Angkor WHAT!?

Photos from Siem Reap ($.50 beer capitol of the world), the amazing temples of Angkor and our journey to Phnom Penh where we met up with Nathan and Jen (yes, we know you are jealous).

Amanda sitting in the ubiquitous plastic chair, waiting for some fresh pressed sugar cane juice. We are trying not to get addicted, but sugar cane on a hot day is pretty damn nice. Luckily we will have state sponsored health care when we get back, since we're pretty sure we are going to get diabetes.
Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, also known as S-21. This building was once a high school but was turned into an interrogation center when the Khmer Rouge took over in 1975. An estimated 20,000 people were tortured and killed here, many brought to the infamous Killing Fields 14KM outside of the city. It was chilling to walk the halls which are full of mug shots of the prisoners staring back at you.
And this is where we stayed, note the house on the end halfway under water. We paid a pretty good price considering the fact that we had a free swimming pool in the corner.
Arriving in the big city, Phnom Penh, we take a tuk tuk to lakeside to stay for the night.

An apsara dances gaily even though she lost her face. These female deities lined basically every wall of many of the temples we saw. Those Khmers sure love to dance.
Colin still sweats balls in a tank top as the faces of Bayon temple stare down at him. Bayon is one of the coolest Angkorian temples with as many faces as there were provinces in the whole kingdom that resemble the emperor at the time. Big Brother is watching!Look familiar? Think Angelina Jolie in hot pants. This famous tree is pretty impressive and is featured in SE Asia blogs as well as blockbusters.
The "crocodile tree" clings to the temple wall like it's a fresh wildabeast. Nom nom crunch nom.
On the altar of the Leper King there are many reliefs, so many that there are even reliefs behind more of them! This site was once thought to be dedicated to one of the two Khmer kings who had leprosy, but is now thought to be the remnants of the royal crematorium.
The trees don't only take over the temples, but also sweaty tourists trying to hide from the sun.
The trees overtook Ta Prohm's temples and now are necessary to hold up the crumbling stones. They haven't reconstructed so you can get a view of what the temples looked like before conservation. Temples like Angkor Wat were taken apart and put back together stone by stone to rebuild the grandeur of the past.
Climbing the steepest steps to the top of an unfinished temple due to the king's untimely death during its construction. Those Khmers have the tiniest feet! There were good views of the surrounding temples from the top and a sleeping guard next to a Buddhist shrine.
A smaller Buddhist sanctuary dedicated to one of the most famous king's mother built in the 12th century. Many children at the entrance of the temple offered us postcards and other souvenirs, all of whom could name every capitol of every state in the US.
A bas relief depicting a scene from the beloved Ramayana epic. An evil giant warrior fights off a member of Hanuman's monkey army. You can ask one of us to tell you the full story over many beers if you want more details, we'll be experts on Hindu classics by the end of this trip.
One of the subsidiary praangs of Angkor Wat. Monks find shade from the blazing sun.
"We're too excited to sleep!!!" Amanda sports her new krama plopped on her head ala Cambodia.
Angkor Wat viewed from across the moat at sunrise. We biked there just in time to catch our first glimpse as the sun was rising out of the clouds. In the center of the photo are the iconic five praangs (towers meant to symbolize mythical Mt. Meru, the center of the Hindu universe). When we first saw the moat we thought it was a river but then found out it is the largest moat in the world, pretty impressive especially since it was built by hand 1,000 years ago.
A common treat on the streets of SE Asia. It looks like pancake batter, sometimes sweet and other times savory, this one came with a chili sauce and green onions. You can pick up 5 for about a quarter, not bad.
Who knew there were crocodiles in Siem Reap? Amanda wrangled one on the sleepy riverside, a hard thing to do without getting your dress dirty. We spent a couple afternoons here reading as it was the only cool retreat during the hottest hours of the day.

Fleaing from Laos, Isan, and our first taste of Cambodia

Finally in Cambodia we are writing to you from a stifling hot internet cafe (not really cafe though, more like cubicle) in Battambang. Outside there is a Khmer wedding going on in the street and music is blaring through the doors. We've only been here for two and a half days but have seen and done a lot. This morning we took a Cambodian style cooking course and sampled some great dishes (try fish Amok) and also took a tour around the local market. We watched the women kill the fresh snakehead fish that was used for our curry. Yesterday we took a tour around the area from a local college student and saw temples, countryside and the "bamboo train"(see below). Amanda was also filmed for a local TV show as "tourist walking through the temple". The people here speak an amazingly good amount of English and the kids are all smiles and "Hello's!" We are excited to explore more into the country and are heading to Siem Reap and the much anticipated, fabled, extremely expensive Angkor Wat next! As they say, stay tuned...



Some Khmer style pagodas on top of a hill near Battambang that also houses caves which the Khmer Rouge used as mass graves in the 1970's inelegantly named the Killing Caves. There were still some bones displayed in a cage, a chilling reminder of the recent past of Cambodia.

We took a tuk tuk ride yesterday from Battambang with the Dutch girl on the left. The sight she really wanted to see was the "bamboo train," which is the platform that we are seated on. It was probably the dumbest tourist thing we have done to date. It takes you 13Km through barren rice fields along some old and decrepid train tracks. Of course we went in the heat of the day and almost died of heatstroke (not really Mom).

Money money money! Crossing into a new country can feel like you won the lottery, or you're at least a very good crook. In Cambodia you get Greenbacks out of the ATM, which you then have to convert to riels in a market, and with the exchange rate, you sure get a lot of them.

They're not going to let some sort of Bedhouin into Cambodia. After three busses and waiting in the midday heat for a reasonably priced sangtheuw, we were unwilling to pay up for a motorcycle taxi the remaining 4KM (or was it 2, maybe 5) to the Cambodian border, so we walked. Enroute we came across a few street parties. Young men offered us rice whiskey, old women entered the street to dance with us, and a quiet young lady gave us two bottles of delicious, although boiling hot, Leo beers. It was an epic farewell to Thailand and a stirring introduction to Cambodia.

We hear that your inner hippie comes out in SE Asia, but we don't have any idea what people are talking about. Lazing about on the sand on Ko Chang.

Who is that old man? Colin turns 25 on Ko Chang. Notice the fantabulously crafted layer cake in the foreground, hazelnut torte, watch out! Amanda slaved over balancing the bon bons on top of the oreos with a bean-filled moon pie in the middle, delectable.

Long Beach, Ko Chang, Thailand. Watching the sunset from the balcony of our bungalow. We needed some beach time after so much time in the heat of the interior, and spent four days relaxing on this beach, a pretty easy thing to do.

A local Thai man walking up to soak us in Trat, Thailand. Traffic was pretty much at a stand still as everyone is out in their trucks or on the street with drums filled with ice water. We wandered around the streets all day acting like children, soaking people with squirt guns and dancing at road side parties. Everyone was so happy and even the police were participating in the fun. The only time you can soak old ladies and cops and get a smile and thank you in return.

SONGKRAAAAAAAN! The coolest holiday in the world celebrated in Thailand and Laos for New Years. We didn't quite believe the scale until we wandered out to the main street and saw hordes of trucks and people with buckets and squirt guns. They also rub talcum powder on your face for freshies, or perhaps a fresh start to the year. This photo was after a pretty mild smathering although some groups of boys would rub it all over your face and in your eyes. Nothing that a good drench wouldn't cure.

Amanda awestuck by the Khmer's architectural style. This was built in the 10th century and remains in pretty darn good shape (says Colin the archeologist).

A huge tree covering a Khmer ruin in Phimai, Thailand. If you think this tree is big you'll be blown away by the Banyan tree park we visited in Phimai, with branches covering over an acre of land. We stayed here for two days and with the beginning of Songkran caught a Lady Boy show as well as some Thai dancing and singing in the main square. Also really good Pad Thai. Phimai style maybe the best we've had.

Sunrise on Phu Kradeang. There were many pine trees on the top that were a novelty for Thais and reminded us of home.

The most photographed spot on top of Phu Kradeang, we hiked 20KM that day in through the interior and then along the ridge with some Belgians and a Brit.

It was a steep climb in the mid-day heat to the top of the mountain (1,200 meters in 5.5KM). We leap frogged with a group of monks that were also struggling up the hill. You could hire a porter to carry your things up for you, but of course we didn't. The porters were crazy though, carry ten bags, beer, water, eggs, you name it suspended on a piece of bamboo. When we got to the top it started pouring rain (what, in the dry season?) and shared our tamarinds with the monks.

Back in Thailand we moved quickly through Isan (NE Thailand) stopping for a night in Nong Khaew, Loei (not be confused with Roi Et which we were very close to being put on bus to due to horrendous Thai pronunciation), and Khon Kean, a university town. We then made our way to Phu Kradeang National Park, a table top mountain filled with wild elephants, tigers and bears (oh my!). We took some complicated transportation to get there and ended up hitching the rest of the way with this nice Thai family which was excited to get a photo with us. Along with the ride they gave us a large bag of tamarind you can see in Amanda's lap.

Easter dinner in Vientiane at a fine French restaurant with WINE! Oh glorious wine, sweet nectar of the gods. If Amanda looks sleepy it's not the wine, but the bed bugs that haunted us for three nights in the city. We literally fled the country to Thailand to escape the scourge. We spent a full day exterminating our backpacks and washing all of our clothes which was actually probably a good thing to do after so long. We became people obsessed, but we are totally over it now...wait, is that an itch? (Shira we will have to compare notes).

Buddha Park outside of Vientiane. It was a brainchild of a Buddhist monk/Hindu guru in the early 20th century. He blended the two religions and had quite a following. This park represents his cosmology in sculptural form which was really amazing to see and hard to understand. The large reclining Buddha behind the creater god Brahma is a very famous sight in Laos.

Sweat drenched Colin at the top of what looked like a small hill behind our bungalow, but was really a steep climb to the beautiful sunset views at the top. There was also a labrynthine cave halfway up that housed some communists (those commies are always hiding in caves here). We spent a few days in Vang Vieng wandering amongst the karst and through the rice fields meeting farmers and dodging dogs. It was a great place to explore.

TUBIN'! Laos' backpacker right of passage. You get a truck inner tube like so and a ride to the first of many riverside bars. You plop your tube in and are immediatly thrown a line and fished out of the water by proprieters of the bar. They give you free shots and cheap whiskey and have dangerously high rope swings into the rocky water. It's great fun, and we are still alive Mom & Dad! (Amanda didn't do the rope swing...but someone else did).

Vang Vieng, once a small river village in Vientiane province surrounded by karst formations, but now a town overrun with white devils drinking the day away tubing and watching Friends at several bars around town. We stayed a bit away from the madness, across the river in a small bungalow that faced the karst cliffs. The owner was a sweet lady that also sold pancakes and sandwiches to hungry tourists trying to soak up the morning's hangover. Needless to say, after our day of tubing we needed them too.

Novice monks collecting alms in the early morning in Luang Prabang. We rose at 5:30 to see them and waited about an hour before we saw a small horde of tourists down the road flashing their cameras at the monks. We hung out on a corner by the market, trying not to be obtrusive but also wanting to observe the tradition. People sit along the sidewalk offering handfulls of sticky rice to the monks as they pass swiftly by. It's quite a sight for us Westerners, but an everyday occurance for SE Asian Buddhists.

One of the many tiers of the waterfall. At another swimming hole there was a rope swing which Colin swang on (do we sound twangy?). There were many tourists which isn't a suprise because every tuk tuk in town offers to drive you, and if you say no they offer you weed.

Amanda clamoring through the falls and undergrowth to get to the "super secret waterfall" that a very excited unnamed source told us about in Thailand. We can't put the photo of the waterfall up here, it's stamped confidential, but let it be known that you would die of jealousy if you saw it.

In a tuk tuk on our way to some very famous falls near Luang Prabang (so famous we forgot the name). There are many tiers and even a sun bear rehab center at the foot of the falls. The cool air was a heavenly retreat from the hot hot HOT heat, dust and smoke that settles over the city.