Photo's

Some Photo's to show you the type of fun that goes on, on a small island with not much to do...... Peace ya'll.

More Tales of Asia

Welcome back guys!
Just thought I would give you a little bit more of a low down of the history of the Temples of Angkor that are in the below pictures.
On the first day we visited the Angkor Wat, which dates back to the 10th century apparently, it was a magnificent site despite the clouds and throngs of Asian tourists! It is a pretty large complex with intricate carvings of Aspara's (celestial nymphs) and Naga (mythical beasts similar to snakes and lions) guarding the entrance ways. The whole of one of the inner walls is covered in an ornate carving of a huge battle scene.After exploring the Wat the Tuk Tuk driver (visitors are not allowed to drive themselves around, you can either go by tuk tuk or taxi or on a bicycle, or you can even walk but the whole of the site of Angkor covers over 100 sq KM's so we decided we would need some wheels!) took us to Angkor Thom, a collection of some of the most famous sites of Angkor. After a rather over priced and not that pleasing breakfast and after purchasing a couple of much needed (and well priced) bamboo fans (man it was humid!) we went to Bayon, which is covered with huge heads and faces, serene looking images of the Buddha and Javarayman, the God King. I think collectively this was our second 'favourite' temple that was there.
Next we visited some of the inner temples, including the Elephant Terrace which is covered in sculptures of hundreds of elephants in full battle and the temple of the Leper King. It was getting even more hot and humid as it reached midday so we headed for the cool shade of the huge trees that cover the jungle temple of Ta Phrom. I thought this temple was the most spectacular with huge buttress roots smothering the archways and branches encircling the ancient stones in all directions. It really was as though Ta Phrom had been left to the ravages of the dense Cambodian jungle.
The next day we went out a little bit later as we intended to see the sunset from one of the temples. We spent the day driving round some of the lesser known temples, still many of which were equally amazing and so well preserved and maintained. The Aspara figures cover all the temples and each one is unique, imagine how long all this would have taken to carve and construct? Some of the temples had little holes dotting them, we found out that these had once been filled with all kinds of precious gems like ruby's, emeralds and sapphires. When the time for sun set did arrive guess what? It was cloudy and hazy again! So we decided not to hang around as once again we were all very tired out and hot and we still had one full day left on our passes.
On the third day we had a long ride of about an hour and a half in the tuk tuk's to the outer temples. The first one Banteay Srei I had heard a lot about, it was said to be a beautiful pink colour in the early morning sun light and contain some of the most well kept and intricate carvings. We arrived there still sleepy and had not expected it to be so small! Especially after the vastness of the main Angkor temples. No wonder they advised you to get there early to beat the tour buses, it soon began to fill up, so we left after taking as many pictures as we could. We visited the last of the outer temples, the most interesting things I remember about those was that I bought some delicious hand made sugar cane sweets packaged in the sugar cane leaf, i was well impressed with those, also Max bought some cute origami type paper decorations and Jon bought a funky silk table cloth, all very cheap from the temple children.
After a day to recover in Siem Reap getting massages and catching up on our sleep, e mailing and going to a local swimming pool to cool off we decided that was enough of Cambodia for a while and that it was time to meet Adam in Bangkok anyway. So we got a bus which took about 10 hours to Bangkok. It was not such a bad journey as we slept for most of the way. After checking into a hotel and having a cheap feed on the Ko Sarn Road and a couple of drinks back in our hotel room we passed out and the next day Max and I went on a huge mission around Bangkok to try to find a decent tailor who would replicate a couple of our skirts for us but they were all well too over priced and didn't have very nice material anyway. That evening we headed to the airport to meet up with Adam and all went out that night to one of Jons regular hang outs the 'Rasta Bar' where we ended up bumping into some of his old teacher friends who took us to a Shisha bar on Ko Sarn where we smoked apple and strawberry flavoured tobacco through large, ornate pipes. This was a first time experience for some of us and it was big fun, although the live band could only do covers of classic songs in broken English! I would have preferred to be smoking shisha down a back alley in Marrakech but, one day, one day....
The next evening we were all glad to be leaving for the paradise islands in the Gulf and hopped on a night bus to Koh Tao, the bus was luxurious especially compared to all the ones we had been catching in Cambodia and it was barely full so we could put the seats back to fully recline and proceeded to watch Pirates of the Caribbean and drink Bacardi Oro (nice one Max!) to help us get to sleep. We got the early morning boat to Koh Tao and were all very excited about the prospect of getting under water again. Max and Jon were both qualified divers already and Adam was to do his open water diver course with Kieran.
Kieran and I and Max and Jon decided to sign up for a days boat trip to do some fun diving, we had a fantastic day and got breakfast and lunch included and 3 dives, 2 at Sail Rock which even Kieran and I had never dived before in our time working in Koh Tao, and 1 dive at South West Pinnacle. Sail Rock is a cool dive site between the islands of Koh Tao and Koh Phagnan, it is not particularly deep but has a cool 'chimney', which you enter at a depth of 5 meter's and descend to 18 meters and exit out the bottom. We of course saw loads of cool tropical fish but unfortunately no Whale sharks this time, it was great to be back in the water again though and diving with friends. Many of the following pictures from that day and others are from Jon's camera, thanks mate! Jon doesn't have a lot of luck with camera's but I'll say nothing more on that.
The next few days we spent exploring the beaches of the island, snorkelling and relaxing while we waited for some more friends to arrive to also do their open water dive course. We also discovered, much to our disbelief and disappointment what had happened to our beloved haunt 'Happy Daze' but I will let Kieran tell you about that.

Photo's from Angkor!