Cambodia

Sorry about waiting two months in between posts. A few people noticed, which made me feel good since it means people have been reading. June just sort of got away from me. I watched a lot (A LOT) of soccer. It was fun being in a country that is soccer-crazy. I know that lots of people in the states were watching too, but here it was on everywhere. And I mean everywhere-in every restaurant, in every bar, on all sorts of big screen televisions all over town (a la Times Square) There's even a small park about a block from my house where they installed a television so that people could come out and watch together. It was pretty fun. We are five hours ahead of South Africa time here, so the earliest games were on at 6:30 p.m. and the latest didn't start until 1:30 a.m. As a result, I spent a lot of the last six weeks sleeping late and being generally tired.

But last week, I finally went on my long-awaited trip to Cambodia. My aunt and uncle met me in the capital of Phnom Penh and we went together by bus to Siem Reap to see the temples of Angkor Wat. Before going, I knew that Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure in the world. And I knew that the site was considered the eighth wonder of the ancient world. But here are some things I didn't know:

• there are three enormous temples: Angkor Wat, Bayon, and Ta Prohm;
• in addition, there are dozens of smaller temples, of which most are bigger than most temples in the world;
• Buddhist monks still use the temples for prayers;
• many of the temples are inside the confines of Angkor Thom, which was the royal city during the area's 12th century heyday
• after the trip, Cambodia and the temples around Siem Reap would move to number 1 on my list of all-time travel experiences.

Now that I'm back in Jakarta, I will do my best to write more frequently. I'll be traveling a little less between now and the end of August because in September I have three big trips planned. I've been here exactly six months. In some ways, I can't believe it's gone so fast and in others, it seems like I've been here forever!

If you want to see all my pictures of the Cambodia trip, you can check them out here.