Angkor Wat and swimming on a bicycle

Angkor Wat is Almost as big as Paris Hilton.

We started out by renting bicycles to go and see the former capital of the mighty kingdom of Angkor. There were tuk tuk's and taxi's everywhere but had read that biking was a nice way to do it. They gave us old school fifties style bikes with the wheel protectors and curved handle bars. I felt like I should have brought some of my old baseball cards and put them in the spokes.

As we were going I heard Anisa fall behind me. She told me that a motorcycle driver had knocked her over. She was ok with some cool road rash, and while the motor driver did not stop another young man carrying school books stopped. He did not speak any english at all but saw what happened and offered to put some crushed leaves on the wound and wrap it up with a ripped plastic sack. It seemed to work nicely and we thanked him, although it was questionable if he understood us at all. He then brought over one of his school books and upon opening it revealed that he was actually selling some kind of herbal product, that had accompanying horrific pictures of people with bleeding feet and missing toes and chunks of their body. But his herbal pill was appearantly the god send to save this.

I looked around and did not see any of his product. I might have purchased some as a thank you but he didn't have any. So we just kind of óuued and ahhhed at the pictures but he could not speak english nor could we speak his native tongue. So we got back on our bikes and continued to ride. The guy followed us for almost an hour, everywhere we went. He wouldn't say anything and we told him we were ok. I am not sure if he was looking out for us, or waiting until we got to his pill stand to buy his shit. After awhile he just disappeared and we relaxed a little bit.

Angkor Wat was the shit, but I am not here to teach you about it. You should have paid more attention in your high school ''History of early Cambodia'' class like me. If you want to know more still slacker, read here at wikipedia.

Riding a bicycle around really was a great experience. It was very hot but cooler when we were riding with the breeze coming by you.

Rivers out of streets

As the park was coming to a close around 530 pm we started to ride back to town, which was about 30 minutes away on a bike. I could see a very large thunderstorm approaching from the area of the town.

Now just to catch anyone up, I hate lightning. I hate it more than Bono of U2. I hate it more than the MVD. I hate it more than a dirty swimming pool. I mean, I fricking hate it. Or more accurately, am scared of it.

So we had to stop at this one temple to look for a lost item. The temple is named Bayon and has about 300 stone faces in it. One of my favorites for sure. While Anisa ran in to look for sed item, I stayed outside. The storm was approaching from the south and I could hear this noise that would start very faint and then progressively get louder. It could have been an alarm, except that it was too smooth and at different durations. I almost felt like I was on the show Lost in season 2 when they don't press the numbers into the computer and the station explodes, and before it did it made that awful alarm sound (if you watch lost, my reference just described is perfect. If you don't or haven't watched lost, please close down this blog and surf Disney.com you loser.)

Anyway I got some kind of cool video with that noise in the background. I am trying to upload it now but I mean...you know how fast Cambodian wireless internet is. Who doesn't?

We did not find the lost item and started our maddening Dorthy riding in Kansas bicycle pace. Right as we left the park it started to come down. I stopped and gave Anisa my kick ass Indiana Jones style full brimmed hat since her longer hair was getting in her eyes, and my luscious long baldness seemed to present less of an obstacle.

It was a lot of fun and the rain was coming down harder than I have ever seen myself. There was huge lighting striking all around us, but we thankfully were being protected by large temples and larger trees, which I hear will distract the lightning!

I had my camera and camcorder in a backpack and was pretty worried about them getting wet, but after a minute riding in this insanely hard rain, I didn't care. It soaked up every part of me and my clothes, and was so overwhelming that you could not do anything about it. We were getting passed by people in taxi's and tuk tuk's who would look out in amazment that we were riding our bikes in this storm. We will be in a lot of Korean tourist pictures I think.

Once we got into town where the curbs began the water became a river. At first it was just big puddles but at the intersections it became small creeks and rivers. One portion the water was so deep that it went up to the middle of the bicycle wheel and your feet were almost entirely covered in water as you pedaled. I even grabbed on the back of a tuk tuk to help tow me through, a la Back to the Future Marty Mcfly style. It worked quite well.

It was the most fun I have had on the trip so far and I love moments like that. They have new meaning but also have the ability to summon up good memories from the past and make it that much better. Something about extreme weather and being in it just overwhelms the senses.

I just barely dried off, 24 hours later as well.

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