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Kompong Pluk Floating Village
When we went to Cambodia, our driver, Sarat, suggested we go check out this little floating village on our last day in Siem Reap. Since we’d visited most of the Angkor temples and it was only about 2:30pm, he offered to drive us about 40 minutes or so outside of Siem Reap to this little river that feeds into Tonle Sap Lake and is the home of local fisherman. He had said it was only a 20 minute drive, but it ended up taking us about 40 minutes to go the 10.5 miles in our little tuk-tuk. The drive out to Kompong Pluk was nice. We got to see quite…
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Leshan Giant Buddha
In 693 AD one of the most colossal undertakings in pre-modern history began taking place. A Buddhist monk named Haitong decided he wanted to build a Buddha statue in the Sichuan Province of China. But it wasn’t going to be just any Buddha statue. This Buddha statue was going to be carved into the side of a mountain next to a river in hopes that the Buddha would be able to control to tempestuous river spirits and allow safe passage to the numerous travelers of that river. After saving alms for 20 years, Haitong saved up enough copper coins to begin building this monumental statue. He enlisted help from other monks, masons and his…