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Published: December 5th 2005
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angkor thom
a temple with many faces! Joom-reap-leah Cambodia!!! (Goodbye Cambodia)
Well, this will be our last email since we are finally back from Southeast Asia. And I promise to keep this relatively short...
So many people have asked.... 24 days straight, spent together in a foreign continent. Did we fight at all? Actually, Teresa and I did get into one fight. It was in Thailand... if you want to see what happened, click here:
http://storage.calgrads.com/temp/sagat_stage.jpg
We must say it feels damn good to be back in the good ol' U.S. of A. Wow, we certainly appreciate some simple things here in this country: air conditioning, clean running water, traffic lights, and burritos. Yes, I said burritos. While asia has a great variety of food (you know, pigs feet, chicken feet, and ox feet), the one thing we craved most was Mexican food! So the first thing we did when we came back to the states was head to our local taqueria and eat some bigass carne asada burritos. Man... it was like heaven to my stomach... but hell to my ass! Sorry, that was kind of graphic.
Cambodia
Since we last wrote, we trekked to Cambodia to spend 4 days primarily at the
ancient temples of Angkor Wat. It was, by far, the most breathtaking archeological site we saw in our entire trip -- maybe in all of our trips. AMAZING. Angkor Wat literally means "City of Temples," and that it was -- over 290 temples that cover 60 square miles of land. Yeah, I know -- thats a lot of dang wats. After all, this is the largest religious monument in the world. We didn't see all 290 wats, but we saw more than 20 of the main wats. To preserve the temples, several signs say "Do not touch." So this prompted me to sing this song all day: "Wat it is yo....wat-supppp.... can a playa just look, not touch?"
Angkor is truly one of the most beautiful and mysterious historical sites we've seen. The cool thing is that Angkor has been somewhat "protected" from tourism, and the customs and the cultures of the people living there have not changed much. In fact, one local told us that prior to 1993, barely any tourists even knew about the ancient city. Even when we were there, it felt like tourism was still in its infancy stages. Don't get me wrong, several people
caught!
teresa cheats on me with angkor man flock to the temples each day, but in comparison to other sites in the world, Angkor is still somewhat of a recently exposed secret.
Most of these temples were built in between the 9th and 12th centuries by Khmer kings, who once ruled a vast domain that covered Vietnam, parts of China, and even Bangladesh. By visiting the temples, you can see how spiritual these people were - the grandeur of the monuments, the detailed religious artwork, and the architecture of the area itself are truly insipirational. It's hard for us to explain what these temples are all about... all we could say was "Hot Damn!!!" everytime we'd see a new one.
Our first day there, we visited the town sculptor's house. He is an old man who is a local icon -- he sculpted minature versions of the Angkor temples in his backyard. He is about 70 years old, but scultpting is his passion... he is losing sight in both eyes, but still managers to sculpt and teach the local children for free. It was so cool meeting him, and seeing Angkor Wat from a "birds-eye view". Of course, I had to take some pictures of me
tomb raider
check out those tree roots! this is the temple where laura croft came out of... acting like Godzilla stomping through the tiny city. I kept saying "Teresa, look! Rarrrrrrr".... by this point in our honeymoon, she didn't even react to my stupid jokes. She would just stand and stare at me like I was a kid in trouble. So, I stopped. Anyway, it was nice seeing a smaller version of the city before we attempted to tackle the real thing.
We spent the next 3 days exploring the city...waking up at sunrise to see the main temple was amazing... And we even saw the temple where they filmed "Tomb Raider". We've never seen the movie, but our local guide kept pointing at a temple and saying "Angelina Jolie, Angelina Jolie!" I was confused at first...but I looked at the temple and it was quite curvy, so I thought he was trying to tell me that it was shaped like her. Then I realized he was trying to tell me that the temple was from the movie. Ohhhhh...I get it now. But I do have to say that the temple coincidentally had a kickin' body. Again, I won't go into detail on all the temples we saw - because words won't do it justice. Hopefully
some of our pictures will... but it the meantime, if you're bored/interested, you can read about/look at Angkor Wat here:
http://www.sacredsites.com/asia/cambodia/angkor_wat.html
In addition to visting the temples, we spent some time watching some locals perform traditional dances, and a puppet show performed by little children. It was quite entertaining... and the food in Cambodia is awesome! We ate a ton of Lok Lak beef with fried egg, fish, and chicken marinated in Khmer spices.
The Cambodian town we stayed in, Siem Reap, is very rural. Dirt roads connect the cluster of villages... and local people still live the way they did for the past few centuries. Except now some people are building their busineses around tourism. The people are very warm and friendly. Considering the terrible recent past of their country (Khmer Rouge which murdered millions of innocent people), it is amazing and almost baffling to see how much these people smile. The country is still covered with land mines, so it is foolish to wander around without a local guide. Teresa and I are thankful that we came back in one piece! Well, in two pieces - me and her... uh, ok.
We also did some
shopping...the currency unit is called "Riel". One experience was quite confusing:
Vendor: "Hello sir, you want to buy this?"
Andrew: "How much...can you give me a good bargain?"
Vendor: "Four Riel"
Andrew: "For Real? You'll give me a good bargain?"
Vendor: "Four Riel?"
Andrew: "For Real?"
Vendor: ?????
Andrew: ?????
Like most places in the world, people use their children to try and sell trinkets to tourists. Besides, the children speak the best English. But you have to be careful not make eye contact with the kids when the swarm you, because then they know they have your attention. They are RELENTLESS. They swarm you and say "You buy! You buy!" One kid kept saying to me "You want to buy a book?" "You want to buy a book?" He asked me about 100 times. I ignored him...then he said "You want to buy a bird?" I thought....what the hell? He has a bird? So I looked and lo and behold, he had a little bird in his hand. Damn!!! He got my attention, and all the kids attacked me with their trinkets. I got suckered by a little Cambodian kid.
There are tons of lizards and geckos here, and Teresa was traumatized when she opened the closet door in our guesthouse and a little green friend was there to greet her. She screamed at me: "Do something!!!" So I walked over and asked him if he could offer me car insurance. (I know, badddd joke. Please don't throw a tomato at your computer screen).
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