Travel Photos: Tonle Sap Lake (Floating Village) - Cambodia

I went out for a while with my CS guest from Serbia to see what we can see more of this huge lake close to Siem Reap city.
The heat was scorching but it didn't prevent us of going there, it took us a while to reach the place as our tuk-tuk driver drove so tortoise-like. As expected, these are the common sights that you would see in Tonle Sap lake filled with poor mushrooming floating houses and even boathouses.

Trusting God When Life Seems Unfair

Sometimes, I felt life is unfair and when life is getting so harsh, we tend to say God is unfair. As a devout christian and a missionary, it's not easy and even so painful to see those who aren't doing well in life.
In fact, it is frustrating to know when you always hear the sermon in the church telling God is love and yet, you couldn't see the reality of His love but the contrary of what it's to be called love. Poverty is one of the rampant epidemics in the world, which no matter how hard you work for life to survive, still you couldn't get out the brinks of life's impoverishment. The reality is, the poor's getting poorer while the rich's getting richer, wherever you go, sights of life's poorness is still visible and sometimes it became an eyesore to the public's eyes.
I cam across of this blog telling, "When God Seems Unfair".

God is unfair, here’s why…When we see good people suffering and the bad living their full life, when we see a child rapped, when a town is devastated by natural calamities, when innocent people are killed by some lunatic, when your brother or a parent die of cancer even if you prayed your heart out, when you lost your job, when you don’t feel like you deserve what’s going on in your life — we question God, “Are you fair?” Why are these bad things happen to good people?I admit with honesty and sincerity, that I do not hold all the answers and wouldn’t want to try to give absolute answers. True enough, who can? Can we really explain?However, I offer possible answers based on God’s Word itself. Some, “maybe’s” that we can think of.When bad things happen to good people…1. Maybe you’re just a victim of a fallen world. The reality is, the world we live in is sick. It’s dying. In this world, the Bible says, you will face troubles. It guarantees that we do, because we live in a sin-sick world. Why do our love ones get sick, and eventually die? Why would somebody hurt us even if we do good things to them? It’s not your fault. It’s just that we live in a sin filled world and we become victims of it.2. Maybe it’s a direct result of your sin. We would ask God why he allowed us to be financially messed up? Because probably, you loaned a car, a house and purchased the newest iPad even if your income cannot support it. Why wouldn’t your children love you? Maybe because you were out most of the time. Sometimes, we suffer because it is a direct result of our own sin.3. Maybe God has something bigger in mind. I was watching this not-so-good Gerald Butler movie (and yes, we kinda saw that just because it’s a Gerald Butler movie) called “Machine Gun Preacher”. In that part of the movie when he gave his life to God, you would probably rejoice already. But then, right after that, he got laid off as a carpenter and his house got destroyed by a storm. You would think, why would that happen to him considering that those events happen right after he committed his life to God? Isn’t that unfair? But then, because of those two events in his life, a door opened up for him to start his own construction business. When something seems unfair, maybe God is doing something else for your benefit.But here’s the bottom line. Asking the question “Why bad things happen to good people” is a flawed question in the first place. The right question is “Why good things happen to bad people”. The reality is, in the eyes to a holy God, all of us are bad. We are all sinners. And if God is fair, he would have given what our sins deserve. Because he is UNFAIR, he gave us what we do not deserve — love, care, blessings. And for those who accepted Christ as their savior, he gave salvation — we don’t deserve it, we didn’t earn it, we CAN’T earn it, and yet he gave it anyway.Mercy is God NOT giving us what we deserve.Grace is God giving us what we DO NOT serve.God is UNFAIR.

Disclaimer: The following text is owned by Gamboa

Travel Photos: Ruins, Monks, People - Siem Reap Cambodia

I am a kind of person who doesn't love much of going to recreation area, so long as I could see touristic places such as ruins, relics, and landmarks of a country.
That reminds me of the time when I was still in Thailand teaching, and no one did dare to come with me just to see those temples in Bangkok.
On the contrary, most Filipinos laughed at me and find me weird because of my tenacious desire to see those temples and mingling with the monks. Well, just as what I would always say, I am a backpacker or traveler not a tourist of sort.
Siem Reap - Cambodia is one of the most visited places in Southeast Asia because of the famous Angkor Wat. Even the re-known travel photographers and travelers in the world, won't mind the long distance trip so long as they could see the famous Angkor Wat and take a snapshot of it.
There's no other temples in the world would match the grandeur and the structure designing of Angkor Wat. It made me so jealous to know the huge numbers of foreign visitors in Siem Reap coming every year just to see the famous temple, with the hope my country Philippines would have the same amount of tourist coming in.
The structure of the Angkor temples would always bring me to a different dimensions thinking how the Cambodians would have thought of creating such a marvelous design. There wasn't technology and other stuff back then to help the Khmers to design it by themselves, yet, they done it perfectly. No doubts, why Thailand and Vietnam were trying to occupy Cambodia back then.