Cambodia

A fairly leisurely morning by our standards with bags and passport out by 0830 and an hour and a half to eat breakfast before we left for the airport - I had soup. I asked for the octopus and the lady gave me pork. I tried to explain, and she just ignored me, like I wasn't saying anything; her head looking further and further down. It was delicious.

The airport was a process, but only because you had to go through immigration, which required going through a metal detector and then you had to go through normal security, another metal detector. I wandered around the airport and then settled in the wait - we were a bit delayed.

On the plane and we were off to Siam Reap, which we would find out later means Siam defeated. As I was deplaning, I forgot my shopping bags with all the treats for

Gill and I, but Philadelphia was looking out for me and handed it to me while we were waiting in line.  

Visas were a joke and the guy that everyone had to go through was a monster. You had to fill out three pieces of paper, which I had done on the plane, but I did not sign it. So the mean guy yelled at me and sent me to the back of the line, which I did. Dallas was behind me and I explained as I was being banished what had happened, but shortly the same thing happened to them. When I got to the front of the line again, I gave him my paperwork and then he yelled at me that I couldn't keep standing there. I said, but you have my passport, and he said I told you to get it over there, which of course he hadn't.  

Between here and over there was a long horseshoe table where they were passing the passports along, each doing a single thing; there were eight people in the process. Then you got your passport back and stood in another line where you gave your other pieces of paper to a very bored guy who could not be rushed. Dallas was delayed by another 15-20 minutes and when they all finally emerged, they were very frazzled and

Sue was well and truly flustered, but we were through.

Our new guide, Sam, was waiting on the other side. Sam is one of 11 children although only 8 are alive because one starved and another died by landmine. He immediately started talking about how loud the Koreans are all the while Sue was waving him off because female Dallas is Korean.  

Since our plane was late, our timings were all off and they rushed us through lunch. It was a buffet, and it was very good; the best thing was the curry potatoes and beef with chili and lemongrass. The banana ice cream was not too bad either, but I doubted whether it was actually cows milk.

We had a lecture from a PhD student from Sydney who explained all of the in and outs about Angkor temple complex, which was the largest city of its time, the size of modern day Los Angeles in the 11th/12th century.

Then we went out to the temple of many faces. This was the place that the king commissioned so that everyone could worship there Hindu, Buddhist, Animist... It was pretty wonderful.

At first, it looked a bit like a pile of rocks, but a structured pile of rocks - no doubt.


This temple is called Banyon, and it is within the walled city of Angkor Thom. As you got closer and closer, you saw more and more faces.

The group was pretty much awed and there's were lots of photos taken. The light was a perfect and we watched the sun go down.

I wanted to be really frustrated about dinner, because we were told we were going out of the hotel - hooray, Cambodian food. Nope, it was French and really good French at that - hence, no frustration. I had lamb chops and they gave me 3 and I ate them all. There's always tomorrow...