When we toured Cambodia’s Angkor Wat, we first spent an entire afternoon in the temple complex. Later, we went to see the sunset on a famous hill. You can climb the hill up a very rough, rocky (actually boulders) path or take an elephant ride up.
The sunset was something I have not seen the like of anywhere else in the scores of countries I have traveled. Take good film to capture this phenomenon, and go early; it gets very packed up there!
A terrific highlight of our September/October 2000 trip to Southeast Asia was Angkor near Siem Reap, Cambodia.
by Fred DeVinney, Oakland, CA
Malaysia Airlines’ ad sounded almost too good to be true: $999 would take us halfway around the world to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s cosmopolitan capital. To that we could add as many (or as few) as we wanted of the dozens of destinations Malaysia Airlines flies to in the Far East. We’d be using Kuala Lumpur as our hub for the Far Eastern destinations, but it would not cost us a penny more to add to our travel agenda, if we chose, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore, Yangon, Hanoi, Manila. . .
We took a cruise from Belize to the Barrier Reef and Guatemala and back, March 12-23, ’04, with American Canadian Caribbean Line (461 Water St., Warren, RI 02885; phone 800/556-7450 or visit www.accl-smallships.com). The cost ranged from only $2,455 to $2,985. It was for 11 nights, with the option of arriving one day early and “being there” rather than worrying about getting there in time for departure.
I visited the astoundingly beautiful, inspirational and impressive sites of Borobudur and Prambanan on Java, Indonesia, in September ’03 and am sad to report that both left a bad taste in my mouth because of what has been allowed to develop at these sites.
After climbing the 3-dimensional mandala of Borobudur and being awed by its 2.4 miles of bas-reliefs, in order to exit the grounds visitors are forced to walk a very long, Disneyland-like snake-line of stalls. This line seems to go on forever with no way of escape. It is tacky and certainly not in the spirit of the ruins.
