The weather in Koh Ker this week was beautiful. The entire team was pleasantly surprised by how nice it has been this field season. Usually, when doing fieldwork in Koh Ker, it is nearly 100 degrees every day. This makes fieldwork extremely difficult to do throughout the day and usually requires that we go inside around noon, requiring many more days in the field in order to get everything completed. However, since this week was so nice, we were able to get all of our work done in record time!
In the field, we saw many different critters. The most prevalent are the red ants, which are huge. When standing around in the forest, I have to do my "ant dance" and make sure they don't crawl on me when I stay still in one place for too long. If Mr. Sy sees a red ant on me, he'll pick it off of me and eat it! Ants are a common dish in Cambodia... I have yet to try them myself.
Many of the animals we encountered were in our rooms instead of outdoors. These included a frog, many lizards, spiders and beetles!