Biking in PP

is a crazy affair.

Check out the attached video to get a narrated glimpse of things in action. I shot the video by duct-taping my handheld to my handlebars. Boo-yah!

p.s. Follow my Bike Route on a map if you want.

Normalcy in PP

sets in. As Julie mentioned in her blog, everything seems somehow "normal."

Clinging onto the back of a moto seems normal. Walking in the street and not on the sidewalks, which are pervasively occupied by parked motos and cars, seems normal. Even biking the streets, where incoming traffic consciously does not look before entering the flow, seems normal. There are so many other things that are simply becoming a part of daily, regular existence.

The school semester is in full stride, and we are having a great time with our students. After my second morning class--around 8:00 a.m.--I have another cup of coffee before heading to the gym. I alternate between weights, the tread, the elliptical, the pool, and blowing it all off and just sitting in the sauna. I often get a fresh coconut cracked open and sip that on my way to lunch. I have a few regular joints, my favorite being a stall tucked in the middle of the Russian Market. When I make it there, I have what I've dubbed "pure deliciousness," fried noodles on a lettuce/ vegetable base topped with peanuts, sliced spring rolls, and a rope-a-dope sauce of mystical creation.

After my nooner class, I head back home--usually--and relax in the apartment. As Jules mentioned, I am finishing a draft of a book on travel, which I hope to send out to some agents soon. I'll let you all know when it goes global. I also keep myself informed by scanning Yahoo News! I like it's medley of feel-good, celebrity, and serious stories. There's only so much debt ceiling stuff you can read about before you want to vomit.

The weekends are filled with kid-friendly activities. There's a great French joint that serves a nice breakfast and has a large sand pit. There's the huge park down by the riverside. There's the pool at the gym and many other things to keep us all going.

As I said, we are settled into routine. Though we miss the States and our dear friends, PP is treating us right and its quirks have not yet driven us insane. Sure, sometimes I get frustrated when a huge car almost takes me out going the wrong way down the street, but let me tell you this: I am the only one who gets frustrated. To everyone else, it's all normal, so I put on a brave face, try not to hurl expletives, and pretend it's normal to me, too, which, in a way it is, I guess--for now.

The Temples of Angkor

Wat were some of the most amazing I've ever seen. In scope, they far surpass what's left of the fabled Incan ruins at Machu Picchu or the monolithic stone Moai of Easter Island; while they cannot compete with the sheer grandeur of Java's great Borobudur, the Temples of Angkor--if taken as a whole--rival that great complex in magnitude.

Many people--myself included until recently--associate images from a series of sites loosely catenated  by some beautiful tree-lined avenues with Angkor Wat, which, though it is certainly the most ambitious of the group, is just one in the series. The rest vary in size and scope from small mausoleums almost lost amid the jungle (and seldom visited) to the great terraces that house the 200-plus heads of 12th-century (self-styled) God-king Jayavaraman VII. Beyond Bayon to the East lies Ta Prohm, or what is now known as "the Tomb Raider temple," crumbling and flaking off under the weight of great hundreds-year-old trees.

Julie, Sila Kai, and I spent three days touring the ruins: the first we spent as a family, biking the 5 kilometers from our hotel to the beginning of the site, and biking and stopping at various places throughout the early afternoon. The second day, while Julie took Sila Kai for the morning, I headed off at 5:00 a.m. to join the "penitent" (tourists, really) to catch an elusive sunrise. As it's the rainy season, and it was dumping buckets for much of our four days, you can judge for yourself how my "sunrise" photos turned out. Intrepidly, my Kiwi friend Amanda and I continued on our adventure shortly after sunrise, biking our way through the complex--often off-roading to see some of the out-of-the-way places. The following day was Julie's to explore, but I did make it back with SK in the late afternoon for a few hours. We stayed closer to home at Angkor Wat proper and checked out the extensive bas reliefs that adorn the outer walls of the main temple.

Though different than what I expected, the experience and the temples themselves were everything you might imagine, everything I hoped and dreamed they'd be. For now, it's back to waking at 5:00 a.m. not to follow the masses in pre-dawn pilgrimages, but to bike across the dusty and chaotic streets of Phnom Penh, or PP as the locals say, to teach a 6:00 a.m. English class.

You can't ask for much else from this ol' world. So, if anyone asks, you tell 'em, He's doin' just fine.