Ankgors

Tori and I wet to see three temples today - Angkor Thom, Bayon and Ankgor Wat.  Ankgor means capital, Thom means like city or something, and Wat means temple.  And all that rolled together means it's entirely obvious why these are world heritage sites.

I'm not knowledgable on Buddhism, Hinduism, or southeast asian history, power struggle and wars, but when the worlds largest religious structures built almost a thousand years ago are the days itinerary, I can succumb to having my mind totally blown just as well as anyone else. 

These things are totally awesome, it's where Tomb Raider was filmed for a visual reference better than the little snaps attached (Tori had the good camera, since I'm getting wi-fi on my blackberry everywhere I've ripped one image off the web to attach just for the heck of it too).  The intricacy, envelopment by the jungle, and sheer scale of it all is totally amazing.  I'll put forth that biking from Siem Reap and back was the perfect way to see it, everyone here rides bikes or little crappy motos anyway (I can bike faster), and sitting in the back of a tuk tuk doesn't appeal (crappy moto pulling a 2 seater chariot).  The only other way I think could possibly be cooler is by elephant ride between the temples.

Every inch is carved with something intricate and historic.  Monkey army vs. demon army wars about some god and some gods wife that got captured and taken to the island of Lanka (now Sri Lanka), that kind of stuff.  What I can't believe is that even with solid 100m walls of mural carving, that this massive thing was built in like 40 years. 

We saw monkeys, ate bananas the size of my thumb, dragon fruit, mangostein some other tasty little fruit, an awesome fresh lunch with the tastiest bay leaves I've ever had and a sour sop pop.  I took a little video of grass stuff the guy showed us that moves when you touch it, it's like it has muscles cause it flexes closed when you brush it.  I also got a random photo with Tori's big zoom of a little tiger-dog.  Some bored policemen painted their little beige dog like a tiger with soot and their fingers... the end result was actually pretty good.

It's mega humid hot like the hottest La Ruta has to offer, but without being in a constant hurry it doesn't seem too hard.  Other than La Ruta like temps, that's where the similarities end.  Prevalence of land mines, cobras, and no hills don't exactly lend themselves to off road cycling.  I think sleeping hot at home for the last few weeks helped.  And speaking of being in a hurry, I'm getting some solid intervals in with one of the guides we're hanging out with, one is pretty fast and we chase the tuk tuks together.  Cambodia could produce some serious climbers if this country had hills, if I had to guess, I'd say an average Khmer gene pooled male is like 5'2" and like 50kg.  Tiny... no wonder the Viet Cong could build those tiny little tunnels.    I bet my two hands could wrap around the waistline of about the smallest 15% of the adult male population. 

The Khmer or Cambodian language and characters are entirely lost on me, it's awesome to be so oblivious, it just looks so complicated.  This area is the most touristy we'll be at, so everyone speaks english... and well enough to be really clever.  Little kids all try to sell you stuff, a dollar is the going rate for any nick nack.  They're sharp as tacks!  Once I figured out they weren't just blindly reciting canned lines it got way more fun:

"Mr. do you want to buy?" (Putting little bronze figures on the side of our lunch table)
"No, I'm not into that kind of stuff, I like bike stuff."
"Mr. buy one for your wife then."
"No, she buys her own stuff."
"Mr. buy one for your friends."
"I don't have any friends."
"Mr. if you bought some of this it would really help you get some friends."

Sweet.

Besides english there's a lot of french restaurants and menus so that makes it easy... and last but not least... I observe that every place here serves banana pancakes on the menu based on a 4 restaurant/eatery sample size so far.  Any country with that prevalence of banana pancakes is a friend of mine.  Oddly enough too, I never would have guessed that they're totally into pumpkins here.  Soups, casserole type stuff ("pumpkin oven"), chopped in other salads, and names of nightclubs "the blue pumpkin". 

The cycling guides, and all their buddies they see when they're out with us, seem to think my Dean is about the coolest bike in Cambodia.  They watched me put it together so they explain it to the other guides who are taking elderly people around on Treks with Alvio... then they tell their friends how they got just the two of us for two weeks and we're racing around together.  I think next time we'll be able to charge the guides to ride with us based on how it's going so far.

Whether its guides, tourists, staff, restaurateurs, street vendors, restoration workers at the sites, roadworkers, or people out doing other jobs we can see, everyone seems really smiley here so far.