Beng Mealea

First we woke up to view the sunrise at Angkor Wat.  Riding in the pitch black was warm and totally pleasant.  The temples at sunrise are inspiring.  There's a hell of a lot of rock, they're impressively big and symmetric, and for the right religion, I'm sure also drowned in symbolism.  If I was the temple, I'd long for the days of even just a hundred years ago when a few artists tried to capture me by paintbrush vs. the onslaught of western, Japanase, Korean and Chinese tourists machine gun volleying digital camera clicks at me.

We rode from Siem Reap to some more temples at Beng Mealea, something over 70km and mostly flat.  That makes it sound easy, but it's baking hot out, with headwind.  Fun though.

Our guide guy Phea (like Pierre without R's) is universally happy and talks to everyone.  People think we're good to ask a lot of questions of, so we go back and forth through him a bit.  He also tells them that he grew up with no dad (Khmer Rouge victim), mom moved to a city with a factory so she could work closer to a place they could go to school, and that after he moved to Phnom Penh and continued, but he too started by taking 3 cows to the good grass by the river every day and washing them too.  It's not lecture-ish really the way it goes (as far as I can tell without language barrier) - but basically they ask him how he got so smart that he can talk to us all day.  He has a Trek city commuter type mountain bike, which is markedly different than most here, so it's noted he's got a good thing going (no car, no moto, just a bike though).  Going to school and exercising and getting "more intelligence and more knowledge" is the message, hard to argue with.  He hasn't been guiding bikes long, but persona, fitness, language and philosophy give him the right package for it.  Says it's the best job he's ever had.

Our driver goes on other paved roads more that connect up with where we go through farm country (usually they take more people on tours but I think the marginal cost of running one is low, only two of us signed up, and the 28 year old guys seem to think having just Tori and is perfectly fine and fun for them).  We have a hard time meeting at times when the van and the dirt doesn't meet.  Tori asked if they had maps and the guy just laughed.  Other than signs on the highway saying which major city is which way, I haven't seen any street signs, speed limits, or other traffic signals anywhere. 

Beng Maelea temples are ruins, very explorable if you were allowed to run amok, which isn't the case.  Area was recently de-mined (2 years ago), so you can go more places.  We spent a tired hour at the end of the day checking it out, then hit the coconut stand out front for refreshment and the drive along highway 6.