I decided to visit Cambodia during my winter vacation, which meant I was in Siem Reap, location of the world famous Angkor Wat on December 31st. It really is a magnificent place, used as a location for many movie scenes, and the ancient temples are just breath-taking. And unlike many tourist attractions in the west, you are free to explore yourself (by which I mean, 'explore on your own' not that you can discover your innerself), and you can scramble all over the old buildings. Which is no doubt doing irrecoverable damage to these centuries old structures, but is lots of fun!
Having visited 'The Window of the World' in Shenzhen last year, a sort of model village theme park, I had already seen it though. Don't know why I bothered really. Once you've seen the model, you've seen it in real life really haven't you? See if you can tell which is real, and which is the model;
While I was there, I also visited a crocodile farm. They had over 600 crocodiles! And for $8 you could buy a live duck to throw to the hungry crocs! (A live chicken was $10). I was tempted, but didn't do it. The crocs didn't have any hoisin sauce for one thing, and forcing anyone to eat duck without hoisin seems unnecessarily cruel.
Back at school, we are busy getting ready for the start of the new school year at the beginning of March. The students are all learning a graduation song as they prepare to head off to big school for the first time, and almost all of the Korean teachers are leaving too! I will soon be the longest serving teacher at the school!
Then at the end of January, it is new year again! This time it is Lunar New Year (as they call it in Korea), or Chinese New Year (as they call it everywhere else!). Which means good news on two fronts. Firstly, we get two days off school to make a 4 day weekend, but even better than that, the Principal gave us teachers the traditional new years gift of spam!
Finally, the Adventures of Tyrion the Turtle
Well this month, as temperatures plummeted, I took Tyrion ice-skating. And he was no Bambi on ice, that little turtle has some serious moves! He was skating around, doing little jumps, half-pikes, triple twists, the works! It was something to behold!
