Advertisement
Published: February 22nd 2009
Edit Blog Post
So with the jet a few pounds lighter (due to my 10 lb weight loss), we flew into Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. I still didn't feel great but was MUCH better than I had been the last few days. Wat is just another word for temple and there are many, many wats all over southeast asia. When I was here just a few months ago I got tired of seeing them as they are all pretty much the same. Like churches in the US. This one however, was pretty impressive.
It felt good to be back home, so to speak. My two months of travel through the area had left me with a deep fondness for the people, the food and the overall culture here. I was happy to see the dingy little shops on the side of the street all selling the same stuff, the cheap $5 massage, and the strett markets where if you pay the first price they give you, you are crazy. Bargaining is everything here. Despite having been in the area before (Thailand and Laos) I didn't make it to Cambodia because I knew I would be here on this trip.
I had never seen
Angkor Wat before and so thought it a good idea to catch the sunrise the next morning as it came up over the temple. It was a good idea, in theory, and it was very cool to see this magnificent temple materialize before my eyes in the brightening horizon, but the sun never actually came up. It was too cloudy. Finally when we realized the sun just wasn't going to make an appearance, we split back for the hotel to eat some breakfast. As we were driving away, the sun popped out for a few moments and we got some nice photos of it over the moat that surrounds the Wat.
Angkor Wat was built by the Khmer empire (different from that of Killing Fields fame) which used the area as a walled city and as a temple. About 20,000 people lived inside the temple area during the 400 years that the Khmer empire thrived. OK, enough ancient history. But how about some more recent history? Our guide began telling us of the atrocities that the Khmer Rouge inflicted on it's own people. The infamous Pol Pot (not his actual name, Pol Pot is short for political potential) was once
a great leader and incredibly smart student before he apparently went mad. Mad with power is what our guide had thought. Before he came to power he often worked for the poor, visiting them in the countryside where they tended their fields. He had been sent away to school in France and had been an impressive student. When he won the democratic elections he just went nuts and started killing thousands of people. Mostly intellectuals from the cities. He made an army of kids, and those kids could be forced to kill their own parents. The atrocities went on and on. It wasn't the first time I had heard of genocide, but it was the first time that I had a first hand account of it from someone who had lived through it and lost siblings and parents to it. This all just happened in the late 70's. Over a million people were thought to have been killed by the Khmer Rouge. And it's not over, if you look around at the people today, you will find an alarming amount of them are missing limbs due to the land mines that were never removed.
Next we saw the jungle
temple near Angkor Wat where they filmed Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie. I thought this was, in many ways, the more fascinating of the two temples. The vegetation that had surrounded and enveloped this temple was ever present. There were trees that had become part of the structure itself, embedding their roots deep into the temple walls.
By the way, Cambodians love Angelina Jolie. She is like a god to them. She not only has adopted half the population of Cambodia, but she has also donated over a million dollars to humanitarian efforts here. She could be their next prime minister if she wanted to run for the office.
With my appetite back I began the arduous task of putting back on some weight. The food here has been amazing with some of the best of it being on the plane. However, after my little brush with explosive bodily fluids, I was a lot more selective about what I shoved down my gullet. Skittish is a word that comes to mind. Before I had been eating everything, trusting the around the world company (TCS) and their buffets. Now, I was a worn and weary traveler who knew better. Despite
having advance TCS staff eating the food days before we get there, (yet, we have food testers), I knew that I needed to peel that banana myself and stay away from those lovely salads. It may seem sweet and innocent, but lurking on some of these foods is days of misery. Hence, despite the allure, I am not falling for this call of the sirens and am now eating only hot foods. The more cooked the better; in fact, go ahead and char it for me if you can.
I know, I know, you all feel terribly sorry for me. I know.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0369s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb