A head cold can be draining, especially when traveling but last night I had eight hours of sleep, I could breathe and I’m feeling much better. We have a slice of toasted bread at our guesthouse before biking to town. It’s just a 15-minute ride to town but it is biking on a very busy road, similar to Hwy 99 in Washington State. Four lanes, no shoulder, and as the side of the road ends, dirt begins. And the beeping. So many vehicles beep at you. I just told myself, “Oh, they’re saying, ‘Hello’”. Okay, it’s a lie but it helped me with the stress of being beeped at regularly as I was biking on the busy road. Then there’s the image in my mind from yesterday. A biking accident involving a car. What we saw was that the driver pulled his car over and ran to the biker who laid unconscious on the street. Six or seven people had gathered to watch but I’m not sure how it ended. Is help on the way? Did the man recover? .I don’t know but it’s a sobering reminder of biking.
Cambodian Sun Dried Clams
We have two other people joining us in the cooking class. Adam, a recently graduated law student from San Francisco who recently passed the bar exam. He’s traveling for six months before starting his new job in SF and Emma. Emma is from Australia but lives in New York City and works for a publishing company. She’s traveling for three more weeks and will go back to New York, quit her job to move back to Brisbane. We leave the restaurant to go to the market to buy a few items for our cooking class and for the market experience. The food, selection, sights, and smells of the market never tire for me. Our cooking class took place on the roof of the restaurant, outside but undercover. Hot but busy and fun. Again, we learned knife skills and tricks of the trade for cooking Cambodian food. I was in charge of the papaya salad, cashew chicken, and banana dessert while Andy prepared fresh spring rolls and chicken-pineapple amok. He put in the time-consuming, hard-work to grind the amok paste with mortar and pistol. I can only imagine it was delicious, too spicy for me even to try. Also, included in our cooking class was mango salad, fried spring rolls, and spicy chicken. A delightful four-hours.
When we got back to the guesthouse, we decided to pay $12 to have a tuk-tuk drive us to the outer circle of temples. We hit a rain squall where our driver had to pull over in the torrential rain and lower the clear vinyl sides of our tuk-tuk. Fortunately, it was a short storm and we drove right thru it.
Today was our last day experiencing the temples. Our driver took us to the three most popular wats in the outer circle. The first temple we climbed on, enjoyed overlooking the landscape and still very much overwhelmed by these massive structures. Our second temple was smaller and it’s sad to say, not as interesting. I think it’s wat overload. Just being honest and real. I want to appreciate each and every moment, take it all in with excitement and enthusiasm and I do love it but it’s nice to just, enjoy. We can’t go back to the driver because to seems too soon, too disrespectful for the feat of this building, so we hang out in the back and enjoy playing cards before going to the tuk-tuk.
It was the third and final wat for the day that got me back into the thrill of it all. Preah Khan Temple, “The Sacred Sword” built-in 1191. King Jayavarman VII a devoted Buddhist dedicated the Preah Khan to his father. In the late 1920’ s work began clearing, cleaning and restoration began. Because of the earlier storm, the rocks here are very slippery and lots of standing water. I was Andy’s comic relief. No falls and loads of fun.
Our last night in Siem Reap included dinner, shopping, Andy found a tee-shirt, snacks for tomorrow’s travel day, and a chatty email via the internet café computer. Good night.
