Podaegi, Korean Baby Carriers

Podaegi are Korean versions of baby slings or Moby wraps.  Since people walk and take public transportation so frequently in Korea, mothers and grandmothers carry their babies more often than they push a stroller.  Korea isn't very ADA or parent-with-stroller friendly, and it must be easier to navigate a lot of stairs or crowded spaces with the baby strapped to you.


These baby carriers abound and they're typically made of really fluffy fleece and printed with a babyish pattern like clouds on a bubblegum pink background.  They look precisely like a bathrobe that has been wrapped around the mother and baby and secured with the tie, and they appear to double as a warm fuzzy coat for the mom and baby too.  It's funny but I don't think I've ever seen a simple black backpack style baby carrier on a Korean.


A few friends of mine are expecting babies and I looked into buying one as a gag gift, only to find they cost over $50!  For that, I could buy a bathrobe to tailor, make a mondo diaper cake and still have money leftover for some candy pacifiers....

Siem Reap

Last stop was Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.  The town is a sleepy, touristy town with great markets and tasty open air restaurants serving 25 cent beers.

We woke up at 5am to watch the sun rise over Angkor Wat.  We had arranged a driver to be "on-call" all day for us for $22 so he was up and ready although none of us were thrilled about waking up before dawn on the last day of vacation.  Evidence our day pass photos below:

Our smoking-flash, many-drops camera did a passable job of capturing the sunrise, but Andrew's real entertainment came not from photographing the main sight but photographing the photographers....

After the early morning wake up, we decided our last day of sightseeing would be best spent with a big break from sightseeing before doing our obligatory exploring.  After checking out the most famous ruins, we returned to the hotel to eat the huge buffet breakfast, swim and sunbathe, and shower.  Then we could muster more interest in the sites of Angkor.

First, a tiny history lesson courtesy of Wikipedia: Angkor Wat is a temple complex built by the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city. When Cambodia opened to the world after the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's, it became a major tourist attraction and a photographer's dream.

Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh was our first stop in Cambodia, and already it felt much different than Vietnam: wider avenues, fewer motorbikes, French Colonial architecture and more pronounced Thai influence.

The first afternoon we walked around with periodic stops for food, drinks, or interesting sights to photograph.  We also stopped by a few markets for souvenirs or $3 tshirts and $10 "North Face" backpacks.  It was especially easy shopping since Cambodia uses their own currency, the rupiah, for denominations less than $1 but they use US dollars for the rest.  

Of course lunch was first on the agenda when we arrived.

Motorbikes and a tuk-tuk in front of something pretty fancy.

Buddha Gate at the Palace.  Just a side door though.

With Jess in front of the Palace.

Next morning we rode in a tuk-tuk about 30 minutes out of town to the Killing Fields, one of many mass burial sites for victims of the Khmer Rouge.  The tour included a very well done audio tour with khmer music, personal accounts and sound effects to drive home the atrocities committed there.  Of everything we saw on our vacation, the Killing Fields had the biggest impact on me.  As many as two million Cambodians were killed by their countrymen in the mid 1970s for being educated, Christians or Buddhists, allegedly criticizing Pol Pot's regime, or no reason at all.  One quarter of the population was wiped out; approximately 17,000 at this site.

In short, the Killing Fields is on par with a Nazi concentration camp in Europe.  Horrific.

No original buildings remain from the site of the Killing Fields, but the mass graves are intact and you can see where bones and teeth are emerging from the mud.
In the middle of the site is a large tower that holds 17 levels of skulls and bones found on site.  It's unbelieveable how human beings can treat one another so heinously.

The tribute at the Killing Fields filled with the skulls and bones of humans.

1000 paper cranes for the victims like at Hiroshima.

The Killing Fields was certainly a downer, but I was still impressed with Phnom Penh and really enjoyed our time there.

The following day we had to get to Siem Reap, where we only had one day to see Angkor Wat and fly out that night.  But we hadn't planned very well and were making the trek right before Lunar New Year when all the buses and vans were full....

Luckily our hotel was able to arrange a driver for us who was willing to drive down from Siem Reap to transport us back with him (a 10 hour roundtrip for him), but it would cost extra.  How much extra? We kicked ourselves for not making arrangements earlier until he said it would be $5 extra.  That's a perk of traveling in undeveloped countries!  But the flipside is a headache of traveling in undeveloped countries- the road from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap was two lanes and not paved the whole way.... Needless to say we were very happy to pour out of the car in SR!