Cambodia '07-'08

Found these pictures of my trip to Cambodia on 28 Dec '07 - 4 Jan '08. (and since I dont have anything to blog about, let me just post some pictures :P)

Below photo is taken at the roundabout in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. The thing in the middle of the roundabout is the independence monument of Cambodia.

We visited the Mekong River too. Cambodia is really a poor country. The people living at the Mekong River live in a small hut with no electricity and water supply. Some kids dont even have clothes to wear. They bathe, drink, wash their clothes using the water from the Mekong River. A lot of children are malnutrition (by looking at the lack/faded colour of hair at a very young age). Feel so sad to be there. :( According to the tour guide, the degree of corruption is very high in Cambodia. For example, to work as a tour guide in Angkor Wat, they need to forked out a few thousand USD$, just to earn USD$1/day!!! :(

The one-room huts. And I swear these are the better + cleaner looking ones already. :(

We also went to the famous Central Market for souvenirs shopping. It's true that we can get Polo Tees for the price of USD$5. Most of them have brands and it even goes to the details like the brand name printed on the buttons! o.O some says they are originally from the factory but being sneaked out by the workers. Hmmm.. They have alot of things too like handbags, watches, shoes, etc.

We bought mostly from this lady as gave us one of the lowest price we can get. :)

I remember going to a few more places like the Esplanade, we had steamboat, local food, western food in a high class restaurant. All the while using the local Tuk Tuk.

And yes, we managed to squeezed in 11 people in a Tuk Tuk excluding the driver. :P

Besides that, we also travelled via bus to Siem Riep for the most famous thing in Cambodia; the Angkor Wat.

I reached there and only to realised Angkor Wat is only one of the many ancient architecture. There are actually hundreds of monuments/buildings in that area.
There is a choice to visit for one/three/five days. We paid for 3 days pass.

All of carvings on the stones actually represents different era & meaning. Usually it follows the religion of the King who built the monument. One building might be Buddhist themed, the next might be Hindu themed. Some are mixtures of both. Each building serves a different purpose too. Eg worship, studying the religion, healing purpose, etc.

The weather was super hot on our first day visiting the monuments. Look at the picture above. We were baked under the sun! We looked for shade whenever we could. However the weather changed the next day and thereafter. It became cooling and in fact quite nice to walk around. Luckily!

Alot of trees there has been there for a long loooooooong time. They are huge! Look at the tree roots!

And I absolutely love the next photo. The tree grew on top of the building. Aint it lovely?

In fact, when they found the buidings, a lot of them were about to collapse. These tree roots are the one supporting them. Thus they could not cut the trees down without damaging the building or risked them collapsing. Aint it cool?

A tree on top of a building actually supports the building below? I FIND IT SUPER COOL! Look closely at the roof of the building.

HAHAHAHAHA below is a superly random photo which I like. Girl Power! ;)

Next is THE Angkor Wat.

Beautiful huh? :)

Angkor Wat is actually the largest temple among the rest, with the ruins encompass an area of approximately 104 square kilometers and took more than thirty years to build. It is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

They have many beautiful carvings of the Hindu religion in nearly every inch of the building.

I remembered the tour guide mentioned that Angkor Wat is divided into a few levels. I think something to do with thehighest level representing nirvana. My bad if any of my facts are wrong. I have super bad memory. :S

Anyway this is the highest level of the Angkor Wat. It was closed for restoration work as the stone steps were too narrow to walk on and to make it worse, many stones have chipped off. It would be quite dangerous.

Random fact: People have died falling down while walking up/down the stairs *gasp*

Now they build steps over the original stone steps with bigger feet space and railings to hold on to reduce the accident rates.

The back of the Angkor Wat.

Finished the Angkor Wat building. Back to other stone buildings. :)

This is random, but I just like this pic. Seldom have picture of 3 sisters nowadays. :)

Oh, and I like the following picture. Like promoting some Indiana Jones/National Treasure movie. LOL

Tree and building again. But this time, the branches of the tree are poking out at all sides of the building. Make it look as though the building is the tree trunk.

Look closely at the next building. See the roof of the entrance are all crooked and about the collapse? Look at how the tree roots helped to support and prevent them from collapsing! Ah, the beauty of mother nature helping us! :)

The next building is very cute. Grass grow out from all over the building. Makes the building look hairy. lol

Next building is different again. Something about different stones used to build the building. Can see by its colour. Cannot remember the facts d.

We watched 3 sunsets from three different buildings during the three days. And it is usually packed with tourists like us taking photos of the moment.

Squint your eyes and see the number of people climbing up the stairs to watch the sunset.

The end of stone tour! :)

On one of the day, our tour guide also ta pau-ed some local food and took us to a waterfall place for picnic lunch. The place was quite ulu as I remember passing a very bumpy steep road to reach.

We had a pondok to ourselves. There's even a hammock in the pondok.

And I celebrated my 18th birthday in Cambodia too. The tour guide was supposed to just bring out the cake to my table for the surprise during dinner, but it turned out that he made the big buffet dinner restaurant played a birthday song over the speaker when the cake parades out from the kitchen, and the guests in the restaurant sang along. WOAH~~~~

Super embarrassed at that moment! LOL but well, at least it is memorable! <3