The SE Asia Weight Loss Plan

Wellllll - maybe you have been wondering why we haven't updated the blog with incredible pictures from Angkor Wat and Siem Reap (the nearby town). We have, actually, been trying quite hard the past few days to do just that but Cambodia's internet connection is a pathetic attempt at something like the internet 10 years ago in the USA... dismal. We are lucky to even find a decent connection! We cannot get, however, a single computer to work with our little hard drive that we store our photos on and thus, no temple photos yet. This may have to wait until Vietnam but maybe we will get lucky in the next week.
Stories from the land of temples....Jay and I tried these yummy fruit shakes (that we have been drinking all across SE Asia for months now) at Angkor Wat when we got thirsty from all the walking and WOWing we were doing. They were cold and good. And laced with something so potent that we both ended up in our bedroom for days married to the toilet. That's right folks - the SE Asia weight loss plan. Yee haw. I don't recommend it. Lucky for us, we got 2 days in at the temples before the midnight strike of the shake. Sadly, we missed the third day of the pass we paid for and did not get to see some of the off-the-beaten-track temples and the land mine museum. Instead we saw the lovely architecture of the aging bathroom - amazing and intricate linoleum floors, mold in the corners, sink falling off the wall, little line of ants parading around, and the plastic showerhead dripping slowly! It was like a tour of a temple! Throne of Julie and Jay, circa 2008. Enough joking, we have recovered now - thanks to a smart doctor back in the states that gave us a prescription that said "FRUIT SHAKE ANTIDOTE". What'll they come up with next?

But here is the happy story....The temples were, indeed, like nothing I have ever seen before. The place was surrounded with this aura of magic and history. We watched sunset AND sunrise at Angkor Wat. When the sky slowly came to life in the morning, it shed golden pink hues onto Angkor Wat and the temple towers just glowed in profound beauty! These are the moments in my life that I will cherish forever. We had the temple almost all to ourselves in the morning, compared to the previous evening when it was very crowded. So we took the time to revisit the bas-reliefs that surround the central towers of the temple. These walls have amazing stone-carved artwork that tell some historical tales from the era as well as some stories from Hindu epics like the Ramayana. And some extend for about 180 feet!! Other temples we visited had huge mysterious stone faces on all four sides of the towers and one temple had ~35 towers! We felt like someone was always watching us. And sometimes we felt like actors in Indiana Jones as we explored mossy-green temples that were falling apart from the weight of the giant trees growing on the top of the stone walls or roofs with huge buttress roots snaking down the stone to the ground. It was even a riot to get surrounded by all the cute Cambodian kids trying to sell you their crafts...."where you from?... oh America?! Capital is Washington D.C. you buy my postcards I talk to you first. One dollar. Don't buy from her, buy from me, I talk to you first. You have coin for my collection?" The whole place was fun, wonderful, exciting, fascinating and truly deserving of its world heritage status.