We’ve been in Melbourne since Christmas Eve. It’s been a wonderful holiday so far. Hope you had a wonderful Christmas too. It’s been a blessing to be able to spend time with family again, meet our new nephew, and catch-up with dear friends. There has been lots – LOTS – of eating (just look at my Instagram photos!), and visiting of favourite places, such as the Maribyrnong River track, which is my favourite running track:

{Maribyrnong River trail, Ascot Vale}

I’ve always run this track by myself so it was very special to come back this time and run it with the Mister.

The girls’ first request when we got to Melbourne was to visit their favourite playground in Ascot Vale:

{Essendon Community Playground, Ascot Vale}

Despite some shaky weather around Christmas (heat, followed by hail, storms and floods!), the weather in Melbourne has been fantastic.

Being back here in familiar grounds has been conducive to reflecting on, and being thankful for, the amazing year that 2011 has been. It’s been a year of restoring relationships, experiencing new places, and finding and settling into a new home. This year we:

1. Moved the family to Hong Kong (and what an adventure it has been!): started new jobs/schools, found a new home, and made lots of lovely new friends!
2. Traveled on 15 flights, spent the new year Fiji, and visited 4 other Asian countries that we had never been to before
3. Ran our first fun-run in Hong Kong, and trained for and ran our first ever half-marathon in Cambodia
4. Re-discovered how much I love drawing and sketching thanks to the Sketchbook Project

It really has been an amazing year and I thank God daily for it. I don’t expect we will be traveling so much next year, but I am looking forward to having more wonderful adventures with my family, running another half-marathon overseas, visiting family that I have only ever heard of but never met, doing more drawings and illustrations (and hopefully some sewing!), and finding ways to give more back to the community that we have settled into in Hong Kong. As 2011 draws to an end, I feel very blessed and am very excited about what 2012 has in store.

{Beautiful sunset at Williamstown Beach}

I wish you a 2012 filled with joy, peace, contentment, challenge, strength, wisdom, hope and love. See you in 2012!

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently traveled to Siem Reap, Cambodia, to do my first half-marathon. It was also my first time in Siem Reap.

The Siem Reap airport is one of the prettiest airports I have ever seen, reflecting Siam architecture. We were picked up by a driver and tour guide that we had hired and our tour guide gave us a great little history lesson on Siem Reap. I found Cambodian food to be so delicious – they have the best green mango/grilled fish/shrimp paste salad I have EVER tasted.

We stayed at the Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra, which must have the most beautiful and tranquil hotel grounds I have seen this year:

Also, the hotel was great value compared to some of the other more expensive hotels in the area – spacious and clean/well maintained rooms, massive outdoor pool, fantastic services at the Spa, very good food, and excellent service overall.

Beacuse we couldn’t walk much after the half-marathon (as expected), we only managed to visit two of the nearby temple ruins. Both were spectacular!

The Bayon Temple ruins:

And the Angkor Wat ruins:

We only spent a few days in Siem Reap but it’s definitely a place we would love to return to next December (as we are planning to do the half-marathon again!). Having a private driver was definitely a good investment (as the road rules are kinda ignored). Our private tour guide was fantastic and made sure everything flowed as smoothly as possible (especially on the day of the big run and getting us to the start line before sunrise!).

The people are absolutely lovely, so respectful and friendly. The history of the place is both breathtaking and heartbreaking – the Angkor ruins are only a few minutes away, as are the infamous Killing Fields. If you are thinking of exploring somewhere different and unique in Asia, please do consider Siem Reap.

I would highly recommend:
Hotel: Sofitel Angkor Phokeethra
Vithei Charles de Gaulle , Khum Svay Dang Kum , Angkor, 0 SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA

English Speaking Tour Guide: Yann Sorn (yannsorn [at] yahoo [dot] com)

Sorry about the rather boring post title up there :-) Work has been so busy lately! I’m thankful to have the opportunity to squeeze in a little bit of time to draw and sketch – loving the fact that a sketchbook and some pencils/markers fit comfortably in my bag and I can take them anywhere :-)

I’ve completed a few more drawings. These are not for the Sketchbook Project but drawings that I’ve done in my larger sketchbook so that I can keep the originals.

I’ve used a mix of Markers + Pen + Pencils for each one:

This one was started at the Ho Chi Minh airport in Vietnam, while we were waiting for our connecting flight back to Hong Kong (from Siem Reap), and then completed on the plane trip back:

I did this one for my daughters’ room after they asked me for a Disney Princess-ish drawing. This was my interpretation:

And with this one, I wanted to try less saturated colours for the skin and less tones. I’ve called this one “Esther” after the Biblical Queen of the same name:

As you can probably tell above, I’ve been experimenting with different ways of illustrating hair :-) I’m really enjoying all this drawing and sketching – such a fantastic way to wind down from constantly busy and challenging days.

This past weekend the Mister and I flew to Siem Reap in Cambodia. A few months ago we decided that we wanted to hit a milestone before this year was out – and that was to run a half-marathon. We found out about the Angkor Wat International Half-Marathon through workmates and decided that it was THE one to do. So we’ve been training for the last month and a half – not the ideal duration to train (probably would have been best to train for at least 3 months) – but the training has been a memorable experience in itself!

We’ve never been to Cambodia and I will write a separate post on our experience in Siem Reap apart from the run. In this post I will focus on the event for all you run-nerds who may be interested in doing this run in the near future :-)

The half-marathon started at 6:30am and we were at the starting line by 6am. The starting line is just outside the ruins of one of the gates of Angkor Wat (meaning the ‘city of monasteries’). It was a sight to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat – an extra bit of inspiration to calm the nerves!

We were told that it was the cooler season in Cambodia – so the forecast was for about 30°C by noon time! Thankfully, it was a nice and cool early morning and though it stayed cool for the next few hours (as the course went through the forest surrounding Angkor Wat), the humidity was quite evident a few kilometres into the run.

This was the half-marathon course:

The course itself is flat all the way (my favourite kind of course!). I didn’t spot any toilets until about the 15km mark, however, there were water stops every 3km. So as you can imagine, there were runners constantly ducking into the bushes to relieve themselves. We even saw a lady run into the bushes and do her business while a wild monkey watched her from a only a few feet away (I don’t think she realised it was there!).

The main highlight of the course was – you guessed it – the scenery and the temple ruins seen along the way:

Including the opportunity to run through the Angkor Thom gate – just maginificent -

Also, there were sweet, lovely, Cambodian children along many parts of the course who were helping collect bottles that runners left behind (for pocket money) and who would stand by the side of the road with their arms outstretched, ready to give you a high five and wish you good luck. I may have high-fived almost one hundred tiny hands!

{The Mister posing with some of the kids who were cheering runners on.}

In all honesty these two factors (scenery and local support) made the kilometres breeze by for most of the run.

The main negative of the course was that there were various parts where you had to share the road with cars, minivans, motorcycles and touk-touks. Having to inhale the smoke they left behind was definitely not healthy, and it was quite a distraction trying to make sure that you didn’t get run over!

As I mentioned, this was my first ever half-marathon. I was really nervous about this run. The farthest I have ever run in 17kms, which is 4.1kms short of your typical half-marathon. Surprisingly though I was feeling okay for the majority of the run and basically ran the first half without stopping. However, once I hit 18km, it was like my whole body decided at the same time that it had had enough! My ankles hurt, my feet were numb and felt like they were going to fall off at the ankles, and my quads and calf muscles started cramping up (which has never happened to me on a run before). My breathing was great, my mind was ready to finish this thing, but my body was just about ready to give up.

So we shuffled for about 2kms. And as you would expect, the adrenaline kicked in with 500mtrs to go til the finish line and we were able to pick up our pace again. Crossing that finish line was AMAZING. We had done it. We were ready to collapse right there and then, but we had done it!

The pain afterwards is something else altogether! We could barely walk for a few hours. Thankfully we had the hindsight to schedule an hour-long massage back at the hotel after the race, then had a huge nap, then spent an hour or so walking around a few temples to try and get the blood flowing again. We also had a delicious Cambodian dinner and then slept for 10-hours straight!

We’re hoping to do another half-marathon in the first half of next year. This time we’re planning on training for at least 3 months and hope to get our fueling strategy before and during the run right. But this first half-marathon was a wonderful, memorable, surreal experience. I’ll never forget it.

Funds raised from the Angkor Wat International Half-Marathon go to supplying limbs to Cambodians who have been injured by the many land mines still in Cambodia, and those who have lost limbs in accidents, as well as supporting work to help prevent HIV/AIDS amongst the Cambodian people. You can donate directly to Hearts of Gold to support these efforts.