I'm back

Actually I got back last Wednesday. I'd like to say that I've been busy, but, the fact is, I ordered Seasons 1 and 2 of Numb3rs from Amazon and just had to watch Season 1 over the last couple of days.

On vacation in Cambodia, I spent endless hours with a couple of friends wandering through ruined temples. I've added pictures from the first day to the sidebar. We went to Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, and Bayon. I had wanted to go to Angkor Wat for many years, so I was really looking forward to finally seeing it. I wasn't prepared for the vast scale of Angkor Wat and all of the other temples and buildings around it. It was really mind boggling to think of the many tons of stone that were moved from the distant sites and the 10's of thousands of stone blocks that were hand carved using the tools available a thousand years ago.

I will definitely return some day soon for a more leisurely tour of the sites. I'd first like to study the history and then tour the temples in the chronological order of their construction.

I was awed by what the people of that region did, but, as with all grand religious edifices (temples, cathedrals, and mosques), I was uncomfortable when I imagined what it must have been like to be a common person forced to do that work and use those resources when I could have spent my time better growing crops or building a house. I guess the fact that I don't have any really strong religious beliefs to support with a house of worship may make me a poor judge of what is necessary. (As a lazy Taoist, I think that you should just be - don't do.)

I really enjoyed Cambodia. I don't think that I met a surly or unfriendly person the whole time I was there. The hawkers and touts at the sites were sometimes a little too persistent, but they never got angry.

While on vacation, I did a little bit of reading. My first book was superb and I highly recommend it. The Kite Runner is a wonderfully moving tale of friendship and betrayal. It was both sad and uplifting. It was an unflinching look at real people's frailties. The author has a style that I really like. His characters are well-developed and interesting. The plot very plausible. In Bangkok, I picked up the lonely planet story. I've used many of The Lonely Planet travel guides over the years and I've always found them useful and interesting. I thought it would be interesting to read the founders' story. However, the lonely planet story is one of the most boring and poorly written books I've read in recent years. I've gotten about halfway through and I keep going because there are a few little interesting tidbits and I keep hoping that it will get better, but it hasn't yet. It's just a long, boring list of "We went here and felt good, and then we went there and there and felt bad." The story itself may be interesting, but the writers' style is not interesting. I also read A Loyal Character Dancer by Qiu Xiaolong. This was just a light murder mystery of the type that I often read when on vacation. It was okay, but a little too clever (or perhaps I'm just not smart enough to get it). However, when the main character has to take the whole last chapter to explain how he figured out who did it, I think the author is a little too clever.