In Transit

June 21-22, 2012

Well, we're on our way home after an amazing three-week adventure that saw us through Tibet, Nepal and Cambodia, with brief stops in Korea, Thailand and China (yes, the Chinese consider Tibet to be China, but Tibetans do not...and we like Tibetans better...).

Tonight we are celebrating our 26th wedding anniversary by having a nice French dinner before we leave for the airport and our late night flight. Cambodia was first a colony then a protectorate of France from 1863 until 1953, so there are many vestiges of French culture left in Cambodia...one of which is French cuisine, lucky for us.

This is the low season for tourists because we are about to enter the rainy season...so we have the restaurant to ourselves...champagne, escargots, wine, etc...While we are having dinner the daylight turns to dusk, and we again see the most amazing thing...every night at this time, the trees in the park across the street from our hotel let loose thousands of bats. And these are not the small bats like we have at home that flit around like little starlings...these are big bats that fly slowly, flapping their large leathery wings, and there are so many they are a torrent of black silhouettes against the nearly black sky...hard to get a photo of, but amazing to watch.

We have an overnight flight to Seoul, Korea, so we get to the airport in Siem Reap after dark and board our flight.

We land in Seoul in the morning and have arranged for a room at the transit hotel at the airport. Seoul has a very nice area for transiting passengers...it is upstairs from the main concourse, and it features nice seating areas, places to eat, an Internet cafe, free massage lounge chairs, free showers, a massage shop, and our hotel.

Here's the massage establishment...we wondered if they would close the drapes when the massage was going on so that the massagee would not be on display to passersby...?!

Here's the front desk of the transit hotel, and our room...the room is slightly bigger than the bed, with virtually nothing other than a TV in terms of amenities, but it does have a very nice bathroom...and outlets to recharge all of our electronics...

We're fortunate to have a room with a view, some rooms don't have any window at all...but look at our view...we look out into the terminal right above passenger check-in...now that feels weird! Fortunately there are good blackout shades, so we catch a few hours sleep before lunch.

Other than having to wait an inordinately long time for a really, REALLY bad cup of drip coffee at the Dunkin Donuts in the concourse, our day was uneventful, and we walked the concourses to get a little exercise and take in the sights. One of the sights is the bathrooms...I know, we've become more interested in bathrooms since our Tibet experience...but c'mon, these are pretty fancy for ANY airport...right?! There are little child seats in the women's bathroom where you park your kid while you're busy ...

By evening we were winging our way back home!

Sorry for the lack of photos on the return flight...it was much like the first flight of this journey, and besides, we slept for a good portion of the flight anyway. We landed in the early afternoon and after three long, adventure-filled, amazing weeks (and another 10+ hour flight) we are HOME!

Now comes the catching up and preparation for our next little trip in about four days...!

Total travel distance...16,292 air miles, plus 375 miles driving across Tibet.

Highest elevation...17,125 feet above sea level at Gyatso La pass.