Day 12

Mum and dad woke up early and went on a boat down the river to take pictures of the sunrise and more dead bodies while Simon and I slept in. Then after breakfast we all got in the car and went to a Buddha Temple and got the lowdown on how that religion began.  

I suppose I should give you a quick summary:  

Once upon a time there was a king and queen who were about to have a baby. The queen was walking around amongst the trees when she reached up and grabbed a branch. Suddenly there was a flash of light and a her baby appeared before her and took seven steps, and where he stepped there grew seven lotus flowers. The mother unfortunately died a week later and bewildered the king to a wise man who told him that if his son stayed in the castle he would become a great and noble king, but if we left he would become a great religious man and receive enlightenment. So basically his father wanted him to be king so he kept him locked up in the castle till he was twenty three when he went out, saw an old man, a dead body and a priest, nom of which he had ever seen before. The guy then decided to leave his life behind and try to become a holy man. He traveled far found some holy people in the woods and lived with them for a while then moved on, was enlightened, then continued on to enlighten other people. Later he died and was greatly missed by all and was then on known as the Buddha.  

We wandered around the grounds for a while and went down the road a bit to where they had built a monument to mark the area where the Buddha had first been enlightened, although now a lot of it was just rubble because it was all destroyed by the Muslims. 

After that we needed a break from tourism so we returned to the hotel for a while and sat by the pool where we met some people from Edmonton (Go Canadians!) and chatted with them till our break was over and it was time for us to go out touring again.

This time we took to the streets once again on tuck tucks and toured around the town for about and hour.

Later we returned to the hotel and got ready for New Years Eve. The party was a disaster but it was sure funny to be at, there was a band setup outside in a tent but since it was pouring (it supposedly NEVER rains this time of year there) it kept short circuiting the instruments, the power kept going off and for some reason they decided to start the countdown ten minutes too early. Shortly after midnight we said bye to our Edmonton friends and retired to our beds.

-Chloe :)