i want a hula hoop

Banteay Samré is my other favorite temple, besides Preah Khan. I like it because it's also fairly quiet, and very complete.



The doorways are short, though.




Even when collapsed into the double small hoops, it's a challenge to carry this sucker up and down the narrow temple stairs!


So we took the hula hoop out into the courtyard, and I finally have video!

Here's Autumn, being fantastic


And me, developing fantasticness, very slowly


And that was all. Cambodia offered great food, wine, shopping and massages in addition to the temples. The next day we spent a good fourteen hours on buses and standing in line at immigration before we reached Ban Phe. It was 11:30 at night on the 4th of July, and we remembered just in time to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" with Christian, who also existed. I'm sure that the other guests at my guesthouse appreciated it.

no one knows

On day two of temple-hopping in Cambodia, Autumn and I styled entirely new outfits with scarves from the market.

We visited Pre Rup, a temple mountain with ridiculous steps.





And then we hula hooped at Preah Khan (this is a lot of the same stuff, isn't it?) Preah Khan was my favorite temple when I visited Cambodia in October, and I'm glad that it was one of Autumn's favorites, too. It's sprawling and has giant tree roots growing over it, like Ta Prohm, but it has far fewer visitors. It's quiet and serene and the grassy courtyards were fluttering with hundreds of little yellow butterflies. The butterflies were surreal, but not something we could capture on film.





There are other, less irreverent reasons to visit ancient temples, besides hula hooping and taking pictures of one another. These are not much fun to blog about.



Besides, Autumn swung on a vine!


And this!


Curiouser and curiouser...


Preah Khan is arranged in a very deliberate cruciform layout, with doorways getting smaller and smaller as one approaches the inner sanctuary from any direction. This building (the one I'm hugging) makes me happy because it's so random. Off to the side but within the walls of the temple, it's a two-story structure with big round columns. Nobody knows what it was for.

hey, lady

After wandering around Angkor Wat, Autumn and I maneuvered our way past the chorus of "Laydee, you buy cold water/new dress/new scarf/fan/lunch/bracelets/etc." and visited Angkor Thom. The saleswomen are much like zombies. Slow moving, but when one sees you and moans, "Laydee..." it alerts all the others to your presence and you have a hoard of women and children trying to sell you things.

Angkor Thom is a big walled city, and home to one of the most famous temples here outside of Angkor Wat: The Bayon. The Bayon gives the general impression of a pile of rubble from a distance.



As you climb up into the temple, you notice the faces that adorn each tower. And the girls posing in window frames



and giving Eskimo kisses to ancient kings.



And then we fell in the mud!





It was tricksy mud, made to look like solid ground. We went down within the same fraction of a second, but kept going, up the steep steps of the royal palace.



And to Ta Prohm, where hula hooping happened



and America's Next Top Model posing happened.





A good day.


I'll write about the rest of our trip for next week.

two of us riding nowhere

Autumn and I traveled to Cambodia together on June 30 (my blog is far behind--when this entry posts I will be in Indonesia.) It was great.

We took a minibus to the border at Aranyaprathet, and switched to a big bus on the Cambodian side.



It was raining in Cambodia.



We arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia in the evening and after checking into our guesthouse we went down to the wonderful night market where we got out first doses of "Laydee! You buy...?" (this chorus would haunt us for the rest of the trip.) We bought silk scarves with which to style ourselves the following day.

Our third mode of transportation is the Cambodian tuk-tuk, which differs from a Thai or Lao tuk-tuk because it is a removable carriage hitched to the back of a motorbike. Very colonial.





Our fourth mode of transportation on the way to Angkor Wat was not a decorated pony. Autumn made friends with it:



I did not make friends with the pony.



But that is my collapsible hula hoop on my shoulder! At Angkor Wat!





When I visited with Elle and Jamie in October, the central tower was closed for renovation, but this time it wasn't.



We admired the view, and then hula hooped in the courtyard.





Since there are so many pictures, I will continue with the rest of our first day (Angkor Thom including the Bayon, and Ta Prohm!) tomorrow.

Rock and roll, part 2

When last we left our heroine, she was recalling those blissful days of her youth... It was sunset on October 29th, 2009, to be specific, and she was watching the sunset from the top of Ta Keo.



She looks a little disgruntled, doesn't she? Maybe it's that the third person is messing with her perception of personhood.

Our third full day (October 30th) began at 4 o'clock in the morning when we awoke to start the day with sunrise at Angkor Wat.

It was worth it.

Later in the day we visited Banteay Samre


And Preah Khan, which is still in ruins in some places, and has a more tranquil and undiscovered feel to it than even Ta Prohm.







If I'm being one of those people who doesn't want to claim a famous one like Angkor Wat, the Bayon or Ta Prohm, then I think Preah Khan was my favorite. It's got trees growing over it, and it's still crumbled in places, but the most intriguing thing for me was this structure:


It's also one of the quietest temples we had to chance to visit.

We posed for an album cover, just in case.


And then I didn't pose at all before our final sunset at Pre Rup.



Before I knew it, our three day passes were all used up. We entertained ourselves for a few more days in Cambodia before returning for our previously documented trip through northern Thailand. The more I think about Cambodia, though, the more magical I feel it was. If any of you stateside folks come to visit me here, I absolutely insist that we make a jaunt over there. Thailand is a wonderful, rich place, but Angkor is a dream.

We are the pirates of the temples...

It strikes me that after promising to talk about the highlight of my life that was my visit to Angkor in Cambodia, I neglected to post about it. This is the first of two blog entries about my adventures at Angkor Wat--I want to post too many pictures for one entry! All of the pictures in this post are courtesy of the incomparable Lionelle Drabble, who is an excellent travel companion and a fabulous photographer who just started work at a school in Bangkok. You may read of her adventures here.

Angkor Wat is the most famous temple at ancient Angkor. It was part of a vast city of temples and now-forgotten wooden structures that thrived from about 800 to 1300. We bought three-day passes and climbed on temples all day, but still visited less than half of what there is to see. We arrived at Angkor Wat in time to watch the sunset on October 27th. Sunsets became an obsession, as we would seek out the tallest temple we hadn't yet visited each evening and sit and listen to music and watch the sunset. The morning of the 28th we set out to explore Angkor Wat again, in pretty dresses this time because we knew we had a lovely photographer.


That's Jamie, Elle and me.



The next on our must-see list was Ta Prohm. We explored for awhile in the heat of the day, cherishing the shade until a welcome end-of-monsoon downpour surprised us.



Here is Jamie looking lovely in the rain. She's teaching in Trat now and writing about it here.


We went to Phnom Bakheng for the second sunset. This is the most popular sunset venue, and the temple is set atop a hill.

On the second full day of temple climbing, we visited Angkor Thom which is a walled city. This is the city gate.



Those faces are familiar--they decorate the other most famous temple which is located in Angkor Thom, the Bayon:



I love that the Bayon looks like a mountain of rubble from a distance, and it isn't until you're in it that you can really admire the enigmatic Buddha faces in every direction.



The same day, we visited the Elephant Terrace and the Royal Palace and Phimeanakas beyond it.



We watched the third sunset from the top of Ta Keo.



I don't know if the pictures demonstrate the steepness of the climb.



But this one should:


Many of these temples have steep steps like this, which require a person to descend them sideways. Ta Keo offered up another glorious sunset, and glorious sunsets are a great way to end these entries.

I will post again tomorrow with more pictures from the rest of my temple-hopping.