On my way back from 11 months in Australia in 2005 I spent some time in Thailand and Cambodia, meeting up with various school and travel friends along the way. My friend Luke and I took a big fancy coach out of Bangkok (above picture shows some Thai school girls waving at people on our bus) and after crossing the Cambodian border got back on to a decidedly less luxury vehicular contraption.
That broken down bus journey along a mud road with regular potholes nearly the same width as the road, was one of the most fascinating and magical journeys I've ever experienced. We saw groups of little kids leading their buffalos to water, we waited while the onboard mechanic fixed our rusting sweatbox of a bus numerous times, we heard about the many family members that our guide had lost during Pol Pot's regime, and yet he was the smiliest man I've ever met. We saw six people on one scooter and people travelling sitting on the roofs and bonnets of cars. It was wonderful.
The view from our TukTuk on the stunning approach to the huge Angkor Wat temple complex.
At some stage in history some philistines knocked the heads off most of the hundreds of buddha statues.
Stone relief 'Devetas' in Angkor Wat - they're just so much more joyous than images you get in Christian churches aren't they?
Below - Luke and I in Ta Prohm or the 'jungle temple'. If you haven't been there you may well have seen it in the Lara Croft Tomb Raider film. These photographs really don't express anything of the grandeur and beauty of Angkor Wat, I'll have to dig out the negatives and see what else I have. In the meantime why don't you look it up or better still just go there and see for yourself?
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