Where’s Megan?

Pretty much all I did in Cambodia was visit the ancient temple complex of Angkor Wat. I could describe what they are and why they’re important, but I’d just get it wrong. (Go here if you care). In any case, some of the temples looked cool and I took about a billion pictures, so I’ll just shut up and post them:


I honestly wasn’t that impressed with Angkor Wat itself, It’s certainly old. And big. But I found others more interesting.

Bayon, at Angkor Thom, is filled with big stone faces, staring at you from all angles. It’s a little creepy, if only because they’re all kind of Mona-Lisa-smiling.

The temple of Ta Prohm is awesome because it was basically abandoned to the jungle for centuries, and the jungle clearly won.

I waited about 10 minutes for this extremely-suave Italian guy to finish posing, but then just gave up and took the picture. His white leather jumpsuit and shoes were quite stunning, I must say.

Tomb Raider movie fans might recognize this doorway.

I was pretty templed-out by my third day, so I took a trip to a local silk farm, where I got a tour of the silk-making process, worms and all.

They eat and get fat, and then spin their cocoons in these baskets. Then they’re dropped in boiling water and the silk is unraveled, spun, weaved, stitched, and sold. I’m told the silkworms are quite tasty, but I wasn’t hungry.

Besides the Angkor Wat complex, pretty much the only thing Cambodia is known for is having experienced a massive genocide. During the 70s and 80s, the Khmer Rouge massacred 3 million people, roughly a quarter of its population. The effects of this, plus the dropping of literally thousands of tons of landmines throughout the country (thanks to both domestic and international forces) ever since, has left Cambodia a pretty beaten-up country. The survivors are poor, have inadequate healthcare, and one of the most corrupt governments in the world, but they’re remarkably resilient, considering.

In any case, I only spent about 6 days total in the country before heading on to Vietnam. Besides some tragic history, I did learn a few other things… like the maximum capacities of vehicles:
– One pickup truck can carry around 25 people OR about 10 live pigs.
– One motorbike can carry 6 people OR 1 person and 3 dead pigs OR 1 person and a basket of dead puppies (applicable on Vietnam side only).

On an unrelated note, Cambodian-Mexican food isn’t too bad!

Tags: Angkor Wat, Cambodia, Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 1:03 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.