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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Angkor-Wat

This is the finale temple for us, the 'Angkor Wat'. There was a beautiful coincident here when we arrived. A rainbow appeared over the sky and the rain stopped just in time for us to have our photo taken with the beautiful reflection of 'Angkor Wat' in the pond. Better still, trying to wrap the rainbow, walking on the rainbow bridge with the rainbow on top of us is really great and the feeling so good just as we finish taking photo a heavy down pour and we actually walking some part of the temple with hat(compliment from the guide) under the rain. I must elaborate here... 'Angkor Wat' is the grandest and most sublime of all the Khymer temples. A city by itself with a total area of 200 hectares. The scale of Angkor Wat enabled the Khmer to give full expression to religious symbolism. There were four big basin to stabilise the structure of the Angkor Wat. All was drained off water due to mosquitoes infestation. Most of the statues of Buddha was vandalised/stolen of heads, hands or legs. Well I must said we were all a little disappointment here because we are not allowed to climb to the highest point of 'Angkor Wat' which was closed for renovation purposes. We did have fun though and enjoyed ourselves so much that even being drenched in rain don't seems like much of a problem.
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After Angkor Wat, we went for another session of massage. Self paid. The last itinerary of our day (also our tour) was dinner with Cambodian traditional show. That pretty much wraps up our Siem Reap tour.
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This is a portrait of our tour taken with our tour guide and the driver. To spice up our Cambodia trip a little more, the five of us went on a 'TuTu Trishaw' ride to the discos to have some workout done (compensating for the gym session we missed back home).
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Leaving Siem Reap at 8am the next day and arrived back in Kuala Lumpur safe and sound. Chaires's driver, Aziz, was already waiting for us when we got out of the immigration.

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Siem Reap (Day 2) Continued...

As per my last entry, we continued our tour on Day 2 to the next temple, 'Ta-phorm', a monastery. The movie 'Tomb Raider' was shot here.
The complexity of its layout was made worst by its' partly collapsed state......and the trees that intertwined itself amongst the ruins plus a greater mass of thinner & smoother grey roots which grows into various crevices in between the ruins.
This is where Angelina Jolie jumped down in Tomb Raider... and ended up in Dubai, hahaha...
and we'll end up in Anchor Wat in my next entry.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Siem Reap (Day 2)

Day 2 started with an early breakfast before our tour to Angkor Thom. Our tourguide, Mr Sip, was already waiting for us in the lobby when we are done with breakfast. To get into Angkor Thom, we need to pass thru some villages on dirt roads. We were then given an entry pass to all the various temples around Angkor Thom each. We arrived at the South gate before long and was greeted by two rows of statues resting on dragons.
One the left, it was the symbol of God with smiling face... And on the right, it was demons with huge popping eyes. Here is the elephant terrace that led us to the 'Bayon Temple'.Inside the temple, most of the towers are carved with four faces which are worshipped by the Hindus & Buddhists. We met 2 young monks and took some photos with them. Before we do that we have to know the rules and that is, there shall not be any kind of body contact.
Here is a photo of me rubbing nose & kissing Buddha's face...Hehehe... It is not what you see it is. Just a camera trick that did it, cute isn't it?
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After Bayon Temple, we were supposed to go on a hot air balloon. But unfortunately, the weather was rather bad that day. We only get to take photos of it instead. So sad... Well, next will be 'Ta-Phorm' temple and 'Angkor-wat'. But it will have to be in the next entry. Tired la.....bye for now, have a nice day.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Cambodia- Siem Reap

I mentioned in one of my entry that I will be going to Cambodia with a few friends of mine. Remember? Well... I did. Went with four of my friends last last weekend (11-13/10). It was a 3days/2nights holiday from "Airasia Holiday Package" which includes the return air tickets + accommodation. As for the ground arrangement like airport transfers and sight-seeing tours, we booked separately through a Cambodian friend. Our flight for Cambodia (Siem Reap) was due for departure at 7am. Therefore, we need to start our journey from Kluang as early as 2am, barely 2 hours past midnight. We gathered at Chaire's house prior to our departure from Kluang and took advantage of her newly acquired 15-seater celebrity MPV...
Together with her driver, Aziz, we started our journey at 1:15am, from Kluang to the LCCT airport in Sepang.We tried to catch some beauty sleep through the 3+ hours drive.
We touched down in Siem Reap right on schedule. There were no hiccups going thru the imigrations too.
Once out of the airport, we were greeted and welcomed by the hotel staff together with our tour guide, Mr Sip Cham Nan. We checked into our hotel, freshen up a little before our tour of Siem Reap begin!
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Our first destination, a silk farm!
Learnt a lot on how silk is actually produced and why it is so expensive.
Next, is the Jewellery Shop (no photos allow inside). We get to learn more about different kind of gemstones. As we all knew, Cambodia is one of the country that produces many different kind of gemstones. Here, we were taught how to differentiate the real thing from the fake ones, and of course the gems are for sale too. I didnt buy any but got an early birthday present from Tenny, a beautiful yellow gemstone surrounded with sparkling white stone ring. It was a good bargain. From USD200.00 to USD20.00. You'll be surprised at how they actually marked-up the prices. The discounts offered went as much as 80%. So bear this in mind if you are going for Cambodian gemstone. Next on our itinerary was the floating village. There were plenty of boat houses, (look at that little girl on the boat, think she is bearly 5yrs old) ...
...floating schools and churches...
...and even a crocodile farm.
While we were at the crocodile farm, our friend Chaire accidentaly dropped her very expensive sunglasses into the crocodile's enclosure and our tourguide Mr Sip have to fish it out for her. Here, we can actually buy the crocodie and have them cook it for you.
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After the excursion, we went for our 1hr free massage which was included in the ground package. By the time we are done, it was already dinner time. We had crocodie meat, not as nice as we thought it would be.
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We went to the night market after dinner and bought some souvenirs. In Cambodia, USD is their main currency even if a withdrawal is made through an ATM machine. That end the 1st day of our trip to Siem Reap.