Siem Reap, Cambodia

At the last minute (well right about the time I arrived in Saigon) I decided to take a short trip to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. It is only about a one hour flight from Saigon, so I figured...Why not? Unfortunately, because I made up my mind to do this only 2 days before leaving, I didn't have time to shop for travel agents, instead I just had to trust the Hotel's service...which turned out to be a mistake, as they really messed up my flight leaving Cambodia...(Keep your fingers crossed for me, because in about 2 hours, I will find out if things will work out or not...if they don't, I may be spending the night at the Saigon airport..i.e. like in the movie The Terminal...as I don't have a re-entry visa for Vietnam, so I won't be allowed back into the country...and there won't be any flights out of the country until the next day...But I'll keep you posted on that.)

Anyhow, back to my story...so Siem Reap...Wow!!! What a cool place!.. I really love it here (coupled with the fact that my hotel somehow confused my reservations and I got upgraded to an Executive Suite that is bigger then my last apartment and has two bathrooms, really who could complain!)...I spent an entire day exploring the Angkor Wat archeaological site (man my spelling is getting worse by the day...sorry!!), there was so much to see, and my driver really managed to work it out so that I was visiting stuff at times when there were hardly any tourists around...which confused me at first, because I didn't understand why I was visiting Angkor Thom before Angkor Wat..but whatever, it worked out perfectly!!! So there I was, wandering the ruins of some of the most incredible buildings I had ever seen (I kept imagining myself to be Lara Croft, as it really did feel like I was discovering some sort of hidden treasure)...and as of now, most of the buildings are still open for people to walk thru, so it's not like Stonehenge or the Pyramids, where they have a fence around the monuments and you can't actually go near them...I was able to walk right up to them and touch them and really explore the structures.

My most favorite site was Banteay Srai (which is the Women's temple), it was probably the best preserved of all of the sites, and the structure itself was a miniature version of all of the main structures (and by miniture I mean of a smaller scale, you could still walk thru it, but things were about 5xs smaller)..the buildings were set inside a moat that was filled with water lilies and lily pads, then outside of that there was some really dense jungles...the place had such a magical feel to it that I would not have been surprised if someone told me that I had discovered a Fairy kingdom, because those are exactly the types of inhabitants that belong there.

Well after a long day of trekking and exploring, I headed back into town to explore the Old Market...which was like most of the markets of South East Asia, selling produce and meat (I am so going Vegetarian, I am not sure how many more dead chickens or headless pigs I can see without freaking out...and the smell of rank fish is so overpowering it often stays in my nose long after I've cleared the area.)and tons of tourist stuff (although most of tourist stuff I have seen already in Thailand)...the only things I wanted to get were shadow puppets, which I got then realized I had no room for in my backpack (oh well) and strange cow and horse bells (which I wanted to use for some new jewelry ideas that I have)...We shall see if any of the stuff I got makes it home.

Well, I gotta get out of here and finish packing...I have a long day of flying ahead of me (Siem Reap to Saigon to Kuala Lumpur to Penang) cross your fingers that I make all of my connections.