Phimeanakas

Phimeanakas is "The Palace of Heaven" and was built by King Suryavarman I.

It is a square building with 4 stairs at each side. And it was slanting 75 degrees up. The steps of each stairs was LESS half of my feet size. When you climb up, you need to put your feet side by side and climb holding the side corners. Very dangerous.
There is a newly build stairs on one of the side of the stairs. It is so scary climbing up from here, so I decided to use the newly build stairs.

After climbing those scary stairs, you need to climb around 20 steps, but this time the steps are bigger abit. When we reach the top, we can only see 1 small buddha statue on the middle. Thinking back, why we need to climbing so hard just for the to see a buddha?

Even on the olden days, even the King itself need to climb like that. The stairs they purposely build so small so that you slowly climb up and its a sense of respect to the GOD.

But when you come down from the Phimeanakas, you need to climb down using the new stairs as is it way to dangerous climbing down from the orginal stairs.

Previous: Ancient Bathtub
Next: Angkor Wat

Ancient Bathtub

Ancient Bathtub. So huge. Just for the King and the Queen. The King's bath tub is on the front and the back is the Queens one. Now it is just a pools for local kids playing and swiming at there.

Previous: Prasats Suor Prat
Next: Phimeanakas

Prasats Suor Prat

Prasats Suor Prat is 12 largely identical towers were constructed during the reign of Indravarman II. They posessed some supernatural powers to resolve legal disputes.
It serve as a Court in the ancient time.


Previous: Terrence of the elephant & Leper King
Next: Ancient Bathtub

Terrence of the Elephant & Leper King

Terrace of the Leper King is Ancient Court for those Khmer. All of the walls are CARVING. Amazing ancient people.

Carving at the drain??

Detail carving on the walls. I think those ancient people life is just carving stones everyday.

Terrence of the Elephant: This is where is stage is for the King and the people to watch the elephants battles. We are on top of the Terrence of the Leper King.
Statue of Leper King.

If you love carving, this place is just so beautiful. Can't imagine how they carve these stones. I find it difficult to carve on rubber.

Previous: South Gate at Angkor Thom
Next: Prasats Suor Prat

South Gate at Angkor Thom

Day 2: Finally I am super excited that we are going to visit Angkor Wat. Mostly people just know Cambodia for Angkor Wat, but Angkor Wat is only one part Angkor Archaeological Park. Angkor Archaeological Park is mainly divided in to 2 parts:

1. Angkor Thom (大吴哥)


2. Angkor Wat (小吴哥)

What makes Angkor Wat so famous is because it was the best-preserved temple at the site.

Big picture of Angkor Archaeological Park at the ticket counter.

Here is the ticket for Angkor. We brought the 3 day pass for USD20. 1 day pass is USD20 while 7 day pass is USD60, which must be used consecutively. The ticket include a photograph of the owner. The photograph is taken at the counter. Some destinations are apart, so regular checks for the pass are performed at almost all sites within the park. So it is wise to carry a plastic protactable tag to hang on your neck. Locals does not need to buy ticket.
There is night ticket you can buy seperately which you can enter after 5pm. There are spots light set up at night at some selected places.

Note take from one destination to the other destination is not near. Before that I thought that I need to walk thru the whole park, which is impossible. The are alot of tuk tuk car beside. Just hired one of them. We travel using the van that the tour guide provided.

Angkor Thom itself have 4 gates - north, south, east, west. Usually visitors enter thru the south gate as it is the most complete statues. The gate consist of 4 faces of buddha in each side.

Me infront of the South Gate. Busses, van, tuk tuk can enter these gates.
Each gate layout is the same. There is a 5 head snake statue on the begining of the bridge, one in the left, another in the right. The snake statue is a good prosperity sign for cambodians.
After the 5 head snake, it is followed by 54 statue of God on the left hand side of the bridge and 54 statue of devil on the right hand side of the bridge.

According to the tour guide, each statue have different face expression. And those whiter statue are those re-build statue where those dirty old statue are those orginal statue. So most me picture are with those ancient old statue.

Elephants are great helpers of the khmer. I can see carving of 3 elephants on the side of the Angkor Thom gates. And real elephants walking around the south gates. There are available for tour.

IT's just the begining of the Angkor Trip. After snaping picture, we hop on to the van and looking forward for our next destination.

Previous: Artisan d' Angkor
Next: Terrence of the elephant & Leper King

Artisan d'Angkor

Artisan d'Angkor is an Art School to help train young Cambodian artisans and promote Khmer cultural identity. Admission is Free.

Carving on the walls. Beautiful.
See how beautiful this student is painting. Visitor and visit from one room to another room with consist of different art work for the students.
Another student painting. I love the Angkor Wat painting in front of her. Simply so allsome.
Some more painting. Some parts are coating with Gold. Makes the painting shinning
Golden Bowls. Handmade by those students too....
Statue of the buddha made by the students there. TS is imitating the statue. Haha
More statue out of the building.
Souvenir shop with excellent quality, but abit costly. One of my friend brought a stone buddha face which cost USD50++. But the quality is very good, carving is very smooth and detail compare those we brought from the market area.

Previous: Tonle Sap Boat Trip (Floating Village)
Next: South Gate of Angkor Thom

Tonle Sap Boat Trip (Floating Village)

Tonle Sap is a combined lake and river system. It is the largest freshwater lake in South East Asia. So what is so special about this lake?
In Siem Reap, there is a community of people living in the lake. This place is called the Floating Village.

You can have a boat ride for 1 hour at the lake. USD15 per person. Here is a similar boat that we took. The weather is not good. Abit raining. Causing our shoes to stuck on those mud before entering the boat.
Floating Chruch. All buildings are floating.
Floating School. Where the children go to school. How? By rowing boats to there. Children here all know how to swim. In a small age, their parents will throw them to the water and they will learn how to swim.
Floating Basketball Court. A place to play basket ball and for wedding ceremory or funeral events too.

Life of the floating village. One whole family live in a small house. A family average income is around USD3-4 per day. Very poor people. They really depands on the river for their daily life, washing vegetable, bathing... etc. Mainly income of family depands on fishing and crafting. The tour guide even told us sometimes they will eat those water snakes and rats too. But they claim their rats are clean because their rats only eat fruits.
Boat full of goodies to sell.
Here the wave is very strong. Our boat is waving hard. Here is the end of the river and begining of the lake. It is dangerous to move forward so we move back.
This was near the end of the river and to the hige wave lake. The lady was rowing toward the boat restoran with full of fruits on her boat. We was worry that her boat might fall apart.

There is a small restoran on the lake for visitor to stop by. There have a place where they keep some crocodile for visiting purpose. The lake/ river have crocodiles, but crocodiles are only found on shallow waters. They don't go into deep waters.

The restoran also have seafood serve. You can order some freshy fish that they caught instantly. Here is a big map on the restoran of the tonle sap lake.

This picture we took for 1000Riel == RM1. This children using a bowl and row towards the floating restoran. Showing us this water snake. When we want to take picture of her, she refuse. Too bad I didn't have my sweets with me, so I gave her money. She smile happily and post this picture. After that she quickly row to another side and hand over the water snake to her friend and ask her friend to come. Gosh~ But to bad this time the dogs on the restoran notice and come barking at them. They were scare and quickly row away.

Me and TS of top of the floating restoran.
When reaching towards the end of the boat trip. The 2 kids on our boat show their skils on parking the boat to the river side. They were so exprience. Heard this kids were not pay to do these. They are relying on the customer tips. Poor kids. We gave them some money and you can see smiles on their faces.

When we reach the ground. Few locals rush towards us and selling us plates. Plates of our picture on top of it. Thats why we are wondering why they are taking our pictures when we are waking towards the boat. Each plate is USD3. Only one of my friend brought from them. I guess he feel pity on them.

Previous: Flying to Cambodia by Air Asia
Next: Artisan d' Angkor

Flying to Cambodia by Air Asia

I never fly by plane before. This is me & TS first flight. TS was teasing say I will be super excited. Who knows he was the one that was excited.

Didn't sleep well at home. We need to arrive at the LCCT at 5am as our flight is 7am at the morning. We took the taxi at 3.30am from Wangsa Maju for RM100 per car of 4 person.

It was 8am at the morning. Raining. Unable to see anything down beside of thick thick clouds. I love the clouds, it is just like cloud candy（棉花糖）to me. We were lucky that I could even see a rainbow above the clouds.

Air Asia flight ticket - a resit instate. Need to fill in the Cambodian white card (similar when you enter Singapore).

Before landing at Cambodia, we could see from the plane windows, several big stones on pools of water. Thinking why? Finally reliase it was the floating village houses that I will be talking at my next post.

I didn't sleep well on the plane. See how blur I am. Here is Siem Reap International Airport. They only allow small plane to land here only.

Previous: Tips and Guides travel to Cambodia
Next: Tonle sap boat trip (Floating village)

Tips and guides travel to Cambodia

I have not arrange my photos, but I think it is useful that I share my experience on tips and guides if anyone in future would like to visit Cambodia. And as a checklist for my future trips.

Water
Tour guide advise us to drink only bottled water. Avoid untreated water, ice made from untreated water and any raw fruit or vegetables that may have been washed in untreated water. I even saw light yellowish water (teh ais color) at rural areas which they wash their vegetables with. Bottle water is USD$1 for 2 500ml (Angkor Wat price). Buying 1 dozen of 500ml bottle water is only USD$1.50-$2. Cheaper for 8 of us. Drink lots of water to aviod dehyration.

Food
We took mostly food from restaurant. But we still took some local foods, street foods. We try not to eat those fresh vegetable and eat those ready cook foods only.

Take some comman medicine with you, like those panadol, oral rehydration solution (ORS), bandages, band-aids, stomach ache medicine (Poh cai yun).

Buy candies, biscuits, pencil, gums from your country. There will be alot of children asking for money and a good way to let them not bother you is giving them sweets. If you say you don't have sweets, they will ask for biscuits, pencil, gums. TS ask me to buy 1 pack from Malaysia and when you give them sweets, they feel delight and will smile to you. I should take all my pencils that I took from those hotel and give them too.

Insect and mosquito repellent

Change your currency to USD before going to Cambodia. Try exchange smaller notes of USD. Best smaller the $20. You can exchange Riels when you reach Cambodia but do not exchange riel too much. For Malaysia, buying using USD is cheaper compare to Riels.

Umbrella / Raincoat (For Wet season from May to October)

Sport shoe - to climb those rockly building at Angkor Wat.

Extra camera battery and extra memory cards. Most of our camera bateri was flat at the evening on the Angkor Wat Trip. Phnom Penh have lots of internet cafe, make sure you remember to take your cables for camera to PC connection.

Travel extension/converter for electronic device.

Remember to apply Sun block at least SPF30. I apply my moisturize with SPF15, but still have sun burn. Travel at Cambodia is extreemly hot. Especially walking at Angkor Wat at 10am to 1pm .

Tour guide
It is so meaningless that you visit somewhere without knowing the history or story of the building or heritage place. I think it is wise to have her/him explaining why we are visiting each paticular place. There have professional tour guide in speaking from Chinese, English, French, Korean, Japanese...etc.

Airport Tax
Keep USD25 to pay when you departure back to your country.

Visa
Malaysian does not need to apply visa to enter Cambodia

Next: Flying to Cambodia by Air Asia

Sister Studio Graduation and Family Photo

Almost all my sister friends had their graduation photos at studio. My sister last minute decided to have the graduation photos too. Seen my younger brother will be leaving Malaysia soon. Too bad my another younger brother is not at Malaysia.

She told the package 5 picture for RM188, but ended up choosing 10 picture. Need to add money. That is how the wedding shop earn money.

The whole process of snaping picture took us 1 hour. The last family photo snap was just 10 minutes. The photographer keep on asking us to post here and there and take alot of pictures. Heard my sister say she have a hard time choosing them as all pictures are so beautiful.

Here is her personal graduation picture.


My sister & my parrents


My younger brother, younger sister and me. I seems to be the shortest among them. So sad.
Last minute decision from my sister. Thank god I manage to find an old good looking dress and borrow a scaft from my mum.


Family picture. The photographer say that what to have a 溏心风暴(Heart of Greed - Hong Kong Drama) photo look rather then the normal tradisional family picture.


Additional family photo.
Everyone pretending to look at the book while my dad is reading a story book.


This is sweet, the photographer ask my dad nose touch my mum nose and 3 of us was looking on them to see what they are doing. Funny.


My dad and mum


My brother- business man look hor~~ Handsome ler.

He is leaving Malaysia today. And I maybe will see him another 2 years later. Sad.