NAM! Saigon a.k.a. Hoo Chi Coo Chi City

Vietnam, A strange land of contradictions and juxtapostions


SAIGON:

I arrived in Saigon via a Vietnam Airlines flight from Bangkok without a lot of pre-planning. My first task was to withdraw enough local currency to pay for a cab to a hotel. I was unsure of the exchange rate and recalled I had a back packer advertising zine from Bangkok stashed deep in my bag that contained the US dollar exchange rates for all of the southeast Asian countries. Huhmm... Interesting. Vietnam's local currency is called the "Dong" and secondly you can trade one US dollar for about 17,800 dong. I crossed my fingers and hoped the currency exchange information I gleaned from the zine was correct and furthermore I deeply hoped all of the comas or decimals on the screen were in fact what I was taking them to be, when you're dealing with six zeros you don't want to screw up. I withdrew three million dong. Three MILLION DONG! I just became an instant dong millionaire. I like Vietnam already.

What you've heard about the traffic here is true. The traffic in Saigon is nuts. No offense to Bombay or the Vespa choked streets of Rome but you ain't seen nothing till you've seen the scooter traffic in Saigon. Saigon is an excellent walking city, or at least it has the potential to be if someone could just get the 80 bajillion scooters here under control. The sidewalk is either A.) a completely clogged scooter parking lot through which it is impossible to pass, or B.) a secondary scooter express way which serves to catch the overflow of scooter traffic when the flow of traffic on the streets isn't moving fast enough to suit the tastes of Saigonites. I mean I'm not anti-scooter, but its complete anarchy here. There needs to be safe sanctuary for pedestrians somewhere in a city, but it is not to be found in Saigon. When in Saigon you had better watch your step and steel yourself for the adrenaline pumping adventure that is crossing the street. Its best to wait and follow a local if in doubt, but whatever you do don't hesitate or show fear or the hoards of scooters will rip you apart. Bold is vastly preferable to cautious.


Scooter gear de riguer Saigon. The air is so polluted and dusty its hard to ride without an air filtration system and eye protection. The cops don't give a crap about anything you do on a scooter here, you can drive a scooter 100mph through a pre-school playground, just wear a helmet.


Does this look like a good idea to you.? Me neither. No freaking way would I ever consider driving a scooter here.


Tuckered out Saigon Cowboy.


The food in Saigon is absolutely awesome. No offense to Thailand but I was so happy upon arriving to eat something that wasn't fried rice, barbecue chicken or a coconut based curry. No, Vietnamese is not radically different from Thai, but Vietnamese is a real cuisine. A varied and rigorous cuisine with many influences and different styles unique to each region, south to north. Saigon is Vietnam's most cosmopolitan and sophisticated city and the culinary scene here is no different, Saigon is Vietnam's culinary piece de resistance. The melange of tropical flavors from Kampuchea and the Mekong Delta collide with the colonial French flavors and the more traditional flavors of the Chinese influenced north to create one of the greatest food cities in South East Asia or even the world. From the low end street food to the high end artistry of the gourmet the food in Saigon rocks. Perhaps best of all it is really cheap, even the fancy places are pretty fair. I am going to miss the food in Saigon dearly.

My blog posts have been getting a little long and out of control lately so I'll just try to give everyone a quick rundown from here. Walking, shopping, eating, War Remnants Museum (incredibly disturbing, the worst thing I've seen yet but I promised this is a happy blog from now on!) Reunification palace, tour of Chu Chi tunnels. That was pretty much my time in Saigon, that and getting yelled at everywhere I went. When you're a foreign tourist walking around Saigon all of the Xe Om drivers and street hawkers selling counterfeited guide books and other crap that is much less useful call out "Hey! Hey! Where you go? Moto Cyclo?" Its persistent, its relentless, its pushy and rude. If you speak to me courteously and like a human being I will try to acknowledge you and respond once with a simple "no" or at least a head shake, but the drivers here yell at you constantly "HEY!HEY!HEY! and they even clap their hands at you like you're some kind of a dog that's hard of hearing. That's no way to treat visitors. This scooter driver jackass just kept yelling and yelling at me tonight even though I was obviously doing my best to ignore him while I was attempting to take pictures of this gigantic dying rat on the sidewalk. Finally I had my fill of this behavior and decided to give it right back to this guy. I spun around and jumped right up in his face and started yelling "HEY! HEY! and repeating whatever other gibberish he had been yelling at me while aping the motions of a person trying to get someone's attention. His xe om friends seemed amused and he seemed pretty flabbergasted and confused by the whole thing but I would think the expats that live here must flip out and do the same all the time. It gets terribly old being yelled at constantly no matter where you go. I know there are some pretty big cultural differences between east and west but does anyone like being yelled at constantly? Is that so hard to understand? Jeez.

Tomorrow I leave for Mui Ne. I guess my story above means its time. I do like it in Saigon though, really. Its a great town.




Typical Saigon market place. The greens here are amazing.


Typical madness on the doorstep of my Saigon Hotel 24-7


Oh No! What would Uncle Ho say??? Louis Vuitton? Millions of idealistic communists got their asses shot off on the Ho Chi Minh Trail for this?


Dong Khoi at night. Saigon's answer to Rodeo Drive.


The exquisite Vietnamese treat "Ca Phe Sua De" or Vietnamese sweet ice coffee. The little silver tumbler looking thingy is called a "fin" or at least that is what I was told. The "fin" is just a drip coffee brewing vessle that both brews and filters the coffee. The little white vessel on the table holds the sweetened condensed milk of course, which is added according to individual preference but is optimally added to the hot brewed coffee not the ice so it will warm increasing its viscosity/solubility. Proper Ca Phe Sua De is made with a lovely variety of indigenous Vietnamese coffee, Buon Ma Thuot, which is roasted in butter. The butter roasted beans impart this wonderful beverage with much of its characteristic depth, smoothness and extraordinary richness.


Finished product ready to drink.


Raiden from Mortal Kombat prepares a Durian for my enjoyment. Well, enjoyment if you're the kind of person that derives pleasure from a fruit that has the same consistency and smell as a rotten baby diaper.


Traffic? What traffic? Fire up the barby!!!


One of my appetizers at the Temple Club. Shrimp pate applied and cooked on the stalks of young fresh sugar cane with spicy greens, steamed rice noodle roll-ups, shaved fresh green fruits, house prepared rice paper wraps, and of course a special sauce. They don't mess around when it comes to food in Saigon.



Ngo Viet Thu's most groovey Reunification Palace.


Mother and Son posing in front of the tank that crashed the gate of the old Presidential Palace before it became the "Reunification Palace"


Paging Austin Powers.....


"Gentlemen Please! You can't fight in the War Room!" StrangeLove-esque Telex room in the underground bunker complex underneath Diem's Palace. He was assassinated just before it's completion.




Don't forget to floss kids. Gingivitis is a real killer. (War Remnants Museum.)


This flag was pretty creepy. The honesty was too much. And to think the Army claimed they didn't know. (War Remnants museum.)


Spider entrance to Viet Cong stronghold Chu Chi tunnel complex


A not so fat Dutch girl unsuccessfully attempts to fit through the tunnel entrance above.


The tinniest British girl I've ever seen successfully makes it inside the hole.


Carcass of American M-1 tank resting where it was destroyed by Viet Cong in 1970. Now its a jungle gym for tourists at Chu Chi.


Ministry of thought helping to re-educate the feeble white devil minds of tourists at Chu Chi.


Living out my childhood GI Joe fantasies with a real AK-47 and fake ear muffs.




Badminton in the park.


Synchronized dance practice in the park.


Cyclo driver takes a break from peddling to catch up on the day's headlines.

Trapped inside of a Thai postcard.

I did it. I went searching for that perfect Thai beach postcard moment everyone has in their mind's eye when they think of Thailand and I found it.

Anyone who has a problem with beautiful beaches, sunsets and pictures that all look like they are from a postcard or as my fiance said, "Christian inspirational wall art" should stop reading now. For the record none of the pictures I am about to post have been cropped, photoshopped, or altered in any way. Railay is weird. Just hold your camera up, click the shutter and and there's a 99% chance you just took an amazing photograph. Longtail boasts, immaculate white sand, crystal clear water, crazy sunsets, and limestone karsts and cliffs jutting dramatically from turquoise seas, they're just all over the place. It's not a big secret anymore, but postcard Thailand is real, and it's alive and well in Krabi province.


The majority of peninsular Railay as seen looking north. To the right you see East Railay, the other side is West Railay. Way in the distance nestled at the base of the far cliffs is Ton Sai. All pictures on this blog are thumbnails. Click the picture for a larger image. Not pictured is Phra Nang beach. Phra Nang relative to the photo's vantage point, would be to my back. I'm standing atop the large rock formation that divides Phra Nang from the rest of Railay

During my time in Krabi province the fiance and myself based ourselves on Railay. I had always heard marvelous things about Krabi Province and a friend I made in Thailand pointed me towards Railay. (Thanks Fin!) Railay is part of the mainland but feels and functions like a tiny dessert island because it is surrounded by impenetrable cliffs which make longtail boats the only way on or off the island. No cars or motorized transport is allowed on Railay adding to its serenity. Railay itself is quite developed but you don't really notice it when you're there, especially outside of the high season. The hotels, bungalows and villas are all well hidden among the cliffs and palm groves that make up the island. Railay is a 10 minute boat ride away from the its northern beach neighbor Ao Nang but has been spared the over development that comes with easy access. Apart from how nice your room is and what you paid for it, my impression of Railay was the location of your accommodations mattered little as Railay is a tiny place which can be easily traversed on foot.

Railay essentially has three sides to it. East Railay, which is a more of a mangrove swamp/tidal bay than a beach. East Railay has lots of bars, restaurants and some cheaper backpacker style accommodations. On the other side of Railay lies the fabulous white sand beach of West Railay. West Railay is dominated by more upmarket hotels and resorts and offers little else in the way of food or drink outside of what's on offer from the resorts themselves. The southern tip of Railay is home to the spectacular beach of Phra Nang. If there are better beaches on this planet it would be hard for me to imagine them. The only accommodation available on Phra Nang beach is the ultra-exclusive and obscenely expensive Rayvadee Resort, but fortunately for those of us can't afford to spend a few thousand a night to stay at Rayvadee, Phra Nang beach itself is still open to the public.

Between Railay and Ao Nang is the tiny little back-packer/rock climber community of Ton Sai or Hat Ton Sai. Ton Sai is even less developed and more isolated than Railay even though it is still on the mainland and connected by a rudimentary road to Ao Nang. Ton Sai has a terrific kid-free mellow back-packer vibe and the prices here are what you would expect from Thailand. You will eat a better meal in Ton Sai for half the price of what you will find in Railay. At low tide Ton Sai can be reached via a quick 10 minute scramble across the slippery sharp rocks from Railay West. During the day I think you can arrange boat service between the two, but if your accommodations are in Railay and the tide comes in at night while you're visiting Ton Sai you're either spending the night in Ton Sai, or braving a very dark and bushy forty minute trek through the jungle with the wild things to get back to Railay, but that's another story.

My stay in Railay was far too quick. We had good weather and Akila and I made the most of the beaches and fantastic waters surrounding Railay. I finally got to use my mask and snorkel I bought in Koh Chang but was unable to use before due to scrapes and stitches. Our very first night in Railay we ate a late dinner and went for a midnight swim at West Railay. Having heard of the magical photoluminescent waters around Krabi I couldn't wait to give it a try and was not disappointed. If you splash or run your hand through the water you will see a beautiful stream of thousands of little points of light trailing behind your hand. It looks like tiny blue/green-gold fireflys getting rolled about in the water. Absolutely amazing and delightful stuff.

The next day we enjoyed beautiful Phra Nang beach and then some dinner and a fabulous sunset at West Railay. Day two, my back was smarting from the sunburn I received the day before and we opted for an evening snorkeling trip around the surrounding islands that was to depart around two in the afternoon. Night snorkeling with the photoluminescence sounded cool and I wasn't up to braving the mid-day sun. The trip was going well and Akila and I were both really enjoying ourselves. The seas had been rough that day but the snorkeling was still very good. I saw more fish than I ever had seen before diving and snorkeling in the Caribbean. We enjoyed a nice dinner and a lovely sunset on Chicken Island and then when we least expected it disaster struck again. My poor little Akila was climbing back into the boat in the total darkness of a moonless night after a swim when she placed her hand down on the side of the boat and felt a sharp, burning, wicked pain shoot up her hand. She thought she had pushed a nail through her hand but she had in fact been stung by a mysterious creature who's identity and origin is still unknown to us even as I write. The pain was excruciating and she became griped with the terrible fear of the unknown as her hand turned an ugly waterlogged blue and she lost the feeling in her fingers and the ability to open or close her hand.

Aside from the terrible and unexplained pain in Akila's hand we had many other problems that night. First the boat crew was terrible. They gave Akila a Tylenol but offered very little else in the way of sympathy or concern. Most troublingly they offered us no explanation of what it was that may have stung her, how serious it was, or what the proper medical course of action should be. The language barrier was a problem here but I thought someone on board could have at least made a bit of an effort. They acted as if it was paper cut. I was smart enough to have brought a little first aid kit with me on the boat trip, which did come in handy for the Benadryl, but I foolishly left my wallet which is of far greater use than gauze pads in a real medical emergency. Lesson learned. Never again. So once we get back to West Railay Akila is sea sick, in excruciating pain, and she's in near hysterics about her hand. She desperately wants a state of the art medical facility with a team of neurosurgeons just to tell her she's going to be fine but instead we find the closest thing to a medical facilty Railay has to offer, the local pharmacy, is closed and we instead get a cup of vinegar from some well intentioned waitresses. We're told the closest "clinic" (Which in Thailand means a basic Pharmacy staffed by a person with some medical training, NOT a nurse, and definitely NOT A DOCTOR.) is in Ao Nang and it closes in thirty minutes. After buying lunch I've only got a couple of hundred bhat left in my pocket. Not even enough to get to Ao Nang, let alone pay for medical care and god forbid its more serious and we need to get to the real hospital in Krabi. Boy this vacation just got really stressful really fast. I'm between a rock and a hard place. Akila was not in any state to patiently wait for me while I ran to the room to retrieve my wallet. It would have taken me twenty five minutes or more to sprint there and back, but then we have this problem of the closing clinic. The long tail boat from the snorkeling trip is the only boat in sight and probably the last boat leaving Railay that night, especially with the high seas. I make a snap judgment and put Akila back on the boat to seek medical attention in Ao Nang. I figure either the sting she got on her hand is not serious and the people at the clinic in Ao nang can fix her up, or if it is serious we'll know by the time we get to the clinic in Ao Nang and at that point we're off the island and that much closer to a real hospital in Krabi town. If push comes to shove I figure someone will take a $1500 camera for a ride to the hospital. The boat captain with the boat full of mysterious stinging creatures wants 1500 bhat just to go one way to Ao Nang. Jackass.

We made it to the clinic in Ao nang which is fortunately just off the beach. I tell the boat driver he's going to have to wait to get his money until we get back but if he does I'll double it to take us back to Railay. Inside the clinic we find a nice young woman who finally tells Akila she's going to live and there's no need to chop off her hand. She kindly and confidently explains that Akila has been stung by something that is like a baby scorpion, but not a baby scorpion. She muttered the word in Thai a few times, rubbed her head and talked it over with her co-worker before deciding she had already given us her best english translation. The girl at the pharmacy explained to us there is really nothing to do for these type of stings and outside of a few people who experience severe allergic reactions to this creature there is nothing to worry about except the agonizing pain, which normally subsides in 24-48 hours. Akila's hand hurt for the next 72 nonstop, but the worst was over after 48.

By the time we reached the pharmacy the color was already returning to Akila's hand and she was regaining some movement, the pain had not spread beyond her hand, and there was no unusual swelling. I felt like we had at least dodged the "allergic reaction" bullet. We unsuccessfully attempted to get a second opinion from a real doctor in Ao Nang, but since we were too broke to pay our way to the hospital in Krabi, Akila made do with some coconut oil and a scrib of Tylenol for some of the worst pain she had ever felt in her life. We returned to Railay. There were a few more bits of drama that night but basically that's it. One day I hope to find out what kind of animal stung Akila that night, so I can spend at least one week of my life hunting them, and smashing their vile cowardly little stinging bodies with a giant hammer.

It was still a nice trip.


View from my balcony.


West Railay Beach


East Railay


Phra Nang


Phra Nang





West Railay sunset


West Railay Sunset




Shark paramedics onboard snorkeling boat.


The obviously named "Chicken Island"


Akila performs the impossible by sitting on two beaches at once while watching a sunset!


Photoluminescence captured at ISO 3200, well sorta. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger picture. Look in the middle of the frame.


Our gear taking the boat ride back to Krabi. Can you guess bag which is mine?


END

Siem the Reaper: Temple of Angelina Jolie

I write this post back in Bangkok after an amazing trip to Railay, Krabbi Province Thailand, my heart isn't really in this one, but I think a visit to the world's largest religious structure/complex and one of SE Asia's biggest tourist attractions is an obligatory post. Perhaps a bit on Cambodia's capital Phnom Phen while I'm at it. I've also decided to beef up my previous Kampot post with a few more pictures. Sorry, but I got behind in Cambodia and I wasn't going to choose my notebook over my fiance during the short time we had in beautiful Railay. What can I say? Blogging is hard work sometimes.

Before I post any of my pictures for this entry I would like to moan about some camera drama. The kit lens, my main lens, that I purchased with my beloved Nikon D90 camera completely fell apart while I was in Kampot. (The blades that made up the aperture fell apart inside the lens leaving me with a bunch of metal blades rattling around inside my lens shredding my optics) Fortunately I packed a second lens for my trip, a Nikon 50mm 1.8f prime, but unfortunately the crop factor of my camera's CMOS sensor converts the 50mm focal length of my lens into the equivalent of a 80mm telephoto which is really only good for portraits. At 80mm my camera was completely incapable of any wide angle shots that you need to photograph the temples of Ankor or the ruins at Bokor Hill Station but I pressed on with my long lens and diminished photographic capacity. Several hundred dollars later and a trip to the only Nikon authorized repair shop in Bangkok (Who would not honor my warranty without a hard copy of my original warranty certificate)everything is all good and my camera is back up to full speed. I even traded the the frustratingly long 50mm for Nikon's new 35mm 1.8 and I am very happy with the nicer and more versatile lens. Razor sharp, even wide open at 1.8. Ok, enough gear nerd talk. Get ready for some awesome shots from Railay, but first a whopping double blog entry for Phnom Phen and Siem Reap/Ankor Wat!



I think it was Fifty Cent that said: "You ain't nobody if you don't drive Porsche" Well in Cambodia you ain't nobody if you don't drive Lexus, and apparently a Lexus just isn't a Lexus without a gigantic decal applied to both sides, the hood, and the back of the car. Seriously I didn't see a single Lexus without the extra "LEXUS" decals plastered all over the car. I wish I had pictures but I also saw "Lexus" brand crackers, chocolate chip cookies, and toothpaste. All real Lexus brand products produced under license on behalf of Toyota Motors Inc. of course.


On my way from Kampot to Siem Reap/Temples of Ankor I stopped and spent one night in Cambodia's busy capital of Phnom Phen. I had not heard much nice about Phnom Phen, mostly I had heard about how crime ridden and dangerous the city was but I found nothing of the sort. I found Phnom Phen to be a busy happy city chock full of optimistic teenagers and new decaled Lexuses. (?sp) It was a town flush with new foreign investment cash (I was told it was the Chinese and the Koreans) and you could definitely tell it was a town that was going places. Even as a fresh off the bus farang there was no mistaking that Phnom Phen was in the middle of some pretty radical changes. Despite the appetite of the locals for international brand names the city was strangely but also refreshingly devoid of any large fast-food chains. No Mc D's, KFC, etc. I did enjoy a few nice pieces of "Louisiana USA" fried chicken at one shiny new fast food establishment popular with the local teens. It appeared to be a rough imitation of Popeye's/Bojangles. If there are any entrepreneurs out there with good political connections in Cambodia there is a fortune to be made in opening American fast-food franchises.


One of my reasons for visiting Phnom Phen was to see the city's dark side from it's sad and violent past. The word "autogenocide" was first coined to describe what took place in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge and nowhere is the gruesome legacy of the Khmer Rouge's madness and cruelty better preserved than inside the notorious torture and detention center know as S-21 or Tuel Slang.


Tuel Slang, a.k.a. S-21

A former elementary school that was converted into a shop of horrors Tuel Slang has been left as close as possible to how it was when the Vietnamese found it in 1979. 15,000 Cambodians were tortured and killed at Tuel Slang during the two years it was used by the Khmer Rouge. Outside of a small handful of guards and high ranking Khmer Rouge officials there were only 14 Cambodians who were known to have passed through the gates of Tuel Slang and lived to tell the story. Those scant few survivors owe their escape to the haste and confusion of the Khmer Rouge's retreat when Phnom Phen fell unexpectedly to the invading/liberating Vietnamese. In a sick turn of justice very few of the guards that worked at Tuel Slang ever escaped its vortex of death as the guards they unwittingly trained as their replacements would routinely execute their mentors as their first rite of initiation. The paranoia and wanton disregard for life displayed by the Khmer Rouge leadership is unmatched in modern history. Most of the prisoners tortured and killed in Tuel Slang were loyal Khmer Rouge themselves who fell under the suspicion of "Angkor"

Weak of stomach or soft of heart may want to skip the next few images.






As many as 800 prisoners were processed at S-21 a day so whenever you see a number it is not a unique number or a special prisoner identification number, it is just that person's number for the day they were processed. This little boy was the one-hundred and fifty second prisoner processed at Tuel-Slang on the day he arrived. Notice the placement of the safety pin. Entire families were disposed of here.














OK, no more really bad stuff I promise. Maybe a picture or two from the Hanoi Hilton or some UXO information from Laos but from now on this is a happy blog.

Siem Reap is a bit shocking coming from the rest of Cambodian. Stepping off of a plane from Bangkok one could be forgiven for believing Cambodia is roughly at the same level of development and tourism as Thailand even though nothing could be further than the truth. I would reckon Siem Reap to be at least 25 years or more ahead of the rest of urban Cambodia and light years ahead in tourism. Siem Reap has been packing in western tourists making the pilgrimage to see the temples of Ankor since the 1860's when the writings of the Frenchman Henri Mouhot excited the imaginations of Europeans in search of ancient grandeur and mystery. Understandably, Siem Reap is a bit more attuned to the western sensibilities and more adept at catering to their tastes. The Angkor Temple tourism industry like many other things was completely wiped out during the madness of the war years but Siem Reap started making a comeback in the early nineties as Angkor quickly became the most popular tourist attraction in Cambodia. In less than 15 years Siem Reap has transformed itself from a tiny sleepy backwater to the wealthiest city in Cambodia and a premier destination for the international jet-set crowd.


The tourist friendly streets of downtown Siem Reap



Fancy Art-Deco style 5-star hotel around the corner from my hotel. One of the many new luxury hotels which seem to be multiplying like mushrooms in Siem Reap.



The super-mod and very minimal chill-out lounge in the fantastic "Blue Pumpkin". Exquisite ice-cream, cakes, cookies and pastries downstairs and the free Wi-Fi and pillow lounge upstairs with a full bar, complete menu and table service. If you could operate a Blue Pumpkin franchise in the States at even a 200% markup of the Cambodian Blue Pumpkin's prices the sky would truly be the limit. Air conditioning and free WiFi aren't quite as exciting to find in the US though.


The temples of Angkor are the surviving relics from the golden age of the Khmer empire, which thrived roughly between 802 AD to 1432 when the city of Angkor was overran by invading Thais. The temples at Angkor, and Angkor Wat in particular are a source of great national pride for all Cambodians. Angkor Wat is the crown jewel of the temple complex and the largest religious structure in the world. It appears on the national flag, money, beer and almost everything in Cambodia. During the the heyday of the Khmer-Hindu god kings the borders of Cambodia stretched deep into Thailand, all the way across Laos and included much of the south of Vietnam. Cambodia was the regional superpower of southeast Asia and their only real rivals were the Chams or modern day Vietnam. In the six hundred years since the fall of Angkor Cambodia as been forced to suffer many indignities at either the hands of its more powerful neighbors Thailand and Vietnam or by colonial powers such as the French and more recently the Americans.

The surviving stone temples seen today were for for religious purposes and ceremonies only. It was forbidden for mere mortals to live in houses made of stone. The actual city of Angkor lie to the west of the temple complex and was made entirely of wood. Virtually no trace of the wooden city which housed over a million inhabitants at its peak is left today. All of the early temples at Angkor were erected as shrines to Hindu deities. As Buddhism gained popularity through the Khmer empire later temples attempted to merge the gods of both religions in an attempt to smooth the religious strife that was developing among the subjects of the kingdom. Later kings declared themselves Buddhist and would go about retrofitting older temples with Buddhas only to have successive Hindu kings reaffirm the Khmer empires' Hindu-ness and proceed to remove all of the retrofitted Buddhas. So it went until the Thais invaded and chased the Khmers out of Angkor and down to Phnom Phen.


Me standing at the east gate entrance to the Ankor Thom temple complex



Gate Face detail



The fantastic crumbling temple of Banyon with more bewitching smiling faces than you can count.



My tour guide knew how to set this one up. Pretty cool right?



My guide and photographer for the day, KimHour (Kim-whoOHHR)



Well you knew the temples were crumbling but did anyone wonder what happens to the stones? First they fall off and land pretty much where ever they want. Hopefully not on top of a rich American with a good attorney. Then the workers here stack them up along the outer walls of the temple and maybe one day someone will be able to get a team of skilled archeologists to put them back.



One of the thousands of beautiful Apsara sculptures among the temples at Angkor. This one was at Banyon.


Japanese tourist worshiping Lord Buddha inside Banyon temple.



The fabulously overgrown Ta Phrom temple of Angelina Jolie/Tomb Raider fame. Locals were very proud of their connection to Hollywood's most famous and glamorous starlet and credit the film with doubling the number of tourists visiting Angkor. Ta Phrom was pretty awesome, but the crowds, the roped off areas, and the construction equipment attempting to arrest the assault of the jungle on this magnificent place did diminish a good bit of the mysterious lost jungle temple charm this place must have radiated just a few years ago. Regardless, you would be hard pressed to find a building with more character anywhere. It still has a very powerful energy and immense authority.



I know I've already bored everyone with my camera talk, but my shots at Ta Phrom would have been so much better with a wider lens. Oh well. Perhaps an excuse to come back.








What? I didn't say anything....



Inner most chamber of Ta Phrom. KimHour said all of these holes used to have giant diamonds in them. I guess Lara Croft must have snatched them already. I'm not 100% sure I believe KimHour. I read something somewhere about holes and bronze panels but I guess its kind of cool nobody really knows. Maybe the holes used to contain gigantic diamond skulls with the blood of virgins inside.






Same tree as picture above, but seen from the outside of the temple grounds.



Main entrance to the granddaddy of them all. Just the moat on this sucker is huge! You should see the aerial photos of Angkor Wat.



Cheesy, yes I know, but how can you resist? My guide KimHour had Ankor wired. Dude knew the exact positioning and framing for all of the trick shots.



Detail of one of the many elaborate and beautiful carvings adorning the walls of Angkor Wat. All of the relief carvings illustrate narratives either from Hindu mythology or the history of the Khmer kingdoms. There's quite literally miles of this stuff stretching along the walls and corridors of Angkor Wat.


Gorgeous Sanskrit writing adorning the walls of Angkor Wat. The stone has been polished smooth over the years by many hands trying to read the elegant script. Can any of my Indian relatives make out what it says? I'm not a Lord of the Rings fan but it looks like elvish to me.



END.