A day with the monks

Two days ago, we went to see Angkor Wat and the surrounding ruins. My favorite ruin was Ta Prom. This ruin was left intentionally unrestored, to look like it did when it was first discovered in the 19th century. There are enormous roots (with colorful names like “strangler ficus”) growing among the stones. Here are a couple of pictures from the site:

But my favorite part of the day was seeing the monks in their saffron robes. I’m embarrassed to say I was surreptitiously trying to get lots of candids of the monks among the ruins.

At one point I made eye contact with the monks and we smiled at each other. So I approached and started talking to the monks. The one in the foreground in this photo said that he has been a monk for give years and is hoping to be a tour guide when he finishes! The other one has been a monk for two years and wants to be an English teacher someday.

Mixed blessing

My last day of work (2 days ago) started off great. I went to one of the clinics for indigent people (where my refractionist works). It was enriching to look around and see what various clinics are like in the city. The first room was the “emergency/triage” area – where a British general practitioner was volunteering for two weeks. The clinic is a free clinic that’s entirely run off donations, but the facilities were still well-kept and spacious and far more contemporary than I would’ve thought for a free clinic in Vietnam. For instance, the Ob-Gyn exam room had a portable ultrasound, there was a laboratory complete with CBC and chem machine. It was even air-conditioned and had an elevator. Pretty fancy.

Then, the day started to go downhill. We went to a tour agency (since we’re out of work until Sunday, my mom and I decided to take a little trip to Angkor Wat) that’s downtown and my mom thought we since we were downtown, we should go shopping. If you don’t know, I’m really not a shopper. When go to the mall at home, I often end up spending about 1/5 of my time in the mall and the remainder in the bookstore (looking at architecture books – I’m sort of pre-school about books. I’m much more of a picture-looker than I am a reader). We ended up going to three malls and one market so I ended up shopping for 6 hours today! I think I’ve done all the shopping I need to do for the next year. At least I got some interesting pictures from the market:

These are dragonfruit

And my favorites… mangosteen!

And jackfruit

And even snakewine. Apparently its good for your liver and GI tract.

We also visited the oldest church in HCMC. I’d never seen Vietnamese people in stained glass before so I HAD to take a picture.

And I had never seen a saint wearing Vietnamese clothing before, either!

The medicine woman

I was eating breakfast this morning and the usual cast of women walked by selling fruits and newspapers and things. Then, this woman walked by who I had never seen before.

It turns out she was selling traditional medicines…

Like this raven!

And scorpions!

And snakes!

Ravens and scorpions and snakes, oh my!

Smoking indoors

This is one of our relatives at the Duxton last night. (Apparently, he’s a “famous” writer — so my mom says.) I thought the way he was smoking was just hilarious! No front teeth and only a few teeth on the bottom, but still holding onto every bit of tobacco possible.