Finally after staying and working in Cambodia for the last seven years, I finally managed to come to Siem Riep and see for myself the famed Angkor Wat (and the nearby temples of course) on the 4th of November.
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Whenever friends or guests would come to Phnom Penh and get an occasional tour of the national museum from me. I would usually brief them with a short but tantalizing account of the religious history of Cambodia as we breeze through the different sections (periods) of the museum. I would narrate the exploits of various Khmer kings and their achievements, their temple palaces and their capital cities. At the end I would tell them of how the various museum pieces found their way there from Siem Riep. After they ask me, "have you seen those temples?" - I would usually just change the topic.
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But now to Siem riep and the Angkor Wat Complex... I came, I saw, yet I admit I was conquered. The grandeur of it all for one who sees the stories in those stones is overwhelming.
A lesson I got for myself was when I saw how Temples and Trees (esp. at Ta Phrom) joined in an unexplicable intertwining. The the non-living mixing with the living.... or in cyberlanguage... technology blending with humanity.... but at the end we all know that "Life will always find a way."