lots of wats

our final stop was cambodia. we arrived at the tiny little siem reap airport and got a taxi to our hotel. the driver snickered as we gave him the name, later explaining that it was a 'gay' hotel. the golden banana, go figure. no matter, the place was gorgeous - filling several complexes, each with rooms surrounding salt water pools with waterfalls of various sizes. not only that, our room had a second story balcony with a private tub and padded lounge chairs. oh, and just about everything in the room was branded with a 'gb' (my intials, heh).. i pretty much took everything that wasn't nailed down.

that first night we roamed outside towards the night market. we didn't make it quite that far, though, because we were pretty hungry. we popped into a little resto with lots of locals and had some pretty bland soup and a couple cold beers. after that it was back to enjoy our fabulous hotel room.

on the bike ride

the next morning it was off to angkor. the temple complex is only about 5-6 kilometers away and apparently a pleasant ride so i was hoping to bike. mom figured she'd better pass and save her energy for temple exploring. so i rented a bike for $2 and had a nice (if sweaty) bike ride to the site.

view with requisite symmetrical palm tries

i met my mother there where we reluctantly decided to get a guide. we normally eschew such things but this particular complex, we had read, was so sprawling that we'd never know where to go, especially given that we only had a day. to his credit, the guide seemed to know what he was talking about. we walked over the bridge and through the entrance building, which already had some pretty fantastic sculptures. through that chamber was the main temple. the site (see below) is what everyone probably pictures when they hear the words angkor wat, though it's just the main temple among a site that is vast and made up of dozens and dozens of such structures.

epic walls

we made our way towards it and started out going counter clockwise along the exterior walls - well, interior exterior i suppose. there was an arcade that went along the outside of the inner courtyard. the walls were covered in intricate low reliefs of the great hindu epics. oh, by the way, this particular temple was originally hindu (a krishna temple) but was then later converted into a buddhist temple. many other temples on the grounds were the reverse. anyway the reliefs were impressive in both quality/attention to detail and just sheer quantity. in addition to the mahabharata and ramayana (not pictured: sita. interesting, no?) there were depictions of hell as well as the gods churning of the sea of milk (the fish were particularly good).

once we had explored the outer walls we went inside, where i climbed up to the central tower. many of the statues that would have been there are of course gone, but there were a few buddhas here and there. and a few nice wall carvings. the view from above was slightly underwhelming. the best vantage point is really from the ground.

believe it or not, by then it was already getting to be lunchtime. so our guide took us to a nearby restaurant. i had beef loklak, one of the few dishes i had read was a specialty of cambodia, along with a mango shake (fruit shakes - another supposed specialty. although these are all over southeast asia and universally delicious). both were fantastic, although pretty much anything would have tasted good after lots of biking and walking in the midday sun.

angelina jolie was here. so that makes it worth seeing, right?

from lunch we went to ta prohm, a former buddhist temple which was supposedly kept intact by the incoming hindus because prohm sounds like brahma? seems like a stretch to me. at any rate, it was pretty spectacular. it was apparently used for filming part of the tomb raider movie. when you're there it's easy to see why - the crumbling walls are covered in moss and tree limbs, climbing up walls and splayed over doorways. the setting made for good pictures and i enjoyed tramping around trying to find shafts of light or mossy corners. we declined, though, to wait in the line to take our picture in a particular doorway.

profile

the next stop for us was bayon temple, the most recently built. its signature is the giant four-faced pillars found throughout. like ta prohm, it was originally buddhist but was apparently not razed by the later hindus because the four heads resembled brahma (again, dubious). in any case walking right up to these massive faces - most of which seem like they're dreaming peacefully - is pretty surreal.

pictured: lots of dragonflies. probably.

from there we did some quick stops at a few other places - the elephant terrace, the 'leper king' statue - but we felt we had hit most of the highlights and were winding down. mom was pretty beat so she took the rickshaw back to the hotel to rest. luckily i still had my bike so i elected to hang around a little longer to catch the sunset. the best time to see angkor wat is really at sunrise, but i never did make it for that (i do regret this a bit). i figured sunset was the next best thing and that, perhaps i would catch that golden evening light on the temple facade. well i didn't. but i did manage to see the sunlight glittering on the lily pond. which was pretty nice in itself. side note: apparently dragonflies really like to sit on water lilies. often perfectly still (handy for us would-be photographers). i enjoyed that for a bit too long, and then biked home just as it was getting dark though. the sun going down didn't make the ride any less hot though.

oh i almost forgot. on the way back to the hotel i stopped just across the river at the night market (yes here too!) for postcards (guess what scene was on them. go ahead, guess). i parked my bike and was locking it up to one of those little fences around a sapling on the sidewalk. well as i was trying to get the key in the lock it fell out. no problem, how hard could it be to find a key in a little 2x2 foot space? as it turns out, very hard. within a few minutes i had attracted a small crowd and had about half a dozen people on their hands and knees digging through dried leaves and dirt to find this key. an elderly woman had her son fetch a flashlight for us. so nice! after about 10 minutes (no, really) someone found it on the opposite side of the tree from me. good grief. by the time i got back to the hotel i was sweaty, dirty and pretty thoroughly exhausted.

but if there were any place to feel rejuvenated, this hotel was it. that night my mom and i treated ourselves to room service dinner and wine while we watched the replay of the academy awards. i followed that up with a nice bubble bath in the private terrace. not bad, golden banana.

lake living

the next day (long after the sun had risen.. sigh) we were up and, after another great breakfast of croissants and juice, off to tonle sap lake - the largest in southeast asia, which literally doubles in size during monsoon season with melting snows from the mountains that trickle down the mekong. the drive was quite nice, passing modest, colorful little houses and green rice paddies. the lake was less exciting, a sort of muddy greenish brown. we took a boat ride (for some reason we had this to ourselves), which started off near the floating village - house and little shops. our boat driver said living here was 'not good'. we stopped at a small shop where we were encouraged to buy things to bring to the nearby school/orphanage. a noble idea, but the prices were extravagant - higher than they would have been in the US even, and certainly much higher than the cost of 'transportation' they required, i imagine. still we bought some things and dutifully delivered them at the school - which was a madhouse. not surprising - i've been in such orphanages before. it was a little odd. we met a few of the kids but they were mostly distracted by the distributing of goods brought by some japanese tourists. like i said, madhouse. it's too bad we couldn't have stayed longer and actually played a bit. but our boat driver continued on to.. the crocodile farm. yeah. a bunch of them were gathered into a watery pit where snakes and other snacks were routinely flung in. there were boxes for donations but as these crocodiles seem to be principally bred for either purses or to be eaten, i was not terribly inclined to offer anything.

a quick ride back to the dock and then a drive back to town. by the way, we decided of the four countries and their respective tuk tuks, cambodia's were the most comfortable. for what it's worth. we almost ran out of fuel at one point. but no matter, the driver pulled up to someone's house that had old plastic bottles of gasoline out front. handy.

going amok

once back in town we grabbed lunch at a small place down a small alley. we tried fish amok - the one other cambodian special we'd read about. it was a little on the bland side, but not bad. also tried some khmer dumplings, filled variously with vegetables, egg and chillis. a little on the raw/doughy side, for my taste. washed it all down with another fruit shake, (naturally) which we lingered over as i wrote the last of my postcards. walked around the shopping area nearby, stopping at a used bookstore that had crazy prices! even by US standards. $10 for a bunged up used paperback?? no thanks. had better luck at a nearby thrift store, where i found a nice (but short) flow-y dress that i'll have my trusty tailors make into a shirt. isn't asia great.

we went back to the lovely hotel to make the most of the salt water pool and relax before heading out again. into the night market, where i scored a new purse (india has proved really great at destroying my purses) and a couple cheap t-shirts. how can you say no to two t-shirts for $5? i ask you. after some light shopping we set out in search of a french place. i had heard that one could find cheap french places in cambodia. well all the ones we saw were stupid expensive. we even ventured down 'pub street' - marked by a neon sign as well as loud western music coming from every continental restaurant on all sides - where i had sworn to my mother i would not go. in the end we found a suitable belgian place (close enough) where we had mojitos (fine, not french) and fantastic steak au poivre with belgian fries. maybe it's just that i haven't had a steak in quite a while but i savored every bite. we capped off the meal with ice cream down the street. though, sadly, my caramel tasted like coffee. and with that it was back to our hotel and off the next day.

the travel wasn't quite as eventful as we'd hoped. our leg to bangkok was easy enough. but once in bangkok we had to leave security and re-check in. well every line was encountered was long and slow. including the check-in line where every other person had one or two large screen TVs. i guess jimmy wasn't kidding about bringing him back one. sorry, jimmy. our hopes of duty-free dried fruits and one last tom yum/iced coffee in the airport were dashed by insane immigration and security lines that seemed to not move. we rushed to check in to our flight, only to sit on the plane for another 20 minutes. the indians on our flight knew better, sauntering in after us, mocking us with all their duty-free goodies (well, okay, not really). at any rate, we made it back to bombay easily enough where we were welcomed back by joining the immigration queue with passengers on a flight from riyadh. there was lots of pushing and grumbling in hindi.

i'm home!