Anyway, here’s some of the photos taken.

Sakura at Osaka Castle.

Kyoto. Kiyomizo temple (if I remember correctly).

Took this from my hotel room in the early morning. Its actually pretty cold in the Kyoto/Awara Region.

Yes… It snowed. Somewhere at the Hirayu Waterfall.

An onsen (hot springs) at the waterfalls. Its frozen due the the snow.

Here’s a shot of the famed Mt. Fuji. It was already evening when I reached the hotel, and I managed to get this shot. Its not everyday that we can get a clear view of Mt. Fuji.

More Mt. Fuji.

Tulips, with sleeping beauty’s castle in the background. Taken at Tokyo Disney.

Sunset, at Tokyo Disney. I loved the colours, so i took a quick shot.

Full bloom sakura, at Ueno Park. Its starting to get warm when we reached Tokyo, and the sakura trees there are mostly in full bloom. Ueno park has a path which has sakura trees blooming on both sides of the path, and plenty of picnic spots and local residents using it.

Thats us. At Shinjuku Gyoen. The sakura here is also in full bloom. Although we do not have the walkway like Ueno park, the sakura here is really stunning.

The night view, seen from Tokyo Tower. You can see Rainbow Bridge (which is NOT rainbow coloured) and the ferris wheel at Odaiba.

Base view of the Tokyo Tower.

Flowers blooming outside the Sony Building at Ginza.

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.

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.

Just 2 days ago, I left for bintan with the rest of my work colleagues for a company retreat/offsite/team building exercise. Its basically a 3 day / 2 night trip at some ulu part of bintan (not a luxurious type resort) to feed the mosquitoes. The place we went to, Loola Adventure Resort is a rural retreat bereft of our modern amenities. Ok, we do have electricity and a sewage system (as in, our body wastes do not just float off to sea), but nothing much more apart from that. So we just sit around talking rot, gossiping, poking fun of each other, and feeding the mosquitoes at night, while engaging in team building and confidence exercises in the day time. I wouldn’t say it was a total waste of time, and I have to admit I enjoyed the trip away from civilisation for a while, and just, well, slack and take photos.

Here’s a couple of shots taken at the resort, when I wasn’t engaged in other activities.

Its been a terribly long while since I’ve shot landscapes, so The composition is a bit repetitive at best. Enjoy

Basically, we stayed at these little huts, sharing amongst 3-4 people. The huts are build on a solid concrete foundation (as far as i can see) and interconnected with a wooden bridge walkway.