Siem Reap!

Cambodia Blog 7: Siem Reap
December 16th

My apologies for the prolonged absence. I am scrambling to catch up on blogs, and really incredibly busy most of the time. But really before I can write about anything else I need to get Siem Reap out of the way!

Wandering the temples of Angkor is like shooting adventure directly into the veins. Prowling through the crumbling moss covered ruins you explore a different world. It is easy to let the chatter of tourists fade beneath the layers of frog-songs, bird cries, the wind dancing with ancient trees. It is easy to imagine yourself the person to push away the jungle and walk through a trapdoor to another time, were kings ruled with the sun from on high and giants and gods live in the stones.

Angkor Wat is the most famous of all the temples, a sprawling overwhelming mass of palaces and temples. But Bayon, famous for the enigmatic eternally staring,  eternally smiling faces carved from it’s wall. Something incredibly peaceful rests in their faces, and a bit of this peace is granted to each visitor who climbs the temple to rest with the giants among the treetops. While we wandered though the catacombs and faces of Bayon it began to rain, a warm, constant rain that blurred the world to the same shade of the stone of the temple. I perched in an alcove and watched the rain wash peace into the world.

The next place we went was the temple Ta Prohm which has made itself famous by the images of tree roots draped around and through crumbling ruins. Tim (a volunteer from Germany and friend) marveled that it looked post apocalyptic, but for me in this world where everything is broken it was as if something had been fixed. The boundaries between natural and created wonders have been erased by time, and so the temple sits seamlessly with the landscape.

Really there is no words that can describe the stunning visuals of Siem Reap and the temples. Pictures can barely capture hints of what it is like to see them in person, but I have done my best to bring a bit of it back with the lens. There are more photos on my face book account here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=252762&id=669520939&l=c70aaab2a4

A baby monkey near Angkor Wat. They spent nearly 30 minutes posing for us!