well i know it's been a couple weeks since my trip, but by popular demand i've decided to get down to posting a few pictures! it's hard to narrow down all the events and pictures down so much, because so much happened! it was really an amazing experience. i got to travel with 44 kids in my class for 10 days and see some awesome sights all over vietnam and cambodia. i really bonded with people in my grade and had a whole new cultural perspective. in our first city, saigon, i learned a lot about the impact the US had on vietnam during the war. there was a lot of gruesome information that was interesting, if disheartening to learn. in our next cities, danang and hoi an, helping the kids at the orphanage was definitely one of the highlights. it was eye opening and so fun to play with them. it was also pretty sad, and i felt even more guilty considering the amazing hotels and resorts we got to stay in. i didn't have too much time to dwell on it though since we moved so fast along to our next destination! we went to hanoi, a northern vietnam city, and went on a cruise in the famous ha long bay, where they have tons of beautiful cliffs rising out of the water. we got to visit a working floating village where people actually live. we even saw some kids rowing home from school. next we moved on to cambodia. seeing angkor wat, the temple ruins in siem reap was another of my favorite experiences. the construction and designs were so intricate and detailed, it was really cool! we were blessed by buddhist monks and saw the sunset from the top of one of the temples. our last stop was the capital, phnom penh, were we saw the killing fields, a remnant of the khmer rouge regime. in one monument, there were piles of human skulls belonging to thousands of executed political prisoners. it was sobering to get a visual image of such a terrible atrocity, but i was glad i could learn about this event that i really hadn't heard of before. that night we had a nice dinner at a delicious restaurant (the food was really delicious for almost the entire trip) and prepared to say goodbye to asia for the time being. i definitely plan on going back to some more countries here, there's so much to see! and the shopping really is amazing :)
4 comments:
Thanx, Woozie, for sharing your trip & comments. You are a lucky girl to have seen so many different things in so short a time. It is enlightening for one's soul to be subjected to the good, the bad, and the in between of various nations & cultures. Hope this will give you a new perspective of what you will study in the future to be able to provide service to others. You have so much to offer.
Love you
Grannie
Rachel, everytime you talk about your trip to Vietnam I can tell how much you loved the experience. I'm proud of you for raising the money (Yes, I know you're still raising the money! :) and for letting the expeeicne there shape your life for the better.
Love you!
What a trip! We were thinking of you in Vietnam while we were in Portugal! Glad you had a great time.
Those photos are so amazing Rachel! That's so neat that you saw all the things that you did. I worked on a documentary about the genocide in Cambodia and it was indeed very sobering. What a memorable experience to see it all in person.
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