Photo Adventures with Curiosity and Learning

We arrived about 10 in the morning and our tree house was not available until 2 so we, with PiSey, wandered around. We visited the central shopping area, the night bazaar (closed during the day of course) and the river. The Villa Siem Reap (which offers the treehouse as a room) has built a new place outside the city called Sojourn where Anthony and Fiona have built 10 wonderful bungalows and accompanying restaurant. We visited the bungalows, Ellen fell in love with it so we decided to shift after 3 days in the tree house. Nearby is an old temple - but totally deserted because we are now in a quite rural part of Siem Reap.

How we got there

Takeoff from Changi - Taxi

Takeoff

Climb

Climb

Climb, 766 m

Climb 2559 m

Leveling at 8419 m

Crusing at 9715 m

Nice clouds

A few islands off the coast of Cambodia

And mainland Cambodia

Crusing at 9700 m

Starting descent = at 4545m

4150 m

1472 m

Approach at 640 m

Approach at 635 m

Approach at 634 m

Approach at 626 m

approach at 219 m

Once down and through customs - we had to get around. Villa Siem Reap provided a Tuk tuk and driver - here is our man PiSey - what a terrific guide

Villa Siem Reap: the wonderful place Anthony and Fiona made

Little Kids

Big kids

Carrying charcoal

Cambodian Peoples' Party

One of the fun parts about staying with Anthony and Fiona at the Villa Siem Reap is the information and help provided by staff. Our tuk tuk driver, Pisey, recommended we stop and look at this temple area. It was totally deserted and we were able to walk about, look, and enjoy this 12th century architecture This is one of the buildings near our Sojourn residence

The temple - back door

The front door to the old temple

Looking straight in - The front of the temple

Looking through doors

and through windows

Looking through the temple door

Looking through doors

Looking out the temple window

If you know me, you know that spiders have an interesting affinity with my camera. Without tripod or macro lens, this guy provided an interesting challenge. A daddy longlegs hiding in the window

An old temple building

Hiding in the corner of another temple window was a St. Andrews cross spider - without stabilimenta

The temple

Adjacent to the old buildings was a more recent working temple and monestary. And the Buddha inside the temple

A local monk

Driving back to town and the treehouse, we drive along the Siem Reap River. Here are colorful reflections

More reflections

and more reflections

Ellen at the Siem Reap Villa, with fresh lime soda - waiting for our room key

While outside is a lady with a stylish hat

Another others - displaying a dust mask -actually the road dust was pretty bad

On our way to the treehouse, more reflections in the Siem Reap River

More reflections

Our new home - a treehouse with a view

Inside our home

Living room

The deck without an Ellen

Ellen and our snack

If you purchase tomorrow ticket to Angkor Wat at 5pm the previous day, you can enter for sort-of free (actually you paid for the ticket. Pisey took us to a mountain to climb in order to watch the sunset. And what a sunset.

Reflections of Siem Reap

We passed over the Dragon Bridge

The first thing we encountered inside the Angkor Wat grounds was the mote around the main temple area

More mote

Here was a small ensemble of land mine victims - playing along the path to the top of the mountain

Ellen watching the sunset

There is a balloon that you can rise above the occasion and see all things

Early sunset

later

later

later

later

When the sun says goodbye

another goodbye

Its over

We drove back and the temple lights were bathing some remote temples

another view

The lights rotate through colors of red, green and blue (or maybe white)

C. Frank Starmer

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