{"id":3079,"date":"2007-11-03T17:27:27","date_gmt":"2007-11-03T17:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=3079"},"modified":"2007-11-03T17:27:27","modified_gmt":"2007-11-03T17:27:27","slug":"angkor_when_it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=3079","title":{"rendered":"Angkor: When It Rains, You Score"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen Brookes<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Rain was lashing against the side of the plane as we broke through the clouds. Below us, Cambodia stretched out like a perfect disaster: fields flooded to the horizon, palm trees whipped by the wind, a sky so dark and heavy it seemed about to collapse. As we dropped closer, we caught a glimpse of two people pushing a truck through knee-deep water, struggling to keep from being washed away.
\n“It’s fantastic!” I said to my wife, whose hand was clamped on mine in a vise-like grip. “It looks like we timed this perfectly!”
\nWe’d come to Cambodia to see the famous temples of Angkor, those magnificent ruins that make up one of the most extraordinary landscapes in Asia, if not the world. And we’d come in July — in the heart of the monsoon, which sensible people had told us was pure madness. Wait until the dry season, they said, when the skies are clear and you’re guaranteed as much sunshine as you can handle. Go during the long, wet summer — when more than 50 inches of rain falls — and you’re certain to get stranded in your hotel, swatting at mosquitoes and hoping you don’t come down with malaria.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen Brookes<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Rain was lashing against the side of the plane as we broke through the clouds. Below us, Cambodia stretched out like a perfect disaster: fields flooded to the horizon, palm trees whipped by the wind, a sky so dark and heavy it seemed about to collapse. As we dropped closer, we caught a glimpse of two people pushing a truck through knee-deep water, struggling to keep from being washed away.
\n“It’s fantastic!” I said to my wife, whose hand was clamped on mine in a vise-like grip. “It looks like we timed this perfectly!”
\nWe’d come to Cambodia to see the famous temples of Angkor, those magnificent ruins that make up one of the most extraordinary landscapes in Asia, if not the world. And we’d come in July — in the heart of the monsoon, which sensible people had told us was pure madness. Wait until the dry season, they said, when the skies are clear and you’re guaranteed as much sunshine as you can handle. Go during the long, wet summer — when more than 50 inches of rain falls — and you’re certain to get stranded in your hotel, swatting at mosquitoes and hoping you don’t come down with malaria.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3079\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}