Ruined Cities Tropical Islands

Ta Prom and Preah Khan Can’t go wrong really with giant roots and towering trees, mysterious carvings and jungle-clad ruins so here’s another selection of photos of Preah Khan and Ta Prom temples in Cambodia’s World Heritage Angkor temple complex, taken on our recent Cambodia Overland small group tour. Preah Khan, as with the better-known Ta Prom, is a late…

Baphuon Prior to the construction of Angkor Wat, Baphuon  – the 11th-century royal temple of King Udayadityavarman II – was the largest temple of the Angkor empire. With a main tower surmounting the massive sandstone pyramid, said to have originally been clad in bronze, and its spectacular, raised entrance causeway, Baphuon must have been a truly impressive sight. Unfortunately, for…

Banteay Kdei Temple Prasat Banteay Kdei, or Banteay Kdei Temple, in the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Angkor complex is not generally considered one of the ‘major’ Angkor temples and is often skipped by visitors and tour groups. However, we make a point of including it on all our Angkor tours precisely because much of the time you’ll have the spectacular temple…

Koh Chang Thailand Koh Chang Thailand located in the country’s eastern, Trat Province, is the largest island after Phuket and Samui but, though development has proceeded rapidly over the last decade, it remains still much more low-key than either of its larger competitors. Resorts now succeed each other one after the other all the way down the West coast sandy…

Bird-life on the Sangkar River A few photos of some of the spectacular bird-life on the Sangkar River we’ve come across on recent boat trips from Siem Reap to Battambang. (Would have a lot more for you, but since it’s tricky getting sharp shots of fast-moving birds from a heavily vibrating boat, we had to delete most of them!?) The…

Apsaras of Angkor Wat A few photos we came across in a far corner of our hard drive – kind of a computer equivalent of down the back of the sofa we guess. These are some of our favourite Apsaras of Angkor Wat; just a few among the estimated 2000 plus carved figures to be seen in the World Heritage…

Dawn at Angkor Wat A bit rushed today so no time to write a blog post and we’ll fall back on a few classic dawn at Angkor Wat photographs, which you can never have too many of. Must have watched the dawn rise over the famous silhouette at least 30 times but it never gets boring! Different time of year,…

Ta Keo Temple Prasat Ta Keo or Ta Keo Temple at Angkor – often overlooked and never gets too many stars in the guidebook ratings yet it is a very impressive monument and one that you can generally visit without fighting your way through noisy crowds of Koreans for a pleasant change.  (Or Chinese, French, Russians, whatever – don’t mean…

Road to Pailin To conclude our recent Cambodia Overland tour series, here are a few pictures from the final section – the road to Pailin – which takes us from Battambang to the Thai border. The road is now more or less complete thanks to funding from the Chinese government and the 80 kilometres or so is easily done in…

The Road to Battambang The road to Battambang; well, strictly speaking, by boat across the Tonle Sap and up the Sangkar River followed by a drive across country to Battambang. We usually do the whole journey from Siem Reap to Battambang by boat but water levels being low at this time of year meant that whilst we left Siem Reap…

The Road to Siem Reap Another excellent and interesting Cambodian overland trip yesterday – the road to Siem Reap in western Cambodia from the capital Phnom Penh. First stop was Skuon for the always popular deep-fried ‘tarantulas’. Popular photo subject that is – not always such a popular snack and this time the fried crickets won out over the spiders…

Ta Nei Temple We must have visited the ruined Ta Nei Temple or Prasat Ta Nei some 20 times and am yet to see another visitor there! It’s a beautiful little, late 12th century, Jayavarman VII site in a picturesque forest setting with some interesting carvings remaining and certainly, in our opinion, deserves to be seen by far more visitors….