Angkor What?

(Okay, totally stole that title from a restaurant somewhere here in Siem Reap...it's in the guidebooks. We have two, one of which was written by my dad's friend. I feel in the know)

Scrambling around really ancient ruins today, (pretty much the inspiration for Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, etc.), I was thinking of all the fantastic things I've seen this past year. Amazing mozaics and a whole Roman city's worth of ruins in Tunisia, cool carvings in English churches, the Bayeux tapestry, er, embroidery, the Stonehenge-all this really neat, really old stuff. It's amazing it's all survived, to some extent, at least enough to tell the tales of ancient awesomeness today. I love it! It's inspiring, amazing, and reminds me of how much of a history nerd I really am. But I wouldn't want to be an archaeologist for a living, no way! One of the temples I saw today had been taken apart piece by piece, to be put back together again perfectly. Unfortunately, the Khmer Rouge took over and the meticulously catalogued plans went missing! Now some Frenchies and Cambodians are putting all the stones back without a guide...in really intense moist jungle heat! Not for me. (BTW Erin, you'd love this place! It's like the Amazon, with temples! I feel like a half-assed Indiana Jones in my Cambodia hat!)

Monkeys, though. They're amazing! I did the tourist thing and bought bananas on the side of the road just to feed to the cute little things. One of them took one bite and dropped it on the ground. Well exCUSE me! As we were leaving, I saw the kids who were hawking bananas and cactus to the tourists scaring the monkeys back up into the trees before they had finished...so more tourists would come along and buy more bananas...oh well, the monkeys were fat and looked happy!

Angkor Wat was stellar, and Steve, I can totally see what you're talking about...I saw the part of the bas-reliefs with the army of monkeys, and I'd support anyone getting a tattoo of something so cool.

The plan is to go to some 'nice' joints for dinner and drinks tonight...and by 'nice' I don't mean fancy, I just mean anything that's not a strip club. Not that that's all we've been doing-last night we saw traditional dancing and had a sweet buffet; felt like I was in Hawaii! SE Asia: so far, so good!