I don’t normally like to take pictures where the main subject is people.  It is mostly in my head, but I think that trying to capture the perfect ‘image’ of a person is something I need more practice with.  I have taken some portraits that I am proud of, but it still feels like something outside of my comfort zone.

That said, it is certainly much easier to take pictures of people that are so photogenic!  I must say that I am glad that there are rules about smuggling people inside of luggage as I fear that Mrs Columbus would have taken as many of these home with her as her baggage allowance would have permitted:

Not that we are complaining, because we are actually very blessed with what we have – even if they are sometimes a little sketchy looking 😉

On day 2 of our Angkor adventure Mrs Columbus and I roust our teenage companions for a very early 5am start on the day.  In doing the planning for our short time here almost all the comments I saw indicated that a sunrise or sunset (or both) at one of the temple sights was an absolute must, so we asked our guide to include one in our travels.  Given that we are here in the off season we unfortunately have to work around the potential of rain so that basically eliminates the sunset option as we would have to take a 40 min hike up a rise to see the view and sunset from the top.  The rains most often come in the evening, so we decide that the chance of having to hike up and down (the down part in the semi-dark) while being rained upon suggests that we are better off focusing on the sunrise option.  The skies can be mixed cloud most of the day so there is a chance the sunrise will not be as spectacular as we see in the photos, but we set off in the morning to see what the day will bring.

We have chosen to go to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise as we can get a good view over the moat with the temples in the background and a nice reflection off the water if all the conditions co-operate.  Unfortunately the last bit did not work out as well as we had hoped, and the overcast skies blocked out most of the sunrise itself.  However we still did get some nice photos and I have to say that the serenity of the moment was more than I expected.  We managed to set ourselves down on the outer wall to the left of the main causeway that crosses the moat, and there were no people around us at all.  We had a light snack for breakfast and watched as the sunlight came in.  The water in the moat was perfectly flat and you could hear the just the sounds of the jungle – it is difficult to describe, but extremely peaceful.

After the sunrise we jumped back in the car to start out to our next destination.  I had read about a company that offers a tethered balloon ride near the temple that allows you to see the park area from the air, and asked our guide about it.  It was very close to where we were, so we decided to check it out.  It was still early in the day and  before most of the bus tours start up, so there was no-one there but us, and they were able to take us up right away.  The balloon took us up about 150 meters (about 500 feet) and we had an impressive view of the main temple but also of the surrounding area and some of the spots we had been to yesterday.  It is hard to understand why these sites were lost to the jungle over the centuries when you are standing in them because they are truly massive, and you think how could something this size get ‘lost’, but from the air it is a little easier to understand how dense the jungle can get, and some of the temples we saw in the first day barely show through the ground cover and canopy when viewed from above.  All in all a great stop and we are very happy we chanced upon it.

Our next stops include the temples of Banteay Srei, Banteay Samré, East Mebon, Pre Rup, Ta Som, Neak Pean, and finally Preah Khan. Towards the end of stop at Preah Khan the weather catches up with us and a short cloud burst of about 20 mins opens up and we wait it out inside the temple.  When the rain lets up we decide to wrap it up for the day as we are a little tired and don’t want to chance getting caught in a bigger storm, but it is a little unfortunate as I think the temple was quite interesting and there was more we could have explored.

We have been fairly fortunate all day though as the route we took seems to be even more offset from the bus tours than our schedule yesterday and the number of other tourists we have to share the temples with is quite small all things considered.  These sites all seem to have an extra sense of grandeur when they are not full of people.

Our guide Theoun has co-ordinated some discounted tickets for a dinner show that is right across the street form our hotel, so we finish out the evening with a buffet of various Cambodian and SE Asian food, and a display of traditional Cambodian dancing.  Tomorrow is our last day here and we have a few things left on our list to see, so we set a start time of 7am with our driver and it is the end of another busy day.