Bangkok to Rio

Siem Reap, Cambodia is only about 300 km from Bangkok, but it took us a full 12 hours to make the trip, which involved seven different motorized vehicles - subway to taxi to bus to tuk-tuk to golf cart to bus to taxi.

Siem Reap is a dusty, poor Cambodian city with the same population as San Francisco, but people come there for only one reason -- the surrounding jungle is filled with ruins of the great Khmer cities and temples of the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries.

Ignore the green scaffolding and this is pretty much what it looked like a thousand years ago:

For $12 a day, we hired a driver to take us around the ruins.

Not a bad ride.

I don't know why American tourists have such a bad reputation; really, I don't.

In the brief period when we weren't eating (previously documented) or fighting through crowds of Thai teenyboppers in the mall (sadly undocumented), we saw some of Bangkok's amazing Buddhist temples and monuments.

The most impressive was the reclining Buddha:

Half the length of a football field, the Buddha is plated in gold except for the bottom of his feet, which are covered in mother-of-pearl inlays.

Alms bowls in the temple

The King of Thailand is incredibly popular. His official royal color is yellow. Every Monday, everyone in Thailand shows their support for His Majesty by color-coordinating. We had to use some spy tactics to get this photo -- they never suspected a thing.

A new friend.