Kim's See-the-World Adventure Searching for new adventures, creating new friendships, and sharing with old friends in distant lands!

We spent three days in Siem Reap exploring the temples, floating fishing villages, markets, silk farms, and the streets. This area is a major tourist destination and is becomming "Disneyesque" with hotels going up as fast as you can say "Money". But the touristo dollar has turned a poverty area into a growing community that feeds more hungrey children and builds more schools and fixes roads. We decided to start our day at Ta Prohm which is the more overgrown temples. There are trees coming up the walls and it feels like the jungle is trying to reclaim it. We also went up to Kabal Spean where they carved little phalic symbols (lingas)in the river along with other figures to honor the Gods. We had to hike up a path for about 45 minutes to see the area of the carvings so there were fewer tourists. We came upon several Camodian families going up there to have a picnic and Nancy talked with one woman in french as we climbed. They inited us to join them in their meal but we had several more stops to make and wanted to get on our way. Banteay Srei was my favorite (also called the "Citadel of the Women") with almost a fairy like quality to the carvings in pink sandstone. We ended the day at Angkor Wat and was in awe of the enormity and complexity of the work. The fact that these were built in the 12th Century is incomprehesible to me; pictures cannot do it justice. Nancy was here 10 years ago when no one was around. The last ten years have brought dramatic change to the area and they now report that the water table is diminishing due to all of the hotels consuming water. If you want to see this, I encourage you to get here before it becomes less accessible or begins to be affected by the underlying geographical changes.