Water buffalo, landmines, massages-the highlights!

OMG! The temples have been great (the last 2 days I've been jetting around on the back of Long Seng's motorbike)...I can't believe how old and amazing they are. So intricate, so advanced, and some of them were made in the 900s! Riding through the rice paddied countryside is an amazing experience...I can TOTALLY see why my dad has been coming here to motorcycle around for the past 10 or so years. It's hot, beautiful, with cheap food, friendly people, and water buffalo! At one point yesterday, driving back from one of the temples, some water buffalo ran full speed across the road! Cars and motorbikes (including us) had to screech to a halt and I was just thankful we weren't a few seconds ahead and in their way! I have no idea if they were running to or from something...crazy!

Yesterday was September 11th. I noticed this fact while I was at a landmine museum. I got to see all sorts of landmines and anti-personnel devices. There are still millions out there, and thousands of people are maimed and killed every year. I learned that the US hasn't signed the landmine treaty (sing me a new song! The Kyoto Protocols, the Equal Rights Amendment...we suck at being cool), because we want to reserve the right to use these effective tools at the DMZ (de-militarized zone) between N. and S. Korea. We are ridiculous. So on a day when I should have been (and was) thinking about a terrible atrocity inflicted on the US, I was learning about the horrible things we have a hand in.

I also got to witness some good ol' Cambodian corruption: the police pulled us over and I just stood there by the bike while I watched Long Seng slip a few dollars into the guy's hand. 'What was that all about?' I hadn't noticed before, but his motorbike didn't have lights like it was supposed to. Cool.

After I got back to Siem Reap yesterday, I found a massage parlor I had read about in Lonely Planet (I am such a yuppy). Seeing Hands trains blind people to be masseurs and masseuses. I got a great massage (I was 75% asleep throughout), and got to feel good about helping out blind people. I felt like Mira Sorvino in At First Sight with Val Kilmer, except I'm not about to fall in love with my blind Cambodian masseur! I only dealt with blind people there, and it was funny...it was $5 and I gave her a $10 and asked for change...I could have given her a $1 bill and told her it was a tenner, but I'm not so evil as to rip off blind people! C'mon!

Last night I went out drinking and dancing with my dad. We went to Pub Street, and the drinks must have been watered down, because I had 2 margaritas with dinner, a tequila sunrise, an 'Oh my Buddha!', 2 Long Island Iced Teas, and at least 3-5 beers after that. We went to a Mexican place for dinner, hopped over to a Khmer place for 2 drinks (happy hour special), back to Temple Bar for drinking and dancing (where we met some cool Americans I'm hoping to see again in a few days in Phnom Penh...she's doing the Peace Corps in Thailand, and her boyfriend is visiting her...they thankfully rescued me when they were the only white non-prostitutes dancing and my dad was getting talked up by...well, you know). My dad left, they left, and then I crossed the street to Angkor What? which was playing some great music and was full of 'barong' ('white' people, or at least tourists), and a few Khmer drinking mixed drinks out of buckets (they shared!). Then I caught a touk-touk home at 1-something.

Tomorrow we're busing back to Phnom Penh. And the adventure continues!

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!