they’re orthodox Jews… can you?
because of the dietary restriction of mixing meat with milk Kosher restaurants tend to serve one or the other but rarely both… Falafel falls into the parve category, being never meat more milk. The mom in the above picture is clearly just back from taking her kids to the beach. From what was happening, it was clear the kids had been given ice cream while there (milk) and she wanted to get them a mid-afternoon snack but it couldn’t be meat because not enough hours had passed since they’d eaten the milk meal (seriously… there are rules to ensure that the meat and milk don’t even combine in your belly.)
The two-handled red cup next to the sink is for the ritual washing of your hands before meals
IF an Israeli restaurant is Kosher (which is NOT a given) then it will have falafel and meat, or falafel and cheese, but not both…. Sabbaba has both and as such while it’s Jewish/Israeli it is NOT someplace the Jews who keep Kosher would eat at…. if you ever go to Israel you’ll quickly notice that NOT all the food served there is Kosher… if it is there’s be a big sign over the door advertising the fact in no uncertain terms.
While at Katz’s I tried their Matzah ball soup. It was ok… my father made better. The “trick” to REALLY good chicken soup is you boil the WHOLE chicken, feet, beak and all, which this place did not do. If you don’t add those ingredients, the soup tends to have a sort of weak flavor and consistency. The feet are what provides pectin, and also a sort of super saturated chicken flavor. Today… when most grocery stores don’t even have the feet to sell you… folks rely on bullion cubes to provide them with that flavor — because they’ve forgotten what it was about grandma’s soup that made it just, better.
Finally, Not only did I find Krinsky’s, the largest kosher grocery store in Sydney (it’s the size of a small Kosher market in Chicago), during my 2nd visit, but up in the mall next to Bondi Junction, there are three different supermarkets, and in one of them I found an absolutely MASSIVE (for a non-kosher market) kosher section
On my international list of BIG things… may I add, three happy hens who are located along the main road, outside of Meredith in the Australian state of Victoria… and are advertising the Happy Hens Egg Farm.
They’re on the Midland Highway that links Ballarat, where I was staying at a friend’s home, to Geelong, where there’s a dentist who is a jaw specialist [back when I fell and had my concussion, I had landed hard enough to dislocated my jaw, no seriously, totally dislocated it on both sides, it’s been almost a year and it’s still not completely back to pre-concussion condition]. As luck would have it, my friend’s son had previously had jaw issues, so she knew just which dentist to take me to, but warned me, “He’s VERY good-looking.” I was like … “Ok” and she was like, “NO, REALLY, he stunningly handsome”… “sure” and I shrugged… then I saw the guy and it was a good thing she’d warned me because I SWARE TO GOD, my knees buckled… only twice before in my life had I seen men so amazingly good looking that they made my knees actually go weak… it’s a thing. Anyway, if you find yourself in the area and in need of a very good dentist, or if you’re a HUGE fan of the TV show Grantchester when the lead was played by this guy (who looks much handsomer in film when his face is moving than in still shots)
… then you’re going to want to make an appointment with this dentist in Geelong, Victoria (see my click map)… well that or if you have a bad jaw issue that needs looking at. Well let’s face it a really good dentist is hard to find, and there’s the added bonus of that looking at a doctor that attractive might help you forget you’re going to the dentist. He essentially took an x-ray of my jaw (which we mailed to my dentist back home) and declared it too early in the healing process for me to start wearing a mouthpiece (you know they’re good when they value your health over your money). Told me to wait till it was 6 months after the concussion, and then if my jaw was still clicking, to see my dentist… who ultimately made me the mouth piece (cost me a THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!)
To quote my friend, “They must have very smart animals around here!” You just have got to love signs like this that don’t say what they’re supposed to because of bad Grammar.
My friend immediately realized the unintended joke as we were driving down the road. I beg forgiveness as it was only a few weeks after my MASSIVE concussionmy MASSIVE concussion, so my brain wasn’t very quick on the uptick. I didn’t get it till he pointed it out.
(and why yes, I’m STILL backlogged … this happened almost a year ago)
Located along the boardwalk in Cairns is a MUST TRY gourmet restaurant of the sort you’d THINK would be easy to find in Australia (especially in tourist heavy locations like Downtown Sydney or Bondi Beach), but which really is NOT; namely, eateries whose chefs promote flavors that are UNIQUE to the continent of Australia; places that offer A fusion of native ingredients used by Aboriginals before the European invasion and modern gourmet cooking. Ochre is just such a restaurant.
Currently I’m in Sydney, and I have friends coming from Korea, and I’ve been searching, and SEARCHING (for DAYS!!!!) trying and trying to find a chef’s pallet of local flavors that comes anywhere NEAR what’s on offer at Ochre, so that my friends can have the same experience… and I have been failing HORRIBLY… I’ve even reached out to locals and … SHOCKINGLY the animal does NOT exist is Sydney!!!
I’m serious! You can find places serving Kangaroo, crocodile and Moreton bay bugs (which are NOT worth the price in my opinion), but that would be about it. There’s a handful of places that offer up maybe ONE dish with a native ingredient flare to it…
but I couldn’t find anyplace with Wallaby and even Davidson Plum and lemon myrtle were rare, and salt bush was only available at this one gimmick chain-restaurant steak place (not all that different from American owned, based in Florida, but Aussie themed Outback Steakhouse).
None had a menu anything like what’s listed above — where every item with a (sort of multicolored) stamp next to it (which included ALL the deserts) … i.e., almost half the menu… is a dish that stars, or utilizes native flavors.
Personally, nothing makes me happier than trying foods and flavors I’ve never had before. When I realized a place with THIS many native ingredients existed that played starring roles in the dishes…. I was really looking forward to trying it … Only to learn that not surprisingly, it’s won all sorts of culinary awards.
My friend (the vegetarian) for his appetizer had a Wattle SeedDamper loaf (a traditional Aussie bread) with an Aussie variation of the Egyptian dukka that made with pepperleaf (actually any of three different plants) and lemon myrtle, in macadamia oil for his starter — and yes the Macadamia which I always thought was a Hawaiian thing is actually native to Australia. I tried it just to have a taste, and it was rustic, but quite good.
For his main dish he had a Quinoa, roast beetroot and macadamia salad with fennel, orange, pickled muntries and tom burratta (a kind of Italian cheese)… which we both agreed was VERY good …
I had a Wallaby fillet (looks exactly like a Kangaroo, but is at least half the size) with an Argentinian influenced Chimichurri (which tasted more like a sort of sweet chutney) — that I think was made of something local… served on a salad of puffed amaranth, green tomatoes and topped with sprigs of salt bush (it’s the green thing on top of the meat… and it tasted salty)… the Wallaby I’m sorry to say had a very odd flavor that I didn’t much like, and while it was supposed to be much more tender than Kangaroo, it was in my mind just as chewy… The Chimichurri they served with it hid the flavor nicely, and combined (which I think is the intent) the merged flavors was better than either alone …. and the salad combo it was sitting on was VERY nice.
For dessert we shared a Davidson Plum Mousse with macadamia Pacoca (normally a a candy made out of ground peanuts, sugar and salt), which was served with a lemon myrtle and coconut ice cream…. It arrived looking like three small cherries with springs of mint on top and some sort of white flower that I’m still not sure what it was — COULD be sprigs of Lemon myrtle but I’m guessing. The mousse was REALLY REALLY good. The outside was a sort of gelatin (bright red) and it was filled with a more pinkish, tart and fruity, just sweet enough to take the bite off mousse.
I REALLY wish these guys had branch in Sydney… or SOMEONE else would open something similar.
A local fixture since 1988, Goodies Cafe in Mossman Queensland is an unassuming but great place to stop for a healthy affordable lunch. Catering mostly to the morning and afternoon crowds, the cafe is closed on Sundays, and opens at 5:30 am every other day… with a closing time of 4:30 for every day except for Saturday, when it closes at 1pm.
Americans beware, MOST cafe’s in Australia keep just these sorts of hours… I have no idea why. In fact, finding a coffee place that’s open in the evenings can be something of a challenge in small towns. Also, there seems to be a belief that bread must have butter on it, even if you’re putting something else like humus or tahini on it… so be prepared to tell them, “no butter” if you don’t want it.
Also, when Australian cafe’s say pie, they don’t mean apple or cherry… they been Australian pies, which are more like our pot pie’s or the Cornish pasty… only meant to be eaten with your hands
That said, I was actually a bit impressed with this place.
or design your own wraps and sandwiches from available ingredients.
As a result, no matter what your dietary needs, odds are you can probably get a really tasty fresh meal from here.
I ordered a chicken sandwich on whole grain bread with sprouts, beetroot, cucumber and tahini…. unfortunately … and I didn’t realize this till after when my friend told me, Australians automatically put butter… so my bread had butter on it.
My travel buddy, the vegetarian… ordered an avocado/cheese toast and smoothie, and we were both VERY happy with our meals.
Back in late April of 2012 I did a very brief bucket list trip to experience first hand some of the temples of the (once hidden within the jungle) capital city of Angkor (or Yaśodharapura}, from the time of the Khmer/Angkor Empire (802-1431 AD) near the modern city, popular tourist destination of Siem Reap, Cambodia. We arrived the evening of April 23 and left on the night of the 26th… so essentially only three days. I’m posting about it now– using the notes I wrote on my Facebook account at the time to remind myself … because, to be honest… I seriously doubt I’ll ever be able to do this trip a 2nd time.
I went there with my Canadian work colleague — the one whose home, in Mill Bay Vancouver Island, I visited in June 2016. We shared an office in the Business school’s Marketing department for the entire time I taught at Kyung Hee University in Seoul South Korea… and took this trip together over the course of an extended weekend — I’m vague on it at the moment, but I think it may have been the period given to students to prepare for their midterm exams.
Our one obligatory tourist shot… our tour guide insisted… what you don’t see is the long line of other tourists waiting to do exactly the same shot
Normally, this blog site will only cover trips from 2015 and later… or will reference back to previous trips because of more recent ones I’d just done (like the Halloween at Three Disney Parks post, or the one regarding Stubby Henge in Rolla, Missouri, where I compared it to the henge it mirrors back in England, visited in 2014)… But this was sort of a special case and the need to post about it has been plaguing me for a while now.
Priests in their orange, and a balloon ride off in the distance
IF I were to go again, it would only be if I could stay there for like three weeks or longer, which is not something I would be willing to do as a woman traveling alone. So it would mean having to find a friend willing to go with me, and to spend that long leisurely exploring the sites together. This could of course happen, I’m just not sanguine about it…. so I’ve decided I sort of HAVE to document that trip (from SIX years ago) as best as I can remember it at this point… just for the heck of it.
So, let’s get started.
First off… Siem Reap’s Airport, was TINY!! The image below was NOT from the parking lot, as you might imagine, but was rather taken from the edge of the tarmac!
(Don’t worry, the plum-colored shirt I’m wearing has the consistency of mosquito netting… utterly transparent up close, but helps keep the little malaria carriers at bay.
The building was only one story tall, so it’s of the type of airport where they bring stairs to the plane, which is about as tall as the building itself… and then you have to walk over to the building…
The building as seen from the tarmac
As you can probably tell, we were able to get a direct non-stop flight from Korea to Siem-Reap airport. [One of the things we discovered while there is that Korean pretty much dominate a segment of the tourism trade there, and are disliked by the Cambodians because their businesses are insular — creating very little profit for the locals]. Passport control for all incoming flights is one tiny room…. and then you’re out.
Inside was easily the cutest nicest passport processing area I’d ever seen, replete with what I, in-retrospect, learned to recognize as re-creations of the Angkor Wat statues that decorate most of the hotels and such around town (at the time I was a bit worried they might be originals, but they looked too shiny and clean). These are usually made by handicapped artists — often folks who survived stepping on land mines — from a training place located near our hotel (see images of that later).
The whole building was very new, and very spotless. The Cambodian government has clearly been convinced of the benefits of tourism to its economy, and has invested likewise — probably with some help from UNESCO grants (but I was guessing).
This was the North Gate bridge entrance to the Angor Thom temple complex (I know this only by searching Google maps for photos, and this location was distinct), which was the first place of many that we visited on the first day, with my friend/office mate and our tour guide for the day – who I am still Facebook friends with almost six years later (I’m putting up his link so if you go there and want a good guide… hire him). He had been an English lit major in university (and as such spoke English impressively well) but had to leave because his wife started to have health issues and he needed to earn money
and our Tuk-tuk driver, who had been assigned to us for a whole trip… He picked us up at the airport and was supposed to have dropped us off at the end, but didn’t show up. I’m pretty sure we kind of stunned him cause we treated him like our friend instead of our hired help — only I ultimately think he didn’t trust it was real. We insisted he eat with us at almost every meal (he refused the first time, but then gave in), and treated him when he argued that it was out of his price range;
we introduced him to his first cheese burger and fries [which he enjoyed a lot, although he was wondering where the vegetables were — a slice of tomato and a leaf of lettuce weren’t doing it for him]. During those meals, he shared with us that he had been a street kid after his parents died under the Khmer Rouge (ruled Cambodia 1975 – 1979), [for those unfamiliar with the regime, I suggest you read up about the Killing fields, or see the movie of the same name] but had been pulling himself up by his own bootstraps ever since. His English was very good, all things considered … I no longer remember his name because he never stayed in touch with us….. even though he said he would. AND, I might add, my friend was all ready to send him a box of textbooks on topics he said he’d wanted to study, because he couldn’t really afford to go to school but still wanted to able to study … For those who don’t know… the tuk-tuk, a sort of mechanized update on the rickshaw, is the omnipresent form of taxi in Cambodia — only they’re SO CHEAP that you can afford to rent them by the day, like your personal chauffeur …. MUCH more pleasant
The carvings on the bridge are from Hindu mythology, and represent a serpent that is being used in a sort of epic tug of war, to churn the sea of milk. According to our guide, the process resulted in the birth of many Hindu gods and the dancing nymphs. We saw this sort of image often throughout the temples …. as to the missing heads, sadly, he told us that during the civil war folks would knock off the best ones and sell them on the black market to private collectors.
Something you see all over while traveling around these temples is workmen reconstructing them. On one hand, this is great for tourism… but as an anthropologist, I felt like I was continuously seeing an archeologist’s nightmare in progress. What they’re doing is taking the toppled blocks up from the ground, figuring out where they go and putting them back… so … on one hand, good… on the other… worrisome
Another thing you see is these temples aren’t just tourist destinations, they are still used by the locals for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it gets pretty depressing, a few times we saw mothers who had seriously sick kids and were praying for them… Often the sort of illnesses you just don’t see in affluent societies. One particularly unforgettable example was a baby who seemed to have water on the brain so that the head was the size of a large watermelon on the torso of a baby who looked to be less than a year old.
The old nymphs, and the modern ones
The cleaning staff is everywhere, constantly cleaning… Again, on one hand an archaeological nightmare, but it made me think of how this must have also been true way back when these temples were in their heyday.
We were worried about this little guy, but it turned out that his mom (one of the cleaning staff) and his FIVE brothers and sisters all weren’t far away… again you saw this a lot, mom’s who were on the cleaning staff brought all their kids with them… often kids who should have been in school.
At this point I have to make an admission… I think at some point before this trip I had ‘neuroticly’ turned off GPS tracking on my phone, and as such, I’m not actually sure WHICH temples the following photos are from… they’re in order… I just can’t specify the specific locations. and there are a lot of little temples along side the big ones that I’m pretty sure they took us to, and I’m only posting what I felt were the best pictures (there were a LOT of pictures)
Our tour-guide, took us off the beaten path around the back of the temples, away from the masses of tourists so that he could share with us one of his favorite things about this place…. the chorus of birds doing jazz rifts in the forest. Also, the trees in these jungles (much of which have been cleared in order to better display the temples) have a beauty to them that’s a bit like modern art
you can’t really see it from this angle but from the side (and looking at it sideways) this lump I’m touching looked like a head and two outstretched arms.
An amazingly beautiful sight… the way the light was hitting the tree, etc..
Note the images visible in the doorway
These wild chickens are EVERYWHERE… in case you ever doubted that the domesticated chicken began in Asia and moved west…all you need to do is look at these birds
they’re definitely chickens, but look really skinny, tough and inedible…. and they run very fast. This totally makes sense, think about it… flightless birds that are as slow as our domesticated chickens really do need to be protected from predators in order to survive, while these guys move SO fast… and you have to look hard cause their chicks are almost perfectly camouflaged by the leaves
I love the way the two human forms sort of mirror each other, the nymph, and the manLike ants, crawling up a hill…
When it came to the big temples like this one my friend, who is much hardier stock than me — the woman rode her bicycle to work every day while I took a taxi because just the walk up the hill (our University’s business school was at the top of a relatively steep hill) was too much for me.
These orchestras were everywhere, and would switch out every few hours at the same choice locations. All are made up of horribly disfigured amputees, missing limbs, eyes, you name it.
More toppled stones being replaced into the locations they believe they came from, like a giant 3D puzzle.
The hoards, lining up for the obligatory picture on the pedestal… Everyone comes here wanting to take the same picture… in the same place, under the same tree… Also note all the blocks of stone that are on the ground… Those are both the walls and I assume some ceiling bits?
I think this is my favorite picture of me from the whole trip
The killer embrace
If you look you’ll see that in the background, behind my friend and the guide, are two trees, with one wrapping itself around the one below it…. and killing it.
And when you walk through the doorway around to the other side of the wall you see this… the roots of the killer tree like the tendrils of an alien crushing the buildings….
But again everyone wants their picture in front of it, because its also kind of beautiful. After this our guide took us to a different place, but the Tuk tuk driver needed to stop for fuel first… which turned out to be kind of a horrifying experience….
these are what roadside gas stations look like in Cambodia…. they’re everywhere, loaded up with empty water bottles or such… filled with what looks like lemonade .. but is actually fuel.
As we drove we came across monkeys sitting by the side of the road, my friend and I kept squealing out.. “Baby monkeys!! Baby monkeys!! Baby monkeys!!” Our driver had to be convinced to turn around and let us ogle them… Cambodians see them as annoying pests
For some reason, maybe it was because we’d just seen the monkeys, our guide decided that when we approached Angkor Wat the first time it should be from the back side of the temple, rather than front…
The famous Angkor Wat Temple, from the back
And this is where we saw a representation of the monkey wars… I forget that actual story but after our glee at seeing monkey’s this was where our tour guide took us next
If you look to the left you see the beginnings of carvings that were never completed
Note!! The Buddhas in this hallway are all missing their heads… Again, they were broken off and sold during the civil war (according to our guide)
Again, the monkey wars
When they dug this temple out of the jungle, this building was dense with bats, and the ground deep with bat-shit, which is apparently very acidic. The acid mud when the rain hit it ate away the bottoms of these pillars
Locals poured into here to have a red thread tied around their wrists, and to be blessed by the old man. Our tour guide (who was wearing one) explained that it was sort of Cambodian belief that these red bracelets warded off evil spirits
The detailed caving on this wall depict a massive battle from Hindu belief; the reason it is black and shiny is from so many hands having touched them over the years. As a result, now they try to discourage people from touching the walls because all the acid from their hand is eating away at the stone the same way that bat shit ate away at that pillar
The famous Angkor Wat, from an angle
This guy had earlier in the day asked me if I would take a picture for him. Later we ran into him again, and he insisted on buying me a coconut as a thank you, an offer that I quickly took him up on. I had already figured out at lunch that coconuts were going to be my dehydration savior. I was pretty much dying at the time, when our guide suggested I get a coconut water. I slurped the thing down, and my friend said she could see the light coming back into my eyes. I ordered two more and was right as rain and good to go, after having been almost at death’s door not a few minutes before, because of dehydration.
Coconut water is not only sterile to the point where you can use it as IV fluid in a pinch… but it’s better than Gatorade at curing dehydration. He ended up buying them for our whole group (including our guide). Turned out he was a retired cop from a Malay Island we’d never heard of, and was in town for two days just so that he could see Angkor Wat before he died. We agreed that too was why we had come as well, because it was a bucket list item — we then had to explain to him what a bucket list was.
Me and my friend, at Angkor Wat
The Buddha’s footprints
After this, they took us to a silk farm; this group is trying to ensure that the traditional skill of silk production doesn’t disappear (which it almost did after the civil war), and also as a way of trying to keep locals in the rural areas by providing them with gainful employment
I learned that raw silk is actually yellow and is the other part of the shell… while refined silk is white and is the inner part of the silk thread
if you look close you see the individual threads being drawn out
An example of a traditional Cambodian pattern, is present in the stone carvings at the temples… of course they’re taking you here in hopes that you’ll buy some silk. We didn’t.
At the end of our VERY long day, we were taken for an hour-long foot/leg massage, which was included in the cost of the tour… we later discovered that a massage like this in Cambodia only costs about $5. They even offer them in the waiting area in the airport near the duty-free shops (only more expensive).
END of Day ONE
YUP, ALL of that was ONE day… in Cambodia, in April when the average temperature is a whooping 96 F !!!! AND HUMID!!! If I were to try to do all that today in those temps, I’d die!
DAY NUMBER TWO…
On the second day we went to a less visited area where the temples had not yet been “reconstructed” and the difference in what we were looking at was radical. The other places also had stones on the ground, but nowhere near as many. I’m not sure if Angkor Wat and the places we saw the day before — which draw most of the tourists — had when re-discovered simply been in better condition than this or not… and that’s why they’re famous. (As in maybe they weren’t the best temples at the height of the Khmer Empire, but were just the ones who survived best over time).
But consider (images above and below) the state of this building and
note the HUGE difference from the ones I visited yesterday
All HAIL Coconut water… seriously, if you go to Cambodia, this is your dehydration savior. Happily they were sold everywhere. When I first got there I was suspicious but it’s actually the safest thing you can drink. Coconut water is a completely sterile solution till the moment the flesh is pierced… and the women who work these stands are SO good at their jobs that they can whack off the top chunk suck that just a tiny layer of fresh coconut fruit is left covering the top. You poke a straw through that to get at the drink inside…. and if you’ve got a spoon, you can can scrape out the fresh coconut for a snack afterwards.
Like I said before, it was Cambodia, it was HOT and it was humid…. and I have a strong preference for elevators….
My friend however was more than game to climb up the temple steps, while I stayed on the ground and took photos.
These priests were really excited to talk to us. I think most tourists kind of just look at them in awe and don’t get that priestly duty in these countries isn’t any different from say… the two obligatory years of working as a missionary is for Mormons; the only difference being as Buddhists, you can do those two years at almost any age… (I of course know all this because my boyfriend in college was a getting his Ph.D. in Buddhist philosophy) Although most folks chose to do their obligatory service to the religion it at about high-school because it makes it easier to find a good job or a wife if you’ve already done it, the fact is some will even do it when they’re young children
After this, our Tuk-Tuk driver took us to this temple, after asking us first if he could. As I said previously his parents died under the Khmer Rouge… these memorials, which include the actual bones dug up from the killing fields offer a stark reminder to the Cambodians of those times. It marks the location of the one the 20,000 mass grave sites that were uncovered after the end of the regime. To save on ammunition, most of these people were killed via blunt force trauma, hammers, blades, axes, etc.. The location is not just a holocaust spot, but rather doubles as a school and orphanage, so alongside this visual is the sound of children’s laughter.
At the end of the day, after a bit of a rest they took us to a buffet and show (included in the price of the hotel, if you can believe it); we insisted that our Tuk-tuk driver eat with us rather than stay out at the vehicle, which turned out to be a very good thing for us because, and we didn’t know this in advance, until he broke his leg in an accident which resulted in a limp, he had been a dancer at this very show and knew a lot of the dancers.
Apparently, in Cambodia, the hospitals just amputate badly broken legs that require anything more than just being set in cast. That is, of course, unless your family can pay for better care, and as I said previously he’d been a street orphan. So instead of going to a hospital for care, he’d had gone to the priests who did NOT amputate, but now one leg was a bit shorter than the other.
It’s amazing how these shots light up ever speck of dust on your lens
We had to get to bed a bit early that night, because our next morning was going to start very early. We were going to do the obligatory “sunrise over Angkor Wat” — a trip that was also included in the price of the hotel room.
For me, part of the fun was watching the hordes of tourists, all taking photos where if you adjusted your exposure right, it almost looked like you were there by yourself, watching it…
only you weren’t you wee surrounded by hundreds of people (and keep in mind this was the off season) watching the same thing….
I don’t even want to think about the crush would be like at the height of Siem Reap’s season.
One of the omni present features of the temples is the mass of hucksters, selling everything from silks, to fans, to postcards.
Something that is a bit disturbing about it is that more than a few of these hucksters should really be in school. But the economics of the situation is that their parents need them working, because tourists are more likely to buy something from a little kid.
We figured the pig had gotten away from the restaurant (which is off to the right of this location — it’s the same place where the cop bought me a coconut the day before.)
The long shadow taking the photo is me
After this … my friend who I was traveling with leads a grueling pace…
we went on a boat trip down the river to where the floating towns are located
A boat loaded with priests… note the orange robes
Life along the river was kind facilitating, at first I wondered about having their lives on display like this, but then I figured a river is not really any different from road, or a train, and it was like how you can look in on people’s lives as you traveled past
A floating town (that’s not the shore)
That said, some of the house-boats were really, REALLY, nice and immacuatly kept up
Note how the well-kept houseboats have satellite dishes and TV antenna’s. Thing is when you first see it you don’t really notice those little details — in part because you have your own assumptions about how these people live their lives. Me, I was wondering how they got their power…
cars in the driveway
And there were also some less affluent homes
While there we stopped at a store where they tried to sell us school supplies for our next stop, which was going to the be the village’s school.
My friend, who is a bleeding heart liberal, wanted to buy some… but I was skeptical (having pointed out the satellite dishes to her along with some other details of affluence), and didn’t let her. Our Tuk-Tuk driver (who had come with us) grinned widely after I did so, and backed me up. He said normally he never says anything but it’s a huge scam. Tourists buy supplies, and as soon as they’re gone, the unopened supplies go right back the store to be sold over and over again, with most of the profit going to the store… which is NOT owned by the boat people.
This boat, which he pointed out after was docked next to the school, loaded up with tourist donation about to head back to the store
And THEN after this visit, we were taken to a project not far from our hotel, where handicapped men were taught to create duplicates of the sculptures at the temples, to decorate hotels and sell to tourists.
By this point in the day I was really worn out by our travels, the early morning, and the heat, and my tummy for some reason wasn’t happy with me, so begged out of what my friend had lined up for us as for the afternoon (more temples). Instead I stayed home at the hotel and rested for a few hours, and got to enjoy the view from our hotel, before we went out for dinner
Before our trip, my friend and I discovered (to my horror) that by the time we got around to looking into it that it was too late to start the anti-malarial treatment. We got shots for Japanese Encephalitis and some other thing, but Malaria is a HUGE deal in Cambodia. That said, apparently since Siem Reap is the ONE major draw for tourism to the country, the government actually invests a lot of money in trying to control the mosquito population in the jungles that surround it. But I was still nervous, so I basically bathed in repellent on a daily basis, and soaked that cheese cloth like shirt in the stuff for good measure — I was not pleasant smelling the whole trip, but I didn’t care. Happily, I managed to avoid the little suckers and only got ONE mosquito bite, on our very last night in Cambodia (when I’d begun to get lax in my neuroticism), at the fancy restaurant we took our Tuk Tuk driver to which was on the edge of town (across from a graveyard) … I was praying it was NOT a malaria carrier… and luckily it wasn’t.
Australians are as into big things as America is: Located in Cardwell Queensland on top of a 24/hour seafood cafe that is apparently famous for their Mud Crabs, which are served either deep-fried, live, or steamed… sits a 2 meters tall (6 and a 1/2 feet tall) crab.
Passed this while road tripping from Townsville QLD to Cairns, where we were going to go dive the Great Barrier Reef, and of course we had to stop at least for the picture. I TOTALLY wanted to try their Crab Burger, or at least the crab sandwich… but my travel buddy, who is a vegetarian, pretty much refused to go in there … the scent of seafood was a bit strong for him … it wasn’t offensively bad… so but he’s pretty sensitive to it. Sigh. No fresh crab sandwich for me.
Drove by this one completely by accident. Its made of concrete and stands 10 Meters high … or 32.8 Feet (according to this website) and was created in 1972 to stand next to a backpackers motel that had been there since the 1960’s but was torn down in 2006. It’s a very large statue of Captain Cook, the 18th century British explorer of the ‘uncharted’ oceans who ‘discovered’ Australia.
It was repainted in 2007, and apparently became for sale because the Japanese developers who bought the motel property didn’t want it. In Jan 26, 2017, known as Australia Day/Invation day — the commemoration of the day the first prison boat landed in Sydney, while the statue which was STILL standing in it’s origianl location (I’m going the hazard a guess that it’s STILL for sale, over 10 years later) … it was “vandalized” when some folks hung a sign on it saying “Sorry”… pretty tame and polite to be called vandalization… if you ask me. Apparently at the time, an Indigenous/Aboriginal artist by the name of Munganbana Norman Miller suggested that the statue should be given a proportionally large Boomerang to hold… which would have been cute
Earlier this week I am happy to say that I completed yet another one of my bucket list items; I went scuba diving/snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef along the eastern coast of Australia…. before it died completely. That said, I’m VERY sorry to say that, at least for the bits I was able to see up close, were already pretty much bleached/dead, when compared to pictures I have seen over the years of the explosion of color it once was…. very sad. Global climate change, it’s a thing.
My travel-buddy and I had went up to Cairns in northern Queensland, which is the town located closest to barrier reef, and stayed there for a week. Be warned! Once you get there you’ll be barraged with boat tour options because Cairns is about either diving the reef, or visiting the UNESCO world heritage area rainforests/wetlands that line this part of the Australian coast. We ultimately opted for a company a friend of ours had previously used and been very happy with, called Reef Experience, which advertises itself as the only one to offer “all-inclusive” tours… no “hidden fees”, etc.
This would be one of the photos they sell to you, taken by their photographer
What this translates to (per my understanding, which may be flawed)… is that while there are other companies that may seem cheaper… in reality they all pretty much cost the same or in fact more, while delivering essentially the same offerings. The major difference is other companies might not include various taxes and fees and what not (cost of the swim gear?) in the advertised price, and you’ll find you have to choose to add them in addition, or not dive… and by the time you do, those other guys are actually more expensive (unless you own all your own scuba gear, etc).
Our tour group, including me and my friend (can you spot me?). The company posted this to their Facebook page for us to download afterwards — a freebie photo
They do have an online website, but I, rather than make the reservation that way, dragged my ass into their offices (a short walk from our Airbnb) FIVE days in advance of our trip … on the assumption that this would keep problems from developing … I paid for the two reservations, and they asked were there any food restrictions. I explained that my friend was a vegetarian who was allergic to mushrooms. So, all good, and was told what to bring with me, when we’d be picked up, etc… and went home.
TWO days later (on Sunday, when we were supposed to dive on Wednesday), and I might add AFTER it was already two late to cancel and get a refund!!!!! I get an email explaining that under Queensland law, not everyone is legally allowed to do scuba diving and that we had to both fill out a medical form and send them a list of all the medications that we were taking, dosage, and how often; They would then show the list to their dive doctor and he would say if we could dive; or he would say that we needed to go to a doctor to be certified in person as healthy enough to do scuba. WHY they could not have told me that when I was in the office, and given me the form then, I don’t know. …. AND this was no PDF that we could fill-in and then send back to them, or even a website to fill out, it was an image file (???!!!). Something you needed to print out and fax back. Now keep in mind, we’re tourists, and I’ve yet to find a really portable printer (and who the fuck brings those on a plane?) and the Airbnb we were renting didn’t have “business office” facilities … so we had to get REALLY creative to figure out how to fill this thing… my friend, who is a professional geek, luckily had an image editor on his laptop… I have no idea how other people might manage it
Also, read the form REALLY carefully. [Have you EVER suffered from a cold? Our best guess was that was, what’s called in the legal profession, a gotcha question; i.e, IF anything bad happens that you might want to sue them over, odds are you answered “have you ever had the common cold” with “No” because you want to be allowed to go scuba diving, and they can then say “SEE they lied on the form! They can’t sue us!”
So… Early Monday morning, after finally figuring out how to fill this thing in, and before we left to do the tourist stuff we had come to Cairns to do — which was NOT filling out medical forms, we sent it to them. LATE Monday night — seriously I kept checking my emails for a response from them, it didn’t come till around 9pm…. we got an email saying that their doctor had OK’d me to dive, but my NOT my friend (who is WAY healthier than I am and not a month before had been scuba diving in the waters off of Bali). Do not pass go, do not collect $200…. He had be seen by an actual doctor to get OK’d to dive, and they suggested a 24 hour walk-in-clinic nearby. My friend (being too tired and grumpy to go that night) contacted them to make an actual appointment for the next morning, but was told he couldn’t get one, that he had to come in as a walk-in, and hope to be seen on a first come first seen basis starting 5pm. (We called the company, who started calling around to other clinics and NONE could see him.) So the next day, he went over at 4:30 …but the doctors on staff did NOT know of his medication, and could NOT ok him to dive! They told him he had to come back AGAIN the following morning at 6:00 AM, BEFORE our 7:30 am dive, when the doctor who actually knew his stuff would be there. So my friend did, and that doctor said it was no problem — the drug is a common one in the USA, but less commonly used in Australia — and thankfully my friend was able to go there and be back by 7am, in time for our 7:30 bus…. which came 10 minutes early…. and after all that rushing, we were dropped off and discovered we now had to stand and wait for the boat crew to be ready…. because they were not.
Talk about hurry up and wait!!! But back to the issue of pricing…. Essentially most of the one-day tours at this price point, about $150 USD/person, all seemed to last for about the same length. You should expect need to arrive at your ship at about 7:30 am and return to port at 4:30 pm. (Like I said, ours included pickup from and drop-off at our hotel — and thankfully the Airbnb was actually IN a hotel or they would not have — as part of the price… on the up side, they did call us when they were about to arrive. I STRONGLY suggest you find what the nearest hotel to you is, and set that as your pick up location if your airbnb is NOT so situated)
Finally the staff arrived to check us all in. We had to show either the print out of our ticket or an email confirming it. On their sheet I saw that they had my friend listed as vegetarian, but NOTHING about his mushroom allergy, so I reminded them…. they said “thank you” and wrote it down…..
This guy was traveling solo
Then every group of visitors (friends, families, etc) had their photo taken… like the one I posted at the top of the blog…. this is a photo you’ll be expected to buy later…
Before the boat got started they talked to us, and told us that motion sickness pills (both medicinal and ginger tablets) were available. The Medical ones were $3 AUD for two pills (one for BEFORE we got moving, the second to be taken after lunch), which I went straight over the purchased… and was SO glad I did. Even with, I had to focus on calm breathing and such during part of the rougher parts of the ride out. During the way out to the dive site they fed us breakfast, and lets just say some of the folk who had thought they didn’t need the pills had ‘spilled their cookies’. For my travel buddy…. they had a veggie burger, which he didn’t want because he wasn’t hungry… and for everyone else there were fried-egg and bacon sandwiches… I just had a fried egg which I patted down with paper towels, to remove the oil. While doing it I talked to the chef-female and asked her, “did they tell you my vegetarian friend is allergic to mushrooms?” and the answer was “NO they had NOT.!”… Keep in mind I told them this TWICE…. AND she kind of freaked because the dish she was getting ready to make for his lunch, was FULL of mushrooms!!!! That’s a MAJOR screw up!!
There’s a top deck for those wanting to tan and rest, note the resort deck out in the distance (it just stays out there pretty much 24/7)
SO, that said… Along the way no matter which cruise you take, they’ll feed you breakfast, lunch, and a snack on the return trip (ours were all you can eat, and there was enough for seconds) — which is either included or you’ll need to pay extra. Ours was included, with water, tea and coffee for free…. pop or beer cost extra.
Taken using their underwater rental camera… notice the color difference between the shoe in or out of the water?
Once out there, you’ll be lent a blue “stinger suit’ to protect you from jelly fish stings, a pair of flippers, a snorkel and goggles. Our company also lent a wet suit to anyone who was a certified swimmer and didn’t have their own (again something that I think other companies might charge you for). They seemed to have all the gear at pretty much every size, so for instance my friend who wears a shoe size of 13 Australia /49 European & 15 US — huge feet, has trouble find socks and shoes, WAS able to borrow ones that fit… while my feet are at the other end of spectrum (unusually small for a white girl, although average for an Asian woman), and I was also able to find ones that fit snuggly.
They even had prescription goggles that they were lending out for free. I have particularly horrible eyesight, and doubted they’d have mine… but they had one that was close enough to allow me to see, and even had one that was for folks who were even worse than me… although they weren’t bifocals so I could see far but not near….
Me, with my borrowed prescription goggles — purchased pic
Once we got out to the reef and dropped anchor, everyone got one scuba dive with an instructor (if they weren’t already certified), where the staff helps you get into the gear, into the water, and then makes sure you can both breath properly using the tank and regulator, and are able to expel water from your goggles while under the water (because apparently the goggles have not yet been made where that won’t happen).
The rental camera is red filtered for underwater use, and is kind of lousy above it
And then you get led around by the instructor for about 20 minutes after that, after the photographer has had a chance to take pics of you while under the water. A second optional scuba dive was available for $65 AUD more (clearly advertised as such in advance), and you could make up your mind to add it after you’ve done the first depending on how you felt about it.
This platform (holding a mini motor boat for emergency pick ups) was lowered into the water, and we took off from it, see the 12 air tanks lined up?
The first dive was about half an 35 min and included instructions and making sure each diver UNDERSTOOD them and could demonstrate them (one on one testing), while the second scuba dive is 45 minutes with none of it wasted on instruction. IF you are a certified diver… you could spend the WHOLE time swimming alone, but if not you HAD to swim with a guide and HAD to go through the lesson, even if, like my travel buddy, it’s not your first time going scuba diving. In fact in my group of four swimmers, I was the only virgin who had never done it before.
The red filter is simplistic, and makes everything look green
So the pic above — see how it’s very green? — That was one I took with their underwater rental camera which cost me about $99 to rent (but included my choice of 15 of the professional photographer shots … not great, … The pics below are that are blue, are by their photographer…. the very big fish is like the crew’s pet. Apparently this type of fish has a 5 year memory and is a bit like a dog in terms of his level of affection for the divers who come by daily
The professional photos were color adjusted using very expensive specialized software, I’m SURE of it, because I watched him doing it.
So again, compare the color palate of the pics by the professional (blue) with the one they rented me (green), which I used while scuba diving… i.e., going MUCH deeper into the water than I would experience while snorkeling… much higher water pressure.
The above were also passed through some basic color balancing attempts by me, using my Macbook’s photo program not complex algorithms for divers
Dealing with this pressure, and the fact that the goggles flood regularly is a big part of what they taught us before we went down. I felt ok for most of it; there were some initial problems my regulator which for some reason was set so tightly that I was having to REALLY force the air out while breathing, I could just breath out.
Multiple boats all sharing reef adjacent areas, and little platforms set up about midway between
I hand signaled the instructor as we’d been instructed… we went to the surface and I told him about it and he made some sort of adjustment to the thing… and from then on it was fine. Also between the fat on my ass and my tits, there was too much buoyancy between me and the suit (which also has built-in air pockets) so that I wasn’t able to submerge like everybody else … again I asked to go up… explained it to him… he made some more adjustments and then I was fine.
A purchased pic of the diving staff, the blond guy front and center led my group of 4+him
After we finished the dive the instructor (blond guy wearing glasses above) told me that I had actually done unusually well and should feel proud of myself. He said that MOST virgins on the first dive freak out during the instruction section, because of problems breathing, or feeling like they were being water boarded, or whatever…. and MOST never actually manage to get past the initial instruction phase to do the scuba dive itself. I on the other hand had managed to do the whole thing, including pretty much the whole time allocated to the dive.
But at the very end of it my core muscles in my torso, and the muscles in my legs were just knackered. At that point, my friend, who is a strong swimmer, signed up not for the 2nd scuba dive (which he had intended to do) but rather for a snorkel dive with the ships marine biologist (I forget what the fee for that was, but it was less than the snorkel dive), which you could only sign up for if you were a strong swimmer. Since I was tired, he ‘informed’ me that he was borrowing my rental camera.
Me, showing off my iPhone in it’s waterproof plastic case, $28 AUD/~$20 USD ($13 on amazon)
Before going on the trip I had found a camera store just near our Airbnb rental. The girl working there had convinced me that the rental underwater camera’s offered by these trips weren’t actually all that good, and intended more for video than photos. That a better option, was to use my own iPhone inside one of these clear, heavy plastic zip-lock bags designed for smart phones. She said that’s what she uses and has used for a few years, and if you’re NOT going to invest in a top of the line camera it’s really the best choice. Supposedly I COULD have used it for scuba diving but to be honest, I didn’t trust it to keep my iPhone dry more than a few feet down …. but I figured snorkeling it could manage…. and in addition to the scuba outing, which you HAD to do with a crew member unless you had certification to scuba solo (which takes a full three days minimum to complete in Australia) there were two chances to go snorkeling independently (about four hours total) — although you had to stay within a certain distance of the boat/life guards while doing it ….
Googles maps
An image of an underwater reef taken from above the water, they’re easy to spot, and at points they come up so high that boats can’t pass over them… so snorkeling really is a viable option… at the right locations you don’t HAVE to go very deep to seem them. Our boat while it ultimately docked at two different locations, so we got to see some variation of the reef while limiting our snorkeling to within the ken of the lifeguards. Although, that said…. BOTH locations were on/at the bit of the barrier called the Norman reef — if you look at a map of the barrier reef, it looks like a line of underwater islands.
As the medical thing we had to go through earlier demonstrated, not everyone can scuba dive safely because of medical reasons— for instance people taking certain prescriptions aren’t allowed, and not everyone feels comfortable scuba diving (even among those who want to, they freak out when first trying it as it can be claustrophobic and a bit like being water boarded). As such, even though scuba is included in the price, you can choose to just do snorkeling the whole time, if you’d rather
These were the photos I took during our first chance at snorkeling, before we did our scuba session, when I was still using their rented underwater go-pro type camera (i.e., everything is very green)
Photos from the rented camera, even after I futzed with the color balance on my computer, still not very good (but better)
… First thing I noticed when doing snorkeling was that MUCH bigger fish than I saw by the reefs seemed to like to hang out JUST under the boat. I think it has something to do with what was in the blue plastic bin they had hanging below the boat… it had these things that looked like transponders in it which I guess sent out sound-waves that attracts the fish to the boat… but that’s just an educated guess (after they pulled up the crate, no more big fish were hanging out down there). Anyway, once again… here was the photo I took of the photographer using the expensive to rent underwater rental camera … very very green
And by comparison, THIS is the image of the same guy only this time I was using my iPhone inside the plastic bag. See how BLUE everything is? And sort of monotone everything is?
Taken with my iPhone … really
Afterwards, at the end of the trip while we were heading back to port, one of the staff members saw me flipping through images, and suggested try a free app for the smart phone, that she loves, which would automatically color correct my photos for me (it also allows you to modify that correction, less or more, etc) called Dive+ … which I did… and here’s what it looks like (before and after)
So it’s a sort of judgement call as to whether to use it or not to apply the correction… but I was actually REALLY happy with some of the photos I ultimately got with the iPhone/Dive+ combo
Love this one, it’s very other worldly
I keep wondering how far down the professional dive photographer had to go to find this shot (below) … because it was NOT up near the surface where we were snorkeling (images above), that’s for sure
Purchased image from our dive, also visible on their Facebook page
That said, its pretty clear from my images that the barrier reef, at least up at the top where a snorkelers could see it is already like 90% bleached out in these areas… which is very very sad.
bottom right is scuba and deep divers (folks who are experienced enough to hold their breaths and go deep)
OR of course, if you don’t TRUST the plastic pack to keep your smartphone dry, you could always still rent from one of those underwater cameras from the tour company … which I opted for — at the last-minute — as the thought of a water-logged smartphone popped into my brain before the scuba dive. I admit I did this AFTER a lecture by the photographer about how much better my photos would be if I had the right equipment…
purchased pic of me and my friend … I’m holding the rented phone (at the end of the yellow thing… which will make it float/bob in the water if you loose it) in my left hand
Actually I think that it was because I decided to rent their go-pro-type underwater camera (the yellow thing in my left hand in the picture below) along with a package of 15 of the digital photos the professional photographer took……that they decided to put the above photo on their Facebook page… I’m GUESSING it was because … as far as I know, I was one of only TWO people who had opted to rent one of those underwater camera things, and as the camera is front and center in this photo, above, the photo helps to promote other people renting it
This is now my second year of spending a few weeks in Bondi. Like I said 
My friend immediately realized the unintended joke as we were driving down the road. I beg forgiveness as it was only a few weeks after 
The building was only one story tall, so it’s of the type of airport where they bring stairs to the plane, which is about as tall as the building itself… and then you have to walk over to the building…
and our 
Another thing you see is these temples aren’t just tourist destinations, they are still used by the locals for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it gets pretty depressing, a few times we saw mothers who had seriously sick kids and were praying for them… Often the sort of illnesses you just don’t see in affluent societies. One particularly unforgettable example was a baby who seemed to have water on the brain so that the head was the size of a large watermelon on the torso of a baby who looked to be less than a year old.
these are what roadside gas stations look like in Cambodia…. they’re everywhere, loaded up with empty water bottles or such… filled with what looks like lemonade .. but is actually fuel.
For some reason, maybe it was because we’d just seen the monkeys, our guide decided that when we approached 
Locals poured into here to have a red thread tied around their wrists, and to be blessed by the old man. Our tour guide (who was wearing one) explained that it was sort of Cambodian belief that these red bracelets warded off evil spirits
An example of a traditional Cambodian pattern, is present in the stone carvings at the temples… of course they’re taking you here in hopes that you’ll buy some silk. We didn’t.
And THEN after this visit, we were taken to a project not far from our hotel, where handicapped men were taught to create duplicates of the sculptures at the temples, to decorate hotels and sell to tourists.
But at the very end of it my core muscles in my torso, and the muscles in my legs were just knackered. At that point, my friend, who is a strong swimmer, signed up not for the 2nd scuba dive (which he had intended to do) but rather for a snorkel dive with the ships marine biologist (I forget what the fee for that was, but it was less than the snorkel dive), which you could only sign up for if you were a strong swimmer. Since I was tired, he ‘informed’ me that he was borrowing my rental camera. 
Afterwards, at the end of the trip while we were heading back to port, one of the staff members saw me flipping through images, and suggested try a free app for the smart phone, that she loves, which would automatically color correct my photos for me (it also allows you to modify that correction, less or more, etc) called 
Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned! 