Christopher Perlow and the Temples of Angkor

I arrived in Siem Reap Friday afternoon after a six hour bus ride which was reasonably comfortable. Siem Reap is the gateway city to the fabled temples of Angkor, and is booming economically in comparison to the capital. I spent Friday evening cruising around on a tuk tuk soaking in the scenery. The photos are unspectacular at best, so I'm not going to bore my five readers with them. I took it easy Friday night and was tired after an early morning and a long bus ride. I made an arrangement that evening for a driver to pick me up at 6am to take me out to one of the most distant and ruinous temples.

The accompanying photos are of Beng Melea. If I remember my history properly, this temple was built by Mexican conquerers around 1449. Later around 1967 it was destroyed by a renegade group of Canadian mounties and has been overrun by jungle ever since. Seriously this temple was cool because it had a primitive, Indiana Jones feel too it. At least that's what the Lonely Planet told me. The cool thing about these temples is that everything is accessible. One can climb freely on these ruins and I climbed to the top of these.

I climbed to the top of this particular ruin and had to swing on a vine to get to the next one. It was there where I crawled down a hole and discovered a golden idol surrounded by booby traps...mmm... boobies. Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, I avoided the poisoned darts and ran down a shaft where I tumbled down a hill. It was there where some creepy Frenchman took away my idol with the help of his aboriginal cronies with blowguns. Luckily, I held up a dollar bill and was instantly swarmed by children and the aboriginal mercenaries let me go back to the temple to look around some more. They did make me delete all of my pictures of them first, which was a bummer.
I didn't see anyone else except for a group of Korean tourists, who are known around Asia as the most annoying. They travel in groups, know zero English, and bring their own food. Not to mention that they keep with their local tradition of standing in doorways when you want to get through. On a side note, I once saw three Koreans at Suwon Station having a conversation at the top of an escalator right where people get off. They didn't move, even though there was about 30 square yards of space behind them, and people were either falling over or pushing through. I just yelled: "Get the hell out of the way you jackasses!". Of course they didn't understand a word.
Where was I? Oh yeah... the temple. This place was really quiet after I climbed away from the tourist group. It was fun to wander around on the rocks and soak up the jungle atmosphere. This would be the first stop on a very scenic three day tour. If you are wandering why this blog has been so meandering, it's because there really isn't much to talk about other than the creepy Frenchman, the aboriginals, and the annoying Korean tourists. There aren't many stories to tell about Siem Reap, but there are a ton of pictures. By now I had learned to avoid eye contact with any locals to avoid being harassed (unfortunate, but true).

So expect many pictures in the upcoming blogs, but not so many words. That's the way this tour was, scenic and not very social. I took over 300 pictures without hardly saying a word to anyone. The temples are spectacular, however. This one pales in comparison to what I would see in the next couple of days.