Just Another Brick in the Wat

Well, here we are on Alison's last night with me in Southeast Asia. Now back at our Guesthouse in Sukhumvit, Bangkok for an early night before our trip to the airport at 2-3AM. Al's headed home to Canada and I'm heading onward to Bali with magnificent Air Asia.

Happy to report the marvelous Angkor Wat lived up to its billing. Although its temples and carvings did not fill me with the same type of desperate awe inspired by the likes of Machu Picchu, Petra, or the Great Wall, it remains a wonderfully epic place to wander and think. A bit eery, as always, pondering another tombstone of an ancient yet advanced civilization - lots of time to reflect on the "what was", the "what might have been", and the impermanence of all things.

After hiring the guide for the first day with Alison, I went back for a second day solo with a hired tuk-tuk driver to see the less crowded temples on the periphery, including a ride up to the landmine museum. One of the more worthwhile museums I have yet visited. It was founded by former child soldier Aki Ra, whose life story is one of the more amazing that you will come across. All the more poignant given the number of victims seen around Cambodia, including the guy I saw on leaving the museum cycling his bicycle with his one remaining leg, crutch across the handlebars. Such a tragic recent history. Out riding through the countryside, seeing the smiling children and the workers in the gorgeously green rice fields, hard not to develop a special affinity for the country that I think will last awhile.

There is a lot to digest from the images seen in Southeast Asia, from the poverty to the simple strangeness in which you find baby squirrels and chicken incubators sold in Bangkok's weekend market. "Same same, but different", as the popular t-shirt sold here says. In a funny way, it is a slogan that reveals more than it seems.

Pictures, which always help better illustrate these ramblings, to be posted once I settle in Bali. Farewell to enigmatic Bangkok. Very happy that on this trip - to quote one of the country music songs on Alison's Ipod - "I've still got a lot of leaving left to do."