Day two in Siem Reap

I forgot to mention last night that Siem Reap means "Siam Defeated". Just a little trivia for you so if it comes up as a question on Jeopardy you can look really worldly to your friends and family. It's difficult to remember these things when you're writing your blog at midnight after spending a full day of touring in the hot sun, and the evenings getting hour long massages and drinking pitchers of gin and tonics. But I do what I can.

Today we began again at 8 am with our guide, the correct spelling of her name I found is Vatey (pronounced Wat Tie). First it was off to the Women's Temple, which looked like it could have been from volcanic rock. It had very intricate carvings, the most vivid we had seen yet.

Next stop was the Beng Mealea temple. We walked a long road to enter the temple, which had a huge mahogany tree at the entrance. The mahogany tree is called Beng here. The temple was in ruins from the Khmer Rouge regime. They tried to blow it up. There are land mines all around the area. Someday they'll put the puzzle back together again and restore it. In the meantime, it makes for some very interesting and eerie exploration.

After stopping for lunch at a local restaurant, we continued on for our afternoon visit to the floating villages on a huge lake, which I won't even try to relate the name of. It has too many letters. But the village was a wonder to experience. It was amazing to us all how those people live, out in the middle of the lake, houses lined up one after the other in rows, just like any suburban neighborhood, only with houses make from straw and bamboo, and canoes tied up in front.

We stopped at a Budhist temple with a school attached and stopped to purchase tablets and pencils to give to the children. By the time we were finished with that, it was time to get moving back towards our hotel, since Laura and Beverly had massages scheduled for 6 pm. We had dinner reservations for 7 pm. Everyone was ready to turn in around 9 pm. Tomorrow we have our first day of leisure before leaving for the airport at 4 pm for our flight to Hanoi.