Safari!

There is a really funny story about our arrival in Cambodia, but I think it would be wise to wait until we leave the country to blog about it. So stay tuned ....

The first leg of our stay in Cambodia was a 4 day/3 night temple safari -- a tour of various outlying temples -- that Corina had found on the internet. Other than our hotel room on our first night in Yangon, this was the only actual plan we had made before we left.

We were picked up at the airport by our guide and driver, whose names we promptly forgot. After a quick stop in Siem Reap, we hit the road to a temple called Beng Mealea. This temple has largely fallen down and been reclaimed by the jungle. So we sccrambled around on the rocks. Unlike those in Burma and Thailand, the old temples here are Hindu, not Buddhist.

After a lunch of noodles, we drove to Koh Ker (rhymes with "croquet"). This was briefly the capital of Cambodia back in the 10th century, and is now pretty much in the middle of nowhere. There are about 25 old temples here, the main one being Prasat Thom, a 50 meter high pyramid. We walked around the grounds for awhile and then headed to our camp, where we were soon joined by another group of 20 people, mostly Americans. I was a little wary at first, but they turned out to be really nice. I was never entirely clear on how they all knew each other, but the organizers seemed to be a woman who had been born in Cambodia and who had recently made a documentary about it and her boyfriend.  They were on a 2-week trip just in Cambodia.

Later that afternoon, we walked over to the pyramid and climbed up to the top to watch the sunset. This was a little dicey as the Khmer temple builders do not seem to have been big on uniform stair sizes. Or hand rails. We then had an excellent dinner back at the camp and decided to climb back up the temple to look at the stars, but the chief of police nixed that plan. Still, even just a few yards out of the camp, it was pitch black and we could see millions of stars.

Then we went to sleep in our tent. A word about the tent:  It was pretty nice, with beds and everything. And there was a separate bathroom tent with a toilet and camp shower. And there was a generator, so we had light on our front porch until 9:30 or so. But at this point we were not yet resigned to our fate of filth, so there was a fair amount of grumbling about heat, dirt, and bugs which I have omitted. Use your imaginations!