Christmas in Cambodia

Donna & Paul's plane landing
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Hooray!  Family!!!

Jenny's parents (Donna and Paul, or as they will be referred to from here on: Mom and Dad) realized that they were missing out on all the fun, and that a year was just WAY too long to go without their baby.  So they hopped a flight to Cambodia to celebrate the new year.  Lucky us!  B/c Jenny fronts like she could go the whole year without seeing them, but she's glad she didn't have to.  Also when the parents travel, they travel in style.

2 Mouseheads! Best X-mas EVER!!!
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The short story of our time in Siem Reap is: we ate, and we saw temples.  The longer story is told in our thousands of photographs of those temples, and our clothes that no longer fit after one (or four) too many buffets.  Let's explore some of the highlights:

1) Mousehead, a Rothchild family tradition, has arrived on the scene.  Lee (Jenny's sister) used to have the only Mousehead, but as a result of the best present ever, everyone in the family now has their own Mousehead.  Mousehead has come on every family trip for nearly 10 years, and is present in almost all our family photographs.  Like part of the family, except without a body, or limbs.  So brace yourselves for a lot of inexplicable photographs, and remember: to know Mousehead is to love Mousehead.

75% of the Rothchildren waiting to get into Angkor Wat
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2) Breakfast buffets at our hotel.  And our hotel in general.  We stayed at this fabulous resort with a gorgeous pool and enormous beautiful rooms that had hot water showers AND attached bathrooms!  Okay so we were a little out of our league, and they weren't quite sure what to make of us when we showed up with backpacks, but I'm certainly not complaining.  Yeah, I could get used to this.

3) The temples of Angkor: possibly one of the new 7 wonders of the world, and they will not let you forget it.  For 3 days we rigorously trekked around ancient wats, structures, cities, and neighborhoods.  And by trekking I mean that we were driven around in an air conditioned car, but it was still super exhausting.  There is a LOT to see!  We took a billion photographs and climbed on things that would be outlawed in the USA.  We have detailed lists of the places we saw, if you are curious, but we certainly can't remember it off the tops of our heads.  Feel free to contact us for the info, if you really want to know.

Elephants x-ing
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4) The children selling things around Siem Reap and the temples. These guys are clever!  It's like they pass around a book entitled "How to impress Westerners and make them feel bad and buy things from you."  They know the capital of any state you say you are from.  They know how to count to 10 in your language, and a variety of other languages.  The know how to look sad, or hungry, or happy.  They know how to tell you that they go to school normally, but they don't have school now (maybe it's a holiday?) and that's why they're hanging around this tourist spot selling bracelets or postcards or scarves that you don't want now but "maybe you come back later and buy from me, ok?"

Are elephants afraid of Mouseheads?
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5) Finally, the family, and the love.  Oh, how it's good to see the folks, to be reminded of home.  We had so much to catch up on, so much to say and do and it was just wonderful.  You can't really put it all into words.  Sometimes you just need family, you know?  I wish it could have lasted longer, and I just hope that mom and dad enjoyed it as much as we did.