Summer Fieldwork
I am really excited! I’m starting to plan my trip to Cambodia and it seems that this will be a remarkable summer! I will be traveling to Kuala Lumpur on the 3rd of August, from there we will go to Siem Riep where we will stay four days taking photographs of the naval battles at the Bayon temple, Dr. Penny has included me among his group of the Greater Angkor Project, so I will have a permit to do the photos and everything…Like a real archaeologist! Cool! That includes the special VISA, which is nice! Then we will move on to Banteay Chhmar, which is in the north of Cambodia, almost 4 hours away from Siem Riep, close to the Thai border. We will stay with the local villagers, a project directed by an NGO to promote rural tourism in Cambodia. It’s a remote location, i hope I can recapture the spirit of the Golden Era of Travel! I have just received notice from someone living in Siem RIep that it will be difficult to travel to Banteay Chhmar, since the rainy season will have damaged the roads to the site...I hope not! I really need to work on the reliefs of Banteay Chhmar. I want to talk with the people of the NGO, I think I will keep in touch and when I finish my thesis I’ll try to make it more marketable for them to sell it to tourists and invest the profit in their project. After that is back to Siem Riep, where we will stay in the Grand Hotel D’Angkor, the original hotel where early travelers stayed in the late 20’s!!! It’s so exciting! It’s very expensive, but we can spare a few bucks just to stay a night at this 5 star hotel with memorabilia of these early travelers…Exciting!
Then it will be off to Phnom Pehn and then Kuala Lumpur, stay the night in the Malaysian capital and then off to Indonesia. We will be diving in the Komodo Island for five days just to relax and chill out.
On the 20th will be heading back to Kuala Lumpur for a couple of days before heading back to Spain.
It does sound exciting, if it weren’t because I have to finish my thesis, get the images ready and print it out before handing it in on the 5th of September. And then, on the 6th of September, I will be off to Turkmenistan to dig in the ancient city of Merv, stop point of the Silk road. We will be digging the Islamic period and we will be surveying some bronze age settlements. I can’t wait to go! My friend Helena, from Sweden was the originator of this plan, she spoke with Tim and told me everything about it, and when I discovered that I didn’t get the scholarship to Vietnam I decided to go with her. The dig will run until the 11th of October.
So there it is! My master plan! It gets better every time I think about it.
I still have to get all the flights, so far I have only booked my night at the Grand Hotel D’Angkor. And now I’m off to my books, I need to get 85% of my thesis done before the end of July, including references. And my sister is coming to the UK in July!! I can’t wait to do sight-seeing with her!!! She’ll looooove Camden!