Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Cambodia Photo Set

In December I spent about 5 days in Siem Reap, Cambodia with my parents and Stacia visiting the temples of Angkor Wat and around. Amazing. That is a great place with the friendliest people of any place I have been, maybe besides Fiji.

More photos here.

Sunrise over Angkor Wat:


Lady with friendly monkey:


Ta Prohm:


Street carts in Siem Reap:


Dinosaur carving from about 1000 AD:

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Photo set from Vietnam - days 1,2

Here is a larger set of photos from my first 2 days in Vietnam. These should be higher quality since they are edited on a proper computer instead of an iPad. I need a better iPad photo editor.

Photos with maps here.

A few of my favorites...

Lunch Lady/Soup Lady:


Stacia picking out vegetables for salsa:


Herbs and spices being dried in the street:

Saturday, February 04, 2012

Lunch in Myeong-dong, Seoul

Getting lunch in Seoul was an experience. We had read on WikiTravel about Jeonju Jungang Hoegwan. We decided we would try to find the joint. Um, yeah. We walked to Myeong-dong from the Namdaemun Market which wasn't too far, but cold. We explored several of the underground shopping arcades. These are incredible little places under the streets and intersections with food vendors, clothing stores, and vinyl record vendors:


When we arrived in Myeong-dong we found the station and exit 5, but no Jeonju Jungang Hoegwan. It probably didn't help that we can't read Korean and we didn't know to look for "the guy".

After about 45 minutes of wandering around and generally just being in awe of a new city, we popped into a little local restaurant. We quickly learned that the only way to order was off the menu on the front of the building which was all in Korean and had small photos of the food items. We flagged it and went down the block to a different place. Stood in the doorway for a few beats before figuring out we needed to seat ourselves. We poured over the menu with a little difficulty. There were photos of the items which descriptions in Korean, Japanese, and English. However, many of the English descriptions were "Noodles with vegetables and" but didn't finish. Ugh. Finally we picked some things and called the waitress over. She was very confused when I asked for a coke and told me "Family Mart" and pointed at the wall behind her. We sussed it out that I needed to go someplace. I went outside and the store nextdoor was called "Family Mart" and was like a 7-11. So I got a drink there and just walked it into the restaurant. Works for me.

Lexey with her bibimbap:


The restaurant, courtesy of Google Street View:


The original restaurant we couldn't order at:

Walking around Seoul

From Gyeongbokgung we decided to walk to the Namdaemun Market. It was about a 20 minute walk, but it was starting to warm up so we braved it instead of the subway.

Leaving Gyeonbuokgung we saw the guards:


Longer view of Gyeonbuokgung:


Pretty manhole covers of Seoul:


Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul, South Korea

Lexey and I had one day in Seoul on the way back from Vietnam. We made the most of it even though we were not dressed properly. It was about 15F when we arrived in the morning. We immediately took a train into downtown Seoul from the Incheon airport and went to the Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was incredibly cold so we walk around quickly and snapped a few photos before heading into the National Folk Museum of Korea.

Gyeongbokgung against the modern Seoul backdrop:


Lexey in the Gyeongbokgung Palace:


Beautiful paint work:


Lenny in front of the National Folk Museum of Korea:


The sun started coming up: