I am writing news for several days. We spent Feb 24th and 25th in Siem Reap and the Angkor Wat temples. Our tour guide was a nervous fellow Chenla who spoke barely comprehensible English with the theory that if he said it 10 times loud something would stick. Our driver was a young funny guy with "cheeky street kid written all over him. He loved to make jokes and spoke fairly good English.

Angkor Wat is a bunch of temple complexes all in the same general area, but too far from each other to walk. The first morning we visited Bayon, which is the one with the famous carved faces and the bas relief walls. You can climb all over the temples, on fairly precarious steps. In the afternoon we went to Angkor Wat the big complex with the five spires.

That evening we climbed up a big hill and to the top of a temple and watched a beautiful sunset, along with several thousand other tourists. After that we went to a open air buffet resturant and watched a dancing show. The show was good, and the food was Cambodian Kings table..

The next morning we got up at 5am to watch the sunrise, but it was cloudy so we could have slept in. On the way that morning about 530 we went past the Angkor childrens hospital and there were parents with sick children lined up for a least a block to see the doctor. We complain about 30 min in an AC waiting room...

The area around Siem Reap is extremely dry with this being the third month of the dry season and no rain. The people in the country side live in extreme poverty in thatched shacks.

The second day we went to several smaller temples and the big one that was used to film "tomb raiders" with Angelina Jolie. It is big news there and they are proud that their temple is in an international film. That afternoon we went to a cultural village and watched a bunch of differnent dances which was fun.

We flew back to Saigon on the eve of the 25th and then on to Nha Trang on the morning of the 26th they use the old Cam Rahn airbase from the was as their airport. Our guide here is "Bill" the bullshitter, he said my
Vietnamese name is too hard to remember so you can call me Bill, like Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. We got in the car and he started singing "O Carol" the song from the 60's. He is 24 yrs old. Our driver has a brand new Mitsubish and thinks he is an Indy driver. Today was very stormy and cloudy but we went on our island trip anyhow since it isn't cold, at least not to us. The sea was very rough but I had taken my Dramamine so all was well.Too bad they don't make a dramamine for fear!!!! I counted the life jackets and there were 20 with only 5 on the boat, us and two drivers so I figured we each could stay afloat with 4.

We went out to some islands in the South China Sea to an aquarium, fed some turtles and then went on to another island and went swimming. The water was crystal clear in the bay. Then we went to a fishing village for lunch where we chose our own fish from a net. They took it to the resturant to cook it for us. The cook said "What should I do with the head? I wanted to say "the garbage" when he suggested fish head soup... It was acturally very good.. Len even ate two bowls.. They cooked our fish in foil and it was the best meal we have had since getting here.

This afternoon we walked down to the central market, a large area of stalls where the locals shop for everything from food to shoes.

We fly to Hoi An tomorrow..