Rith was only six years old when he was taken from his parents and sent by the Khmer Rouge to the fields to work as a laborer. He wouldn’t see them again until he was 11. He was moved to eastern Cambodia to live in a Communist stronghold. The potholes he saw along the way [...]

Angkor Wat may be the most known of the temples, but there are dozens of others within the complex in Siem Reap worth exploring. Following our sunrise and post-breakfast visits to the main attraction, our Semester at Sea group went to what is likely the second most famous of the local sites: Ta Prohm. Look [...]

After an early morning viewing followed by breakfast at the hotel, we headed back to Angkor Wat again, this time to view it under a high sun and blue skies. We had a full day of temples ahead of us, too. Because Semester at Sea docks in each port for such a limited amount of [...]

While in Cambodia, our Semester at Sea group did more than just visit the temples. Our first stop in Phnom Penh was actually to an orphanage that takes in children whose mothers have died of HIV or who no longer can care for them because of the disease. Nearly 100 children live at Palm Tree [...]

From Phnom Penh, we traveled further into Cambodia and took a propeller plane a half an hour to Siem Reap, home to the temples of Angkor. We arrived amid a typical Southeast Asia afternoon shower and went straight to our hotel, the Allson Angkor Paradise (Semester at Sea does not skimp on hotels, y’all), where [...]