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Posts from the ‘Cambodia’ Category

Jun 11

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Siem Reap on a Plate

“Are you running the marathon tomorrow?”

Risa, the kind young woman at the front desk of our Siem Reap hotel, is not being ironic.

Bama and I want to laugh. Our near-instantaneous answer, a polite “no,” dispels any notion that we will be needing a 3 a.m. wake-up call. By pure coincidence, the two of us have arrived the day before the Angkor Wat International Half-Marathon, and the French guests booked into the room next door are taking part. Depending on where we travel, itineraries sometimes involve hiking excursions, snorkeling, or even a bit of ocean kayaking. But running? The point of this holiday in Siem Reap was to explore the area’s incredible trove of ancient temples and to eat. Read more

Feb 19

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A Long-Awaited Journey to Angkor Wat

Squeezed into the middle seat in the back row of a Singapore Airlines jet, between Bama and a cheerful Indian doctor vacationing from the U.S., I look out the window at a jungle-shrouded Malaysian island rising from the South China Sea. The moving map on my PTV screen identifies this as Tioman: from the air we spot a pair of sharp, near-vertical granite monoliths known as the Dragon Horns. It’s barely 30 minutes into a two-hour-plus flight when our plane climbs above layers of cloud, the earth’s surface gradually disappearing from view. Read more