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Published: February 10th 2006
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Jimleighankor
We got up at 4am to see sunrise at Ankor...hope you jerks appriciate the picture Well we just finished off two days exploring the Temples of Angkor, and its pretty cool...you know except for the constant begging and the landmine victims..besides that its a pretty happy place...today we are going to the landmine victim museum and maybe visit a school here…here are some highlights of the last couple days…
Temples:
Well the temples are really cool, and there are lots of them, in two days we visited about 11... we now have a ton of pictures and video of temples that we will never ever look atagain….so the temples are big and really amazing.. at one temple complex they was 3000 monks and nuns hanging out. swimming, cleaning..smoking..very weird…found out it was a once a year festival attended by monks from all over Cambodia…they called it Monk-a-pa-looza….it was really cool to see…all that being said I got “templed” out by the end of the 2nd day and refused to go to any more on the third day, and this sounds terrible but some of the temples are really spectacular, and some are just so-so…well so-so in comparison to the spectacular ones,…So after you have seen the really amazing huge ones, the smaller ones
sunriseankor
Me at the top of ankor at sunrise just don’t cut it,…. another reason why I got “templed” out is because at the front of one a “Police officer” stopped us and said, “Hello can I tell you something about the temple”..we thought ok, he then proceeded to start giving us a tour..and before I caught on we were smack dab in the middle of it… and of course at the end of the tour he wanted some money…. I gave him a 5 and he then asked for 5 more, I told him to beat it and that was the last temple I saw…. the tour wasn’t that good either… But all in all the temples are really great.
Beggar Kids
This is the saddest/funniest thing about Cambodia so far. Wherever you go there are these kids that as soon as they see you they all race over to you and try to sell you junk. “Mister, you buy postcard, 10 for 1 dollar ok?” or “You buy bracelet from me or else you make me cry”(my favorite) and various other selling techniques. There are also kids who just sit there and beg, which is pretty sad. But what is funny is the
ankorsunrise
Ankor Watt at sunrise way they try to get you to buy from them. A typical exchange is like this
KID: Where you from?
LEIGH: Australia.
KID: Ah Australia…G’day mate, Australia population 20 million, Capital Canberra, Australia has many animal Kangaroo, Koala etc etc….now you buy from me ok..
All day long that is what happens ..They can speak lots of languages, and know lots about geography (who said there was nothing good comes from child labour)… …so we broke down and bought a couple t-shirts and postcards…
Land mine victims band
At many of the temples there are different land mine victim bands….which are comprised of dudes with no legs and different disabilities ..it is really cool and they play Cambodian music and they want you to give money to them, this however caused a problem for me…we wanted to get some good video footage but we wanted to give to the band that was really disabled or that really sounded good…but the bands with all disabled guys didn’t sound as good as the bands with a couple amputees and the rest what seemed like normal guys…and made me think that if I was a guitar playing
temple
This is me at the top of a temple...forget what its called landmine victim, who would I want in my band…the guy with no legs who looks good but cant play an instrument…or a non landmine victim musician who could make my band sound good…some of them had a bunch of musiciains and a bunch of dudes in wheelchairs clapping, so that’s the compromise I guess…Siem Riep is a small place I think it would be hard to find a quality drummer with no legs…anway we found one with a good mix of sound and amputees, donated to the cause…
Nightlife:
Continued the streak of drinking before the day of getting up early…Met a French Canadian couple from Montreal, went out for dinner and a couple drinks…really good food here…anyway was sitting on Bar street, which guess what? has all the bars on it…its beside restaurant street ….anyway sitting at a bar on the street round 10pm and the weirdest collection of people walking by…tourists, guys with no legs…dudes with AK-47’s…and best of all.. kids…not just 12 yr old’s either…all ages…saw what had to be about a 1 and a half year old kid just wandering the streets at night…back and forth, playing…its surreal…..another great thing is seeing how
leighkiss1
This is Leigh at the Bayon, kissing a buddha, I kicked his ass after many people they can get on a bike….I saw a family of 6 on one motorbike…I’ll try to get some shots of that before we go…
So that’s my longwinded Ankor experience….still having a good time, hope you all are too
JIM
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Garland
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Dunk a Monk
Hey Jimmy and Leigh Great Photos and write up. I have the right mind to hop a plane and join ya. Cheers