On Sunday, February 1, 2026, we awoke to another beautiful morning at the Golden Temple Retreat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
We enjoyed another simple buffet breakfast.
Linette and I rode a Tuk-Tuk home from Pub Street the night before, and we asked our driver to come pick us up the next morning to take us to church. He was thrilled for the opportunity.
Linette and I rode with Devaughn & Kim.
Roger & Sharon rode with Jen & Landon.
Tyler followed along behind us on his scooter.
It was cool seeing the name of the church in Khmer script.
When we got to the church we saw this family of four on a scooter. It was cute to think of this as their "minivan."
Two of the kids had BYU T-shirts on.
In the chapel, there was a girl who looked about 10 years old playing prelude music, with a senior missionary sister guiding her. We later learned that the senior missionary sister did not know how to play the piano, but was nevertheless asked to teach others (like these girls) to play.
An older girl (perhaps 16) played most of the hymns for sacrament meeting, while another young girl waved her arm to lead. This younger girl got up and played one of the songs, too. It was a little halting, but everyone just sang along and it was great. I thought it was so cool that these young women were stepping up and developing talents.
In Korea, the hymn book has the names of the hymns in English, below the Korean titles. I assume that was to help Missionaries find hymns faster.
No such luck in Cambodia. However, by flipping through a few pages, I could see the pattern of the digits on the corners of the pages, so I could locate the hymns from the numbers on the wall. Then by reading the music of the first few notes, we could guess what the hymn was.
A young sister missionary from Poland translated sacrament meeting for us via some headphones. Her English was excellent, and when someone said that she didn't have an accent, she said, "Thank you. I've been practicing."
During testimony meeting, one of the young women got up and bore a beautiful testimony, and talked about how she had been feeling anxiety because of the war with Thailand in recent weeks. The sacrament meeting seemed so familiar that it was a bit of a surprise to me to hear concerns like that in this context. It made me sad that wars continue to happen, when loving each other as fellow children of God was such a happier way to live.
One guy got up and told a little story, and the Polish sister missionary laughed a little at the story before translating it for us, which was kind of funny to hear in our ears.
In Sunday School, there was a local gal who translated for us. She was Cambodian and said that she had learned English while serving a mission in Cambodia with American companions. After Sunday School, we learned that she was engaged to be married to a guy from Riverton! What a small world!
She was great, and it was fun to get to meet her.
Afterwards, Linette spoke with this sister in the hall. I really felt the spirit at church and grew to love these people almost instantly.
Our tuk-tuk driver was waiting for us when we came out, and we headed back to the hotel.
I wore my elephant tie that I had picked up in Chiang Mai.
Here is another impressive motorcycle trailer.
Kelly & Greg and Valerie & Darren attended the later church meeting.
Tyler escorted them there, too.
The senior couple was apparently helping yet another girl learn to play the piano.
It is always cool to me to see how much the church is the same everywhere, while at the same time, seeing the fun differences.
Here are Valerie and Kelly on their way back to the hotel in a tuk-tuk.
This mom was holding her little daughter on the back of this scooter.
And this dog didn't need to bother putting its head out the window of a car.
Valerie also got this classic shot.
Here is a 3-minute video in which Tyler rides by our tuk-tuks on the way to church in Siem Reap, Cambodia. It also shows the gal playing some piano and the second group heading to church.
After everyone was home, some of us went to lunch with Tyler to another of his favorite places in the area, "Fresh Fruit Factory."
It really was good.
They had a very interesting menu, with pancakes, sandwiches, fruit and desserts.
This dish is called "Ice Mountain", and it was very good.
Tyler's birthday celebration continued with an Ice Mountain with sparklers on it.
Here's a 30-second video showing the birthday wish.
After we ate, we were invited to write our names on the wall if we wanted to.
The owners are from Japan, and they have developed an interesting mix of menu items made with fresh ingredients. Every Monday, they sponsor a clean-up project on the road in front of the restaurant, to avoid trash there from making it to the rivers, and to serve as an example to others in the community who are so new to western influences that they may not fully understand how harmful trash and plastics can be to the environment.
Traveling there is a lot more social, since you can chat with people in other vehicles as you go along. :)
Kelly and Greg found a nice assortment of tastiness as well.
Scooters really are the thing there. Between their cost, convenience in parking, ability to get down a crowded road, and fuel efficiency, there are a lot of reasons for the people there to drive them. Really, the main downside is just the dying part.
Valerie got a picture of this "kid sandwich".
And I think Sharon got the record for capturing five people on a scooter. Here you've got a dad with a sleeping girl in his arms, another girl behind him who seems almost asleep, and a mom on back holding a baby.
I really enjoyed our time in Cambodia. Angkor Wat and the other temples were cool, seeing those little kids while riding ATVs was great fun, the Floating Village was fascinating, and the people at church were wonderful. And I loved seeing the smiles and waves everywhere.
On Sunday afternoon, we headed to the airport for our flights back to Bangkok.
At the airport, we again saw this four-faced statue, but now we recognized the four faces as representing loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.
There were some traditional outfits there, so I had Linette stand by it so I could Photoshop her into it.
Good-bye, Cambodia!
When we landed in Bangkok, I thought this plane looked cute with its beak.
We stayed at a hotel not far from the (LDS) Bangkok Temple.
We joined Tyler for dinner at another of his favorite restaurants, which was at the mall across the street from the hotel.
It was our last night in Thailand, so we went a little crazy ordering every tasty dish on the menu. Greg, Darren and Tyler, who had all served missions in Thailand, were especially excited to keep adding things to the order.
The food kept on coming out, and we ate ourselves silly. It was probably the best meal of our whole trip, which was really saying something. Darren and Greg were so excited about the meal that they paid for the whole thing. Even though we thought we were going way overboard with our order, it still only came out to about 20 dollars per person, and we actually ate almost all of it.
The mall had escalators going in all directions.
Ronald McDonald had an appropriate "wai" greeting.
There was a particular ice cream treat people wanted to try, so we walked down to the 7-Eleven to look for it. The staff looked but couldn't find it.
But we made do.
Here is the view from our window that night.
It was interesting to watch all the scooters work their way in between the cars, and then all go zooming off when the light turned green. Here's a 1-minute video showing the traffic at night as seen from my hotel window. Some parts are sped up so you can see how things move.
And here is the same scene at 6 a.m.
I went for a swim that morning while Linette rode on an exercise bike.
We did a video call with a couple of our kids at 7 a.m. (5 p.m. Utah time, 7 p.m. North Carolina time). I thought this was a pretty funny screen shot, with me in a pool, Linette on an exercise bike, and our granddaughter in the bath tub with her cute little face peeking out.
Roger played a little pool by the pool.
The breakfast buffet was outstanding there. There was a lot of shimmery stuff hanging down from the ceiling for some reason.
This breakfast buffet was the first I've seen to include ice cream, so that was amazing.
Linette and I went with Sharon and Roger to shop for elephant pants. I found that from my height, I could see all the way down the subway train.
We had some leftover Thai money, and we pretty much spent it all on elephant pants. Linette bought at least 10 pairs, to give as gifts to our kids when we got home.
Linette spent down to her last 100 Baht ($3).
Sharon got a great elephant shirt and shorts.
Devaughn and Kim arrived too late to join us at the LDS temple at the beginning of the trip, so they visited the outside of it that day. (It is closed on Mondays).
We checked out of the hotel and waited in the lobby until it was time for our flight. Some people had some meat-filled buns while they waited.
I grabbed a "toasty" sandwich at the 7-Eleven, and then got a final ice cream of the trip at the Cold Stone in the mall across the street from the hotel.
Tyler told us that he was going to use as many modes of transportation as he could, so I thought it would be fun to review how we did.
Like a long-tailed boat, but much larger.
Similar in concept to the pickup-style songthaew in Thailand, but much larger and wide open, with a table down the middle.
Only Landon appears to have gotten a scooter ride, but we'll count it.
That was a pretty impressive variety of transportation options!
On the afternoon of Monday, February 2, 2026, we headed to the airport to begin making our way home.
Linette visited the EVA Airways desk to pick up her reimbursement for having to buy clothes while waiting for her luggage to arrive. They gave her 3500 Baht, which she immediately exchanged for $107, since we were heading home right then. (And besides, we did not have room in our luggage for another hundred dollars worth of elephant pants).
After a short flight to Taipei, Taiwan, we took the long flight to Seattle. Somehow, Linette and I were both able to score our own rows, which allowed us to get some sleep on the flight.
When I wasn't trying to sleep, I was starting the process of going through the 10,000 photos I had gathered from everyone for this write-up. After the initial thinning, I still had almost 6,000 photos and 1,000 video clips to work with. It took two months to curate the photos and create this write-up, but I enjoyed the process of "curating memories". It helped me process, understand and remember all that we experienced.
Finally, we arrived in Seattle, Washington in the United States.
Sharon and Roger bumped into a sister missionary from their ward who was just returning from her mission, so that was fun.
As we prepared to board our flight back to Salt Lake City, Sharon pointed out that this was our 11th flight! (SLC → Seattle → Taipei → Bangkok → Chiang Mai → Krabi → Bangkok → Siem Reap → Bangkok → Taipei → Seattle → SLC).
Bangkok is 14 hours ahead of Salt Lake City, and we crossed the international date line, which set the clock back 24 hours, so Monday ended up being 38 hours long for us. So if it felt like a "long day", it literally was.
Linette was in comfy peacock pants for the trip. (This was sort of a variant on elephant pants).
I ended up disassembling my erhu and packing most of it in my suitcase. I was able to put the two long parts (the bow and main stick) in Darren's full-sized bag as far as Seattle. Then after we went through customs, I got those out and put them sticking out of my backpack. The people at security were a bit confused by it, since it sort of looked like a bow and arrow, but I explained that it was a musical instrument, and they let it through. It was annoying enough, though, that I was glad I didn't have it on the other flights.
It took me about 12 tries, but I finally got the erhu assembled and tuned, and now it looks nice hanging on our instrument wall.
We made it back to Salt Lake City, and I was amazed that other than one temporarily lost bag (and one "bus lost on the tarmac" scare), all 11 flights went off without a hitch.
Wow!! What an amazing trip! Some of the highlights included:
Just as an elephant never forgets, I will never forget this trip and the great people (and elephants) we met along the way.