Hundred pillar wat

About 35km north of kratie.

Strange place, echoes of an old Albanian custom for bridge building where they would place a living person into one of the pillars to appease their belief system. There the family would be paid: one of ismail kadare's novels, I think called the three arch bridge uses this...

The legend of the wat differs, the king had a pregnant woman murdered and placed beneath each of the pillars...but that was the old wooden wat, now replaced by a curious but oddly disinteresting concrete one; although the frescoes were a bit odd...vaguely christian in some way, a kind of 20th century communist propaganda crossed with birthling renaissance perspectives...and I can see the look on one particular face now eyewidened and wondering what he taught me in the kunst historischer museum;-) which allows such simplicity of comparison...

Otherwise kratie was ok, maybe another day if time was a friend: met french guy from pakse stop still cycling the Mekong and took bike for half day wander. But am templed out slightly, not best way to approach angkor.

But it's as it is now...and maybe as it once was...and I really would like a warm shower, a haircut, a beer and a room without cockroaches...and to get some washing done...which sounds very like someone I used to see in a mirror...