Cambodia I - Temples

Well this is going to be a photo filled post so bear with me. The temples in Angkor were amazing and without further ado, here they go:

1. Bayon (57 guards at the entrance of the complex, one for each Khmer province)


Bodhisattva faces:


Acting stoopid at the window:


Some more smiley, serene faces:


Garuda face:


Again:


Bayon gallery:


Love the colors on this one:


Warm Buddha


2. Ta Keo


3. Ta Prohm




Windows:


4. Angkor Wat [sunrise - of course it rained]:


5. Banteay Srei - the best decorated one








Curtained window:




Doors are made for Sandra and Doris :))



6. Angkor Wat again:






Apsara (dancer) detail:




7. Sunset




8. Ta Som










9. Artisan center





My friend enjoying the views:


As usual, more pics here.

Huh?

In case you didn't get it, the last line reads just wrong to me

Bali!!

Two days on the beach is about the maximum I can stand so these two days were great! I ran in the first morning and was planning to run a big run the next day as well but! Our own stupidity killed us as we fell asleep on the beach without putting on any sunscreen! This resulted in Marian and I getting ROASTED! As such, I couldn't run on the second day and i could barely swim (only stayed a bit in the water). To kill the boredom I read a great book, Catch-22 but I definitely have to read it again because I know i missed a lot of cool stuff.


We took my friend snorkeling but she wasn't very impressed - snorkeling was "nice" and the fishes were "sort of beautiful" - so after 1 hour of our paid 3 hours (29USD) she called it quits. Alas, different people, different things that makes us tick!

More pics here.

Frustration

There's nothing like a prolonged journey with people you find out you don't really know through the heat, hunger and dust to make you want to yell FUCK OFF at the top of your lungs.

Other than that, Angkor has been great and the temples are really amazing - pics coming soon! Cambodia is poor an fucking expensive. It's frightening to see how much a madmen regime can destroy a country.

Bangkok is as polluted and full of drunk white people as I remember it and this time not even the temples nor the vague memory of Krabi or Railey can wipe the bad taste away.

It's amazing to see how much of a therapeutic effect running can have on me. With all the frustration, doubt and angst that I feel now I think I could run for hours, although I would probably collapse from the pollution.

To say nothing about how much I want to feel my weight on my fingers- if not to climb, perchance to hang! As Shakespeare would have said had he been a climber ...

Of course.

You tell your high-school friend & desk-mate to come over (and it's not really just a come over because she did have to fork hundreds of euros to jet here) because it's nice and it's warm (considering it's the freaking tropics!) and then FINALLY one year on she does come over and what do you know?! It's been raining for four days non stop. I mean give me a fucking break! Just a teensy-weensy break, please?

Actually, I will be getting a break and heading for Thailand and Cambodia (Angkor Wat!) and BALI! in the coming 10 days! This is a well deserved break especially for my fingers because they will get to rest somehow and maybe when i come back they won't hurt like hell when i accidentally bang them against furniture.

As with all breaks from work it could not have come at a worse time because things are hectic here, my boss is leaving exactly after i come back blah blah blah yadi yadi yada ...

Am still considering what to take: juggling balls, gripmaster, book(s). Running shoes? Open question here because i want to run but I think i will be dead from all that walking. My friend is an architect (what do you know, another on the list of meaningful professions that I haven't chosen!) so i bet she will want to see every fucking building there is. It is still a mystery to me how we somehow used to hit it off because she's so not me - she likes dancing for crying out loud! And actually can walk for long distances in heels!

Scary stuff!

Whoever said climbing/mountaineering/deep water soloing/driving blindfolded, etc is scary, should try giving a lecture for the first time in their lives!! Scary shit man!! To see two idiot students talking among themselves while your supervisor is talking, or to see somebody sleep while you are talking and NOT BEING ABLE TO POUNCE ON THEM LIKE THE COUGAR WE KNOW YOU ARE is some scary stuff man!

To know that whatever it is that you are going to present is definitely too much for their under-stimulated undergraduate brains ... Also know that no matter what, there is no way in which you can make a 60 slides lecture more interactive than it already is because you just can't change slides real-time based on the quality/quantity/sleepiness/interest of your untested audience.

To make a long story short, my supervisor made me, I gave the advanced topic lecture, it went better than I thought (see previous paragraphs) and hopefully I won't see those students again except when I will grade their assignments (in which case i wish i had a way of finding out the names of those two talkative idiots muhahahahhaahaha).

Two weeks, one MRT line

Singapore East-West line - Pasir Ris - Simei - ... - Boon Lay - Pioneer - Joo Koon

Last week: from NUS to Boon Lay MRT - a nice 10-11 km route. Jups told me three years ago that this route is fun to run and I can finally agree - you run past the Chinese Gardens and past some lake and greenery. Not that much exhaust gas to be inhaled either, at least at the time I ran it (5pm).

This week: (yesterday) from NUS to Simei MRT - some 25 km or so. I can't really remember any of it, just that I had to take the bus from one side of Orchard road to the other because it was too crowded and un-runnable. I ran through Geylang! At night! Where I saw 1$ mangoes and 1$/kg rambutan, which is much much less expensive than what we get here in the west.

Excuses vs Reasons

Last Saturday I really learned the difference between excuses and reasons. I set out to run 21 km, water, gel, music and all. I ran about 6km only. This is because when I reached INSEAD (running from school), the mother and the father of all thunderstorms started. Actually, it was starting when I left school, but i just shrugged it off and said that no silly rain is going to stop me. When the storm started I was soaked in a matter of seconds. I did not want to waste my run nor did I want to get pneumonia so I did not board a bus nor wait the storm out. So I decided to run home. In terms of stupid decisions I ever took, this one was one of the best.

The rain was sort of ok, as ok as any shit can be when it hits the fan and there's nothing you can do about it. I swallowed as much rain water as I would swallow when in the pool, trying to learn how to swim (ironically, i was still carrying a 500ml water bottle filled with, you got it, WATER).

By the time I reached the bridge over the highway though I turned from being ok to being scared shit. This is because the thunders were very close, and the lightnings where even closer. And i bet you never knew this, but when lightning strikes close, the rain droplets all light up. There is a point on that bridge that is really bare and tall and it really got me running for my life. And thinking: "shit, shit, shit, this is such a stupid way to die". So I was sprinting and squinting my eyes and sprinting (as much as i could given the deluge).

And then I hit a hill and what do you know, if you are going upslope it means all the tons of rain water are going to come down towards you! At this point I was not running but rather trying to jump over all those tons of water.

I made it home in one piece thankfully, with only my ipod and my iphone dying on me. I put them both in a plastic bag filled with rice and the ipod is back. The phone is still in ICU though - and before you ask, yes I wanted to take a picture with the phone so i took it out of its ziploc bag. I am not only hasty but also stupid.

In summary:

excuse = it's drizzling so i don't want to run

reason = it's the big mommy of thunderstorms outside so i don't want to run