Angkor away!
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Sunday, February 24, 2008
(Jim)
Yesterday we flew from :Phuket to Bangkok, then on to Siem Reap, Cambodia. We are here mostly to see Angkor Wat, the enormous city and temple complex of the Khmer Empire, which was in its time one of the great cities of the world, before being lost to the jungle for five centuries.
Quite a change from the posh Marriott resort in Phuket, where we spent a relaxing, vague and unstructured three weeks. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in the world, mostly agrarian, with only about one-third of the population literate. In the late 1970s the evil Communist regime of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge killed about one in three members of the population -- a butcher's bill of between one and two million dead.
We're in a nice boutique hotel called Pavillon Indochine, built around a traditional Khmer house. We have one big room with three beds, air-conditioning, and a shower-in-bathroom setup with a balky drain. It is important to shower quickly before the rising water spills out of the bathroom and floods the rest of the space.
The food here is good and cheap, especially compared to the Marriott where a burger was $15. Steamed rice and sauteed vegetables are $3.50. Decent French wine is $3 per glass. Amy is in heaven. Delivery pizza is $11 for a large margarita, so the kids are happy too.
Tomorrow morning our guide and driver are coming to take us to our first visit to the temples of Angkor Wat.
Comments
Reading Kim to Kids
At Jim's suggestion, I bought Kim by Rudyard Kipling. I thought, what the heck, I'll try to read it to the kids. I find myself wanting to explain things about every sentence or so. And transliterating to more modern English just to cut down my burden of explanation. But Melissa says she likes it. I can imagine the dreams she has as she drifts off to sleep as I read.
See you soon,
Mikey