Angkor Archaelogical Park

Good morning everybody!!

I've spent the last three days visiting the Angkor
which contains, most famously Angkor Wat (because it's
the largest religion building in the world) and Ta
Prohm (because Tomb Raiders and another movie were
filmed there). There are over 100 temples built
between the 8th and 12th century at the historic
complex and many of them were amazing to look at!!

I cycled from Siem Reap (it's a little over 6km to
Angkor Wat) where I spent the better part of a day
exploring it's many levels, towers and reveling in the
sculptures/engravings on the side of the walls of the
temple (over 800m of engravings throughout this one
temple). It was a beautiful place. I then continued
along to Angkor Thom which is not an actual temple but
a collection of temples. There I checked out the
Terrace of the Elephants, Phmeanakas (we had a
tropical storm while I was there) and Bayon. Bayon
has over 200 faces of the same person. Supposedly the
face of the king so that he can look down on his
subjects!! I then headed home, 6 hours of temples was
enough for one day!!

On the second day I cycled again to the temples but I
went around the short circuit (17kms in all) to check
out some other temples. I was cycling along until the
road turned to mud and then to squishy mud with roads
to give the trucks traction. The bumping was horrible
and I was filthy with their red mud before I'd gone
15m!! I checked out Prasat Kravan (not interesting),
Banteay Kdei and Ta Prohm. As mentioned above, this
is a popular site due to the filming. I arrived at
11am and waited for the tour buses to head out just
before noon before venturing into the temple. It was
beautiful to see how overrun the temples could be if
the jungle was given free rein. Some of the trees
were simply massive with the roots tearing apart the
structure. According to an inscription, it took
80,000 people to maintain the grounds and the
temples!! I took some photos and headed for Ta Keo
and Thommanom which were both neat but far less
visited temples. My butt was getting tired and I'd
had my fill of temples again so I headed back,
stopping briefly at the Khmer people's museum.

Today I relaxed in the morning and watched the news.
Very interesting things going on with Libby Scooter
and the Iranian president before heading out in the
afternoon for the temples. I wanted to see Angkor Wat
at sunset (too lazy to get up for sunrise though I'm
sure it'd be beautiful as well). I took a tuk-tuk (my
butt was sore) to Phnom Bakeng which is supposed to
have great sunset photos but it wasn't a good view so
I headed over to Angkor Wat itself and took some good
photos of the sunlight on the Wat itself.

All in all, a very good trip out to Angkor - my only
complaint about Cambodia is that it's expensive.
Everything's in USD and it's more expensive than
Thailand or Laos. A man from Chile told me otherwise
but it's certainly not true :(

Hope all is well and those of you who've been curious,
I've found someone with a card reader so I'm now going
to attempt to upload some photos onto my blog. We'll
see how this work :)

Miss you all,
Sarah

P.S. Sam, for a bunch of stones, they were
breathtaking, especially at sunset!! You would have
loved it and I highly recommend that you make the trip
next time you're in Laos!! The sun when it set
tonight actually had those rays that you draw as a
child, emanating from the sun - it was awesome!!

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Laos to Cambodia

Good morning everyone!!

Things have been hectic since my last e-mail!! Sam,
the guy from Laos, was sweet and stuck around as I had
a bit of a fit about how I was going to accomplish
everything I wanted in the little time I had left!!

After coming up with something of a plan, it was
almost noon so we went tubing as it was too hot to do
anything else!! It was really a float/drink down the
river with occasional zip-ropes to go flying into the
water. We had a lot of fun, hooked up with a pile of
other travelers and drank too much!! (Lao Lao, the
local moonshine, is beyond too strong but everywhere
we went they were giving it away for free with a
beer). A beer (the size of two in Canada) is about
$1CDN so Sam and I would split them to avoid getting
too buzzed.

Sam left the following day to the village and I went
cave splunking. We did three real caves and one
cavern which, if you possess a lot of imagination, is
shaped like an elephant :) The going was slippery and
wet and sometimes quite tight but it was nice to spend
the day out of the sun. Word to the wise, once you've
seen one cave, they all look the same :) The fourth
and final cave was a water cave so we got tubes out
and floated/paddled about 5km into the cave. It was
cool and the water was very refreshing!!

I traveled to the village to meet Sam's family and
stay in a small, quaint little town. There were about
150 people in the village and everyone was more than
curious about me. Some of the stares were hysterical
when we drove around the rice fields on the
motorbike!! (I have to say, my first time on a
motorbike was with 16kg of luggage, not ideal but Sam
didn't go too fast!!). We couldn't go anywhere in
town without someone wanting us to sit and chat or
"rest"!! They had a traditional going away
celebration for him on the 25th and they wanted me to
stay but it didn't work into the new plans!! When I
left, his grandmother gave me a bracelet for good luck
and safe travels and said that I was always welcome
back. It was sad to leave them as they were all so
nice!! Funny, no one spoke a word of English, yet we
still communicated well together ;) I then headed to
Vientiane with Sam and his cousins. We checked out
the capital - they have something that looks like the
Arc de Triomphe and hung out. We then had dinner on
the river and went to a discotheque!! An interesting
experience :)

I caught a night train from northern Thailand to
Bangkok. It's ironic but I wouldn't pay a travel
agent/hotel person to book the train ticket for me
because they wanted twice the price of the actual
ticket (it included border crossing). I did it on my
own last night, got to the station and all they had
left were 3rd class seats which means no reclining, no
sleeper, no sleep!! I was kicking myself for most of
the night but it was an experience and definitely
better than the train from Chile to Bolivia, at least
this one travelled better and they were kind of
padded!!

I'm now in Siem Reap, Cambodia (caught a flight over
today). I'll be spending three days checking out the
Angkor Wat and the surrounding ruins before heading
down to the beach.

Hope everyone's well back home!
Miss you all!!

Sarah

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