Saffron & Blue

There are few things in this world as gratifying and heart warming as the hospitality of a stranger. To be welcomed into someone's home with open arms, and have them treat you like long lost family affirms all the noblest sentiments we harbor about the generous character of the human species. It's easy to look around at the world and see countless reasons to doubt the innate goodness of man, but when someone you barely know takes you in, nurtures you, feeds your body and soul, and asks for nothing in return, you find yourself marveling at the munificence of your fellow man, and their kindness reverberates within you until gratitude spills forth in waves. It's one thing to visit a country and traipse through hotels, but you can't begin to understand the soul of a place until you set foot in someone's home, and taste their food, and sleep under their shelter. It's really an astonishing turn of good fortune that brought me to Saffron & Blue, Ranil de Silva's beach home on Sri Lanka's southwestern coast, but I give thanks for the many blessings bestowed upon us that we had an opportunity to visit this magical place.

It's not quite right to call Ranil a stranger. I've met him several times over the last few years, at a number of work conferences, and we've had a few good conversations as we've gotten to know one another. But our interactions have always been over cocktails or buffet meals organized by the agency, or over e-mail, and while I gladly count Ranil among my friends, our friendship has been framed entirely by work. I don't know much about him beyond what he does, yet he still opened his home to Becky and I, and went out of his way in a number of ways to help make our visit to Sri Lanka magical and memorable.  
Ranil is a man with impeccable taste and a huge heart, who genuinely cares for people and gives of himself authentically. His home is a great reflection of who he is: it's open, airy, filled with treasures gathered from across the world, and everything about it is tasteful and refined.  Of all the many things I take away from our week in Sri Lanka, I think I value our time at Saffron & Blue the highest, because it gives me something to strive towards. Someday I want a home like this, where I can invite friends to visit, and where I can feed them sublime meals, and give them a view of a paradise they didn't even know existed. The few idyllic days we spent in Kosgoda were the perfect end to a marvelous vacation, and we treasured every moment.
I hope someday I can reciprocate Ranil's generosity, but it'll take some time to build a home of this class and caliber. Constructed by noted Sri Lankan architect Channa Daswatte (a protege of Geoffrey Bawa), this house was designed and constructed after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami completely destroyed the previous home on the property. It's open plan is a marvel to behold, and I highly recommend spending some time on the Saffron & Blue website to really get a sense of this place. The staff was solicitous and considerate, they fed us phenomenal meals (the coconut roti in the morning was particularly tasty), and helped us navigate our way to Galle and back for a day.  Becky and I both hope to return to Kosgoda, as Sri Lanka definitely captured our imagination, and we only scraped the surface of the country in a few short days. Maybe next time we'll ask Ranil if we can't spend a few more days in his lovely home. Due to our timing, we only saw a single sunset from his property, but thankfully, we recorded it for posterity. Have a look below. This was our last night in Sri Lanka, and I can't think of a better place to spend it... Thank you Ranil for everything.


  

Baby Turtles

Spent part of the morning at the Kosgoda Turtle Hatchery, a few steps away from the beach house. It's small, but it's amazing place. We got to hold one-day old baby turtles in our hands, as well as big albino turtles. It was a truly wonderful experience. New life is always astonishingly cute, and watching these little guys swim and flop around was a great way to start the day.

Fighting at the Grocery Store

Survived the 6 hour drive from Dabulla to Kosgoda. Our driver proved to be quite the conversationalist, and engaged us on the subject of Buddhism with all the enthusiasm of an evangelist seeking converts. Unprompted, he started telling us about the goals of meditation, and our conversation veered into truly surreal territory when he asked us if we were familiar with the work of Edgar Cayce. I am, in fact, pretty familiar with Edgar Cayce and his life's work, as I'd read a book about him many years ago detailing his astounding exploits under hypnotic trances. Our driver was most impressed. I think the feeling was mutual. The fact that our driver could hold forth authoritatively on the subject of Christian psychics from Kentucky and the nuances of various states of Dhyana was somewhat astonishing for both Becky and myself. I guess that just goes to show you that you can't tell much about someone's depth or education by their station in life. Our driver was quite a scholar in his own way...but his driving still sucked. It's hard to take someone seriously as they offer up a discourse on an enlightenment while they play chicken with tuktuks in opposing lanes. He was quite aggressive in the way he braked around big vehicles, and bypassed smaller ones. On the highway he turned off on the wrong exit, and then decided to fix his mistake by driving in reverse about 1/4 kilometer to get back to the highway. Lordy. We were thankful to get out of the car a few minutes later at the grocery store, to pick up some supplies for the beach house. The following interaction took place in line at the checkout counter:

Becky: I can't deal with this right now.
Fuad: Chill out. We'll be done in a minute.
Becky: (eyes widening into a furious glare) How DARE you tell me to CHILL OUT?!!!
Fuad: (eyes widening) Uhhhh, ok?
Becky: Don't talk to me that way! I can't BELIEVE you just told me to CHILL OUT!
Fuad: (stifling laughter)...um...relax?
Becky: (shrill) DON'T TELL ME TO RELAX!

This little exchange played out over a few minutes, as I slowly came to realize it wasn't really funny and that Becky was actually really mad at me for not taking her seriously. Humor apparently wasn't going to fix it either. Oops. I include this small little incident here on our blog as a little window into our vacation. It's a little of realism that should be included into this document of our 2-week trip. While the pictures might imply that we were blissed out the entire time, we did, in fact, have a few arguments along the way, as couples do. Nothing serious, or lasting, or important, but it would be dishonest to pretend that two people can spend every minute of two weeks together without occasionally getting on each others nerves. In this case, I was apparently insensitive to the fact that my wife was car sick and overheated. I thought she was kidding when she implied "chill out" was some kind of derogatory statement. I mean...it's not like I wouldn't say that to my own mother, or anyone else, for that matter. But at the time, it was exactly the wrong this to say.  It took the rest of our ride, and our arrival at Ranil's phenomenal beach house to fully put that little episode behind us, and before long, we were right back in bliss. Which just goes to show you...sometimes you need to have bumps in the road to really appreciate how smooth the rest of the ride is... Right Becky? Oh, and CHILL OUT! ;-p

Cave Temples at Dambulla

After the long hike up Sigiriya, and an hour spent savoring the summit and its panoramic views, we descended down the rock in a matter of minutes. The way down was fast and easy, because no one was stopping to see the sights and the route was much simpler. It's yet another interesting design aspect of the place: getting to the top is a bit torturous, along twisting routes and around blind corners, but getting down was prompt. The paranoid King Kashyapa set it up so that he could make a quick exit, if needed... Incidentally, here's another version of the history of Sigiriya worth checking out, entitled "Citadel City of the Playboy King"... I offer it up with the disclaimer that you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, and that this version of history is disputed... But then, what version isn't?

After we finally made it back to the base of the rock, we got in our vehicle and were driven to the Cave Temple complex at Dambulla. This is yet another UNESCO World Heritage site, that has been used for meditation dating back to the 1st century BC. There are 5 large caves towards the top of a 160 meter high hill, which was surprisingly hard to climb. Those 1202 steps up Sigiriya caught up to us with a vengeance, and it took us longer than anticipated to laboriously climb the slope up to the caves. Once we were there, we surrendered our shoes at the door, and scampered across some very hot stones until we found ourselves packed into a tiny cave behind a 20-strong Russian tour group. There's nothing quite like seeing a profound space when you're crammed next to oblivious, uncomfortable tourists who are being herded along in a tight pack. Needless to say, the magic and wonder of the Dambulla caves was muted until we leapfrogged the tour group and had a chance to appreciate the splendor of this incredible site in a more private setting. A meditation cave is best appreciated in small numbers.

These caves were stunning, with each one seemingly more impressive than the last. The natural architecture had been embellished and decorated and the rooms were filled with religious statues and paintings, and you got the sense while you were in these spaces that the air was dense with the accumulated intentions and devotions of everyone who had ever spent time there over the course of the centuries. Although most of the paintings are fairly recent (19th century), the caves are still filled with antique Buddhas, Boddhisatva statues, and images from the Hindu epics. Everywhere you look, there's something potent to marvel at, in dim light and wreathed in shadows. The floors were cool on the soles of our feet, and we wandered from room to room taking in the overwhelming unlikeliness of it all. Huge stone statues fill these rooms. The effort and dedication it must have taken to bring these things here, and to paint every inch of available space is beyond admirable. This was yet another place that was hard to wrap our heads around.

I wish we'd come a different day, and had spent more time at Dambulla really appreciating the place. By the time we got to the top, we were a bit tired, a little hungry, and definitely almost overheated. It's tough to fully take in a place that's been a sacred pilgrimage site for 22 centuries when you're not mentally prepared to spend a lot of time there. I can't speak for Becky but I wasn't ready to really soak it all in. I was still high off of Sigiriya. The inner space and contemplative character of the Dambulla caves was a totally different proposition. Don't get me wrong: I loved visiting the caves, and they were incredibly inspiring, and will likely take a long time to really digest and process...but I wish we'd come on a different day, when we could have killed a few more hours at the summit. The views from the top of the hill were amazing, and the place had a really quiet resonance to it that I think we'll remember and carry with us for a long time. Perhaps someday we'll come back. There's a lot more to see in the cultural triangle that we missed this time around, which is a really good reason to make a second trip. Next time, maybe we'll have more time...

For more on the Dambulla Cave Complex, check out this UNESCO link, or their summary write up on Wikipedia.

Sigiriya - the Lion's Rock

I first heard about Sigiriya while hastily flipping through the book "1001 Places to See Before You Die" at an airport bookstore. There were no pictures of it, but the description was enough to pique my interest. It was described as the ancient fortress of a paranoid king, who had built himself an impregnable capital city on the top of an extinct volcano in the very center of Sri Lanka. Hmmmmm.... That sounds like it's worth a visit, yes? It was only later that I saw the pictures, and as impressive and foreboding as they appear, they still do nothing to capture the full insanity and marvelousness of this incredible site. Becky and I spent the better part of our morning climbing Sigiriya's 1202 steps to its stunning summit, and we both realized about halfway up that this was clearly the coolest place either of us have ever been... And we've been to some pretty amazing places...

It's not just the scale of this rock that impresses you. It's not just the ingenious design of the city it housed, with it's highly evolved irrigation systems, it's elaborate defenses, and beautiful pools and gardens. It's not the attention to detail, or the beautiful art, or the city's magnificent grounds that really make you stop and gape. All of those are elements of a larger narrative, and while they're amazing in their own right, they're pieces of a bigger puzzle. What really grips you about the place is the human story behind it, the ambitions and fears of the king who orchestrated its construction, and the stark Shakespearean tragedy that consumed his life. Sigiriya is a monument to madness and paranoia, to murder and ambition, and to the way karma and power balance each other out. We were totally enchanted by it.

So there are multiple myths and legends about how this rock fortress came to be, but the one I like goes like this: around 477 AD, Kashyapa, the bastard son of King Dhatusena, killed his father with the help of some well-placed relatives in the army, and seized control of the kingdom. King Dhatusena's legitimate son Moggallanna fled to India, leaving the new King Kashyapa in full control. The new king was worried that he couldn't defend the traditional capital of Anuradhapura, so he moved his entire kingdom to the barren rock fortress of Sigiriya and built a city around and atop it. He was beset with guilt from killing his father and also feared that his brother would return at the head of an army and depose him. So he dug in, literally, and fortified his position. Unfortunately, even though he commissioned great works at Sigiriya (which translates as "the Lion's Rock", and is meant to honor Lord Buddha), he ultimately committed suicide in battle (or was poisoned by a concubine, depending on which version you believe), and the royal city he constructed was abandoned when Moggallanna returned to reclaim his rightful place on the throne. His brother did not want the fortress on a hill, and gave it to Buddhist monks who turned it into a monastic center, which it remained for hundreds of years. But even though it was a monastery, the frescoes remains, and the place still carried the marks and legacy of King Kashyapa's manic desire to ensconce himself on the highest, safest ground around, where people could only climb up to meet him in single file... 

Legend says that 500 wives joined King Kashyapa on this rock, and he built glorious gardens and pools to house his entourage. He commissioned decorative paintings to be layered on the rock 600 feet above the ground, on narrow ledges, and these paintings have survived against all odds and are considered to be among the world's oldest surviving frescoes. They were painted on foundation walls constructed of egg white, honey, and polished lime. The images are quite stunning, and totally unexpected. You climb a precarious iron spiral staircase that's been welded into the rock to find yourself face to face with large images of ample bosomed women and attendants, in full color garb, scattered across a rock face in such a way that you wonder how people ever managed to get to these high and isolated spots. There's no telling how many people died to paint these images. Indeed, there's no record of how many people died to build this fortress, but it must have been a sizable number....

   

The rock has been altered in countless ways, and every staircase and structure must have required significant manpower. For instance, a huge porcelain "mirror wall" covers one side of the rock, and in its original polished state it was said to be so glossy that the King could see his reflection clearly in it. Now it's been covered with graffiti dating back 1500 years, from travelers and Buddhist monks who came to marvel at the magnificence of this strange and elaborate monastery...

After winding your way around the rock, and up multiple staircases and narrow passes, you find yourself at the ledge before the final summit, which contains the remains of two gigantic Lion's paws. These were excavated at the turn of the 20th century. Apparently in the old days you had to climb stairs through the Lion's mouth to get to the top, but today only the paws remain. They're awesome. The wife and I took some pics... 

The summit has a magnificent view, and reaching it felt like a true accomplishment. I don't climb 1202 steps every day, and beyond the stunning vista you encounter up there, you also find yourself amongst the ruins of King Kashyapa's original city. Swimming pools, stone storehouses, and the foundations for buildings are all in place, and as you climb over each the genius of it all sinks in once again. The place was laid out with meticulous detail, and reminded me of pictures I've seen of Machu Picchu. Like that other city in the sky, Sigiriya holds mysteries that enthrall everyone who climbs its stairs. Cave temples and elaborate royal architectural motifs cover the facades, but there's more here worth digging into. For 1500 years this place has been a center of learning, and the carvings add an otherworldly dimension to the place. I wish pictures could capture it, but the scale and magic of the place is lost in images. You'll just have to go yourself. Go. Do it. And when you've reached the top and gazed in 360 degrees from the very center of Sri Lanka, on the top of a mountain, drop us a line and share what you felt and thought. For the briefest moment, we felt like emperors ourselves, with the lush green forest beneath us and with other ancient cities lurking behind the mountains in the distance. The horizon from the summit was amazing. Some places beggar description. Suffice to say, Sigiriya is worth the flight to Sri Lanka, the 5 hour ride, and the 1 hour climb. If I didn't see anything else in Sri Lanka, this place alone would have made the whole trip worthwhile....

Geoffrey Bawa: Sri Lanka's Greatest Architect

Becky and I spent much of the last two days marveling at the architecture and layout of the Heritance Kandalama, the hotel we stayed at in Dambulla. It was recommended to us by Sri Lankan friends who all testified to the genius of its design, and we were delighted to wander through it, because everywhere you went was picturesque and offered a unique perspective on the beauty of the natural landscape you're a part of. This incredible building was designed by Geoffrey Bawa, one of the most influential Asian architects of the last century, who left a deep legacy on design and architecture in Sri Lanka that the country's residents are quite proud of. I would be too, if I was Sri Lankan. This man was way ahead of his time, and his pioneering "regional modernist" approach was rooted in the idea of "sustainability" long before the word became commonplace. His legacy is deep and expansive, and his biography is really amazing as well. He was trained as a lawyer and didn't start his career as an architect until he was 37 years old, but once he did, he produced a series of stunning creations that remain hugely influential to generations of architects and designers. Below are some of his buildings in Sri Lanka. For more on this man, check out this book or his website, which was set up following his passing in 2003. It was an honor and a privilege to walk through one of his visionary buildings...

Lunuganga Estate, Bawa's country home in Bentota, Sri Lanka

Light House Hotel, Galle, Sri Lanka

Hotel Serendib, Sri Lanka

Artist's rendering of Sri Lanka's National Parliament, created by Geoffrey Bawa

Here's a link to more about Bawa. There's no shortage of sites dedicated to Bawa's legacy worth checking out. His prolific life's work cannot be summarized in something as simple and superficial as a blog post.    

Journey + Adventure = Growth

Truth is...Fuad & I want to start a family so we decided to take a trip that would tide us over until we're ready to travel with kids in tow... In preparing for my April break we compiled a list of dream places and we really took our time before narrowing it down...Cambodia & Sri Lanka won. It doesn't seem practical, does it, to travel to not one, but two countries in different directions from our home in a 2 week time span? We wanted this to be BIG since we may not be taking another trip for awhile (besides our trip home to the States this summer) and one of the reasons we decided to move over here was so we could explore this part of the world.
Once we decided on the locations, Fuad did all of the work. He did the research and found us the coolest places to stay, he booked all the flights, he arranged all of the rides, he pre-ordered our visas. All I had to do was spend a few hours at the Thai Immigration office getting my multi-entry visa and then show up. I'm one lucky lady!

Perhaps some more detail will put this trip in perspective. Here is our insane itinerary:

Flight-Chiang Mai to Bangkok (1 hour)
2 days in Bangkok (hotel) I sightsee, Fuad works
Flight-Bangkok to Siem Reap (45 minutes-FREE for both of us by using air miles)
3 nights hotel, MASSIVE sightseeing around Angkor Wat
Drive (5 hours) from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh (I now know more about Mr. Ly, our driver than I do about people in Thailand I've been working with everyday for 9 months!)
Flight-Phnom Penh to Bangkok (1 hour)
1 night airport hotel (wake up call 3:30 am!)
Flight-Bangkok to Colombo (3 hours) (A promo deal from AirAsia for $35 per person!)
1 night hotel Colombo (FREE from Hilton points-Fuad spends a morning at Leo Burnett Colombo)
Drive (5 hours) from Colombo to Dambulla
2 nights stay at the Heritance Kandalama (1 day relaxing, 1 day spent MASSIVE sightseeing)
Drive (5 hours) to Kosgoda
3 night stay at Saffron and Blue the amazing beach home of Ranil de Silva, Fuad's friend & colleague from Leo Burnett Colombo...which is where I currently type this...lounging on the daybed, with an amazing view of a storm getting ready to roll in, and the beach a stones throw away.  There's a breeze, and the constant sound of the waves crashing...I know I have found paradise and after the last 2 weeks of adventure, I'm ok with simply laying here and enjoying the view.
Tomorrow we will be sightseeing, taking a day trip to Galle, and then we start the return trip home.
Sunday morning early rise...
Drive (2 hours) to Colombo
Flight-Colombo to Bangkok (3 hours)
Flight Bangkok to Chiang Mai (1 hour)
Taxi to pick up Baxter... and then...home.

We have seen the ancient temple ruins of lost Angkor empires in Cambodia, which are impossible to put into words. We honored the souls lost in a genocide that seems greatly overlooked by the world. We climbed a giant rock to an ancient fortress where a paranoid king ruled over his kingdom while hiding from his brother, the legitimate heir to the throne.
We saw ancient paintings that took our breath away.
We climbed to ancient temple caves and together felt the potency of the sacred place. My mind has been blown...and again, I am moved to acknowledge that I am small. Once you have seen & experienced these things, you can never forget & you are never the same.
I realize that this kind of traveling is not for everyone. If you want to lay poolside or on the beach for days on end, this is not that kind of vacation. Don't get me wrong, we like that too! For us, the experience of seeing the world side by side is priceless, it's part of what attracts Fuad & I to each other. Our mutual desire to see the world and the people in it.
The other day at lunch I asked Fuad about this notion I have about people who travel to see the world becoming "adventure seekers", like each experience makes you want more...he knew what I was talking about and reminded me what he wrote just before we left to live in Thailand.

"Well, we want to travel. We tasted enough of the world to have the hunger in us for far horizons, and wanderlust is both a gift and an affliction that spurs people on to increasingly stranger quests for novelty. We dream of a place where the sun comes down strong the whole year round, where the local cuisine is infused with spices that caress and burn the tongue, and where time moves at a leisurely meandering pace. We want to explore, and to reboot and redefine ourselves, seeking out new levels of awareness and understanding amongst new circles of people. Is that so hard to understand?

Becky and I both came to Chicago as different people, innocent in so many ways, untested and raw, and the city broke us down and rebuilt us in its image. We lost parts of ourselves here, and learned who we were in the process. It took us a dozen years of seeking and wandering to find each other, and now that we’ve joined our lives together, we want to remake our maps and plans and start fresh in a different place and see what a new context will do for our love and lives. Everyone deserves a clean slate every now and then, right? F.Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that “there are no second acts in American lives.” Well, that might have been true a century ago, but it’s not true for us, beholding a far different future. There are many acts available to those of us not hemmed in by borders, who teach across tribes, and who are tapped into the mysteries of sound and rhythm… Those second acts just need to be sought out...."

The rest of that blog entry can be found here.
This journey has been one of the most amazing experiences in my life. Each day filled with new adventure...each day a shift in perspective and for me that means I'm growing & therefore living my dream...

The Heritance Kandalama

We booked two nights at the Heritance Kandalama in Dambulla, an award-winning hotel designed by Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka’s finest architect. The entire building is constructed into a huge rock face, and is integrated into the jungle in a completely original way. Monkeys roam the surrounding areas and in the distance, Sigiriya looms. It's an ecological landmark and just astonishing in all respects. More on this amazing space later… Here are some pics of the hotel culled from the web:

The Long Drive North

The drive from Colombo to Dambulla was long and bumpy. 4 ½ hours spent in a private car, jerking down a crowded 2 lane road that wound down hills and around curves through progressively thicker greenery, until the landscape grew wild and untamed. We booked our ride through a tour service provider who scouted us out at the airport and pegged us as an easy mark. Not that we got ripped off, but we did pay a premium for a private car, and while the vehicle was comfortable and air conditioned, Becky and I still shared an uncomfortable moment of realization once we got in the car and realized that our driver had suffused the entire vehicle with his rather pungent body odor. The kind of remarkable BO Jerry Seinfeld once characterized as a formidable entity with a life cycle of its own. Our driver was a nice guy, and he navigated the snarl of traffic on the roads with practiced dexterity, but still, that ride took a lot out of us. The inevitable constant starting and stopping to move around 3-wheelers and trucks did not make for smooth sailing. It didn’t help that the driver had selected a satellite radio station for our listening pleasure that pumped out nonstop soft rock songs, a litany of unforgettable, sickeningly sweet ballads that called to mind the sweaty teenage insecurities of my misspent youth. Richard Marx and Brian Adams. We took it in stride, and found the humor in it. Upon our second listen of “Everything I Do (I do it for you)”, I remarked to Becky that this was the first song I ever slow danced to, in 8^th grade, with a real live flesh and blood girl, with my arms extended out and elbows locked to ensure that our bodies didn’t really touch and our eyes never really met. Becky too, affirmed that she “was way into it” back in the day. Ahhh, we were such children of the early 90’s. In all our innocence we really dug Kevin Costner as a heroic but conflicted Robin Hood, romping around Sherwood Forest with Morgan Freeman as his random black friend, with Christian Slater as his long lost brother from another mother, as they plotted against Alan Rickman as Nottingham’s vile and sleazy sheriff. In our adolescent brains, that somehow seemed like a good movie, and the Brian Adams power ballad at the end wrapped it all up in a nice tidy bow. Ah, the joys of being young and impressionable.

We drove onward into the jungle. Becky slept first, then woke and I started drifting off. I slept fitfully, and was startled awake when our driver slammed on the brakes to avoid crashing into a semi-truck. I opened my groggy eyes to see the car a few inches away from the back of a mack truck. There was a gorgeous magenta sky on our left, as rain drummed down on the windshield and the sun started setting over the mountains to the west. The stunning colors of the picturesque sunset were offset by the fact that the driver had changed radio stations, and was in the process of subjecting us to an interminable playlist of the Backstreet Boys greatest hits. “cause I waaaaaant it thaaaaaat way.” Lordy. Deeper and deeper into the jungle, as darkness set in, listening to a boy band croon some of the worst hits of the last twenty years, and trying to wrap our head around the changing landscape and the shifting light. We arrived at the Heritance Kandalama after about 5 hours, checked in, and started getting acquainted with one of the coolest hotels either of us have ever seen…

Amongst Circles of Admen

When Becky and I decided to spend her Spring Break in Sri Lanka, I immediately contacted by friend Ranil de Silva, the Managing Director of Leo Burnett Colombo, who has insisted ever since we first met that I must come visit his country. Along with soliciting Ranil’s advice for a workable itinerary for spending 6 days in his country, I wanted to ask Ranil if I could visit Leo Burnett Colombo, to meet the people who’ve spent the last few years producing “advertising” like this:

 

So I spent the morning at Leo Burnett Colombo, helping introduce the team there to a tech tool I’ve been charged with rolling out to my agency’s Asia Pacific network. It was a delight to be there, to put faces to names I’ve been emailing for a decade, and to have a nice conversation and dialogue with the team about how I might be able to be of service to a group of people whose work I really like. I do believe in having “a servant’s heart”, and I’ve learned over the years that while some people find gratification in public recognition for their talents, other people are just happy to help someone else look good. I’m of the latter persuasion. I’ve been a point guard, a street team member handing out flyers, a show promoter, and a nameless ad brat, and I’m perfectly happy in the shadows dishing out assists to other people who are striving for glory with every inch of their being. There’s merit to selfless service, in whatever context it manifests, and I’m lucky enough to know that success is almost never an individual accomplishment. Behind all the great success stories we revere, there’s a horde of nameless people laboring in the shadows. Steve Jobs was just the face of Apple, and perhaps a fine embodiment of the company’s spirit. But you could make the case that his design team is responsible for his success, though you’d be hard pressed to name a single person on it…
 It’s such a pleasure to be able to meet people across the world who are passionate about ideas and creativity. I’ve never considered myself an “adman,” yet this business has taken me across the planet and brought incredible, inspiring people into my life as friends and colleagues. I’m not one of these advertising people drinking the Kool Aid, the Don Drapers of my industry who live the job 100% and can’t extricate themselves from their work. For twelve years I’ve tried hard to maintain some distance from my job, to divide up my existence into neat parcels between what I have to do to earn a living and what I do with my own time. That division made sense when I was younger, when it was enforceable, and I was less invested in my employment, but in recent years it’s completely dissolved. The overlap between my days and nights is simply too large. We are what we do. I am still not an adman, but I’ve spent a dozen years working for a department called Creative Exchange, and it suits me perfectly. Ever since I remember, and long before I worked for Leo Burnett, I’ve always been compelled to spread ideas around, to curate good art, and to try and inspire people with things they might not have heard or seen. To get paid to do that is a pretty sweet gig, and the fact that my job also includes world travel is just gravy. I hope to hang onto this job for as long as I can, because it’s taken me a lot of places and brought me into a circle of amazing people. Plus, my job leaves enough room in my life to make my own music, to write my own stories, to hash out my own creativity, and hopefully to raise a family, while still keeping me tapped into a vibrant community of people exploring what communication looks like in the 21st century. I’m completely down with that. Without my job, I wouldn’t be in Sri Lanka right at this moment, staring at a stunning sunset with my hot wife and marveling at the magic of the multiple UNESCO world heritage sights on my itinerary for the next few days. What’s your job done for you lately?

Sunset @ The Galle Face Hotel

After we settled into our room at the Hilton, which overlooked the Colombo Fort and a beautiful stretch of the city’s coastline, we ate a sublime lunch of Kothu Rotti, then took a much needed nap. We planned on spending our first sunset in Sri Lanka at the legendary Galle Face Hotel just a few minutes away. This hotel claims to be “the oldest hotel east of the Suez,” which strikes me as a rather difficult claim to verify. It is, however, indubitably a place of great beauty, and as it’s been open since 1864, it’s an institution renowned all over the world. Famous guests over the years include Richard Nixon, Arthur C Clarke, Roger Moore, and other movie stars and assorted royalty from across the planet. The buildings are stately and the grounds are meticulously manicured. While I wanted to have high tea, Becky was more interested in visiting the hotel’s famous bar called the Veranda, which is perched along the water and offers a magnificent view of the sunset. We sat by the water and had a few drinks (Elephant Ginger Beer is quite delicious), ate some tasty batter-fried prawns, and watched a glorious sunset unfold over the course of an hour. The colors of the sky shifted, the clouds took on gorgeous hues, and the reflections on the water took our breath away. Sunsets are a serious business here in Sri Lanka, and the highly populated west coast offers up some of the best places on earth to watch the sun descending into the distant waters of the west. We spent our first evening in Sri Lanka enchanted and slightly tipsy, and just as the sun disappeared, it began to rain. We gathered our things, paid our bill, and slipped away, with gratitude in our hearts for the opportunity to visit this astonishingly beautiful country.

Rubbing Elbows with Heads of State

Becky and I caught a 6 am flight from Bangkok to Colombo, which arrived in Sri Lanka around 9 am local time. We made it through immigration in a matter of minutes and were soon in a car headed to the Hilton Colombo, for a one night stay which I booked using Hilton Honors points. When you take an epic vacation that includes visits to multiple countries, you have to find ways to make it affordable, and for us that entailed cashing in multiple awards points in various hotels to lower our costs. Our night at the Hilton Colombo was free, and we were delighted, after an abridged night spent at a crappy transit hotel in Bangkok near Suvarnabhumi Airport, to sleep somewhere a little more upscale.

Upon our arrival to the Hilton, it was clear something very strange was going on. A phalanx of security guards and secret service types were crowded near the entrance ramp to the property, and the hotel’s front door was filled with men in uniform wielding machine guns. We got out of the car, and all our luggage was immediately put through a mobile x-ray machine in a truck, before we walked into the hotel to find ourselves standing on a plush red carpet surrounded by even more men in suits and shades looking anxious and skeptical at our rumpled clothing and bleary eyes. Turns out the President of Palestine, Mohammad Abbas was spending two nights at the hotel, and was about to depart for some meetings right at the moment we arrived.

We couldn’t check in until he had exited the premises, so were ushered into some lobby chairs and made to wait until the man himself emerged from the elevator bank, flanked by one of the most formidable entourages I’ve ever seen. They paraded past us and only after they’d left the premises were we allowed up to our room. The whole spectacle was amusing. It’s been awhile since we’ve dealt with a security apparatus of that scale and seriousness. Getting on a plane in Thailand is not like getting on a plane in the USA, and even though Bangkok is sometimes subjected to random terrorist acts, the Thai people are among the least paranoid and most laid back of anyone you’ll find anywhere in the world. Sitting twenty feet away from the President of Palestine, we were scrutinized more in five minutes than I feel like we’ve been in 8 months in Thailand…

This brief little interlude was the second time in a matter of days that we encountered a major political figure. On our first day in Angkor Wat, our tour guide pointed out an article in the local newspaper announcing the imminent arrival of 25,000 Red Shirts, along with former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister, the current Thai Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra. We hadn’t anticipated spending a holiday in the midst of a Thai political rally. The Red Shirts showed up in droves that afternoon, in countless huge tour buses and private vehicles, having driven across the border just a few hours to the west of Siem Reap. They camped out en masse at a particular site, and by the end of our first night in the area, they were everywhere. Red shirts, red flags, and banners with Thaksin’s face printed all over them. Thaksin is currently banned from visiting Thailand, after a 2008 indictment by a Thai court on corruption charges, but apparently he’s on great terms with the Prime Minister of Cambodia, to the point where his political rallies are welcomed by the government of Cambodia. By the time we left Siem Reap, the Red Shirts were everywhere. Becky and I are entirely apolitical in Thailand, as it’s not our place as guests in a country to have or express any opinions on the internal politics of our host nation. Red shirts, yellow shirts, black shirts, farang, we try our best to love everyone who crosses our path. However, it’s hard to think charitable thoughts about 25,000 people dressed identically suddenly overrunning the idyllic temple you were hoping to have to yourself. Lucky for us, we headed out to Phnom Penh before the worst of it, and left the political rallies behind us. The rest of our vacation promises to be fairly quiet, in the isolated mountains of Sri Lanka’s cultural triangle, and later on the beach. Ahhh… The ideal vacation spot in someplace where no human politics can find me, off the beaten path, where I have no bars on my phone nor Wifi on my laptop, and where I can’t respond to work e-mails. Sadly, no such place is on our itinerary. The work never ends, even in paradise. That’s OK. Work paid for this trip to paradise, and we are eternally thankful for everyone and everything our jobs have brought to us.

Brother Number One: the Lessons of Pol Pot

The Killing Fields were hard to walk through. The graves are just grassy indentations in the ground, and without the audio tour and the signs, you'd never know what went down here. On the outskirts of town, far from prying eyes, thousands of innocent people were brought here to be bludgeoned to death. Bullets were expensive, so throats were slit, skulls were smashed with hammers, iron rods, and rusty garden tools, and children were held by their little legs and swung headfirst into trees trunks until their brain matter was scattered across the ground. There's a pall that hangs over this place, as there should be. 2 to 3 million people died under the Khmer Rouge's fanatical 4 year reign of terror in Cambodia, from 1975-1979. Many of the people responsible escaped repercussions for their actions. There were many guilty parties involved in this holocaust, from the top on down, but much of the responsibility lies with the Khmer Rouge's self-proclaimed "Brother Number One," the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea and the architect of the regime's crimes. Pol Pot was a psychopath, and he was at the helm of one of the most brutal revolutions in human history.

Pol Pot casts a deep shadow over Cambodia. Even though he died in exile in China in 1998, his presence is still felt everywhere, and his impact on the lives of all Khmer people is ongoing. In the four days we spent in Cambodia, I don't think I met a single person older than 40, which is a testament to how effective the Khmer Rouge were from 1975-79 in committing one of the worst genocides in history. They killed 25-30% of their country's population in one of the most fanatical attempts at a socialist revolution ever engineered. Upon taking power they proclaimed it "Year Zero", closed the borders of the country, and instituted a radical program intended to create a completely independent and isolated state. They forcibly emptied out Cambodia's cities, confiscated all private property, and executed anyone involved in "free-market activities." They closed schools, abolished currency, forbid communication between family members, and created vast collectivized farms in which they forced the entire population to undertake a massive, completely unrealistic goal to triple Cambodia's rice production. They starved the population, tortured and murdered at will, and destroyed all the institutions of Cambodian culture in an insane attempt to create a classless agrarian communist society. People will be studying the Khmer Rouge for centuries, as one of the most depraved and unconscionable political movements to ever take root in any country on the planet. Pol Pot was forced from power in 1979 after the Vietnamese invaded after a series of provocations, and he and his Khmer leadership fled westward into Thailand. It was 1980 before the world fully began to understand the scope of the Khmer Rouge's crimes, and yet eighteen years later, Pol Pot hadn't faced serious consequences or sanctions for his actions. He died in China in 1998, just as UN trials were getting underway into the Khmer Rouge's crimes against humanity. Pol Pot's legacy is a nation with a traumatized population, no credible economy, severely damaged institutions, and with no foundations for a civil society and no capacity to move forward from this horrific chapter of history. Former Khmer Rouge officials are still in positions of power throughout Cambodia.  There is no resolution in sight, and no means to fix the many problems that plague this war torn nation...

Cambodia's recent history is a glimpse at the worst crimes humanity is capable of. I learned a lot in three days here. It's like peering into the depths of mankind's evils, and realizing that there is no bottom. Where you thought there was a limit is just an infinite abyss. When the bottom falls out of your world, you're forced to build your convictions all over again. I suppose that's one of the reasons why we travel, to be confronted with experiences that forcibly expand our awareness. I've realized here in Cambodia that I have no idea what pain is. Everything I've ever suffered in my life is laughable compared to what these proud people have endured. My life is cake. Pure, unadulterated privilege born from good parenting, a fine genetic heritage, a strong work ethic, and the best education money can buy. Every obstacle I've ever faced has been something I could overcome with hard work or coherent thinking. I've never been irrevocably screwed by the universe. Such a stark realization puts everything in a different perspective, and I am thankful to this country and its people for reminding me of what I should not take for granted. As my mother was fond of reminding me throughout my younger years in Bangladesh, "there but for the grace of God am I..."    I hope Cambodia's warm, generous, and traumatized people can find equilibrium once again, and that they can start to rebuild all the values, ethics, and institutions that make human society livable. They deserve all the opportunities that the rest of us have been given so easily...

My Country Tis Of Thee...

A brief survey of the last four decades of Cambodian history is hard to stomach. The country won its independence in 1953, and enjoyed the briefest decade of prosperity and growth before getting sucked into the maelstrom of the Vietnam War, and four decades later, it still hasn’t emerged from the long shadow cast by that bitter and ruinous conflict. Walking through the Killing Fields amidst mass graves and piles of bones, and hearing the first hand accounts of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge leave you overwhelmed with grief and outrage of the capacity of human beings to have a willful disregard for the worth and value of human life. The recent history of Cambodia offers up a vivid portrait of how imperialism, violence, and dogma destroyed a country and its people. For anyone foolish enough to believe in the myth of a benign superpower, or the concept of a “just war”, they need to read the history of this proud and broken land. I am speaking, of course, of the United States, my own country, and the people who claim it is infallible.

I have recently been called anti-American. It’s a ridiculous accusation that’s come up repeatedly in my adult life, as I’ve spent much of the last decade publicly criticizing the foreign policy of my country, which I’ve believed to be wrongheaded, wasteful, and fundamentally detrimental to the wider health of the global community of nations. That does not make me anti-American. It makes me a student of history, and an American who is concerned, well-informed, and who believes that outspoken and critical dissent is the mark of good citizenship. Such a distinction is usually lost on self-professed patriots who feel that I badmouth the honor of their country, which is beyond reproach. But sadly, no one is above reproach, least of all governments, who are responsible for some of the most heinous crimes imaginable.

The US Government is criminally complicit in the destruction of Cambodia over the last four decades. It started when President Nixon approved the widespread carpet bombing of Cambodia in 1969, resulting in the death of 250,000 Cambodian citizens. This bombing was initially kept secret from the American public, and was not approved by Congress, who ultimately stopped this practice in 1973 when the extent of it was revealed to them. However, in the four years in which it happened, more American bombs had been dropped on the population of Cambodia than all the bombs that had been dropped by all sides during World War II. The reasons for this incessant bombing campaign against a country our government never bothered declaring war against were tied up in the US rationale for the Vietnam War. Apparently it all made good sense to somebody.

In the 1970’s the US supported a coup in Cambodia that triggered a brutal civil war, that lasted for over two decades. The actions of the players in that war cannot be laid at my country’s doorstep, but my government played all sides, armed and equipped multiple factions, and ultimately gave diplomatic recognition to a Khmer Rouge government that was guilty of crimes against humanity. The US embargo on the country triggered a deep famine that claimed the lives of countless Cambodians. Again, all of this is tied up in my government’s questionable rationale behind their choice to wage the Vietnam War.

The list of outrageous US actions in Cambodia is too long to list and document in a single blog spot. It is a chronicle of horrifying depth and stupidity, and the fact that it remains relatively unknown to most Americans is a testament to the obscurity of this country. The Cambodian people are among the poorest on the planet. They did not declare war against the USA, but had the unfortunate distinction of being next door to a country that the US decided to wage war against. Believing that a largely rural, agrarian society of poor farmers is a threat to the national security of the United States is willful paranoia, and is completely unrealistic. It is not un-American to point this out. It is human. When you walk through these killing fields, stare at these mass graves, stare at the children who’ve had their limbs blown off by landmines, and think about the causes of all this, a lot of it has to do with an inability of powerful nations to leave other nations alone. Pol Pot was not created in a vacuum, and he only came to power because of a series of actions that my country helped initiate. I hope and pray we’ve learned the lessons of Vietnam.

I leave you with these thoughts from Mark Twain, who expressed similar sentiments about America's involvement in foreign countries multiple times over the course of his life, throughout which which he was staunchly anti-imperialist. A vocal critic of the US government, this iconic American writer spent much of his life dodging claims that he was 'anti-American.' To which he responded:

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."

And again:

"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death."

Elizabeth Gilbert on Cambodia

If you're a regular reader of this blog you know that Fuad & I have just spent the past 3 days in Cambodia. While traveling abroad for the first time as an expat, I've had some realizations, but I'd like to preface this post by saying...
I don't claim to be a writer (I'll leave that to my husband). I'm just a lady who wants to share her experiences with family & friends and whoever else stumbles upon these Chronicles...I also want to document this process for myself. Next week it'll be 9 months that we've been living in Thailand and when I look back at what I wrote before leaving & upon arrival, I can see my growth...I can also see my frustrations & longings...I've also shared quite a few realizations...

Our visit to Cambodia reminded me of a passage I read about a year ago from Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Committed." This is what she has to say about Cambodia...

"And my trip to Cambodia was...How shall I put this?

Cambodia is not a day at the beach. Cambodia is not even a day at the beach if you happen to be spending a day at an actual beach there. Cambodia is hard. Everything about the place felt hard to me. The landscape is hard, beaten down to within an inch of its life. The history is hard, with genocide lingering in recent memory. The faces of the children are hard. The dogs are hard. The poverty was harder than anything I'd ever seen before. It was like the poverty of rural India, but without the verve of India. It was like the poverty of urban Brazil, but without the flash of Brazil. The was just poverty of the dusty and exhausted variety..."

She goes on to say this about her guide around Angkor Wat...

"I was keenly aware of the fact that I was in the presence of a person who had grown up during one of the most brutal spasms of violence the world has ever witnessed. No Cambodian family was left unaffected by the genocide of the 1970's. Anyone who was not tortured or executed in Cambodia during the Pol Pot years merely starved and suffered. You can safely assume, then, that any Cambodian who is forty years old today lived through an absolute inferno of a childhood. Knowing all this, I found it difficult to generate casual conversation..."

She goes on to describe an experience she had with the children begging...and if you've ever had the deeply saddening experience of a child asking you for money or to buy something so they can eat or go to school...I don't wish that on anyone. It's so hard to say no, yet I do every time. There simply isn't enough to give to every child who needs it, and there's no guarantee to what the money will actually be spent on. This time, the hardest one was a young boy of about 10 who reached his hand through the fence that surrounded the killing fields we visited...It broke my heart to walk by him...

I agree with Elizabeth Gilbert that Cambodia is a deeply scarred and sad place. Honestly, I had forgotten I had read this about Cambodia until I was there...this is a place that has left its mark on me...

Driving from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh

We booked our return flight to Thailand on AirAsia from Phnom Penh, because it was 400 bucks cheaper than flying directly back to Bangkok from Siem Reap. This wrinkle in our travel plans meant that we had to find some way to get from Angkor to Cambodia's capital city, several hundred kilometers to the southeast. Some intrepid travelers go by boat, and others by bus, but we wanted to see a few sights around Phnom Penh and so we splurged on a private car to transport us early Sunday morning halfway across the country. Considering what's left on our two week itinerary, this seemed like a good idea. If we burn out early on some of these smaller travel legs, we won't have the opportunity to really appreciate Sri Lanka next week...

So we negotiated a price for the 5 hour drive with Mr. Hour Lyath (aka Mr.Lee), the charming young father of a newborn son who had spent the weekend driving us around the Angkor temples. He was delighted to make some extra money during the weekend of the Khmer New Year, and arranged to pick us up promptly at 7 am and drive us to Phnom Penh while also taking us on a detour to the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek. It promised to be a long day...

We packed our stuff in Mr. Lee's Toyota Camry and wheeled out of town. For the first 20 miles out of Siem Reap, the roads was smooth, a thanks to the Japanese government who helped build that stretch of the highway with grants and construction expertise. After those 20 miles, the rest of the road was built by

the Cambodian government, and there was a marked difference in the quality of the surface. When your government is incapable of producing quality infrastructure, something is fundamentally wrong...

The ride was eye-opening. You'd think the road between two of the largest cities in the country would be a highway, but the entire 300 km length of it was just two lanes. National Route #6 is just a scrawny road with the occasional yellow line in the middle that no one bothered to pay attention to. No road rules applied, and the entire drive seemed like one extended game of chicken between us and cars and motorcycles hurtling along at us from the opposite direction. At the last possible moment, Mr. Lee would swerve out of the way, but I spent much of the ride wondering if entrusting our lives to Cambodian road rules was a good idea... No lanes, no speed limits, no cops... I tried not to look after awhile and just focused on the landscape passing by....

The country was beautiful. Green horizons, palm trees, and all along the road were tiny ramshackle houses constructed on stilts, with hammocks and motorcycles parked in the shade beneath each home. There was farmland as far as the eye could see, and trees of every shape and size. I've always been of the persuasion that you can't really appreciate what America is until you drive through it, from coast to coast, watching the earth's topography change as you pass from state to state. Cambodia's landscape changed as well as we drove through it, but certain aspects were consistent. There was no concealing the poverty of this country, nor its dysfunction. For all its rich biodiversity and stunning temples, the fact that vast swaths of the

country seem so underdeveloped is an indictment of the nation's leadership. The traumas of rece

nt history still loom over the horizon, and you can see it in every face you encounter. This is a country still struggling to be born anew...

The Ruins of Ancient Civilizations

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." George Orwell

There's so much here in Angkor to contemplate beyond the stunning beauty of the temple ruins. You could spend a lifetime photographing the temples, exploring them, and digging into the rich history surrounding each of these monuments. This entire area feels like it's caught ina time warp, as the past looms over the present and casts a deep shadow overall who live here and anyone lucky enough to wander through these grounds, enthralled with the leavings of a lost civilization. Becky and I leave here deeply grateful for the opportunity to visit this sacred place. It's going totake a long time to process what we've seen here.

As we walked through these stones, and climbed over the rubble, I found myself thinking about time and power, and the desire of ambitious men to leave a legacy behind them, or to even alter the legacy of their predecessors. Reading through our guidebooks, I discovered that one of the reasons so many of these temples are in disarray is because later kings defaced and destroyed some of the temples created by earlier kings. The religion of the Angkor Empire switched back and forth between Hinduism and Buddhism several times, and with each shift, the iconography of past eras was rendered obsolete, so temples were vandalized, stone frescoes were altered with hasty chisels, and huge stone Buddha statues and Vishnu carvings were beheaded by zealous fanatics trying to reaffirm the primacy of their own Gods. I couldn’t believe it. In my mind, the only kind of people who destroy Buddha statues are people like the Taliban, or dogmatic dictators like Joseph Stalin, who tried to purge Soviet Russia of it’s religiosity by destroying ancient churches in the name of thestate. The idea that this happened every few decades or centuries in Angkor was hard to wrap my head around. “Who beheads a Buddha statue?” I asked Becky, after eying a viciously defaced sandstone Buddha… “It’s not their God,” Becky pointed out. “It’s to show that they’ve conquered…”

I’ve rarely seen a more vivid illustration of warring faiths and their consequences than the ruins at Angkor. The uncomfortable overlap of faiths and ideologies contributed to the ultimate demise of the greatest empire Southeast Asia ever saw. I had always assumed that Buddhism and Hinduism lived alongside each other in relative peace, which must be based on my incomplete understanding of how both evolved concurrently in ancient India. I never imagined this kind of intolerance and violence between two faiths that share a common heritage. I suppose I should know better, given the conflicts between the Abrahamic traditions over the millennia… I suppose men have always thought that part of the power of a God is his ability to demean the Gods of others. That calls to mind a famous quote: “you know you’ve made God in your image when he hates all the same people you do.”

These temples are ruins because they were not protected. Subsequent generations considered them to be an affront to their beliefs. They were pillaged by tomb raiders, raided by locals for their wood, ransacked by invading nations, and as the Angkor civilization failed, their monuments succumbed to nature and these sacred spaces eventually became part of the jungle once again. There’s a profound metaphor in there somewhere about the illusory nature of power. It’s worth remembering… Everything ultimately crumbles back to the earth from whence it came…

Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom

After spending the better part of the morning at Ta Prohm, we headed for Angkor Thom, the 10 square km walled city that houses some of the greatest monuments in Cambodia. The city was built by the Angkor Devaraja Jayavarman VII, regarded by historians as the greatest of the "God-Kings" who ruled over the ancient Angkor Empire. He built Ankor Thom around 1200 AD, and filled it with temples, monuments, terraces, and pools. The size of this city is mind-blowing, when you consider that this was constructed prior to the use of machines. Moving this much stone must have required a labor force of millions, including elephants, and the fact that it was all quarried from many miles away and floated down rivers on bamboo rafts makes the whole enterprise even more unlikely. These buildings are the work of men convinced of their own divinity.

Nowhere is this strange narcissism clearer than at the Temple of Bayon, which is the epicenter of Angkor Thom. Bayon is comprised of 54 towers, each of which is crowned by 4 faces, that look down down upon all visitors from various stages of decay. A total of 216 faces gaze out in all directions, each meant to represent various attributes of the Boddhisatva Avalokiteshvara. The temple as a whole is a Buddhist shrine, but it was altered in the years after Jayavarman VII to be a Hindu structure. More on that later. Suffice to say, Bayon is an incredible structure, which looks like huge ruinous pile of old stones from afar, but which slowly reveals hidden dimensions as you enter it and climb its stairs. The place is weird and beautiful and eerie and awesome, all at once. For more about it, check out this link.

Banteay Samre

Our driver suggested we stop at this spot on the way back from Banteay Srei, and we emerged from the car rather unenthusiastically because it was around noon and the sun was just starting to beat down in full force. We found ourselves completely enchanted with this temple, largely because it was quiet and serene and for much of the time we spent there, we were the only ones present. This was built by Suryavarman II around 1140 (the same time as the construction of Angkor Wat), and we had a lot of fun climbing around the place taking yoga pictures. Gorgeous layout, and it's fairly well preserved.

Banteay Srei "Lady Temple"

After spending the early morning wandering through the quiet halls of Angkor Wat, we headed out of the main city to see some of the other cultural artifacts in the area. The pink stone temple of Banreay Srei is 30+ kilometers out of the city, and it's distinctly different from the Angkor temples. It was built by a Brahman, possibly a tutor to the royal lineage, and while scholars debate the date of this, there are historical markings indicating that it was created in 967 AD. It's waaaay ahead of its time, and what's astonishing about this particular temple is the incredibly detailed and intricate stone carvings that adorn the walls and inner areas. This is a small temple, compared to the Angkor monuments, but it's achingly beautiful, and it's referred to around the area as "The lady Temple," because it's believed the intricate stone carvings are the work of women artisans. This Hindu temple was devoted to Shiva. Below are some pictures.

Angkor Wat

I can't find a way to succinctly describe Angkor Wat. We spent the late afternoon of our first day there, under a merciless sun, and then we came back at dawn the next day to see it in all its glory at sunrise. No amount of flowery descriptions could do justice to this temple. It's a mystery and a marvel and something everyone should put on their bucket list. I'm glad to have crossed it off of mine, but I do believe we'll have to return, to delve deeper into this building, and perhaps to try once again to photograph it. On the first day we visited, I found it hugely frustrating to try and take pictures, because the scale of this is lost in pictures, and on my rinky-dink little camera I couldn't find an angle that really felt right. This place is impossible to wrap your head around, on multiple levels.

Constructed around 1152 by the Angkor Devaraja Suryavarman II, this "mother of all temples" was built to honor the Hindu God Vishnu. There are countless unique characteristics of it, and there are details and halls worth exploring that make the place well worth repeated visits. As the world's largest religious structure, it's astonishing that this was constructed in the era in which it was, without machinery to ease the burden on the workers who built it. It took 37 years... It's in better shape than the other Angkor temples...but it stills bears a lot of the marks of the turbulent history of the Angkor empire. Have a look at some of the pictures we took below. They're just a glimpse of what we saw, and this building is an infinitely deep mystery well worth probing...

Ta Prohm - Angkor's "Jungle Temple"

We spent some time plotting out a two day itinerary for our brief stay in Siem Reap. There's no shortage of temples to visit, so we had to parcel out our time and prioritize what we wanted to see. Over the years, there's been a couple of circuits that travelers have developed, to be efficient with their time and visit the temples in an order that makes sense. While those plans looked OK on paper, they didn't really match up with our schedule. We needed to plan our visit to try avoid the huge crowds of people who descended upon Angkor for Khmer New Year, and also to deal with the unbearable heat of the midday sun. Plus, there are some inherent limitations on how much you can really take in on any given day. So we settled on a plan that entailed visiting Ta Prohm, Ankor Tom, and Angor Wat on our first day. On our second day, we'd visit Angkor Wat at dawn, then head out to see Banteay Srei, Banteay Samre, and whatever else we could fit in. While that doesn't sound like a lot on paper, each of those visits entails climbing countless stairs and trekking from one place to the next on foot, which gets tiring really fast when the heat index is past 40 degrees celcius (over 100 degrees fahrenheit). These are some of the world's largest monuments, and seeing them is no small task...

We started the day off at Ta Prohm. This is the famed "jungle temple" of Ankor that was made famous by its use in the movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Angelina Jolie filmed a few scenes here, and as a result, the temple was overrun with tourists taking pictures next to "the tomb raider tree." Although we tried to beat the crowds, there's no avoiding the crush of tourists in Angkor, and while our visit to Ta Prohm was awe inspiring, it was also infuriating. Becky and I both find oblivious, self-involved tourists to be hugely annoying, and Ta Prohm was filled with people stepping on our feet, inadvertently getting in other people's pictures, and trampling through the space with little regard for anyone else around them. It was irritating, but not enough to obscure the magic and mystery of the temple in question. The place is simply stunning.

What make Ta Prohm particularly poignant is the way the jungle has completely overrun the monuments. Giant trees have wrapped their huge root systems around the enormous eroded stones, and where there was once symmetry and order to this temple, there is now a sense that the ambitions of the men who built this have been entirely eclipsed by the laws of nature. This is the jungle's turf, not man's. Originally constructed in 1186 as a buddhist temple, this brooding ruin of a structure is in a unique state of decay. The stones are covered with lichens and the walls are wrapped with creeping vines, and huge trees have grown up in and around the structures, using the stones as building blocks for enormous root systems. Multiple nations are helping to restore parts of this temple, and outside of its main wall there are hundreds of the original structure's huge stones that have been marked for placement in various spots throughout the temple. It is, as our guide put it, "the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle." It's hard to really imagine what this temple could possible look like once it's been restored, since so much of it seems beyond fixing. Trying to describe in words the incredible look and feel of Ta Prohm is an exercise in futility. It's like something out of a fantasy novel... Have a look at a handful of the pictures we took. Everywhere you look there's something camera-worthy, so we spent most of our morning dodging fellow tourists, rolling our eyes at some of the more obnoxious travelers amongst us, and shaking our heads and marveling at the magic of this enchanted place. Some ruins feel tragic, because there's a humanity to their decline that you can't help but feel attached to. Ta Prohm was not like that for us. Life never stopped here. When the humans abandoned it, the trees moved in...