• Tag Archives siemreap
  • Butterfly Sanctuary

    We visited a butterfly sanctuary to take a break from the ruins.

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    This guy is their biggest butterfly.

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    Almost all of their butterflies are bigger than at home, but this guy is huge.

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    They look like birds when they fly by, until you notice them fluttering.

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    These are not monarchs.

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    But they kind of look like monarchs.

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    Lots of butterflies were mating.

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    Some were fresh out of their cocoons and drying their wings.

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    They also had some giant stick insects.

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    But other than that it was just butterflies.

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    Oh, and one large bee. But he may have snuck in through the netting.

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    More butterflies making more butterflies.

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    Lots and lots of butterflies.

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    This is the last butterfly.

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  • Banteay Samre

    We drove further away to get out to this temple.

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    It did not have the best preserved lions.

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    It did have roofs similar to Angkor Wat with the flaming pineapple shape.

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    The carvings and columns were well preserved.

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    Lots of pillars in the windows here.

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  • Landmine Museum

    The landmine museum is a collection of munitions collected around Cambodia. Many by a single individual who defused at least 50,000 landmines personally. His story is quite fascinating, but long so I will not write it all in here. That’s what Google is for.

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    Due to a number of wars and proximity to Vietnam and Thailand many parts of the country were blanketed with mines, or has unexploded munitions scattered through the forests. Some are harder to spot that others.

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    A major problem with bombing areas is that many bombs fail and just lie in the ground waiting to cause problems in the future.

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    These are all examples of shells that were defused in Cambodia.

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    The munitions can be dangerous for over a hundred years. Just recently there was a WWII bomb found in Germany that caused an evacuation to allow for defusing.

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    Many devices were designed to maim instead of kill because injuries cost more to a military.

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    Unlike the movies there is no click, just a bang once triggered. Due to the efforts of several NGOs the number of people killed  or injured by landmines in Cambodia is just over 100 a year. This is still too many and people are working everyday to continue clearing these cheap destructive devices.

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  • Landmine Museum

    The landmine museum is a collection of munitions collected around Cambodia. Many by a single individual who defused at least 50,000 landmines personally. His story is quite fascinating, but long so I will not write it all in here. That’s what Google is for.

    image

    Due to a number of wars and proximity to Vietnam and Thailand many parts of the country were blanketed with mines, or has unexploded munitions scattered through the forests. Some are harder to spot that others.

    image

    A major problem with bombing areas is that many bombs fail and just lie in the ground waiting to cause problems in the future.

    image

    These are all examples of shells that were defused in Cambodia.

    image

    The munitions can be dangerous for over a hundred years. Just recently there was a WWII bomb found in Germany that caused an evacuation to allow for defusing.

    image

    Many devices were designed to maim instead of kill because injuries cost more to a military.

    image

    Unlike the movies there is no click, just a bang once triggered. Due to the efforts of several NGOs the number of people killed  or injured by landmines in Cambodia is just over 100 a year. This is still too many and people are working everyday to continue clearing these cheap destructive devices.

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  • Banteay Srei

    This was a pretty small temple.

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    The statues weren’t the highlight.

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    There were a bit different though which was nice.

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    The highlight was that they used a very soft sandstone in the building.

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    It was also surrounded by a moat filled with lillipads.

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    The roofs were also like Angkor Wat.

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    The soft sandstone allowed for really complex carvings.

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    The carvings were really well preserved and defined.

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    But the stone is also quite soft so they have the temple roped off.

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    So this is as close as we could get.

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    Which is really too bad because there were monkeys guarding this temple.

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