Karyee's Blog

If you are Karyee's friend, you MUST READ the first post of her blog.
http://spaces.msn.com/members/yeungkaryee/
Go there and check the FIRST POST!!

CLOCKs

I put two clock on my blog today. One shows Japanese Time, another one shows Singapore time. I wanted to put more clocks to show many times of where all of my friends stay. It is too heavy to put many clocks so I ONLY out TWO. :p

Happy Birthday to My SISTER

Today is my sister's birthday. She is 23 now.
I wish her happy birthday and another happy year!

Travel to Siem Reap, Cambodia - Day Three

Last night, I was too tired and slept so early. I think it was around 10pm. But I was awake in the midnight and I couldn't sleep for a while. So I wrote postcards to my Thai teacher, my dad and my friends in Japan. I didn't wrote letter nor even postcard for long long long time, or maybe I have never wrote letter to him. So I wrote it because I wanted to make my dad happy. :) It was about 5am when I finished writing postcards and fall asleep again...

I woke up 7am in the morning, had breakfast at hotel. We met the taxi driver 9am past several mins. At first, he said US$25 per day, but after I show him a list of places where we want to go, he told us that one of the places is far from city area, so we have to pay double. :S
But he told us that place a bit far from central area, is different from other ruins and very nice place. So we decided to pay him US$50 and ask him to bring us there.


Near the entrance of the ruin, some people were playing musical instruments. They were introducing them as Cambodian musical instruments, but for me, it looks almost same as Thai musical instruments that I played in Singapore. Thailand and Cambodia is neighbor countries each other, so maybe they have similar cultures.


This is one wall in Banteay Srei, the ruin which is located a bit far but unique one. What different from other ruins here is color of walls/stones and its detailed carvings. Mostly, color of other ruins are just gray color of stone. But they used pink color stone to built up this temple, so whole temple is pink color.
This temple was built in 967, it is BEFORE Angkor Wat nor Angkor Thom, but sculptures in Banteay Srei is much more precise than any other temples built in later years.

After visiting Banteay Srei, we went to see Pre Rup and Banteay Kdei. In these two tuins, I saw something interesting than stones or carvings.
There were 3 girls in front of Pre Rup, selling bracelets. But they were not so persistent as other places, and their bracelets was much cheeper. Yesterday in Angkor Wat girls there were selling 4-5 for US$1, but here they sell 15 for US$1 with counting 1-15 in Japanese. It is sooo cute. At first, they tried to sell these bracelets to us, but after talking us for a few times they gave up and started playing. Haha... and... when we leave Pre Rup, one of the girls gave me her drawing of a flower! She is so cute!! I thought I want to buy blacelets from her, but my wallet was in bottom of my bag, so it was too late and our taxi driver stared his car already...


In Banteay Kdei, not girls but two boys were playing under its entrance gate. They were wearing hat made from leaves and showing us it. But they were just playing and not selling blacelets, postcard nor any other souvenirs. So I make them a bit surprised. :p I took their photo with flash! They looked surprised with my flash but later asked me to show their photo to them.


After lunch, we went to one more ruin called Ta Prohm. This temple is famous because trees are destroying the temple. There are some big trees like this photo, and their roots are destroying temple walls or roofs. As a student major in forestry, this temple was quite interesting.

In the evening, we came back to our hotel and had some massage. My mom wanted to try massage in this hotel, so I booked before I go out this morning. There were two session in massage today. First half was warm up my body with hot oil, and second half was stretching whole my body. It was very very nice except my massager told me to take off my clothes without closing a door which is separating my room and my bro's room. He is a BOY even 15 years old and he is my younger brother though... and his massager was a guy. I was hesitating to be naked so my massager closed the door finally.

After very nice massage time, we went out again for shopping and dinner. The taxi driver brought us two souvenir shops and booked restaurant for our dinner. My mom bought 5 silk wrap skirts for US$75 and got one free. Hum, it is not that cheep but quite ok price with US$75 for 6 skirts I think.

We had dinner with Cambodian Dance show tonight. There were many kind of dishes and we could eat anything and as much as we want. But actually, I enjoyed their dancing more than their food. I ate abit only before their dance show, but once they start dancing, I was looking at them without eating. Haha. I like one dance that a boy trying to court a girl best. It was very interesting and I enjoyed alot. :)


After dinner we could take a photo with dancers. The photo taken by my brother.

Travel to Siem Reap, Cambodia - Day Two

We visited Angkor Wat in the morning and Angkor Thom in the afternoon with Japanese language guide today. The tour guide was very helpful for us. She knows many stories about sculptures on the ruins. It was quite interesting to know the stories of gods, demons and kings.


This is Angkor Wat. Our guide told us that it is better to visit here in the afternoon to take nice photos, but less ppl in the morning.There are 5 pagodas on Angkor Wat, but if you see it from different places or different direction, it looks like there is/are only 1-4 pagoda(s)


Inside Angkor Wat, there are very very steep steps to climb up to the 3rd cloisters. It is too steep and it looks like a wall if you stand in front of it. My sis, bro and me climed up this steps without handrail. Our guide was surpprised all 3 of us could climbed the steps so fast.
My mom was waiting for us at downstairs at first, because it is too steep and dangerous. But she couldn't stand that she cannot reach the top and enjoy the view from there... She climbed up using steps with handrail. She is too enegetic as her age... :S Our guide was surpprised again!

After looking around Angkor Wat, we had lunch at one restaurant near by. The restaurant was like "tourist restaurant", all the menu was written in English, price was showen in US$ and the price was not cheep.
When we finished having lunch, our guide asked us if we have rest for a while at hotel or not. Maybe because it is too hot to walk around outside about 2pm. But my mom didnt want to go back and rest, she just wanted to going on seeing around temples. The guide asked us for a few times but my mom didnt change her mind, so finally she gave up to asking my mom and decided to go to Angkor Thom directly.


First we went through the South Gate and went to Bayon temple in Angkor Thom. It was veeeeeeeeeery veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery hot there. Not only it was hottest time in a day, but most of roof in Bayon Temple was broke down, so there was no shade!!! We were like BBQing! Our guide was drinking alot of water and sweating alot. I think she also felt very very hot but she didnt say anything and showing us around with smiling.
We saw around some other places inside Angkor Thom; Baphuon, Phimeanakas and the terrace of the elephant.
Phimeanakas also had very steep steps similar to Angkor Wat one. We climbed up this one also. There are 4 steps faced t each direction, north, south, east and west. Every night, the king of the country had to climb up one of the steps he chose. If he didnt climb there, something bad will be happened. There is beautiful goddess on the top of the temple and even qweens were prohabited to go near to the temple.

In the evening, we came back to hotel. I was so tired and sleepy, but my brother wanted to play tennis. My mom and sister played with him, while I took nap in the cooled room after taking shower. :p
We had khmer food for dinner at hotel restaurant. It was similar to Thai food and abit spicy but delicious. AH! I cannot wait for going to Thailand and eat Thai foof there!!

Travel to Siem Reap, Cambodia - Day One

I travel with my mom, sis and bro from Aug 21-26. First we came to Siem Reap in Cambodia, transit at Bangkok. It took about 5 hours from Japan to Bangkok by Thai Airline, then we change planes to Bangkok Airway, arrived Siem Reap around 7:30pm after one hour flight.


This is the plane we took to go from Bangkok to Siem Reap. It is propeller-driven airplane!!! It was first time to take this kind of plane for me! My brother was also excited with the plane. He asked me to take photos of this. But inside the plane he was a bit scared because it is very small and weather in Cambodia was STOMY, so the plane was swing and shake many times.

From Siem Reap international airport, we took taxi to our hotel. The way to hotel, driver of the taxi asked us if applied for tour during our staying in Siem Ream. I booked to hire Japanese language tour guide and driver for the next day, but I didnt decide what to do for the rest of 2 days. When I told the driver so, he offered us to hire him for the two days. I translated it for my mom and we decided to hire him.


This is my temporary room in Cambodia, share with my sister. Our hotel in Siem Ream is quite nice. They have big nice garden with swimming pool and tennis ground, Spa & Massage Shop, Cambodian food reataurant and sovenir shop inside. It was more expensive than most of other hotels in Siem Reap, but since my sponsor wanna stay here, I have no choice.

EXPENSIVE ICE DESSERT

What do you think how much is this ice dessert??



I had this dessert this evening at one shopping mall with my friend. My friend saw about this shop at TV and he wanted to try. When we were looking for some where to have dinner we found this shop so we decided to try this after dinner and shopping.

I had sashimi-don(刺身丼) for dinner, it was very nice. I like fish very very much. But I put too much wasabi... almost cry!! I forgot to take photo of my dinner...
After having dinner, we went to CD and game store, coffee shop and book store. I didnt buy anything but just look around shops. My friend bought some CDs.

Finally time to have dessert. We went back to the shop and odered one ice dessert. We call this kind of ice dessert カキ氷. It is just ICE only. But this dessert we had tonight costs alot! It tastes very very good and big enough to share with two though. This ice was like SNOW! Very soft and melt easily in my mouth. And its syrup is taste of green tea. Not too sweet, abit bitter taste of green tea. Green tea ice cream as well. It tastes very very nice! Do you wanna try this!? Maybe after you know how much it costs... you dun wanna try... :p This one costs about \700, it is more than S$10. Now, do you still wanna order this??

DINNER PARTY

We supposed to have BBQ at school but it seemed to be rain, so we had dinner party in my room tonight. About 13 ppl came to my room. We had 焼肉(yaki-niku) for tonight. I cooked some dishes for them. Actually, I didnt know some of them at first though. NVM!



We had very good time with eating and chatting together until midnight...

筑後川花火大会

SUMMER is firework season in Japan. There are many firework festival all over Japan.
Today we went to one of the biggest firework festival in 九州(Kyushu Island). It takes about one hour from my campus to the firework festival in 久留米(Kurume).

One of our friend were from Kurume, so he go first and take place for us. While I let girls wear yukata. He said it is near station but acctually, it was FAR. We were so tired to walk long long way to the firework place. It took about 30mins with yukata... HOT!!
Only when they started firing 花火(firework), we reached to festival place. We wanted to sit and have dinner at riverside before firework show starts though...



Firework tonight was GREAT!! I was waiting for this time for more than one year since I missed last year one by going to Singapore. We enjoyed one hour firework show tonight then... I dragged my heavy body back to the station. I was too tired to walk and wanted to sleep at roadside... Later I remember why I was so tired. It is because I climbed mountain for my experiments in this morning.... NO WONDER!!!!!!

BLOG

I posted some articles that I wrote but didn't post.
I will post some more articles about my life here soon.