My travel guide says that the town of Seam Reap doesn't mind being a one-hit
 wonder when that hit is one of the wonders of the world.  650 years after
 its completion, Angkor Wat and it's associated temples remains the largest
 religious complex on the planet, extending over many kilometers, much of
 which has been overgrown by jungle and is yet to be uncovered.  Only in the
 last few years has the area been declared safe after the removal of
 landmines.  I figured that the time to see the place is now, before it
 becomes just another Disneyland.  It's already well on the path to becoming
 that, with a couple of major hotels completed in the past year.

 In the 1970s, this region of Cambodia was the home ground for the notorious
 Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, a regime allegedly associated with the deaths
 of perhaps two million Cambodians.  If you were one of Cambodia's ethnic
 minorities (Vietnamese, Khmer hill tribes, etc.) or if you appeared to be
 educated -- for example, if you wore glasses or spoke a foreign language --
 the chances were that over time you would be dead meat.  A monument to the
 so-called "killing fields", from which the movie was named, stands in this
 town -- a glass case full of skulls and bones.

 Over 10 million anti-personnel landmines remain scattered across this
 country, plus tons of unexploded ordinance (known as UXO), small bombs that
 the U.S. dropped during the Vietnam War that failed to explode.  Casualties
 range from 100 to 300 per month, mostly children who mistake the small bombs
 for toys.  Since most mines are in fields, it affects the food supply as
 well.  Although the rate of removing the mines in 1996 indicated that it
 would take 300 years to complete the job here, a Japanese invention in 1997,
 Mine Eye, which differentiates between mines and scrap metal, may make it
 possible, the company estimates, to clear the fields of mines within the
 next 20 years.

 Although the Angkor Wat temples are said to be cleared of these mines,
 people are strongly cautioned to "never, ever stray from the paths".  Also
 inspiring one to keep to the straight and narrow is the presence of venomous
 snakes, such as the bright green krait snake, as well as the king cobra,
 which can bring down a bull elephant.

 My moped driver, 22-year-old Vanak, has shuttled me around to over a dozen
 temples in the past two days.  The temples are remarkable both  for their
 size and for their well-preserved carvings.  Also remarkable for their time
 were the huge reservoirs and moats surrounding the temples.

 Near here, a wide and voluminous river called the Tonie Sap actually
 reverses course and heads in the opposite direction during four months  of
 the year (July through October) , due to the Mekong River (which meets this
 river downstream) overflowing its banks from the massive amount of snowmelt
 in the Himalayas.   Centuries ago, this special occurrence enabled builders
 of the Angkor monuments to float sandstone blocks in the direction of what
 would normally be upstream.

 After "Hello", the first English word that children in the developing world
 seem to learn is "dollar" and its corollary word "gimmedollar"!  At tourist
 attractions such as Angkor Wat, young children are employed to hound you to
 death or until you yield your money, whichever comes first.  At each of the
 100 or more temples here, a half dozen children will surround you, follow
 you, and relentlessly pester you, while offering every reason in the book
 why you should buy your fifth set of 10 postcards, another bottle of water
 (though they already see you drinking from one bottle and carrying another),
 another guidebook (though they see you have exactly the same one), or any
 number of other things from handmade items to illegal antiquities.  After
 you have calmly said umpteen times with extraordinary patience "no, thank
 you; I don't need anything; I already have everything ..." they throw you a
 curve ball like "please buy something so that I can have money to go to
 school", and once again you pause, gulp and say, "Uh ... no."  In an average
 day of touring, it seems as if I say "no, thank you" anywhere from 300 to
 1000 times.

 Here is yet another small selection of photos, the final installment of this
 journey.  As always, they are yours to view or ignore.  I'll be back in DC
 on Tuesday, severely jetlagged after crossing 12 time zones.

Thanks for reading!
 Deano