Pip - Whil

Pip - While you were pounding round the colliseum I was pounding round Angkor Wat. It is 200 square km of ruins and two solid days of clambouring over temples has produced a new anciient ruin.....but they are marvellous...even when fighting through bus loads of jabbering koreans ..all in sun hats and face masks. But it was possible to be alone. As soon as you left the main temples behind you found exquisite little temples floating in the heat haze ...completely empty ..with nothing but the ringing cicadas...and everywhere the stone carvings: the dancing apsara, naga the 7 headed hamadryad, garudas, buddahs and elephants.
There must be 20-40 thousand people through every day...but the whole place was spotlessly clean...even the loos. That was really amazing...because Phnom Phen was anything but spotless.

We are now in Vietnam...in Hue. Today we went out to see our Rose Project. A fascinating drive off the main road and down little bumpy farm roads between padi fields and family tombs ...and eventually found a little blue building with a big banner saying welcome to Rose Charities. And inside almost everyone is blind. But we are escorted upstairs and given glasses of water and talk to the director...who is also blind. We talk through a translator..and are told that the money we sent them has allowed them to furnish a classroom with tables and chairs and books etc for 20 people to learn braille. We are taken downstairs...it is all desperately poor...but there is the classroom...full of 20 men and women...all beavering away at their braille reading and writing exercises. They all stand up when we come in and burst into a welcome song. Everthung has "rose charities" writtren on it...the desks, chairs, even the braille books. The teacher is young and enthusiastic ...and longs for a computer to teach them computer braille. He was at university when he suddenly lost his sight. So he taught himself braille...and this project has given him a few months of salary and a project that he is empassioned about. .

It is late and we are off on a long day trip tomorrow

xxJosiem of ruins and two solid days of clambouring over temples