Bang Melea

Bang Melea was a drive out of town...many times I wished we didn't have a van--it made it hard to stop suddenly to see something quickly--but on this day I was not complaining. We took a back (dirt) road that rivaled Tanzania in parts--great to see farms and the stilted houses, the families working the rice fields, the oxen and carts that haven't changed in hundreds of years.

The temple has collapsed and I dearly hope it doesn't get rebuilt. If you have children that resemble mountain goats, no problem, because it requires climbing over enormous blocks of stone and wedging yourself through tiny passages. If you are less nimble, you’d have to go around the outside. If you've seen the tiger movie Two Brothers you would recognize the temple from the opening scenes before the cubs are captured. If you haven't seen it, you should, it's beautiful movie. They built a very nice walkway through part of the site that made part of the adventure a little easier.

The trees are doing their best to reclaim the land for their own.

With all the rubble, it's wasy to forget how precise the construction was. Even here, the perfect angles, the straight lines, the amazing assembly was. No morter.

Nothing like a mediocre beer, with a straw. At least it was icy cold. You can't expect Diet Coke to have infiltrated the pastoral serenity of Cambodia, I guess.

It's hard to find people to set a good example for your children nowadays. Everyone took a turn on the Tarzan vines. I worried we'd be ruining someone else's wonderful picture if we broke it.