Stories of Places, People and Photography in the Philippines and Beyond
The Angkor Archaeological Park, is huge and there are numerous temples around that you would need at most a week to explore most of them. But like I said before, I would only be featuring some of my favorite temples. One such temple which have also been popularized in the media and one of the most postcard perfect temple scenery is Ta Prohm.
I think most people already know that Angkor Wat is one of the most important structures in the world. Since Cambodia finally cleared itself of its land mines and opened itself up for tourism, it gave a lot of people from around the world a chance to finally see this UNESCO World Heritage Site which entranced a lot of people since its discovery. It has been used as a setting for some movies like Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider adventures in Angkor Thom and the profound whispers of Chow Mo-wan in a hole at one of the walls at Angkor Wat in the film In The Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai, which piqued a lot more interest to the general movie going public. Personally, being a fan of places with scenic ruins overflowing with history, Angkor Wat placed as one of my dream destinations (along with Maccu Picchu). And it has been great that I finally had the chance to walk these hallowed corridors whose walls echo stories withstanding throughout time.
For those who may have noticed, most of my travel trails covers a lot of UNESCO sites. I’m pretty sure you can never go wrong visiting one of their sites listed on their heritage list. In Cambodia, the Angkor Archaeological Park is not the sole UNESCO site in the area, nearby is the presence of a Great Lake, which helped the kingdom of Angkor Build their impressive structures and empire akin to how the Nile River build the Pyramids and the empire in Egypt. Tonle Sap, which means Large Fresh Water Lake, is the largest lake in South East Asia and was declared a UNESCO biosphere back in 1997. So a visit to Cambodia wouldn’t be complete without having visited this very important site and take a glimpse of life by this great lake.
After checking out the impressive Temple of Bayon, the exploration doesn’t end there. Angkor Thom, is a vast complex surrounded by high defensive walls with 5 gates, thus the name Thom, meaning Big. When Javayarman VII recaptured Angkorian empire from the Chams in 1181, he did some major empire wide constructions and made Angkor Thom as the new city capital. So aside from Bayon, there are other impressive structures just a walking distance from the center of the complex worth noting. So let’s take a brief look into some of them.
We started our first day as early as 5am in the morning. Since Angkor Wat has been getting a lot of tourist lately, I thought that we should avoid the crowds as much as possible. Especially those bus loads of tourist that can easily block your composition view. In this series, I won’t be delving much on the history of each temple as there are a lot of resources in the internet which has detailed information on each temple. What I would focus on more are my favorite temples and my impressions of them. And more importantly the photos. So here we go.
This would be my last post for the Cambulo/Batad series. I’d just like to share the beautiful scenery between the 2 villages in Ifugao. Despite the continues rains, the terraces never fail to mesmerize. In fact, the added mist and fog added to the drama of the scenery, making it more enigmatic to the eyes.
Last Saturday was the Far Eastern University Annual Alumni Christmas Get-Together at the FEU grounds. I’m not really keen on going on these events but since this is the 2nd time I got invited by a friend of mine, I decided to check it out. I also invited some FEU alumnis who I work with and see what was happening that day. And to add to that, it’s my chance to go around on a nostalgic walk along the campus and see for myself how my good ol’ university got a UNESCO Heritage Conservation Award.
