and this is what you write, an hour after eating 3/4 of a "Happy Herb" pizza, with your hair soaked but your heart beating softly

The rain has a way of disarming people, maybe it really puts us all in the same place.
I am going to miss this land, its glorious temples, but mostly, the spirit of its people.
I will be glad to be “home”, but I will miss them and I wish I could have truly known them.


Tonight is my last night in Siem Reap. Tomorrow, after the rooster will assuredly awaken me at 5 AM (a family lives beside the riverside hotel I’m at, and they own at least one rooster, several chickens, a chill dog and let us not forget, a pen of loud pigs that like to fight or pout after midnight) like my first morning here, I am taking an early morning bus to Phnom Penh. I have inquired and heard that the road there is paved and much better than the one to Poipet.

It has been raining profusely the past three hours. It began for me when I was at Prean Thah (I believe; there are so many of them), the last temple that I visited today. It was remarkable how beautiful the crumbling, decaying, mossy-gray temples truly fit in the scheme of its surrounding lush forest, once the sky darkened and the rains brought life to the open hallways of the temple. I put my poncho on but kept the hood off since I wanted the rains to wash all over my eyes, my face.

Once I passed a bridge to the temple, by now potched up with big, growing puddles, I came to a dusty clearing typical of any big site here, where lines of wooden shacks hawk and sell water (much needed in this heat!), paintings of all that is Angkor, souvenirs, and fresh coconut or other yummy fruit juices. Even in the heavy downpour, one of the young Khmer girls, the ones constantly trying to sell you a ream of postcards or bracelets, was still out in the open, past the shacks, beneath some huge trees, sad-eyed but still pitching her goods. It was a sad moment.

So back in town, the curbs are just absolutely flooded to ankle-deep, muddy brown water. I only got splashed once, and not badly, by a cart that drove along it. It was refreshing to run and balance on the curbs and skip across the sidewalk and road (not always clear because of the absence of one, and you can guess which one) in my best attempt to avoid a puddle or a muddy spill. I think some of the Khmers, sitting beside their shops or inside their garage size homes, thought it was funny that a "tourist" (come on, we're all tourists) had decided to hoof it, hood off, instead of wisely taking a hooded tuk-tuk home.

If only they knew.