The Stairway to Heaven! Here they are, The Stairs. They have figured pretty big in my imagination every since a friend of mine returned from a trip to Angkor Wat with tales of a Japanese girl who slipped down these very stairs in the rain and landed at his feet with a broken neck, either unconcsious or dead. So for seven years I've had that lovely image stuck in my head and, wouldn't you know it, it had started to rain by the time we got there ...

These are the stairs leading up to Angkor Wat's central tower by the way, which is equal in height to Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral. This is it, the mythical mountain Meru situated in the middle of the universe. Well, Nancy was not paralyzed by any of my silly fears so she scrambled away and then Chiev rewarded me for my caution with the story of a Korean tour guide who had died just the month before after falling down the steps (he was going down instead of up when he slipped). Nancy, as you may be aware, survived.