Posted on December 2nd, 2003 by aj
Sita, a driver from our guest house, invited us to his English school one night. We were the first barang (foreigner) to visit their classroom. The students were all enchanted with Mandy, who’s friendly and knows how to teach. We liked it so much we began going every night. During class, people from the street [...]
Posted on November 29th, 2003 by aj
Khmer opera has everything I’ve always wanted in a performance: Comedy, drama, acrobatics, costumes and good kung fu. The play started with ornate shadow puppetry about two monkey brothers quarreling. When the action got very intense, the monkey brothers were replaced with live acrobats who had a fast and funny monkey style knife fight. The [...]
Posted on November 28th, 2003 by aj
Many days we’d just hang out with the family who owns Sunday Guest House, mostly with Gech, the oldest daughter. Gech is really sharp, loves her job, dresses Japanese and practices origami. Her younger brother is 13, goes to Khmer, Chinese, Japanese and English school and is the best student in each. The father just [...]
Posted on November 27th, 2003 by aj
We woke up early the day before to catch the sunrise at Angkor Wat and stayed up drinking with some Japanese kids. Sleep deprived, we got up before dawn, again, to catch a ride down lake and river from Siem Reap to Phenom Penh. I realized that I had food poisoning about the same time [...]
Posted on November 26th, 2003 by aj
A thousand years ago the Khmer ruled Southeast Asia and Angkor was the seat of their empire. They spent their time feeding the Vietnamese to the crocodiles, stomping on the Siamese and constructing colossal temples filled with beautiful dancers. Things change. The Mongols and then French invaded, the American/Vietnamese war obliterated what little infrastructure there [...]