Worn out from walking around all day? Let these fish eat your feet...

This is actually a thing.  Going rate for a foot massage in Siam Reap is about US2.  Caveat:  your "masseuses" will be dozens/hundreds of guppy-sized fish nibbling away at the dead/dying skin on your feet and ankles.  As you can tell from above, it's a disconcerting concept to those who have not seen or done this before - like these intrepid Aussies.  Below is my experience.

Despite how uncomfortable I sound, I kept my feet in for the full 15 minutes.  Once the discomfort with how strange the situation is has passed, the effect of the fish actually becomes soothing.  If you're ever in Cambodia (or a strange parlor in the heart of Chinatown), give it a shot.  You'll be creeped out to the point where all the other weird sh*t around you will seem normal.

P.S.  My feet, post-temple-tour and clothed by my one pair of stinky hiking boots and one of my two pair of wool socks that I've worn every day in southeast asia, have to be among the grossest these fish have encountered.  At least a few floated to water's surface after a few bites of my fascia.  

What'd you like most about these timeless and priceless temples? BOOBIES!!

My borrowed tour guide, in describing the carefully crafted bas-reliefs on the walls of the Angkor temples, explains that the oils in human hands can alter and even stain the coloration of the sandstone from which the temples are carved.  Above, we can see where people have decided to "get a good feel" for the temples over the centuries.  I'm not sure how to say "Amen" in Khmer, so just... amen.

Lara Croft, Eat Your Heart Out

Apparently Bayon is where Lara Croft does her thing in one of the Tomb Raider movies.  More relevantly, it's the temple at the center of Angkor Thom, the walled "Great City" which served as the capital of Angkor in its glory years.  Slightly less publicized (and therefore slightly less crowded) than Angkor Wat, Bayon captures all the mystery of the Khmer civilizations.  The eerie giant faces, carved in the image of King Jayavaraman (the second dude to preside over the temple-cities at Angkor), seem poised to come to life at a moment's notice - with plenty of help from the Japanese government, which is largely responsible for the lion's share of immaculate restorations of the temples.

A depiction of a temple, pre- and post- Japanese restoration

Our traveler candidly enjoying some Cambodian sun at Bayon

Angkor Thom (and specifically Bayon) is also where I feel the most intense combination of awe and inspiration; as I would discover, the remainder of the temples would form a sort of orderly denouement for my journey through the temples, dotted with a few highlights.  However, for all I wanted to, I could not shed my own nagging acknowledgment that the Hindu-cum-Buddhist temples were to me, rather than a world-shatteringly unique homage to mysterious and mighty Gods, instead an inverted tribute to the ingenuity and perseverance of the men who made them.

At this temple:

I try to focus on the the fact my donation of US5 in exchange for a red cloth bracelet [edit:  in Thailand, a Buddhist friend tells me my bracelet means I am married] will go a long way to feed/clothe the women tying it for me, as opposed to the fact that they cunningly asked me for my donation AFTER giving me the bracelet, reminding me of the all-too-familiar feeling of being taken for a ride here in East Asia.  I assure myself that the breadth and depth of poverty in Cambodia is so great that any tourist dollar, regardless of whether it is spent generously, shrewdly, or recklessly, is needed.  Whether this is accurate or just a rationalization is something I can't afford to contemplate for the sake of my sanity.  

A couple highlights from the remainder of the day:

• Running into some fellow Georgetown Hoyas in Ta Prohm, identifiable by their JT3 game-day t-shirts; they're on vacation, after doing their final semester of Biz school in Saigon
• A dramatic separation and reunion with my tuk-tuk guide, Mr. Bora outside of Ta Prohm
• 2 bungled attempts by non-commissioned tour-guides (read: 13-year-old kids) to get me to sneak off the trails and get a "behind the scenes" tour of some temples.  Whether they were trying to get me alone for some sort of mugging, or they were legitimately trying to cut their teeth on the tour-guide circuit, they were not very good.  Thanks anyway.  
• A few more breathtaking photo opportunities:  

Peace be to Ta Prohm

Angkor W(h)at?

OK, I didn't get up in time to make my 5am tuk-tuk appointment to head to the temples at sun-up.  I got up at a lazy 6:15 a.m. and, surprisingly enough, there were still 20 tuk-tuk drivers waiting outside my hotel to bring me (and my fellow western tourists) to the temples to catch the tail end of sunrise.  This was something I definitely wanted to do by myself, so I found Mr. Bora, my US15 tuk-tuk guide for the day and took off for the temples.  The temples are a ~10 minute drive northeast from the city, and although Angkor Wat cannot be described in thousands of words, one comes to mind: imposing.  The temple walls almost menacingly overlook the moat that was carved to surround the "temple that is a city," which was apparently designed to be a depiction of the entire world and cosmos (accurately reflecting the ~13th century view of a two-dimensional world surrounded by water).  I learn this and other information from an English-speaking tour guide I'm mooching off of, since I read that this is one of the biggest ripoffs at the temples.

One trend I am tickled to learn was not bucked by Angkor Wat: epic religious monuments, the world over, are unconditionally co-opted by the ruling religion du jour.  Angkor Wat, being no exception, was a Hindu temple at its inception, then ultimately appropriated by Buddhism.  While I marvel at the impeccable detail of the bas-reliefs depicting the early Hindu epics of Vishnu's battle versus the "asuras" (demons, as far as I can gather from my "borrowed" guide and my 2US black-market reprint of a Lonely Planet guidebook), on account of the relentless crowds I feel very little sense of peace or holiness at Angkor Wat.  I hope for some more peace at the other temples, and hop back in my tuk-tuk with Mr. Bora.  A few more pics, courtesy of yours truly:

    

Thank Vishnu there are no trains in Cambodia

Only buses.  Crappy ones.  And it was impossible to get on the overnight bus to Siam Reap (the city adjacent the temples at Angkor), since there are only two companies in town that travel to Siam Reap after 1pm.  So I had to wait overnight and take the next day's bus (a twelve person minivan whose trunk fell open and spilled everyone's bags as it pulled away from my hotel).  At least the tour guide coincidentally sitting next to me spoke a little English, and pointed out a few things to me, like the crops burning in the fields to clean them before the next season, or the massive townhouses outside of Siam Reap, which the guide claimed were owned by people making money off of Western investment into the tourism industry in Siam Reap.  I arrived at the New Angkorland hotel after sundown, and called to set up a tuk tuk ride for a dawn trek to the temples.  Angkor Wat tomorrow morning.  

This Damn Monkey Slapped Me in the Arm

So Wat Phnom ("Mountain Temple") and its surrounding park are pretty breathtaking.  The temple (right) is one of the tallest structures in the relatively low-lying city, and its hilltop placement means it overlooks most of the city from its northern vista.  The temple itself is in the spirit of the rest of the capital city - definitively Buddhist, but with some sense of context of country.  The most notable part of the park to me is the landscape over which the temple looks:  the giant clock built into the ground is the recumbent centerpiece of a sort of open-air zoo.  I was distracted from the elephant-feeding station (US2 for a bushel of bananas to feed them) by the bevy of monkeys running freely about the park.  I saddled up next to a group of monks feeding a family of monkeys (I tried to come up with a clever pun for this scenario, but decided the sentence was funny enough on its own);  the above picture was taken with "mama monkey" before I got a little too close to her little one (below).  Once I snapped a pic of her baby, she sized me up for a brief moment, showed her teeth, and quickly slapped me on my uncovered forearm - and bear in mind, this uncovered forearm had just spent the day in the deadly Cambodian sun, unprotected.  Needless to say I was in some pain, and my stream of expletives translated well enough to scare off the monkeys, the monks, and just about anyone else near me in the park.  Touche, monkey.  Next time I'll admire the cuteness of your progeny from afar.

     

Mike Eats Ice Cream; Gives It the Thumbs Up

Unfortuately, I think my thumb got in the way here. 

[Edit: I lost the original of this picture, and had to retake it with a copy I found online, hence the grainy appearance.  The original thought, though, I assure you was knee-jerk.]