It was pitch black when I arrived, along with about 500 others, at the temple for sunrise. Luckily I had my headlamp with me, as there were no lights to be found, and you're walking over a 900 year old rock road with varying surface heights. This photo was taken with quite a long exposure as i set my camera on a wall and aimed as best i could.

This was my second day of temple trekking, and it really is a full time job plus overtime. For my day at Angkor Wat, I woke up at 4:30am, threw on clothes, and grabbed a ride on a scooter taxi to the temple. It was awesome to see just how big of a crowd was flocking here for sunrise. I stayed at the temple from 5am until 10am, heading back to my hotel for some sleep while smartly avoiding the hottest part of the day. It was well over 100 by 1pm. At 4pm, I jumped back on a taxi, and headed back to the temple to explore the carvings and stay for sunset. Around 7pm, it was time to head back to shower and find food. Oh, and a beer...

This is what everyone's been waiting for. It was quite a surreal experience to watch the light slowly change overhead, while 50 meters to my left are the calls of the locals saying "Chair for sunrise only $1. Come with free coffee!"

Almost...

With the sun fully up, the details of the temple show themselves. For an idea of the size of this building, look at the people standing in front of it.

No, there wasn't a hit of acid in your coffee this morning, and you're not catching trails from buddha's arm, for there are indeed 8 of them.

Beautiful

up close with the central and tallest tower of Angkor Wat. While standing near the tower, a bird close to the top dislodged several quarter-sized bits of the tower which would not have tickled if they had landed on my precious cranium.

Over the centuries, looting of an epic scale has taken place at all of the temples. Most of the buddha statues have been taken in their entirety. Of the ones that remain, the vast majority have had only their heads stolen.

There was a tour guide nearby when i came upon these buddhas. i asked him how old they were and he tells me, öh, these aren't the old ones. These are from the 16th century." I guess it's all relative.

This was one hell of a steep and slightly scary climb to the upper portions of Angkor Wat, but well worth the views and being closer to the main towers to truly appreciate their scale. After climbing back down, myself and a german lady exchanged commentary on the various styles people had while descending. It was pretty funny to watch. I took a bunch of pictures, mostly of chinese and korean tourists, of their "holy shit this is way scarier going down"expressions.

Wedding party outside of the temple.

My eyes were sweating.

This is just a tiny section of the carvings on the wall that surrounds Angkor Wat. There are over 2400 feet of them, it is truly mind blowing. This section shows people being judged and going to either heaven or hell. This is a scene from hell where the demons inflict torture on people. The figures are a shiny black from millions of fingers touching them over the centuries.

Outside of the major temples are tons of food stalls and souveneir (sp?) stands. Manning all of these are tons and tons of children. And they are renlentless in their sales tactics. First they ask you if you want to buy "cold drink." From there it quickly progresses to bracelets, 10 postcards for $2-which quickly drops to$1, scarves, books, flutes, mouth harps, etc. After many no's from me, they ask where you are from. Giving the answer, they proceed to tell you your state's capital city, population, name of the president, ending with "now you buy!" After a "no," they'll ask you the captial of Madagascar. I told them I didn't know, and they told me "Because you not know, you buy!" I eventually caved and bought some bracelets from one of the little girls. Within 5 seconds of the money exchange, a different little girl who was trying to sell me things earlier came running over saying, ÿou told me no, and now you buy from her!" all the while i'm sitting there eating my fried noodles. after a while, i got them talking about school and their families and they chilled out on the sales pitches. the little boy on the left gave his farewell to me like this. "Bye bye, nice to meet you. I go home now and my mom kill me cause you no buy." They even wanted to charge me for taking their photo.

The sun winks goodbye behind a large veil of haze. And I am ready for a shower.

One, a beautiful fully functioning Canon g10...the other, a very sexy paperweight.

So after having myself and my camera dumped into the gulf of thailand, i had to wait almost 2 weeks to get back to bangkok to shop for a new one. Unfortunately for me, my model is no longer in stock in camera shops because the newer model, the g11, came out 6 months ago. As i was narrowing down my search for the cheapest g11, i came across a nice little shop that had a g10 for sale on consignment. Instead of paying $600 for the g11, i scored with a gently used g10 for half the price. Bingo!

The following few pics are from Koh Tao. This is a lovely little island in the gulf of thailand. We ended up meeting up with some of Tara's friends from the yoga retreat she was on back in Chang Rai. We then had 5 gorgeous days of getting ceritified for open-water scuba diving and riding a quad all over the island...mostly on sandy rocky narrow "roads." More of these pics and pics from the next island, Ko Lanta, when i can get them from tara's camera as mine wasn't feeling well from too much salt water and sand ingestion.

Ahh...sunrise at the Chumpron pier. Very soon after I took this, we boarded the ferry for the final leg of the journey to Koh Tao, a 1.5 hr ride. Cake after the 9 hour bus!

This is one of the coolest things that are made in Thailand. I believe it is called a con-fi. Spelled phonetically...It is a 2.5 ft radius metal ring, with 3 to 4 feet of tissue paper attached. Running radially to the center are 3 metal wires with a flammable paper-like material suspended in the middle. They basically operate on the same priniciple as hot air balloons. What you are seeing here is stage 1. The lighting of the fuel. You are also seeing my sexy shorts. First pair i've purchased probably in 15 years.

The second stage in the process of making the con-fi airborne is to move it up and down to capture the hot air within the enclosed space...

We have lift off! These things will fly and are visible for about 6 minutes until the fuel is all burned up. They get so high that eventually they look like a little orange star.

Me and the girls. The redness in my face is more sweating and sunburn than drinking...although by the end of the night i think i was just red from drinking.

All the girls had the same form...straight arms. Why? Because all girls have weak girly-man muscles. Believe me now, think about it yesterday.

Can you believe I didn't make the olympics? Just look at that form! That stupid grin!!

So this is the guy. I don't even know his name. The girl behind him does because I think they made out later. This guy, out of nowhere, came flying at me on the rope swing, crashed into me, hereby sending myself and my camera into the water. There was a small 666 chiseled into his scalp.

After 20 hours of travel, finally back in Bangkok. As is the case with Thailand, if something takes 20 minutes, it really means 30. 60 means 90, and in my case 15 hours really means 20. It is currently 8:07am, been on the go since noon yesterday, and am now trying to kill 2 hours until my hotel room is ready. Looking forward to a shower followed by a looooong nap by the pool, followed by camera shopping, so hopefully will be posting new photos later as it's been a while. The plan is 2 days in Bangkok, then heading eastward to Cambodia. So for now I'm going to try to control my sweat, try to put off a pending bathroom stop, and get myself to a mango shake.