Siem Reap (Angkor), Cambodia

It is good to be alive again!

I am feeling healthy (aside from a persistent cough that sounds worse than it is) and have just added another once in a lifetime set of experiences to the matter between my ears.

The Angkor temples are beyond words. I feel very lucky.

I think I should just start telling you what I have seen and the descriptions will flow.
The first day at about 3 I went to the center of town (which is 2 blocks from my hotel) and ate some pretty fantastic food. I had Chicken Amok and a local Ankgor Beer. I loved it; I never knew Khmer food was so delicious.

After lunch I met my Tuk-Tuk driver who would take me off to see the sunset. A tuk-tuk is one of the coolest things ever. It's basically a rickshaw strapped to a motorbike. Of course it is modernized and made to function as a little trailer, but I bet that is how it got it's start.

My Tuk-Tuk driver is a tiny little Chinese-Cambodian kid who when wearing his helmet resembles a bobble head doll because the helmet is almost wider than his shoulders. It certainly was an amusing view for the last couple of days.

Well, it was too cloudy to see the sunset, so Back into town for some more Khmer food! YUM YUM YUM!!!

I hit the sack early cause I had agreed to meet my Tuk-tuk man at 5 am so I could see the sunrise over Angkor Wat. This was a real treat. The sky was beautiful colors behind the largest and most intact temple in the whole complex.

As my first temple introduction I immediately clambered my way to the top by way of the famed Angkor "stairs". These things are insane. With no exaggeration, these things are somewhere between 70 and 80 degrees...that's right near vertical and at their highest are about60 feet tall. Halfway up I remembered that I am terribly afraid of heights...oops. Don't look down...too late.

Well I made it to the top with little panic completely exhausted...my first thought was "Oh Shit! How am I going to get down?"

There are stairs in each of the cardinal directions and one has been "Upgraded" for tourists and outfitted with a makeshift piece of rebar posing as a handrail. It must have helped, because I am here now.

I spent the remainder of the day (12 hours) hopping from one temple to another. Over 2 days I visited some 30 ruins. Some big, some small. Some in total ruin, others with huge trees growing out, over, and around them. There is a temple with huge faces carved everywhere you look. There are bas-reliefs, statues, and carvings everywhere you look. The detail is extraordinary!

I will post tons of pictures when I get to Julie's, but if you have the means...get here before 2010 before they change the tourism policy. This is the first time on my trip that my camera ran out of batteries. In one day alone, I took 354 pictures. Simply amazing!

I have also become quite enamored by the little town of Siem Reap. Design is alive here. Here in this little tourist town are some of the finest designed interiors I have seen in Asia. I am very impressed.

I have one more temple group to do tomorrow, then it is back to Hanoi for the last few days of my trip. That makes me so sad just thinking about it.

Check back on Friday for a ton of pictures! I promise.