Update: Cambodia

Hey all,

am now in sunny Langkawi, an island off the west coast of Malaysia. Cambodia was great, nice hot weather, few mosquitoes and warm people. We landed in the afternoon on the 10th and walked around the Old Market area, where fish and fresh vegetables are mixed in with trinket and souvenir shops. There is a mixture of Buddhist and Hindu religion in the area, so we walked around some of the temples and wats in the area. Early the next morning (4am) we got up to watch the sunrise at Angkor Wat, a spectacular experience. The temples don't seem to be very large, but that's because there's a 500 metre causeway leading up to it... Lots to see and do, and navigating around all the tourist groups is also interesting. There was a Angkor-Gyeongju (a Korean city) cultural expo in town, so lots of Korean tourists :). We went to Phnom Bhakeng for the sunset, and had to jostle with virtually a thousand tourists all looking for the perfect photo op... Highlights of the temples were the Bayon area, with the 4-sided enigmatic faces carved on every tower, Ta Prohm with the jungle reclaiming most of the temple infrastructure, and some smaller ones like Banthay Srei, intact with the most delicate 3D stone carving I've ever seen. Most of these were built by one man, Jayavarman VII, who basically depleted the sandstone quarries and exhausted the population... but left a massive tourist site for the Cambodians 500 years later. I guess he was ahead of his time...

Besides the temples, the nearby lake Tonle Sap has a couple of neat things, like the Floating Forest of Kompong Phhluk, where trees are submerged up to the leaves by the rising water, and you can take a dugout canoe around their base. Very surreal... The villages themselves are built on 5 or 6 metre stilts to adapt to the changing water levels, and are all constructed by the inhabitants out of bamboo and palm leaves. We got to take a look inside one of them, it's quite sturdy but no jumping!

In December-January there's a nice cool breeze across the land, and taking the tuk-tuk (a sort of motorcycle pedicab) to the sights is not as hot as we thought. Occasionally the roads would get too bumpy, then we'd have to get on the back of the motorcycle itself the rest of the way. We'd pass by many people riding this way, including some Buddhist monks hitching a ride. The people are very friendly, and all the kids learn English in the schools so are eager to practice ("Bye-bye! Hello!"). In the temples you learn to politely refuse to buy the trinkets that puppy-dog eyed kids will offer, but occasionally we'd just give them some money to take a picture with them. ^_^

Now we're going to take a vacation from the vacation, and relax on the beach for the next 3 days. Liushi is coming to join us today, the more the merrier! We'll go back to Kuala Lumpur on the 20th and stay at her place for a couple nights, then head back to Hong Kong to visit my family. More pics will come soon when I find a USB port and a fast connection...

cheers, slightly sunburned Ange :P