Temples, Temples, Temples

We stumbled to the breakfast buffet around 6:15 a.m. and quickly woke up – the food was too good to be ignored. Upstairs in the lobby a few minutes later, bellies happy, we met Kuy Vy, our guide from Sage Insights who was taking us on a tour of the temples.

We started out at Angkor Wat – a one-day pass for $20 got us into all of the temples in Siem Reap. We climbed up through the ruins and descended on the other side into the temple grounds. To our right, a group of three monkeys was having a morning chat, oblivious to passersby. They were only the first “wildlife” we would encounter that day.

Vy was expert at knowing his way around the temples – we went through Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and La Prohm – the latter being the location for the Lara Croft Tomb Raider movies. I won’t try to recap all the history and culture of the temples – way too much, but there are lots of good websites. Just Google any of the temple names.

I’m more than a little squeamish over creepy, crawly things, yet the morning turned out to be full of them. Entering the first passageway, we noticed (what we thought was) a large spider on Vy’s back. We told him so. He said “a really big one?” To us, yes. He turned to look, shrugged, lifted it off his back and placed it gently on the wall where it scurried off.

Later, a lady walks by with a grasshopper on her arm – a grasshopper that might qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records. Kate hurried away from it, but for some reason, this lady decided Charlie should have this grasshopper on his shirt. She walks up and starts trying to deposit it onto him. He said “no, thanks.” Vy and I were watching this from a distance and he told me that many visitors respond like that. But locals are used to it; in fact, they see the insects as food when necessary. He explained – we are a poor country and we can’t be so particular about what eat.

Later, we arrived at La Prohm and I’m admiring the temple from a distance before we go inside when someone slapped me on the back. I turned to see who it was. A small Chinese lady said “sorry, but there was a huge bee on your back.” I screamed. Not because of her slap, that had only made me curious, although for a small person she delivered quite a smack. My scream was elicited by the mention of the bug which had just recently been touching me for pete’s sake. She was with a large group, and my scream brought down the house. They were laughing and pointing. In fact, most of the tourists turned to see what has causing all the commotion. When these things happen early like this, it’s nice. At least my odds of another embarrassing moment are slim and I can enjoy the remainder of the day a bit more secure that I won’t do something that makes me look like a total idiot for perhaps another 24 hours.

We stopped to take photos with the monks – Charlie stood between us at Vy’s instruction as the monks are not allowed to touch women. Then we went off to another great lunch and back to the hotel for the afternoon. We hung out at the pool with our friend, Bun Von, and talked to another tourist, a young Aussie girl who lived and worked in Vietnam and had come over for holiday.

In the evening, Vy arranged dinner for us at Kullen II, a dinner buffet and cultural show. Food was good, and the dancing was beautiful. We had fallen in love with Siem Reap and its people and were looking to more adventures the next day.

Temples

Off to Siem Reap

5:15 a.m. and we are headed to Changi for our flight to Siem Reap via Kuala Lumpur. But first a quick stop at the Amex counter to change our Sing dollars into USD – the currency of choice in Cambodia. The country does have its own monetary unit, the riel, but it has no value on any exchange. We later learned that there were no national banks until about 10 years ago. USD is king. One US dollar is the equivalent of 4,000 riel. Feeling rich with all these 1,000 riel notes – until we realized they’re worth a quarter! On the other hand, a dollar goes a long way in Siem Reap.

After a brief and unappetizing layover in KL, we arrived in Siem Reap around noon. Immigration was easy. All we needed was $20 bucks, an extra passport photo (add $2 if this is missing and they’ll scan the photo from your passport), a valid passport, and a short visa application form – handed it all to the first guy at a long counter. He instructs us to go to the far end. Then 13 – yes, I counted – fellows pass our documents along, supposedly checking something at each point, until it makes it to the last step in the 20-foot production line. This final inspector calls out our name, one at a time, we step forward, he eyeballs us, our photos, us, our photos – finally, he says okay, hands the documents back to us and points us to another check point. Here, after much more looking and stamping, we are in.

Our driver is waiting and whisks us off to Angkor Palace Resort and Spa – we’d found a great deal here through Expedia. It proved to be a good choice, very colonial. We spent the afternoon at the pool and spa – unbelievably great spa at low, low prices. We all three chose the aromatherapy massage, then Kate and I steamed ourselves silly before a final swim before dinner. We met Bun Von here, the bartender at the swim-up bar, a cheery Cambodian with great English who enjoyed chatting with us almost as much as we enjoyed getting to know him and to learn about his country. We talked about education, food, the world, travel. Having good language skills is a big plus in a place where tourism accounts for a major portion of the employment.

Dinner was on Pub Street and we arrived by tuk-tuk, an open-air cart attached to a motorcycle. It was $3.50 one-way. When we got into town, the driver wanted to take us back at the end of our evening. We said we didn’t know how long we would be and didn’t want to make him wait. He said no problem, and we did see the advantage of having someone to take us home who knew where we had come from. We offered to pay him for the first trip, but he refused. No, pay in full once he delivers us back to the hotel, he said. Okay, off we went.

Pub Street has an abundance of choices so we scouted about for a bit and finally decided on the Cambodian Soup Restaurant which had a good buzz about it. As we placed our order, the waiter became so tickled he could barely contain himself. What could be so funny? We soon found out. Although we had only ordered $28 worth of food, the servings were so large that our table was overflowing and, even with our prodigious eating skills, we were well beyond our depths to put a dent in the feast before us. The $6 pot of Cambodian soup was rich and herby – and large enough to feed a family of four. Add to that pineapple rice, curry, amok, veg, spring rolls – well, you get the picture. Absolutely delicious – like most of the Cambodian food we had. Very fresh, very spicy.

Sure enough, after dinner when we came around the corner to the agreed-upon meeting place, our driver, number 4565, was sitting there waiting, talking to another driver, and quickly jumped up, waving at us. Off we went, tuk-tukking along. Then it was to bed – our guide would be waiting in the lobby for us at 6:30 a.m. for our temple tour.

Siem Reap Photos

Day 1

We’ve just had a beautiful holiday! It started with Kate’s arrival around midnight on Saturday 14 March. On Sunday, our first stop was her favorite food court at Ngee Ann (knee-awn) City, one of the many gigantic malls along Orchard Road. There are dozens of stalls serving all kinds of food – Thai, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Western. It is a feast for all the senses – sorry that pictures can only feed your vision! We sampled a few dishes, but simply ran out of room before we ran out of options. Eating is one of Singapore’s national sports; shopping is the other. After a few hours of such intense work, we were hungry again and headed to Fish and Co for gigantic servings of fish and chips. Then home early and to bed because on Monday we would be in the cab on the way to the airport by 5 a.m. Headed to Siem Reap. More on that next time.

Check out the photos here:

Day 1

Acedia

A friend asked me the other day why so many married women spend so much time badmouthing their spouses. Why? In a word, acedia.

Dubbed the “primary affliction of his time” by Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the word (uh-SEE-dee-uh) comes from the Greek word for indifference, but it goes a bit deeper than that. It is not just a lack of caring, but not caring that you don’t care anymore. Whether it’s about life, your job, your spouse, your family, anything and everything, life in general.

Acedia is the spiritual version of sloth. But that’s not to say it’s characterized by laziness as related to physical activity. Acedia sufferers may be the busiest people you know, restless, agitated, involved in everything. Or they may be paralyzed and lethargic. It works both ways. Either way, there’s no passion. If they are busy all the time, it’s to keep from having to face how empty they feel. Likewise, sluggishness may be the preferred method of ignoring their sense of life’s meaninglessness.

Remember when you were younger and everything thrilled you? The touch of you lover’s hand on your shoulder, the taste of strawberry ice cream, a flock of geese gliding overhead, a full moon shimmering on the ocean. Or when everything was a tragedy? The wrong date or no date for prom. Getting passed over for a promotion. A spat with your spouse.

But as we age, we may seek to control the ride. We turn down every emotion, sacrificing the highs so that we can escape the lows. Taken to the extreme, this becomes acedia. We lose our passion for life. We may realize this, but rather than take responsibility, we blame our circumstances, thinking that if we could just change our job or spouse or family, we could get rid of this empty feeling.

For those whose acedia manifests in an active form, they may have extramarital affairs or be job-hoppers or workaholics, always looking for the perfect fix and changing every variable except the one constant – themselves. For those suffering from the lethargic manifestation of acedia, they complain and criticize. We’ve probably all encountered these people in the workplace – some of us may be those people. In marriage, this may show up as nearly constant verbal sparring.

So I come back to my friend’s question. Why do spouses verbally abuse one another? This is especially uncomfortable when they make it a spectator sport in your presence. They don’t care, and they don’t care that they don’t care. The spark has gone, yet no matter how hard they have tried to kill emotion, as human beings, we long for passion. In its absence, we grasp at anything that helps us realize we are still alive, even when that means attacking, fighting, and destroying those closest to us.

When faced with a life sentence or long incarceration, prisoners may adapt in several ways. Having lost their freedom, they become dependent on the structures of the institution. They may lose the ability to take action on their own and to make good decisions. Because prison can be a dangerous place, they become hyper-vigilant, distrustful and suspicious. In response, they may psychologically distance themselves from others, create a “prison-mask” so that their weaknesses cannot be exposed and exploited. At the same time, they may in turn exploit others, perhaps a response to their feelings of low self-esteem and lack of personal worth.

Hmm…sound familiar? Acedia-sufferers often perceive their marriages and jobs as life sentences, one day the same as the next, death the only way out. Is it surprising then that these same behaviors identified with prison inmates often show up at home and at work? Whether by a prison, a marriage or a corporation, institutionalization can occur and, when it does, it is devastating. The dignity, self-worth and uniqueness of a human being is lost. A modern tragedy rarely noticed.

Self-check moment. Do most of the words coming from your mouth build up or tear down? Is your internal temperature mostly negative or mostly positive? Are you happy or unhappy most of the time? Do you have the power to change yourself or are you just the way you are? Does life – your life – have meaning? Or does existence on planet earth lack any significance?

Your answers to these questions aren’t just philosophical speculation. They are the foundation of your life creating the feelings you feel, the things you do and don’t do, the relationships you have, the love you give and receive, the joy you experience. If your answers no longer work for you, the search for new ones is waiting.

Fun and Games

It’s rainy season here and Singapore storms are bipolar. They can move really fast – one second it’s dry, the next it’s a deluge. No time to run for cover. You will be soaked in the blink of an eye. But at other times, the sky darkens, the thunder rumbles threateningly, but then the storm wears itself out without producing even one drip. Playing chicken with the storms is a favorite island pastime. On the days you lose, you get soggy bread, ruined papers, and really bad hair.

This is always a fun game to observe at the pool. Everyone is having a wonderful time, sunning, reading, splashing. Then the clouds start to gather. The skies are scanned apprehensively and repeatedly, mothers alert to lightning, kids oblivious. We glance around. Is anyone making a move? No one wants to be first. Play it cool. Relax. A rumble of thunder brings us to attention. Is it time? We covertly sneak books, snacks, lotions into the beach bag for a hasty get-away if required. At last, the first weak soul relents, usually a mom who is forgiven because she’s allowed to be over-protective. The rest of us? We won’t be so easily deprived of our weekend respite. Finally, someone caves and packs it in. The rest of us, satisfied not to be the first to break, reluctantly follow suit and seek refuge indoors.

Who says there’s nothing to do in Singapore?

What's for lunch?

Food is top-of-mind right now – I’ve given up soda and meat for Lent. I know, it doesn’t sound that difficult. Just try restricting yourself on anything for 40 days. Suddenly, the cravings kick in. Discipline – good for the soul, right?

Since I’ve been thinking so much about food thought I would share a few local dishes.

First, a bowl of mee siam, brown broth over very thin rice noodles topped with a sliced hard-cooked eggs and spring onions. Yummy! Cost: S$2.80, or US$1.88. Medium spice, just a little fishy/shrimpy.





Next, an Indian feast – one of our favorites.










Stingray. Really meaty fish, more like chicken.







Local favorites – carrot cake here is not what you think! That’s it front right on our table.














And, of course, the local drinks of choice – Tiger beer or coconut juice .

New Dawn

In Geneva, we had lots of visitors. It was fun to know someone was always arriving soon. But guests haven’t been as regular here in Singapore (is that flight over the Pacific so much more daunting than the Atlantic?) so when we saw an announcement in the church bulletin that a group of young adults from the States needed host homes, we signed up immediately.

Kristine and Sarah (far left and far right in photo, respectively), two of the five-member New Dawn team sponsored by the organization Youth Encounter, were delivered to our door by Pastor Nick on Friday evening. To my pleasant surprise, I found out Sarah was a Hoosier (like me) as were two other team members. She hails from Indianapolis. John, the lone male of the group, calls Seymour home. Julia is from the northern part of Indiana, while Jackie and Kristine are from Missouri and Minnesota, respectively.

They’ve been traveling as a team since last August, spending 2008 roaming the States, and now finishing up their one-year commitment here in Asia. It was such fun to have the ladies around the house for the weekend and on Sunday we enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with the entire team. We made our way over to the American Club for burgers and fajitas, not-so-common fare in these parts.

Over the course of a few short days, we talked and laughed and shared life stories. We made cheesy eggs, played Wii, made Miis (even more fun), watched an inspiring movie about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team, sat in the hot tub and shared more of our favorite memories – stories about our hardships, triumphs, loved ones. We all realized how blessed we have been. In spite of illness, injury, accident, broken hearts, disappointments, unexpected losses, and sometimes fear, we share a deep faith that life is precious, God is good, and love and joy abound if we open ourselves up to the possibilities right before us.