Angkor

When booking my bus ticket from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap the ticket seller asked me if I had accommodation yet there and I said "no." He told me that he could arrange free transport to a recommended guesthouse and that the moto driver would be holding a sign with my name on it at the bus station. Immature thoughts flooded my brain and the temptation to have some fun with the moto driver was too much to resist.

The town of Siem Reap primarily serves as the base for visiting the famous Angkor Temples. Angkor Wat was the most stunning and somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to view the 5:30am sunrise at it. The Angkor Wat temple is the largest religious building in the world, yada, yada, yada... To put the temples in more understandable layman's terms, its where they filmed Tomb Raider. Was able to take some good pics of the various temple sites, which I will try and upload today for parties interested. Sadly, the best pic of the day was not captured by me. At one site, I was easily coerced into standing with a group of about 50 Asian tourists for a picture. Gladly used as there token Westerner. But the weirdest part was the Buddhist monk who insisted on holding my hand in the picture. I would like to think he was just recognizing the awesome aura radiating from me, although I suspect it was his attempt to cast out the devil he saw lurking within. Hopefully the former.

The town of Siem Reap itself has been quite easy to get used to. On this whole trip, the cheapest accommodation has been found here for $1 a night. This leaves room in the budget to participate in things like having the dead skin on my feet and legs eaten off by fish. Yes, you heard right. There was a pool of fish in town where they charge you to stick your feet in. A bizarre but amazingly refreshing experience. I am mail-ordering 500 of these fish back home so everyone can do it. Keeping regular goldfish never has felt so foolish as now, knowing what these fishies can do. The proprietor even told me the secret to his success: starve the fish. Genius!

Life became random yesterday, almost to the point where I felt like in the Truman Show. In a period of a couple hours I ran into 3 groups of people all mentioned on the blog in one way or another in the last 6 months. One group was Trilby and Emma, of the Wanton Pub Crawl in Hoi An, Vietnam. Another, and really not as random was the Brit and Canadian couple who taught English with me back in Laos, and most bizarrely, ran into one of the Americans I crossed into Israel with 6 months back. I have been looking for fake clouds and cameras in the "sky" ever since.

Busing on over to Thailand tomorrow morning. Will be seeing the bright lights of Bangkok by tomorrow night if all goes well.

Yours,
Mr. Huginkiss