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Temple Mania
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The Angkor Wat and assorted hanger on temples are truly remarkable for their size and number.
One of the most impressive things for me was the moats surrounding the temples. The moat around Angkor Wat it is 190 metres wide (think 2 football fields end to end) and almost a kilometre by a kilometre square. That's a lot of dirt to dig and remove by hand. Each King over a 600 year period tried to out do the previous king. Some of the temples took 40 years to build. Our guide told us the hundreds of thousands of sandstone blocks (I'd always taken them for granite) were brought by bamboo raft from over 50 km's away. Virtually every square inch of the walls are carved with amazing scenes from every day life to batles. I wonder if the stone carvers back then used to lobby for better projects - "Umh, excuse me boss, but I've been working on this 'picking out the head lice scene for more than 6 months while Supon over there has been making a complete mess of the fighting elephants".
One of the most amazing scenes at Angkor Wat is hundreds of demons engaged in a tug-of-war against hundreds of gods with an enormous snake as the rope. Some how the competition (and here it gets a little murky for me) stirs up this huge ocean of milk which turns out to be the elixir for immortality... quite the cosmic milkshake. Chevy celebrated her 14th birthday at the very funky Blue Pumpkin. In a million years you would never guess it was in Cambodia. Back to Bangkok we met up with Cindy Mylrea and her 2 kids Ian and Michelle. It was great to spend some time with them and explore Bangkok together. Quinn and Chevy enjoyed being the seasoned travellers and imparting words of wisdom to their friends.
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