RKS 2025 Travel: Destination Southeast Asia (Short Attention Span Version):20October2025: Siem Reap, Cambodia: Angkor Wat: Saving the Best For Last?

20October2025 Siem Reap, Cambodia: Angkor Wat: Saving the Best For Last?

I have visited Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and now Cambodia. I have witnessed and experienced an incredible amount and the question that faces me is Angkor Wat the actual highlight of this tour? Impossible to answer although it was the destination of overwhelming attraction and the hook reeling me onto this tour. An ancient city. An ancient civilization. I have visited the Acropolis of Athens and of Lindos, Tulum, Chichen Itza and Ephesus and all said and done Angkor Wat has been the most impressive.

On the bus at 07:00 after a quick breakfast. The Cambodian food at the breakfast buffet appears to have been sitting for some time. It could be attributed to the Americans staying here reluctant to experiment outside their full American breakfast. IHOP in Cambodia!

We arrived in the cool of the morning at Angkor Wat and it was surprisingly quiet for such an international destination. Sprayed up with DEET for malaria avoidance. By the time our tour had finished at 11:30 it was steaming hot. Advice received was do not feed the monkeys or you will face aggressive greed. Any monkeys seen this morning were minding their own business off in the distance. They may have been discussing the Cambodian-Thai border skirmishes.

It would be fruitless to describe the site in any detail. As pre disco Rod Stewart sings “Every picture tells a story don’t it”. I will say it is huge and well restored. This UNESCO World Heritage site is breathtaking. Built in the 12th century it is the largest temple in the world and the crown jewel of the temples that sit within the 155-square-mile Angkor Archaeological Park. Built by King Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, the temple eventually filled with Buddhist elements as the new religion spread through the empire. The main temple, with its central tower rising to a height of 213 feet, was designed to represent Mount Meru, the home of the gods in Hindu mythology. One of the temple’s highlights are the bas-relief murals depicting historical events and various scenes from Hindu mythology and are considered some of the finest examples of Kymer art.

The intense heat and humidity necessitated a soft drink stop at a site concession before boarding the bus to an artisanal noodle making business run by a local family. It was in a village where feral dogs roamed, Children were seen in bare feet and selling cheap trinkets. Traditional rice noodle making is a laborious process which we watched from start to finish These artisanal noodles are sought throughout the world. We had a light rice-based lunch including curried rice noodles, puffy rice cakes and a variety of rice-based desserts. It was excellent and ABC International, our tour company permitted one soft drink per person! Of course in true ABC International spirit, beer was out of pocket. Several children approached us while boarding our bus offering cheap trinkets. Our tour director discretely slipped each of them a few American dollars widely accepted and welcomed in Cambodia.

Before returning to Sofitel we stopped at an artisanal workshop which due to the bus parking spots outside its entrance resembled a “tourist trap” but the wares including silks, leather and carvings were of impeccable quality made by local artisans and designed to foster economic benefits for the local economy. Impressive wares but who has room for souvenirs of any weight.

The evening option was to a “Cambodian circus” consisting of captivating choreography, story telling and folk music. No lions or chained bears here.

A late dinner at the restaurant at Sofitel for Cambodian Beef Lok Nok and rice (of course) on the side. Cambodian men eat 250 kilos of rice a year and women 190! Excellent and complimented perfectly with a glass of Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. Watched a terrible Ringo Starr concert on a really poor large screen television.

RKS Literature: Goodwill (Friedrich Nietzsche)

“Among the small but endlessly abundant and therefore very effective things that science ought to heed more than the great, rare things, is goodwill. I mean those expressions of a friendly disposition, in interactions, that smile of the eye, those handclasps, that ease which usually envelops nearly all human actions. Every teacher, every official brings this ingredient to what he considers his duty. It is the continual manifestation of our humanity, its rays of light, so to speak, in which everything grows.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Human, All Too Human”, 1878.

RKS Literature: The Hierarchy of Good (Friedrich Nietzsche)

“The hierarchy of good, however, is not fixed and identical at all times. If someone prefers revenge to justice, he is moral by the standard of an earlier culture, yet by the standard of the present culture he is immoral. ‘Immoral’ then indicates that someone has not felt, or not felt strongly enough, the higher, finer, more spiritual motives which the new culture of the time has brought with it.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, “Human, All Too Human”, 1878.

RKS Literature: Leaving Dead Bodies in the Woods as a Matter of Course (James Fenimore Cooper)

“The whole party moved swiftly through the narrow path, toward the north, leaving the healing waters to mingle unheeded with the adjacent brooks and the bodies of the dead to fester on the neighbouring mount, without the rites of sepulture; a fate but too common to the warriors of the woods to excite either commiseration or comment.”  

James Fenimore Cooper, “The Last of the Mohicans”, 1826.

RKS Poetry Anthology: Creeping October

Creeping October

Guess who is in town

Homecoming

The big college game

Goon jocks past and present

Pilsner fog

Purple painted faced engineers pursuing Colonel Kurtz?

Initiation rites

Into what?

Last binge?

And the roar after the big play

Fat assed frat girls as a caramel sundae/Sunday’s

For their boys

And we all know the topping I’m talking about

But everything is so decent when the turkey is carved

Robert K. Stephen

RKS 2025 Travel: Destination Southeast Asia: 19October 2025: Siem Reap, Cambodia: Obese Americans with Fanny Packs (Ozempic People)

19October 2025: Siem Reap, Cambodia: Obese Americans with Fanny Packs (Ozempic People)

Travelling is primarily observational. Churches, monuments, cuisine, archaeological sites, topography and people. The majority of Americans are obese and benefit from the current vogue word “inclusion”. Obese Americans in fanny packs lolling through Sofitel caught my eye as a bizarre site. Throughout my Asian travels few obese people are seen except for American tourists. You can see hefty Americans en masse in the United States but suddenly to encounter a passle of them in Cambodia rather makes them “stick out”! I almost thought some of the hotel staff saw them as a “tourist attraction”!

It was bizarre to see twenty or so obese couples albeit for one very ill looking fellow. My guess from reading the activity board is they are part of the Viking Cruise clan. Gaudy attire, baseball hats and fanny packs! One of the reasons I avoid Times Square in New York are the hordes of rotund Midwestern Americans mouths agape staring up in the air excitedly gawking about and pointing, snapping photos to prove they were in Times Square.

These folks speak too loudly and hang out in a pack. Even in the sophisticated Champagne Bar at the hotel they are overly casually attired almost shouting, drinking beer, wearing baseball caps and looking like beings from a different planet. Obese in Boston is vastly different from obese in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Sort of like the usual versus the exceptional.

A cold beer at Sofitel’s Champagne Bar

At breakfast their plates are piled high with pancakes, toast, bacon, scrambled eggs, orange juice and American coffee. Are we at an IHop? All avoided local fruits and Asian dishes. Why leave the ship?

One streamer of an afternoon I headed to the swimming pool where the tubby gang was bobbing in the pool and drinking cold beer. I was wearing a gaudy Uniqlo Keith Haring frog themed t-shirt and caused a stir with open mouthed stares. Was it my lithe physique (dream on) or my bright green and white frogger?

RKS Literature: Rosie and the Priest (Giovanni Boccaccio)

“So to begin, there’s a village not far from here called Varlungo, as every one of you knows or will have heard from other people. I had once a valiant priest, a fine figure of a man who served the ladies well. He was not much of a reader, but every Sunday he would spout wholesome holy verbiage beneath the churchyard elm to refresh the spirits of his parishioners. When the men were off somewhere, he would come visiting their wives more solicitously than any priest they’d ever had before. Sometimes bringing religious bits and pieces, holy water or candle-ends into their houses, and giving them his blessings.”

Giovanni Boccaccio, “Decameron”.

RKS Literature: The Good Book and the Reality in the Colonial Woods (James Fenimore Cooper)

“I have heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man may so deform his works in the settlement, as to leave that which is so clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests. If any such there be, and he will follow me from sun to sun through the windings of the forest, he shall see enough to teach him that he is a fool, and that the greatest of his folly lies in striving to rise to the level of One he can never equal, be it in goodness or power.”

James Fenimore Cooper, “The Last of the Mohicans”, 1826.

RKS 2026 British Columbia Wine: Smith & Montpetit 2023 Muse

Another limited quantity wine from the Smith and Montpetit Winery in the Similkameen Valley in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

100 cases produced.

A Cabernet Franc and Merlot blend. Barrel aged 12 months in 30% two-year-old French oak and 70% in neutral French oak.

Six barrels produced.

Wild yeast fermented.

Aroma: Silky smoothness.  Bingish Cherry. Cranberry. Raspberry. Blackberry. Dark chocolate and tar.

Palate: High strung tightwire cherry intertwined with lavender. Assertive and in your face or better said lively on the palate. Far different than this winery’s rich and heady Merlot and Tempranillo. A seemingly short finish morphs into a much longer one.

Personality: Brash, assertive and eye opening and perhaps even juicy?

Food Pairing: Pork medallions in a raspberry jam and Port reduction sauce.

Cellarbility: Until Canadian Thanksgiving 2027.

Price: $34 CDN.

RKS 2026 British Columbia Wine Rating: 88/100.Gismondi 88.

(Maison Smith Montpetit 2023 Muse, British Columbia VQA, Maison Smith & Montpetit Bottega & Vineyard, (Produced by Mythology Vineyard, Osoyoos, British Columbia) 750 mL, 14.3%).