Weddings and RamblingsOk, after a short absence from my instant messaging network, I’m back.
For past 6 days, I’ve been enjoying myself shooting, looking, learning, eating and getting sunburned… in the small tourist town of Siem Reap in Cambodia and I just touched down yesterday morning with tons of photos. I wasn’t really planning on blogging about this so soon, but I kinda promised to have some photos up by this evening, and it probably would take me years to sort through and edit my photos so I thought I might as well get started.
Siem Reap is the place where the famous Angkor Wat is situated, as well as numerous other temples dedicated to hindu (buddhist) gods as well as the cambodian god-kings. I spent 3 whole days wandering around, visiting about 10+ temples in that area.
Anyway, the trip was a blast… except for the fact that I twisted my ankle at one of the temples and limped the next 2 days. I was there with BT, one of my closer army friends. He was starting to pick up photography as well, so he didn’t quite mind me mucking around in obscure places shooting god-knows-what. The trip was planned to allow us to go free and easy. We stayed at a guesthouse near downtown, ate at restaurants (roadside food looked a bit too risky) and ended up spending just slightly above US$200, excl the plane tickets.
Siem reap looks just like one of the more rural towns in Malaysia. Dusty, hot, bare (of vegetation), dirty and all low lying buildings. But dispite all these, they have satelite TV, cafe’s with free WI-FI (and internet) and a wide range of restaurants offering cambodian, thai, vietnamese, french, western, indian, italian foods. Its really not a bad place to be in, and food is not an issue.
Anyway, I’ve took a quick scan through my trip photos, and here’s some of them.
Entrance to Angkor Wat. Its a bright and and sunny morning, and the tourists are just flooding in. We see the causeway into angkor, which is surrounded by a large moat.
A small shrine in Angkor Wat.
Monks (Angkor Wat).
Monks @ the inner entrance Angkor Wat.
A view of the gate complex (from the other side of #1).
Looking down from the highest point of Angkor. A really scary climb down awaits.
Another look at the causeway to Angkor, on my way out. You can see the storm clouds gathering.
Enigmatic face carvings from the Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom.
The tomb raider tree @ Ta Prohm (Taken on the 3rd day). This is where they filmed one of the scenes in Tomb Raider, where Angelina Jolie plucked a flower and fell into the hidden tunnels or something like that. As you can see, the entire temple has been overwhelmed by the growth of the trees. (There’s actually a tree inside, and a parasite plant which wraps around the tree).
Anyway, its way just super blazing hot and I got tan lines on my feet (from wearing sandals) just after the first day of touring the temples.
More photos on the amazing temples later.
Tagged: cambodia, landscapes, photos, travel