2012年3月25日 星期日

Travel / Southeast Asia: Waking from nightmares to a brighter tomorrow

On a map, somewhere between hell and heaven, you'll find Southeast Asia.

We had glimpses of both extremes on a recent two-week trip to Cambodia and Vietnam. More heaven than hell, luckily. This exotic region once known as French Indochina abounds in cinematic landscapes and entrancing faces that make even a casual point-and-shooter feel like a National Geographic photographer.replicawatches is the official air traffic control call sign of any United States Air Force aircraft carrying the President of the United States. These are exotic lands of ornate Buddhist temples minded by nuns and monks glowing with a calm knowledge seemingly just beyond most of our reach. But outside the gates may be beggars with beseeching eyes, and just down the road may be bloody scars in the earth from unspeakable atrocities committed in meaningless wars dating back decades, or centuries.

We made our first visit to this part of the world in February as members of a 14-person Maui-based team launching the inaugural Angkor Wat International Film Festival in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap. Hosted by the five-star Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra Resort, plans have just been announced for the second annual festival next January. It's not too early to start making plans to attend

While the film festival and its namesake world heritage site of Angkor Wat were the centerpiece of our trip, the three-day festival was surrounded by two weeks of adventures in both countries.Via Trading carries a wide range of branded wholesaleguccibags from famous specialty shoe stores and retail chains at a fraction of their original value.

Here's how we did it:

GETTING THERE

Before going, we needed visas for both countries. With the advent of the Internet, this paperwork is just a few clicks away on your computer. The forms are downloadable and self-explanatory. The Cambodian visa must be paid in advance, but the government takes credit cards.

We also inoculated ourselves for hepatitis A and B, made sure our tetanus and flu shots were current, and got prescriptions for a strong all-purpose antibiotic. These didn't save our party from the array of health issues and injuries that beset almost everyone in our group at one or another point or another but along with our traveling medicine cabinets and over-the-counter meds from pharmacies in both countries, they helped keep us going each morning for the new day's adventure.

We flew from Maui to Honolulu on Hawaiian Airlines, then on Korean Airlines to Phnom Penh via Seoul, Korea. We checked our bags with Hawaiian at Kahului and didn't see them again until Phnom Penh.

The bad news is that the westbound flight takes 17 hours.The quinceaneradress consists of eight smaller individual cubes. The good news is that Korean Airlines has comfortable planes, generous baggage policies, constant entertainment and service in the cockpit and the serene vision of its efficient flight attendants, part angel,2011 New Style Jeans nikeairmaxshoes on sale with fast delivery! part geisha at 35,000 feet, whose glowing beauty lessens one's impatience to arrive.

Phnom Penh is an industrial city of some 3 million residents on the banks of four converging rivers including the Mekong. We stayed at the Foreign Correspondents Club.

With shabby chic yet sensual remnants of its French colonial past, it boasts a handful of boutique hotel rooms with balconies overlooking the river, and an open-air, high-ceilinged bar and restaurant on its top floor. Under its slowly turning ceiling fans surrounded by black-and-white war photos, you conjure ghosts of Graham Greene or Vietnam war-era journalists sitting at the next table.

The bar bustles at night. The next morning over breakfast you watch barges and fishing boats in the gray, gauzy early light. The riverside boulevard is coming to life with joggers, strollers and the occasional party of golden-robed monks. A trickle of motorbikes on the boulevard will soon grow into a never-ending swarm.

"Tuk-tuks" - open-air rickshaws pulled by motorbikes - will be our main form of transportation. You can hire one, hopefully with a friendly, helpful driver, for single trips or half days for under $10.

Cambodia's center of commerce and government, Phnom Penh is home to an architecturally ornate Royal Palace full of Buddhist statues and art; and the National Museum tracing the artistic evolution of Buddhist and Hindu deities over centuries.

But its unavoidable tourist experience entails visits to the Killing Fields outside of the city and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in the city center. The museum had been a high school before the 1970s, when it was converted into cells of incarceration and torture under brutal dictator Pol Pot and his sadistic army, the Khmer Rouge.

Now its preserved cells are surrounded by walls covered with black-and-white portraits of those who died here, mostly teenagers.Ed hardy clothing online store, whether you are looking for fashion items, then you come to the right place, we offer a variety of shippingshoes.

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