Phnom Penh: Photos

We visited Wat Phnom our first day in Phnom Penh Here are some photos from that temple. There were lots of sculptures and paintings of Buddah.

 

We use the tuk tuks often to get around the city. They are the taxis of Cambodia. Here are photos of us in them, we sit facing eachother and there is a moped pulling the tuk-tuk.

On the right is the pool at our fancy hotel! It was a great way to escape from the heat and we made sure to enjoy it because soon we will be living in much less luxurious accommodations. It was beautiful up there, especially at night. On the left is one of Breanna's meals at a fancy restaurant we went to. It was fried rice and chicken put in a pineapple.

Here is the view from our first hotel in Phnom Penh. Below are more photos from Wat Phnom. :)

On our first day in Phnom Penh we visited the Cambodian National Museum. These are photos from the courtyard.

Flight

These photos are from the very beginning of our trip.

Here Is All of our luggage piled up at the MSP airport. We have lots of equipment for our research project and suitcases full of things to give to the Cambodians.

Our flight from MSP to San Francisco was right at sunset so it lasted for almost 3 hours. It was beautiful! This photo doesn't do it justice...in real life you could see the sunlight skipping off all the Minnesota lakes we flew over. :) 

It was a 12 hour flight and we got some much needed sleep. It looks like Jo was falling asleep while playing video games. :P

Deb must have had a fantastic book. I think she finished the entire thing by the end of our second flight! Breanna wins the sleeping award. I think we are all envious of her skill. :)

Flight 2 of 3. The photo on the bottom shows where the sun is shinning.

Our first view of Asia! These mountains were in Taiwan. Below is our first view of Cambodia. This is just outside Phnom Penh, the capitol.

Phnom Penh: Day 1

Hello all!

We have officially survived our first 24 hours in Cambodia after a few very long flights. Leaving the MSP (Minneapolis, MN) airport our flight was delayed a few hours but luckily it did not interfere with any of the connecting flights. We traveled from Minnesota to San Francisco. From there we took a very cushy 12-hour flight to Taipei, Taiwan. We had fancy seats with our own TVs and they fed us every couple of hours. Our third and final flight was only a few hours long and we arrived here in Cambodia around 9am. (There is a twelve-hour time zone difference so this would be 9pm CST) By this time we were exhausted but after just sitting and eating for the past day and a half we were ready for some adventures.

Stepping out of the airport we celebrated our first steps on Asian soil as we took in the hot weather that would soon be our norm. We loaded up a van with all of our equipment and gear and set off onto the Cambodian roadways. At least for me, this was a shocking endeavor. In the US, it seems that people rarely honk and if they do it is usually because they are angry. Here in Cambodia, honking is constant but it is more of a friendly "Hey everyone, get over, I'm going to pass you/turn/change lanes". There seem to be very few 'rules of the road'... and if there are rules, they are more guidelines. The motorbikes and tok-toks (an open-aired taxi pulled by a motorbike of sorts) far outnumber the actual closed-in cars and they weave in and out of traffic as they please. There are two sides of the road, however it is more of a guideline to stay on your side of the road. To cross the road (by whatever means of transportation you have--including your feet), you 'simply' start to cross and the oncoming traffic generally yields (or swerves around you). All this said, there is definitely a certain organization to the chaos that all the drivers seem to somehow innately understand. But I digress; we reached the hotel, showered and stepped back out into this foreign land, ready to continue our adventure.

The rest of the first day we spent touring Phnom Penh (the capitol city of Cambodia) and meeting with various people. We also toured the National Museum and a few local Wats (monastery temples). By the time we arrived back at the hotel, we were exhausted but that didn't stop us from jumping in the pool to cool off from the humid heat.

I promise there will be photos to follow once I am able to upload them. :) And don't worry, we'll keep you updated on all of our adventures! Thanks for reading!

Our Project

    This photo of Sar Vy, a Buddhist monk in Oddar Meanchy Province, Cambodia, was taken by Brendan Brady. Brady wrote an article for a website, PRI's The World, about the efforts of monks and community volunteers to protect 250 square miles of forest from illegal logging and poaching. Reading Brady's article will help you to understand our project. We will be conducting bird and mammal surveys in an effort to determine what animals are living in the forests, providing a baseline for future comparisons and possibly for guiding future conservation efforts.

    We may post a few introductory notes before our trip, but the Cambodian entries will start after we land in Phnom Penh on June 28th, 2013. We will spend some time in Phnom Penh and Kampong Thom, then work for about a month, from about July 8th to August 6th, in the community forests in northern Cambodia. While we are in the forests, internet access will be spotty, but we will do our best to stay in touch with friends and family through this blog.

    We would especially like to thank the Freeman Foundation for their generous support of the
ASIANetwork-Freeman Foundation Student-Faculty Fellowship Program for Collaborative Research in Asia. Additional thanks go to ASIANetwork for their administration of the program. We hope to show you all that we were worthy candidates!

Faculty mentor: Deb Freund.
Students: Joe Weirich, Joel Smith, Kelsey Pischke, and Breana Meyer.