Thomson Airlines Boeing 757 Explorer One (G-OOBF)
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Wednesday, February 17, 2010

    This morning began very early – up at 4 am. This was to allow several of us hardcore photographers to get out to the Angkor Wat temple complex by 5:15 am and find a spot to set up our tripods and cameras to capture the main temple at sunrise. As I mentioned yesterday, there are a lot of visitor from around the world at this time and a couple of thousand of them had a similar plan.

    The best location is alongside of a pond that shows a reflection of the temple, so that is where everyone congregated using their little flashlights to make their way over the high sills of the entrance gates, and along the rough, uneven stones of the walkways to get to the dirt path that led to the pond.

    When we arrived at the pond, there were already hundreds of people standing or sitting in plastic chairs that were being actively vended with the cries of “chair, sir, only one dollar, one dollar – you want chair – one dollar”. Several of us opted to forego the chair and slipped down the bank to the muddy edge of the pond. After asking permission to squat in front of the sitting people behind us, we plopped down onto the muddy bank and set up our gear. We then spent a little over an hour taking photos, trying different exposures and compositions, until the sun had completely revealed itself. We then had to quickly leave so that we could get back to the hotel to get cleaned up, get down for the last 10-15 minutes of breakfast, and then re-board the mini-buses for the scheduled morning tours of several more temple sites.

    The first stop for my group was the Elephant Terrace. There is a small temple here with a large wall displaying relief carvings of elephants performing many tasks. The area in front of the wall is littered with stones that have fallen or been forcibly removed from the wall.

    Following the Elephant Terrace, we visited the Bayon Temple complex. This is a complex of many four-faced towers, each face pointing in a cardinal direction. The temple walls are elaborately carved with images depicting life’s many stories. Climbing the towers is treacherous. The stone steps are well worn, extremely slick, and steep. Combine this with no handrails and elbow-to-elbow visitors and it is a wonder that there are not hundreds of accidents a day. Climbing up is a challenge, but nothing compared with the climb down.

    After our visit to the Bayon Temple complex, we next visited Ta Prohm. This is a temple complex that was overtaken by the forest. The great trees over the last 250 years have grown into, over, and through the walls and towers of the temple. There is an ongoing effort, with assistance from India, to restore this complex, but the plans call for keeping many of the trees that have invaded the stonework since they are what make this temple complex more interesting. Again, the original remaining carvings and statues have been removed to the museums and are being recreated for the site.

    Tonight was our last night in Cambodia. Tomorrow morning at 8 am, we will re-board Explorer One for a flight to India. This afternoon, those of our group that have been in Vietnam rejoined us at the Grand Hotel. Now that we were all together again, there was a grand cocktail party by the pool, followed by a lavish dinner, and a wonderful group performing tradition Khmer dances entertained us. The dinner was buffet style, but was presented as ten or twelve stations with different styles of food. Of course, everyone had to taste a little of everything. It was a great way to finish our stay in Cambodia.