Upgrades and Downgrades: Seim Reap Edition

Spent the weekend in Seim Reap visiting the nearby temples at Angkor Wat. The temples are incredible, the only thing I could think to compare them to are the Mayan temples in South America. Just many massive, 1000 year old stone buildings covering something like 30 square miles. (Not just one temple, they are spaced out). Walking through things that are three times as old as our country was pretty humbling, and I was thoroughly enjoying imagining I was an 11^th century Siamese King. In honor of PGN, some upgrades and downgrades from the trip:

Downgrades

Loss of impressiveness – Look, the temples are amazing, there is no doubting that. That being said, walking through temple after temple when it’s 95 deg out and I’m feeling a little under the weather, I will admit that they started to look the same after a while. I know it’s a very American thing to say, but I wasn’t the only one saying it in our group, and I wasn’t the only American saying it. (It was kind of similar to the cathedrals we say in Europe senior year of high school. Beautiful, but over and over and over, they lose a bit of their luster.)

Tour guides - it would also have been more interesting to be able to wander on our own as opposed to following one around. Though it was entertaining to hear our tiny Cambodian tour guide with the sense of humor of a 9 year old boy crack joke after joke about the female anatomy in the carvings on the temples. It wasn’t so much that his jokes were entertaining as it was funny to see this little Asian man giggling to himself the entire afternoon. Just imagine the following in Asian accented English, followed by high pitched laughing and you have some idea of what we were dealing with all day: “I come from Phnom Penh. Actually I come from my mom. Hehehe"

Bus ride - took 6 hours each way and could have been done in 2 on an American highway. Our top speed was about 40mph, our average speed was probably 30mph and it was so bumpy that I could barely read. I have a Scrabble app on my iPod and when you shake the iPod, it shuffles the letters in your rack. Well, it was such a bumpy trip that I couldn’t even play because my letters kept shuffling because my hand was shaking so much.

Security guards - I climbed over a ‘no access’ gate and was scaling some stone steps on the highest tower of Angkor but was yelled down by security before I had a chance to pull out my camera. Since the sign was in English and said ‘DO NOT ENTER,’ I just kept repeating ‘sum toe,’ the Khmer for ‘I’m sorry,’ so hopefully they just thought I was Eastern European or something. Regardless, I got away with only a bunch of stern looks and gesturing to get on with my tour.

Forgetting my Indy hat in Phnom Penh – probably the biggest disappointment of the trip

Upgrades

Sneaking away from the tour - At the last temple, Angkor Wat (the big one) I did manage to sneak away from the tour and do some exploring on my own. Some little Japanese ladies had a good laugh at me trying to set up timer pictures of myself with the temples in the background, but I was enjoying myself. Also where I got caught by security and where I had my first bargaining experience (I’ll post about it later, but let’s just say I’m a natural.)

Angelina - One of the temples is nicknamed “Tomb Raider” because Angelina came and shot like one scene in front of some tree there for the movie. Well, I guess she has given a bunch of money to help with the upkeep and is pretty big in the area. But it was great walking through that temple hearing all the tours in different languages, ‘babababababa Angelina Jolie bababababaa.’

Free breakfast - Eggs, bread and fruit. Hey, free food is always a highlight.

A/C – no in my guesthouse in Phnom Penh, yes in our hotel.

Pretending I was Indy – sans hat, I did still have some fun. We stopped at Beng Melea Temple on the way home on Sunday and it could have been straight out of the first scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also we didn’t have a tour guide there, and the temple hadn’t been kept up nearly as well, so we got to wander off on our own climbing huge piles of stone and avoiding ants the size of lightning bugs. Let’s just say my friends were rather impressed when I kept reminding them to avoid the J, there were no J’s in Latin, (they used I’s) and to watch out for poison darts.

Overall the trip was a lot of fun. I did have a sore throat most of sat and a runny nose all day Sunday, but I also slept for 12 hours sat night, so I can’t really complain. And I feel great today, so I’ll blame it on traveling. Hope everyone is doing well back home, I’m trying to mentally send some of this hot weather your way! Take care everyone.

TPWWLT : "1^st Time" - Bad Ronald