Technically, yes, we were in Cambodia but in reality, we just went to Siem Reap and surrounding areas. Our main goal was to visit famous temples surrounding that city. The most famous temple is Angkor Wat, which is recognized as a Unesco World Heritage site. In addition to the typical day visit, I highly recommend the night visit, preferably at dusk for photographers. The reliefs, lit from a certain angle come to live and are more beautiful at night. The fortified ancient city of Angkor Thom with its Bayon Temple, characterized by numerous smiling statues is another “must see” location. Of course, the most imposing temple is the jungle temple or Ta Phrom, where roots of giant trees have invaded the temple. The scenery is right out Indiana Jones movies; well, actually the movies copied the scenery from this area, of course. In general, I am for restoring historical sites but restoration work on this temple would certainly destroy the character of this temple. No, they won’t be restoring it, thank you.

In addition, we also visited Chong Khneas, the floating village at the edge of Tonle Sap Lake. For that we took a boat on the Siem Reap River and the experience made me feel fortunate and better about myself.

Thank you for visiting and please feel free to leave any comments.

Photographic tidbits: A night visit of Angkor Wat is a must and you better bring a tripod for that. I had a monopod and the lens I used has an Image Stabilizer alright, which helped enormously but for really long exposure shots to render the colors better, you do need a sturdy support for your gear. Some of the vendors left a chair at the pond and I used it for that purpose; I lucked out and could get that shot I was looking for. Don’t count on it being there the next time around.