The next stop on our "Fallout" tour, Phnom Penh (nahm-pen), is the sole urban center and capitol of Cambodia. A dense assembly of 1950s European architecture surrounded by otherwise unbroken rural expanses. While the Khmer of the jungle are characterized by their laughter and smiles, you would not get the same impression in Phnom Penh. The overall tone is one of despair, dissatisfaction, and dissillusionment. As if they left the jungle for this and realize they can't go back. Its some sort of 'innocence-lost' thing. Perhaps this is what inspired Pol Pot and his comrades to reset the calendar to "Year Zero"

Though we could easily spent the remainder of our days exploring the treasures of the khmer temples, it was time to move on. We were only on a six month tour, after all. Thus we traveled by boat over the largest lake in southeast asia to the capital of Phnom Penh.

Three days of monumental exploration were producing monumental temple fatigue. The third night we said goodbye to randy at the siem reap airstrip and returned to the Siem Reap Angkor Guest House for some R&R. Our fourth day we slept late and hardly left our room, that much time in the sun at that latitude causes some definite solar fatigue, and urban cave-dwellers such as ourselves required a radiation free day. That evening we sat down with our host Sokha, and grilled him on how we could get to some of the really remote sites. He seemed puzzled at our desire to go to so much trouble. We indicated that we very much wanted to get out to Beng Melea. His eyes widened, "Nobody goes out there." "Nobody?" we asked. "Nobody," he insisted, "except the Japanese!"

"Well then tomorrow we will join our brothers from Nippon."

Given the popularity of The Girls of the South, I thought to offer some perspective on the Khmer babes that are an indelible part of the Angkor experience.

REJOICE! another swag of oversized pictures to dominate your available bandwidth: TEMPLES OF ANGKOR DAY III: GODS AND MONSTERS!

actually i am reluctant to reduce the image size at all - the detail on the full resolution pictures is amazing. to reduce them at all seems a disservice.

See for yourself, get your caffeine on and get started now!

and don't ask what "sarcastrated" means - it made perfect sense at 4am

i didn't take many of the 'obvious' photos of the temples, such as "angkor wat reflected in pool of water," because i already took them a year ago. many of last year's angkor shots are up at MediatedMedia.com. It would be easy to return every year, visit the exact same sites, and still be satisfied with discovery each time. It would be just as easy to spend an entire day or week or longer at a single temple, and necessary to really get a grasp of one.

i sat on this a couple more days to add the annotated maps. mostly useful for my own memory i suppose. "Read More" for the full flow.


Update: All images are working now

we are in cambodia. although price fluctuation has stabilized somewhat in the thirteen months since i was last here, internet is still expensive, the lack of any domestic ISP requiring satellite connection.