After months of anticipation, we finally arrived in Siem Reap, home of the amazing Angkor Wat. We spent the better part of two days exploring two main sights: Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom City.

We didn't know this before we left, but around 1000 years ago, Cambodia was a powerhouse in Southeast Asia. Powerful Hindu god-kings built magnificent cities, conquered areas of Laos, Thailand, and Burma, and duked it out with the Chams in southern Vietnam. From the 7th century to the 13th century, a variety of kings built temples and palaces of tremendous grandeur. The piece de la resistance of these is Angkor Wat. It was the crowning achievement for Cambodia, then the civilization of Angkor. Along with Angkor Wat, we visited what was once believed to be the largest walled city in Angkor, called Angkor Thom, that contained one million citizens and dozens of fabulous temples.

On day one, we arrived in Siem Reap, took a tuk-tuk to our hotel, and made arrangements to hire a guide and tuk-tuk for the following day. Our guide, Nak, met us at the hotel the next morning, and off we went, learning about ancient Angkor. We began at Angkor Wat, stopping to first appreciate the enormous moat (190 meters wide and stretching 1.5 km X 1.3 km around Angkor Wat). We then walked along the naga (mythical serpent) bridge that crossed the moat and eventually led to the first level, where our guide explained the stories carved on the bas reliefs surrounding the walls of the gallery.

We then climbed to the second level. Each corner of the second level contains a domed structure--the third level contains the 55m high center structure. The route to the third level is via a very steep set of steps, made as such to symbolize the high priests reaching their way to heaven. It isn't an easy path, so we had to use particular care on our way up and down (see the Siem Reap photo album).

As if the building itself isn't amazing enough, how it came to be is even more impressive. Each year during the rainy season, the mighty Mekong River is inundated with runoff water, and it swells. When the amount of water exceeds the river's capability to dump it into the South China Sea, the river stops and reverses direction, backing up into a lake in Siem Reap called Tonle Sac. It is via this mechanism that workers hauled huge slabs of sandstone to the Angkor Wat site, 50 km upstream from where they were excavated. It is a combination of incredible feats, one natural and one based on human ingenuity.

After seeing Angkor Wat, we headed to several more sites including Bayon, one of the coolest, and Baphoun, one of the oldest. Both these sites, along with several others we also saw, were situated in the old Angkor capital city of Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom was built after the original Angkor city was sacked by the Burmese. It had a large wall surrounding the entire city, with a moat like Angkor Wat that was filled with crocodiles. At each of the five gates around the city, a column with four heads looms over the entrance, along with a mythical three-headed elephant. Check out the Siem Reap photo album for a picture we took near the elephant.

Bayon in and of itself was almost as impressive as Angkor Wat. It, too, had cool bas reliefs, but it also had 54 tall columns, each with four enormous heads carved into it. When we climbed up to the second gallery, at any one point we could look around and see twelve of the heads looking at us. Cool stuff. We took way too many pictures here, so we only included a couple in the Siem Reap photo album.

We couldn't explore within the Baphoun site because it was being restored, but our guide explained some interesting facts from afar. The French had taken apart the temple in the 1960's to restore it. They numbered each stone and set aside the legend explaining how to put it back together. When the Khmer Rouge won the civil war, they destroyed many ancient artifacts and current documents, including the legend. So, when the civil war ended, the French now had one of the most complicated jigsaw puzzles in history.

We then saw the old Royal Palace, an old temple called Pre Rup, and the Terrace of the Elephants. We wrapped up with Nak and then went to a traditional Khmer dinner consisting of a coconut spicy fish soup and fish baked in banana leaves.

The next day, we met up with Nak again to do a half-day tour of some of the key remaining sites. The day started off interesting, as our tuk-tuk driver informed us that he couldn't take us around due to a family emergency, and then our replacement driver ran out of gas just as we passed through the Angkor Thom east gate. We hung out for around 30 minutes while he siphoned enough gas off another driver to get us to our first site.

We checked out a few more ancient temples, including Ta Keo and Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm is where Angelina Jolie filmed scenes from Tomb Raider. Most of the other sites in Siem Reap have had all remnants from the forest cleared, so the temple could be restored. Here, the trees still have a strangle hold on many of the structures inside the temple. In spots, we could see the roots squeezing through cracks in the stones and patiently pushing the structures apart. We explored this site thoroughly and got some great pics. On the way out, we heard some Khmer music played by landmine victims, and it was really good. We got a movie clip and gave them a donation. I am bummed that I didn't buy a CD. I am a knucklehead.

After our morning exploring, we took the afternoon off to check out the rest of Siem Reap. We made arrangements to meet Nak and his buddies later on for some beers and Khmer snacks. After saying goodbye to Nak, we walked through Bar Street, which has cropped up to serve the plethora of foreigners (read: Westerners) that pass through Siem Reap.

Since we hit the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) in Phnom Penh, we decided to get lunch at the one in Siem Reap as well. We had a Khmer taster platter, and it was really good, including things like duck fritters, sautéed beef with a fried egg, Amok (curried fish), and other tasty vittles.

Later that night, Nak met us at the hotel, and all three of us hopped on his moped to go to the construction site where he and his buddies drink pretty much every night. He got a duck and scallion snack for us (his buddies normally don't bother with food) and a case of beer, and we hung around a table in front of the home one of his buddies is building for his uncle.

The guys gave us a tour of a ridiculously nice house, and then we settled in at a table for drinks. Nak's buddies were clearly on edge, and after I pressed Nak, I learned that guys don't typically hang out with ladies and drink. We spent some time loosening them up and introducing them to that western phenomenon known as "the social," and soon we were laughing a little more.

Bev rode back with Nak and I rode back with "Mr. T" who almost wrecked twice. After kissing the asphalt in praise of solid ground multiple times once we got back at the hotel, Bev and I went to sleep in preparation for an early day exploring a temple further away on our own.

It occurred to me later that perhaps Mr. T was a little too housed to drive a moped with a big Westerner boy on the back, but I think it would have been better to figure that out before I got on the bike. Of course, Mr. T. spoke zero English, so he might have told me and I just couldn't understand him. I am a knucklehead--alive and well, but a knucklehead nonetheless.

The next day, we got a new tuk-tuk driver, assuming he would be better able to keep the gas tank full. Wink wink. We went to the landmine museum, run by a converted former Khmer Rouge child soldier (he started at age three). He made it his life's work to remove landmines from Cambodia, and he started a school where landmine victims can go to get an education. His name is Aki Ra, and his story is amazing, as are the stories of the kids who he has taken under his wing.

We then checked out one of the older temples on site, supposedly built by women due to the amazing detail of the sculptures. We took a long tuk-tuk ride through the countryside to get to the temple, and along the way we observed everyday Cambodian life. It was a nice ride, and the temple was cool, although probably not worth the two hours time we spent getting to and fro.

Before we left, we were hungry, so we stopped for a quick bite. We both got noodle soup, but mine was loaded with little dead ants. As dad says, "how much can they eat?" A sign of how long we have been on the road is the fact that I was just skimming the ants off the top in preparation for eating the soup. Bev looked at me, asked me why in the world I would eat the soup if it had ants in it. She said something like: "We don't eat food with ants in it!" I realized I had no good answer, so we promptly left. I love having a wife. I repeat, I am a knucklehead.

We got back, freshened up, and jumped in a tuk-tuk to go to the airport for our flight to Bangkok to meet our friends from home, Naresh and Jen. We couldn't believe that the time to see them was finally upon us, and we were excited to get back to Bangkok, the city where our Southeast Asian adventure began almost two months ago. Bangkok, here we come (again)!