Angkor Wat

I am planning to combine a visit to Angkor in January 2009 along with my trip to Thailand!

how to avoid feeling completely intimidated by this; am i looking at the right things? do i read with proper interpretations? when to slow down and seep into the dusty stones…....

sitting with the rain
dop-dop-dop
washing away the heat

I have wanted to go visit since I read about it in 9th grade history. I also want to visit the Tiger Temple in Thailand … SOON

Absolutely beautiful!! I would recommend eating lunch there, definitely safe, so that you have some time without the throngs of other tourists.

The Siem Riep area and its surrounding temples are truly amazing. Unlike more developed parts of Southeast Asia, people still transport themselves primarily on bicycles through the area. The air is clean and the roads are highly under-developed. The people are friendly, peaceful, and remarkably optimistic despite their incredibly tragic history.

While I was visiting a site where Pol Pot’s soldiers murdered hundreds of people, a young Cambodian boy (who couldn’t have been more than 7-8 years old) calmly demonstrated with a stick how the soldiers murdered citizens. During the entire time he was smiled broadly and seemed happy to have the opportunity to communicate with me. Like other Cambodians, he didn’t seem disturbed or distraught by the tragedy but he instead accepted this cruel piece of history as part of his paradigm.

If you look closely at the attached picture, you will see that these smiling, angelic children are (coincidentally) posing in front of a series of pictures of corpses from the Khmer Rouge era. To me, the picture represents hope and the knowledge that humans are capable of overcoming even the most appalling tragedies.

Okay, well, I jsut watched Tomb Raider over the weekend, and so Cambodia looks so cool, plus I’ve heard so much about Angkor Wat, it seems amazing.

Though I’ve had this place in my mental to-visit list, the beauty of the photograph and the power of the writing that Travelling Life transmitted in her entry has urged me to adopt this in my 43 places :)

when the motorcycle came around the bend to give me my first view of the bayon and its enormous magnificent faces, it took my breath away. one of the few time in my life something i’ve seen has made me speechless.

this trip has moved up on my priority list but unfortunately i’m realizing how expensive this could really be. its funny…you would think that cambodia wouldn’t be a country that would be expensive to visit but there are so many visas and expensive entry fees that tourists have to pay that it begins to really add up. not to mention that the only air carrier flying from bangkok to siem reap is bangkok airways so they don’t have competitive prices…more than $300 for a roundtrip ticket. i hope to do it soon though because i’ve heard that they are going to dramatically increase the ticket prices for angkor wat, eek!

Angkor was nice, but it was in other places that I fell in love with Cambodia :-)