Operation Signage: Angkor Archaeological Park

Time once again for a few blog entries from me, Ken, the art director here at World Monuments Fund. Please don’t expect a lot of coherence from this first one, since I’m on the last leg of the flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia, and the jet lag is starting to kick in.

I’m heading to Angkor Archaeological Park to plan a comprehensive signage program for one of our ongoing projects, as well as spruce up a visitor center WMF created a few years back—more on those in future posts.

Back to the jet lag. Getting to Angkor is a bit of an ordeal—it starts with a breezy 14-hour flight from JFK to Seoul, followed by a mad dash through what has to be one of the world’s largest airports to make a tight connection (which at least gets your blood flowing again), and finishes with another six-hour flight to Siem Reap. 9057 miles, according to my Orbitz printout.

The first flight offered such diverse delights as frozen-solid cucumber salad, and the chance to watch three inflight movies back to back: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (execrable), Crazy, Stupid, Love (surprisingly sweet), and Contagion (quite good, but probably not the best movie to have watched, as it’s about a global pandemic that starts in Asia). The flight goes directly over the North Pole (the elves looked busy), and is long enough that you get to watch the sun set twice from the air. It also passes over some incredibly bleak but beautiful Russian terrain.

This second flight is an odd one. It’s a pretty good-sized plane, but for some reason there are only nine passengers. Global pandemic, perhaps? It is making for some very attentive flight attendants. Although I can’t seem to convince one of them that I’m not an actor she’s seen on TV. No idea who she’s thinking of (suggestions of Anthony Edwards are acceptable, of John Lithgow are not). And never having been a big fan of kimchee in the first place, I can attest that airplane kimchee is worse.

I think that’s enough for tonight—looking forward to getting a good night’s sleep and heading out to the temples first thing tomorrow morning…