I have been remiss in telling my travel stories but the weekend is a good time to pick up where I left off, and with good reason. I just discovered that my birthday week happens to fall on the same week Khmers mourn their dead. How do you figure? The occasion is called Pchum Ben, and this year it allows me a 5 day non-work holiday (including the weekend). There's nowhere I'd rather be exactly, but I'll be damned if I'm spending my birthday at home alone whilst the handful of people I know in Cambodia are off to visit graves and monks in the next-door pagoda start chanting at 4 am.You are guessing correctly. This post has little to do with music. Sorry.
To anyone who cares to know, I am Filipina who is based presently in
Phnom Penh, although my work takes me to neighboring places constantly. One of my trusted moggers, gerekriss, hails from Thailand and works currently in PP; we have yet to meet but it will happen someday. And then of course one of my favorite people, kristiana, lived and worked in Thailand and is a walking travelogue on Angkor (wink wink).
Angkor is the site of what was the golden age of Kampuchea. It was the seat of the ancient Khmer civilization, made up of a string of Buddhist and Hinduist monarchies whose feats in the arts, including architecture, music, dance, and fashion, rival Greece and Rome according to some historians. What I saw personally, when I went for the first time in June, was a universe all its own that I urge everyone to experience at least once. I have had a few moggers leave post comments as well on how they loved their visit to Angkor.
So far I have been to
Bayon,
Baphuon, and the Terrace of the Elephants at the
Angkor Thom complex;
Ta Prohm aka the Tombraider site; and of course,
Angkor Wat. Naturally I went around the hiply laid back town of
Siem Reap, the gateway to Angkor. That's not all, though. I haven't even started to blabber about Vietnam, the hill where I got rained on, the most long-distance dinner I've had this year, and others. All in their own time.
Oh, lookie. A compensatory mp3 at the bottom of the post. Siem Reap / Angkor from PP is 4 to 6 hours by land. This gorgeous track from ambient rockers Labradford's debut is a regular on long drive playlists of mine. That's it then: For Pchum Ben / birthday week, I would most rather be in transit.
Locating MOG account...
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