Abbot and Costello go to Cambodia

Are we going to see a temple now?
A wat.
A what?
A wat.
What what?
Angkor Wat.
Angkor what?
Yea, it's a big buddhist temple.
What is?
Exactly.
Exactly what?
No, Angkor Wat.
What's the name of the temple.
Angkor Wat's the name of the temple.
That what I asked you.  And why are you calling me Angkor.
I'm not calling you Angkor.  I'm calling Wat Angkor.
You're calling who Angkor?
No.  Wat.
What?
Exactly.

I was going to blog about going to Angkor Wat and watching the sunrise over the temple and seeing its reflection in the pool, but I forgot my notebook so here's the quick synopsis:

We woke up at 4 to be at the temples before sunrise.  Angkor Wat is the biggest (just the moat around it is 200m wide!) and best preserved of the dozens of temples in the complex.  It was built in the 1100's and is still in great shape.  We watched the sunrise over it and then went to 7 other temples that morning.

Angkor Thom: the old city housing many of the temples.  At one point 1 million people lives within the wall.  Now the walls are pretty crumpled but the gates are still in tact and have monkeys climbing around on them.

Bayon:  Really cool temple that you could climb all over.  The king who built it ordered the face of one of their gods to be etched into the four sides of all of the 54 spires in the temple, but apparently those faces look more like the king than the god.

Temple of 1000 elephants:  I don't know if there were 1000 but there were a lot carved into what was left standing of the front wall of this temple.

Ta Prohm:  Where parts of Tomb Raider was filmed!  Awesome temple that has been overtaken by the jungle.  The trees have their roots all entangled in the walls and our over 100 ft tall.  I got lost and way off the path that I was supposed to be on which made this temple way cooler than it might have been otherwise.

Other highlight:  A girl selling drinks and painting struck up conversation with me and when I told her I was from the states she began listing all of the states and their capitals!  This was impressive.  Then she started grilling me about state capitals and their largest cities!  Luckily I'm pretty good at geography.  I was so impressed I bought a cocunut from her for 2000 riel = $.50.

I also went for a run in Siem Reap but barely last 2.5 miles as it was hot at 10AM and the exhaust from motorbikes made my lungs burn.  I ran along the river running through the city, which is incredibly dirty: brown, stagnant and filled with trash.  I also (accidentally) ran through a markey along the river selling everything from clothes to fish to TVs.  The market took plpace in front of the people's homes so they had a storefront and behind that was their 1 room home.  This looked very impoverished until I realized many of the houses had TVs and computers in them.  Strange.

In Phnom Penh now.  It's big and dirty and smelly, but has some cool neighborhoods and a semi-clean river that's pretty.  Will detail more later.  Headed to the beach tomorrow for the weekend!