Close but not quite Dept.

Benny's guess at one of my drawings during Pictionary:

"Testicle fruit"

kinda...it was kiwi fruit

This shit is old dept

I spent CNY in Siem Reap, Cambodia. This is where Angkor Wat and surrounding attractions are. It's about 300km northwest of the capital, Phnom Penh.

Glad i got off my lazy ass to go. Or rather, I'm glad i made like a madman from a meeting in London to catch the only flight that could get me onto the connecting flight to Cambodia on time.

The short drive to the hotel took us by Angkor Wat and while it was pretty cool at first to see the silhouette of the huge structure, after a while the feeling was like, "Damn, has this is one-trick pony just blown its load within 15 mins of me getting in?"

But it's so not like that.

Siem Reap, in the northern part of cambodia, is probably the best intro for a first-time visitor to the country . It sets the context for this country. It WAS one of the Indochinese powers in the 12th century, or at least it had a few psycho-ass kings who liked to go pillaging around what is now Thailand, Vietnam and even Malaysia. They also liked to build massive walled cities, knowing little that these monuments to their gods (and themselves) would give their country a means of survival 900 years later. While the walled Angkor Thom capital was built to keep out the Siamese invaders from the west and the muslim Chams to the east, it is helping Cambodia to survive in a completely different way today - through the tourist dollar.

We join a tour with maybe 12 other people, and as we set out, we drive past a construction site with squat blocks rising out of the ground. Pisit, our seriously informed tour guide, says "Now on the right used to be masquerade..... masquerade".

I realise he's saying "mass grave"

Pisit: "In Khmer Rouge regime, this was mini killing fields. Today it is apartment"

Welcome to the 21st century economy, Cambodia. The only thing below the ground on a piece of flat land should be a basement carpark.

Our first stop is Angkor Thom, which is a 9 square kilometre complex built as the capital of king Jayavarman VII in about 1200 AD. It was a living city, but the main attractions are the monuments to the various Khmer kings and the central Bayon temple, which is a surreal forest of two-storey, high four-sided face statues.

It's just jam packed with people...and one thing that surprises me is that it's all access. There are tourists clambering all over the stone temples, and you're free to touch the bas reliefs covering almost every built surface. No one is carting off Buddha heads in their backpacks, but still, all this must be causing massive wear and tear. I wonder how much damage has been done to these buildings in the 21st century alone, with the advent of low cost airlines and the new five-star hotels that have brought mass tourism to the city.

Bayon, the temple in the centre of Angkor Thom. It's not dedicated to one deity, but those of the other states that Jayavarman VII ruled over at the time too. Shiva, Brahma and Buddha are all in the house.

Angkor Wat is almost indescribable. Almost every single surface has a detail on it - a relief, inscription, painting. And it again is an intersection of cultures and faiths. And forget all that, it is just a beautiful structure.

I want to write more but it is taking time to organise my thoughts and collect all the references, cambodia will probably become a developed country by the time i am done.

Go see these important sites before they are roped off or just collapse on a busload of japanese tourists.