shanti and i climbed up to one temple today that was so steep i couldn't believe it was allowed. the stone stairs were about 6 inches wide and slightly slanted downward, getting up was pretty sketchy i had to use my hands to pull myself as i went. of course i didn't think about what that meant to go back down. i walked around and saw the views, then started down. and stopped. and for the first time ever i thought i would throw up from a height. the teensy curvy broken stairs didn't inspire a feeling of safety at all. shanti scrambled down like a little mountain goat but her feet are about half the size of mine (or that's how i'm justifying this). i walked to the other side of the temple and those stairs seemed better somehow and i crawled back down. slowly. like a giant wuss.
its amazing what's legal in third world countries. and that you don't hear news reports of people tumbling off ruins to a bloody broken death. i can't imagine it hasn't happened.
sol was with pablo so shanti and i wandered through the ground floor corridors and found a small toothless man beckoning us to walk through a tiny opening in the walls. i think we were in preah kahn but i'm not sure any more. most of the openings had rocks tumbled down and blocking them but the one he wanted us to go through was open so we went, he didn't speak any english so we couldn't tell what he wanted us to see. a couple small passages and we found an alter with a statue and it was beautiful. i gave a dollar and we were given incense and allowed to make our prayer and eventually got the man to understand that we wanted our picture taken there. with acres and acres of ruins i can't imagine how many secret alcoves are hiding.
sambo took us to a couple more temples but by this time it was outrageously hot and sol was starting to have a hard time, instead of exploring we stopped for pictures and kept moving. on the way home we found a big family of monkeys and that was maybe the highlite of sol's morning. they were on the side of the road and playing and so happy to see us. they loved shanti's skirt and wanted to climb her and pablo had to run around shooing them away. they seemed fun but who knows if they actually wanted to eat us. sambo said they only bite sometimes.
we went back home for the usual late morning swim and hide from the sun. we went to lunch at a great vegetarian restaurant (i've been finding so many pumpkin curry variations here i may never be happy with regular food again). shanti and i went for yet another foot massage, an hour this time, best six bucks ever, and did some shopping in the markets.
and then it went to hell. shanti and pablo were so sick the rest of the nite. i took sol to play for an hour or 2 so they could vomit in peace.
i feel great. i'm sitting on the balcony of the hotel drinking khmer palm wine and listening to a domestic in arabic? yiddish? i have no idea. i feel bad that i feel so good and they're so miserable. hopefully they'll puke it all out tonite because we are driving to bangkok in the morning and that could possibly be the worst 6 hours in their recent memory.
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| angry monkey |
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