Dear Family and Friends,
Friday, August 3, we checked out the scene with a slow walk of Siem Reap. Our day began with a mid-day room departure, lunch at the Ivy Guest House 2 (where we will stay for all of our time in town at 6 USD per night) 
of an egg BLT on baguette for Martha and fried eggs on luscious French bread toasted with a bit of butter for Dani. The two coffees with milk really made the breakfast, of course, and the entire meal somehow cost us the same as one night’s shelter! Well fed, we walked the streets of Siem Reap for the afternoon.
We walked the riverside, taking photos of the concrete animals in the park: local elephants, a lion, some deer-related critters. Tuk-tuk drivers lounged, waiting for their next day’s fare, but not stressed about the wait. His turn would come again; it was just not now. As foreigners passed by, and there are many white faces near Angkor for it is a sight to be seen, a driver would politely ask if you wanted a ride and usually, with a clear, “No thank you,” would drop the subject. Sometimes, it was their turn, and they would pick up a couple to explore the temples for the day from 10 USD to more than 20 USD for the day, depending on where you venture and how far away it is for the m
otorbike-powered taxi cart. When it rained, the driver would put down the plastic curtain sides of the tuk-tuk and keep driving. If the monsoon rains were bad enough, then he would just pull over and open the side so the tourists could take pictures of the rain swelling the streets and the people driving through the very center of the road, the only space left that would not muddy up your back with red-clay caked street mud. We saw many tuk-tuks sitting along the side of the road, waiting the ten minutes until the heaviest of the downpoars passed.
We have learned that the monsoon rains began two months early this year, which will explain for you all the immensity of rain we’re experiencing: It’s not normal. It’s a lot. The last time Martha was in this part of the world, it rained just about two days that she and Capt’n were running amok. Now is very different, and is having some drastic impacts. As you have seen on the blog, it’s rained for a while almost every day. 
Today, however, we walked, and it rained as we got about a kilometer out of town, approaching the main stretch that goes toward Angkor Wat. We stood under a tree for a while, then turned around, finding a smaller temple along the way to take some first-day photos, and climbing under some brush with our umbrellas to be best-protected from the subsequent downpour. We witnessed great construction to build hotel palaces for future rich visitors, some in the styles of the countries building there—Thailand, France, and Japan with the Khmer people building it by hand.
In the afternoon, we were walking home to Ivy when we encountered Legheng for the first time. This 17-year-old young man has been working to show us the needs of the orphans in this country. We stood in front of his home built with tin walls and he told us over and over again about his work with the orphans through the local Catholic church; now, it i
s tough to get work and he is so thrilled to start high school soon, but that university is almost completely unrealistic at $300 a year; about his aging father of 70 years and his aged mother of 50 years, the latter being the age of retirement here, so the government does not permit her to work. However, 
this is a country with four-year old children selling postcards on the streets, and older ladies selling fruits at the temples. He has a genuine spirit, but too much time in Bangkok has made us suspicious of everyone, and perhaps the language barrier adds to this unease.
We left his street thinking he is just a genuine person, wanting to make his country a better place in the ways that he has been shown. We are hopeful to finding out what we might be able to do longer-term in this country. For the short-term, we agreed that Martha and Dani would perhaps rent bicycles for the day on Saturday and ride through the temples of Angkor Wat with Legheng acting as our guide. However, since Dani was still coughing and sneezing and not breathing well, we told him that we may not be able to ride bikes the next day, that we would meet at 9AM at the latest or not at all.
Walking back to the guest house to refresh before dinner, we eventually found ourselves at the restaurant, Amok, in The Alley, where Martha tried the local favorite, called … amok: savory tid bits covered in a sweet coconut milk and lemongras
s sauce! Martha had amok with prawns while Dani enjoyed a load of veggies over rice. A large water (which we quickly finished to rehydrate) and some vitamin-C rich juices made for a nice night, and helped Dani to feel better by morning time. Yay vitamin C!
Saturday, August 4, we picked up the pace after our arrival and slow walk of Siem Reap from the day before. We rented bicycles for the day from the tour office just a few steps left from the front of Ivy 2 for 2 USD each. They were fly mountain bikes; Martha’s was a Dragon and red and Dani’s was blue. After a big breakfast at the guest house (opposite day as Martha had the two eggs on toast and Dani had the egg BL
T baguette … a total of 4.50 USD, by the way), we took off for our long day’s exercise biking the pathways up to Angkor Wat on our introductory day of touring the Historical Park. Legheng was ready with a huge smile when we arrived at 8:45 AM; he hopped on his ten-speed with a basket in the front and set out at a nice, steady pace to make the 7 KM to the entrance of Angkor towards the grand Angkor Wat, our first stop.
As we parked our bikes, the kids rushed to get to us first, trying to make contact with eyes, remembering your clothes, asking for you to buy from them if you buy at all: books about Angkor and Khmer history, postcards galore, flutes, bracelets, shirts, skirts, tablecloths, all hoping that their turn would come around. It’s the off-school season here, and th
e kids are hard at work at the tourist areas. Martha notes that the four-year old's ability to ask ‘why?’ makes them perfect for this job; they will hound you until you at-the-very-least actually consider who might enjoy a bracelet or a holiday ornament for the tree or window … and do I really have enough postcards yet to help boost the postal system while I’m here, too, with some serious postcard
deliveries (finally?!?)! We've decided to buy from only one child per temple to spread our dollars to as many families as possible. We simply repeat “No, thank you” and Martha learns to look them square in the eyes and tell them firmly so they might listen and move on to a more likely prospect; otherwise, the "how about" and "these are different" will continue in hopes that they will put their fingers on ‘the item’ that you actually want to buy. We are again amazed at the negotiators and skilled saleskids who are now working hard every day to bring home money to feed their family in a country where cash-on-hand is not a daily promise.
Angkor Wat is grand, with the river creating a moat around its outskirts, a long bridge creating an open field for any dry-land combat from the front, a spectacular city wall, and an internal structure dedicated to telling the stories of the Khmer’s triumphs and Hindu roots. The wall that Legheng showed us contained passages from the Indian story of the Ramayana, and Martha and Dani were actually able to tell the young man some of the story as told to us by Sheila at the Grand Palace in Bangkok. The tradition of word-of-mouth storytelling is alive, for sure!
We entered the courtyard where the three internal towers stood above all else. A guard brought out a pair of old long-handle tongs to bang against the wall and get lost tourists to return beyond the string that kept the people from certain areas currently under reconstruction. Legheng had a quick conversation with the man and we retraced a few steps to the side of the temple where peopl
e dared to climb the steps to get a birds-eye view of the immensity of Angkor Wat. It was a little scary getting up there, but we tucked our fingers between the stone bricks of the structure and made out way slowly up the thin steps, edge by edge; Legheng had climbed to the summit several minutes before we did. But the youth beat us to most things throughout the day, always patient with us and quick to share the places where most tourists he'd k
nown before enjoyed: take a photo here along the columns (‘I’ll stand here!’); bang your chest here against this wall, and it echoes, bang it here in the center, and nothing; look here how the tree roots wrap around this carving; this is the song that I sing to the children, “Pick banana, pick pick banana; peel banana, peel peel banana; eat banana, eat eat banana; throw banana, throw throw banana …”.
From Angkor's temple we rode our bikes to the collection of structures in the government buildings and royal palace at Angkor Thom: Bayon with its 54 stone, blissed-out faces representing 54 provinces in Cambodia; Baphuan Temple, which is under reconstruction and only open a short time during the day; the Royal Palace and Phimean Akas Temple, where we climbed to the top and looked out over the 
countryside. We passed monkeys and fed them bananas sold to us by a six-year old; we saw elephants working their day to bring tourists around the park; horses who likewise put in a day’s efforts in carting around the foreigners. We walked on the Terrace of Elephants to see the mighty towers of Prasats Suor Prat.
The group of ruins at the center of the park is separated as the mini-tour. The design of this small collection was great for our first day, giving ample time between biking for a bit and then walking up and down the steps to explore the ruins themselves, many of which had three levels at the very least. And these people were not tall enough to have these steps so darn steep! In Thailand, we learned that tall steps and step-overs in doorways were means of keeping out evil spirits who could only move horizontally, and we figured that these folks took is a step farther in preventing evil’s approach. Many of the steps were in excess of 18-inches tall and only six-inches wide, but random in that the next would be ten-inches tall and ten-inches wide. It made for an amazing work-out of walking, climbing, biking, walking, climbing....
Back on our bikes and through the Eastern gate of Angkor Thom, we next explored Thommanon Temple and Ta Keo. We made our way slowly, safely, and successfully through the primary structures, and Legheng was great at leading the way to give us a nice day’s look. He even took to taking photos of the two of us together as we reached Ta Prohm—one of our favorites for the day because the foreign investment teams who made t
he Angkor territories more visitor-ready were smart enough to leave the mighty example of Nature Getting Its Property Back. The trees, called Dong trees, triumphed over the building’s and surrounding city walls. The roots of the trees stretched down from the tops of ten-foot high walls to the ground beneath and stretched far into the sky, sometimes going so far as to slowly topple the heavy stone walls with decades of growth.
When we had finally made it through Banteay Kdei at the end of the MiniTour, we said our good-byes to Legheng about 4 PM, paid him the 10 USD that we would have paid any guide or tuk-tuk driver for the day, and planned to meet him after 7 PM to see the Beatocello performance, a free offering near the town’s free hospital. Dani’s energies had worn down as she continued to recover from her cold; we needed a bit of time to recoup before attempting the long ride back into town, so we sat by the platform of Sras Srang moat which is the place for wa
tching the sunrise. We had forgotten that the last time we regularly rode bikes was, eh hem, more than a decade ago, but our tush muscles were starting to remind us. So we chilled out for a bit before starting to alternately ride and walk the bikes towards the entrance. Eventually, we wrapped our long-sleeve shirts around the seats for a bit more cushion, but not enough. Locals passed us, asking if our bikes were broken and the occasional tuk-tuk passed to ask if we 
wanted a ride. We kept on past Ta Prohm Kil Temple and around the river towards Angkor Wat once again, until we hit the main entrance road. In pain, we realized that we still had 7 kilometers ride before our cool shower, and one of the passing tuk-tuks happened to ask at just the right moment. He placed our bikes on the ride and drove us to town.The glorious tuk-tuk home with bikes cost us 3 USD. We changed out of our dirty clothes (thank goodness Dani talked Martha into keeping those stain
ed pants from our Chiang Mai hike because they are great to have for trudging through the temples during monsoon) and hiked across town to the hospital to see Beatocello, touted as free cello concert featuring Bach compositions. Dr. Beat Richner, known simply as Dr. Beat, did play one, maybe two, Bach compositions as he explained to all of us the three reasons that the health situation in Cambodia is so dire, why he believes that the West is responsible for the wars of this 
country (referring to the days of the American War [as our Vietnam War is known here] and the following years of Civil War and the Khmer Rouge in this country); the years of refugees huddled together in close-contact in Phnom Penh that has caused an outbreak of tuberculosis; the murder of 700 of the country's 750 doctors who had developed an effective health care system only to have it ripped to bloody shreds at the hands of the Khmer Rouge who closed all hospitals. Dr. Beat was here before the war, and he is still here, working hard to create hospitals up to Western standards, even though the World Health Organizat
ion says the country is too poor and too far behind in technology to handle such a sophisticated system. Yet, it only costs his hospital, which runs on donations and serves the cash-less peoples here as best it can during the current dengue fever crisis … get this … 147 USD per child saved from dengue fever for five and a half days in the hospital!! In America, that would cost us THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS.
We provided a small donation, and are inspired to give blood this week to help out in any small way that we can right now.Exhausted, but happy for the day’s experiences, we lamented over how our tooshes ached over a cool Angkor beer in the guesthouse bar, where we first had a chance to chat with Liz, the Aussie
bartender. She’s lived in town since March and hinted to us where we might find some good, cheap grub, and other tips on prices and such.We will appreciate our tuk-tuk ride tomorrow! Feels great, folks, to be getting in better shape. This may be the best investment we ever could have made
at this time in our lives—here here to healthier!In love and light,
Martha and Dani
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