Prom Rath Wat

Greetings,

I've been sitting down in Siem Reap for a week and it's delightful after the hysterical hustle of Saigon in particular and Vietnam in general. 

I've been exploring Siem Reap on foot, hearing and speaking with a variety of tourists and travelers and settling into the pace and rhythm. I will visit the Angkor Wat site and multitude of 7th-16th C. history, art and spiritual wonders down the road.

An orphan girl at a Christmas party.

Siem Reap population is about 130,000, a far cry from the 8 million in Saigon so you can appreciate the lack of motorcycles, noise and chaos as previously written. There are also 7.99 million fewer hustlers.

Minus small guesthouses and hostels there are approximately 110 hotels and 10,000 beds. Inflated stats say there is a 60% occupancy rate. Tourism is down due to world economics, tighter travel money, and small yet significant regional internal and border troubles. So it goes.

The Angkor National Museum was amazing. An excellent introduction into the Khmer culture. 

Angkor National Museum...

My first Cambodian photography gallery is of Prom Rath Wat, a serene temple complex in Siem Reap. Enjoy.

Metta.

The Mavericks Ride Out of Town

The story winds down. Once and only once there was maverick from Arizona. His name was Johnny Mach 1.

He came from Tombstone, an ancient deserted tourist relic town filled with unemployed actors and weather beaten facades. He believed in the confluence of universal string theories in infinity. 

Johnny was old, senile, tired, washed up, washed down, hung out to dry and known to have a quick trigger haired temper. He was actually a Machiavellian maverick focusing on using brute power and doing immoral things to maintain his power.

His motto was, "Shoot first and ask questions later."

He'd escaped from a nursing home and rode off into the sunset dragging a screaming Bush behind him. "You haven't heard the last of me!" It was his last howdy-doodle dandy. 

Then, one day along life's dusty trail of tears he met The Ice Queen, a maverick named Sarah from the State of Confusion north of the lower 48 as she was proud to tell everyone who bothered to listen to her ranting ways. She lived in an igloo. She was the inarticulate queen of the permafrost tundra and badly needed articulation lessons.

She, like old Johnny, believed in Greed, Fear and their offspring. Because he came from A and she came from A they were together in AA. They were in a long recovery program. They prayed together. At AA meetings they stumbled, stuttered and whipped their flag wrapped nags. They assembled their collective naive stupidity and spewed forth vague verbiage designed to attract insecure and desperate people.

And then, the 4th of November loomed on their immediate horizon. It was bigger than a mushroom cloud and more powerful than a radioactive bolt of lightning illuminating the crumbling empire, the decaying civilization and broken financial capitals. 

"It looks like this is the end of the trail," Johnny cried.

Sarah comforted him. "Now little Johnny, let's not forget the good times we had riding the range, and shifting the cow shit left, right and center. Destiny's a funny little creature, you betcha."

"You gotta point there," said Johnny with a final salute. "An old fart with a young pop tart did ok, I guess."

"Yeah, whatever," Sarah sighed. "I'll be back in the saddle before you can say, 'Drill, baby drill."

"Yeah, the thrill is gone."

Metta.