Last weekend in Phenom Penh.
I really had only intended to Post some photos to the blog and not write anything, but after reading your comments I thought I should. First thanks for commenting. It's nice to hear from you guys. It's also nice to know you're keeping up with my posting.
It's a beautiful afternoon here in Phenom Penh. I'm sitting at the outdoor patio at FCC. to my left is a view up the Tonle Sab River, and to my right is a fork in the river where the Tonle Sab meets the Mekong. It's particularly beautiful today because the sky is blue, and it makes the rivers look as if they are blue and clear. They're not these rivers are carrying tons of silt so they are actually a creamy chocolate color.
Yesterday I went to the Royal Palace. It's an amazing display of how royalty lives. This is a poor country, but it still seem to be good to be King. This palace is not particularly old, less than one hundred years, but as opulent as it could be. there is so much decoration that it seems as if it can't be real, but it is all in tribute to the Kings and their power. It had a bit of a disney feel to it reflecting an ideal more than any kind of reality.
As I said in the title of this post. This is our last weekend in Phenom Penh We are going to go to Siamrieb on Monday to spend a few days at Angkor Wat. I know three days won't be enough to see the whole thing, but if we need to we can stay longer. Matt and his friends are planning a motorcycle trip, to somewhere near Siamrieb, so I think were all gonna hook up and do a trip to some of the lesser known areas around Angkor Wat. It sounds like a lot of fun, so I'm really looking forward to it.
I'm gonna miss Phenom Penh. The food here is really good, and we have lots of friends here now. It's such a laid back town. In fact yesterday we went to this mexican restaurant, and after we finished, the owner (a Dennis Hopper lookalike) came and cleared the table off. Nothing strange about that except the whole time he did it there was a joint hanging out of his mouth. Only after that did I notice that he always had one burning. He was chain smoking joints as he worked. What a strange and wonderful place. I will miss it.
2 Comments:
HI Mikey!! I miss you guys, but it looks like your having an amazing time! I check this everyday so keep it up! Thanks for all the amazing photos-I have the floating flowers photo as my desktop on my comp. at work! love you...miss you tons! Jenny
Amazingly good fun!
From a building materials and construction perspective you should find Angkor Wat particularily fascinating.
It truly is a marvel of Eastern ingenuity as far as solving the problems inherent in cut stone construction WITHOUT arches!
Cut-n-paste follows, Namaste!
-sagely
Khmer building evolved from the single brick tower to the vast pyramid temples of Angkor Wat and the Bayon. There were, however, significant problems which the architects had to overcome and some of their building methods contributed to the early collapse of their temples.
Sandstone blocks were prepared carefully to fit together, but vertical joints were allowed to run on top of one another making walls very unstable. So, often a whole wall fell if one stone near the base became dislodged. No mortar was used; just a good fit, weight and gravity was thought sufficient.
The Khmers never learnt how to build an arch. European architects who built the vaulted Gothic cathedrals (SEE CHARTRES) used complex arches to cover a space, a technique which had been handed down to them from the Romans over centuries of development.
The Khmers had no such example to copy. In order to overcome this difficulty, they used the false arch, or corbelling. Large stones were piled on top of one another, reaching inwards as far as possible and touching at the top. An arched roof over a space was thus formed, but it was not as stable as the real arch, and these vaults often collapsed in the centuries after Angkor was abandoned.
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