Angkor What?

Buddhist school
Originally uploaded by PhoJones

After the last post we ventured out and had some nice curry/soup before wandering around the night markets, seeing some Assuara dancers and watching very strange Asian TV. The night before we ate a restaurant where Mick Jagger ate and spent $3 on huge entrees. It's important to remember.

Today began roughly the same as yesterday with an 8 am call to the tuk-tuk though we left slightly later to ensure our bus tickets to Bangkok are sorted. We began at the oldest temple group, built around 875. My favorite turned out to be the smallest (Lorei, I think?) as it featured an active monastic community behind it. We met a nice monk who spoke decent English, told us he planned to study English Lit in University in the fall and is currently teaching about 35 students to read and write in English. The picture above is us in his classroom. There weren't any students around because of New Years, and though he said he didn't have anything to do during his break because he can't dance or sing, I think he was keeping busy fund raising just fine. The money I gave him is debatably the best I've spent so far (other exciting purchases include a wooden juice harp, a strange shuttlecock thing that kids are kicking around everywhere here and I can barely make contact with, and and ancient looking bell (purchased after haggling with a four year old)).

The rest of the day seemed significantly hotter than humanly possible and included a huge empty reservoir temple (that I swear is the model for an entire level in Super Mario 64), well preserved elephant sculptures and an 8th century Buddhist university where we got very turned around and failed to effectively leave for about an hour longer than intended.

Tonight we ate some more Khmer food, procured snacks from a hilarious super market featuring Dr. Lerry's Corn Flakes (the box has an Aryan family twirling in a corn field. Pictures forthcoming). After I got a Dr. Fish massage while Alex ate ice cream. The massage is a large pool you stick your feet into while dozens of fish eat away at the dead skin. The fish apparently came from Turkey and feel certifiably strange.

Tomorrow is a 5 am wake up call to see the sunrise in the temples before heading over to Bangkok. The red shirt protests have been making world headlines every day, the new year festivities (including the world's largest water fight) have been cancelled, and several countries have issued travel warnings, so it should be an interesting leg of the journey. They aren't targeting tourists or westerners though, and we plan to head to the islands the day after our arrival, so fear not moms in the crowd.

Legends of the Hidden Temple,
Jones

PS - click on the picture above for some more images. Slow and steady, but at least it's working a little now...