Saturday at the Angkor Complex

In the middle of the night I was awake for two or more hours, this left me feeling exhausted when getting out of bed. Looking out at the sky there was a low heavy overcast, not a good day for photographs. Dara my tuk tuk driver picked me up at 06:30.

Dara and I discussed where to go in the Angkor complex. Showing him the photo of the tree growing over a building he knew what part of complex it was in. We drove to the entrance of Angkor where I purchased my $20.00 day pass. There were several warnings, "once you pay there is no getting your money back, if you lose the pass there is no refunds or no new ticket" and "the complex closes at 6:30 PM".

The entrance to Ta Prohm (where the tree grows over the building) was blocked and covered with scaffolding. There were steps that took me up and over the old wall, this gave me a good view of some of the trees. The Sarlao tree has a very white back with pock marks, I took several photos of them.

When the sky is white in addition to photographing details without the sky I try silhouettes against the white sky. The large trees and their canopies made good silhouette subjects.

Below is the building with the tree growing over it.

From Ta Prohm we drove to the wall of elephants around the Byaon temple. It was sprinkling as I headed to see what details were on the walls. Most of the walls around the outside of the grounds were next to a swamp, no photos there.

After going into the temple grounds it started to rain. On the way out I passed through a corridor that had beautiful carvings on the walls. It was raining too hard to take photos. I went back to the tuktuk to wait. I found the tuktuk parked with 15 others. When I found Dara, he was asleep in the back seat his head on a child's stuffed bear pillow.

In the parking area a Barang (foreigner) is like blood to sharks. Within 10 seconds of reaching my tuk tuk there were five children wanting to sell things. I politely said no. I took some photos of the kids.

I wanted to photograph some of the carvings I had seen in the rain so we waited for the rain to let up. After about 30 minute the rain becomes a light mist. I walked back to the corridor and photographed.

After lunch Dara drove me to the main Angkor Wat temple entrance where I wanted to photograph the detailed mural carvings in the back of the buildings. There are two long walls (I guess they are 100 or more meters long). They were not easy to photograph.

The rain and white sky did not wash me out completely.