900,000 slaves, 37 years

On Friday we had the breakfast buffet at Angkor Miracle. Not as nice as the one at Raffles but still pretty awesome. We were the only white folks around. The place was jam packed, like every table taken, by a giant tour group, I am 90% sure from Korea.

A brother from the church in Siem Reap, Phirun, is a tuk-tuk driver and is familiar with the temples, so we hired him to take us around. First you go get a pass to get into the large "park" where all the temples are, $20.

We went to Angkor Tom first (kept sounding like "Uncle Tom" when people said it). It's a large complex of walks, ruins, etc., and at the center is this giant pyramid-shaped building, all stone. Filled with hidden staircases, little tunnels and nooks and so forth. And covered, all over, with intricate carvings. Just beautiful. But jam-packed with people, like a crowded shopping mall, so that kinda took away from it a bit. Greg and I had tour guide envy: we realized that the fellow we hired was a driver but would not be going through the temples with us. Other people had these tan-shirted guides, looking all formal, describing everything. I tried to just eavesdrop. It reminded me of the Simpsons where the kids peek into the civil war park ("Hey, they're learning for free!" "We can use these fake muskets to bludgeon them!")

Next was a temple I forget the name of. it was another pyramid, super-steep, like 65 degrees or so. You basically have to climb up a series of 3 real steep staircases, using hands and feet, to get to the top, where there's an awesome view. This was my favorite, because it was pretty deserted, the climb was exciting and good exercise, and the whole thing was still so beautiful. Greg had best line of the day. When he finally got to the little room at the top he called down to me "Guess what's up here! A Starbucks!".

Next was ??? (forgot the name again). This one was more flat and spread out and had a lot more the feeling of a ruin. The cool thing for this one is that the jungle had overtaken it, and there were trees growing up through and over the rocks. It is really cool to see a tree perched on a ruined temple with the roots snaking down to the ground. I overheard that they shot some of the Tomb Raider movie there, I believe it.

Last was Angkor Wat, the big daddy. We finally found and hired our own guide, he was awesome. This had a lot more the feeling of a single large complex: a moat, a wall inside the moat, a giant walkway inside the wall leading to giant 3-tiered temple with towers, swimming pools, etc. The guide said it took 900,000 slaves 37 years to build it. And if they chipped or wrecked a stone carving, they were killed.

It just boggled the mind. When they did renovations on the SF airport I was just blown away at the scope of the operation, so many people all doing their little job and it is supposed to fit together into a cohesive whole. This is like that to the nth power. What artist designs the plan for the 100-yard wide stone carving of thousands of monkeys battling thousands of demons? How do you put all this together without modern computers, communication, etc.

There are a lot of pushy vendors in the park. Sadly a lot of kids, hawking bracelets and stuff. And they are crafty. One got my name out of me on the way into Angkor Wat. When we came out an hour later there she was, only now it was "Doug, Doug, Doug!!!"

Lunch back at the hotel, bummed around there for a while. We went to pub street for dinner again. I actually ate leftovers for dinner, I had some from the night before and lunch. So yay me being thrifty. Greg got some pizza, it was decent but meh.

The evangelist for the church in Siem Reap met us at dinner and we went and did some shopping and dessert together. Blady is such a cool guy, very mellow and relaxed and friendly. Amazing life too: became a Christian as a student in the Philippines. After just 5 months moved to Cambodia to lead a church there. Later moved to Korea, then back to the Philippines, then back to Cambodia again. He has seem Siem Reap change from a dark muddy backwater to the vacation resort it is today.

He took us to a very very posh hotel (nicer than ours) called Hotel de la Paix, evidently owned by a member of our church in Taiwan. Blady seemed to know everyone there, and he speaks fluent Khmer, so he was very at home. We got some ice cream and sat in the courtyard, alight with torches and fountains, and talked for a bit. And something about him really struck me. I tend to think of evangelists as kind of type-A personalities, very go-go, action, driven, etc. And kind of martyr-y, like I'm not being a good servant of Christ unless I'm pushing myself super hard. Blady was so so far from that. Here he is chilling in this nice hotel in a vacation paradise, where he lives, and he is just totally relaxed. Not to say he's not making sacrifices, and for sure he loves the people here and works hard for them. But he is also genuinely enjoying himself, which is very cool.