Back from Cambodia

Day 3

Day 3 started even before sunrise. This was because we ARE going to watch the sunrise =p Our driver picked us up from our hotel at 5am and we proceeded to Angkor Wat. There weren't any lights along the way so we had to bring our torchlight and it was only until I shone my light at the tower did I realized that we were at the same place that we've been to the day before. There were a lot of people, seriously a lot. We had expected the sun to come up from behind the towers but......

Angkor Wat at dawn

After breakfast, we went to Banteay Srey. It was a palace for the young prince of Cambodia dating back to the 10th century. However, this isn't exactly a palace. The area is only 100mx450m big. Small for a palace? Obviously! It doesn't even have the neccessary rooms to live in.

Can you believe that this is the actual size of the palace???

After which we went to the Ta Promm temple. Why is it famous? Because it was the filming site for Tomb Raider *o* The temple was very special not only because Tomb Raider was filmed there, but also, most of the trees grew on top of the buildings itself!!!!!

If I'm not wrong, our dear tomb raider ran out from this door in one scene

Look at the size of the trunk! Its even bigger than me!

After lunch, we had a bit of a massage and spa at the hotel. They were good. Especially the sauna, it was very hot inside and my father was constantly pouring water into the heater to make the sauna hotter OMG I sweated like a mofo. It was relaxing though.

Night time came at around 5.30pm and we went to a popular restaurant called the Red Piano. It served mainly Khmer, Western and Chinese dishes. The food was awesome. I took their signature dish "spaghetti red-piano", damn good. We also got a seat that overlooked Pub street. Guys, I strongly recommend you to eat at Red Piano the next time you visit Siem Reap. Oh and they do have a very special cocktail that is exclusive only at Red Piano......

Tomb Raider Cocktail??!?!?!?

Day 4

Our flight back to Singapore was at 6.30pm so after checking out at 10am, we departed for Beng Melea, a ruin located 65km away from Siem Reap. The trip took 1hr and along the way, we saw the lovely countryside of Cambodia. Beng Melea was constructed approximately 1000 years ago by a Hindu emperor. However, through the ravage of time, the temple is now partly collapsed. However, this is what makes it fun! We trekked through the remnants, climbed through large rocks and secret passages. There are boardwalks at the later part of the tour. We can see a lot of stone carvings from the fallen boulders as we can from other ruins.

Beng Melea entrance The most perfectly ravaged ruin

Boardwalk inside the ruin, as you can see, theres no way to walk on the sandstones

The last part of our trip was to visit the Rulous Group, a pack of temples situated not far from the city. After visiting so many ruins, visiting this one doesn't appeal to me as much anymore XD

We went to the Siem Reap airport at around 4.15pm. The airport as I've mentioned before, is very small. However, it was delicately designed and was full of newly renovated shops. We also got a full view of the airport from our seats. It was good. Occassional planes taking off and landing just makes me excited.

Air China B737-700 taking off at sunset

OK Well, I guess i should stop here. More photos are available on my facebook. Any questions or words of wisdom just drop it on my chatterbox =D

Back from Cambodia (Day 2 continued below!!!)

Tuantuan? and Puanpuan? (Ladies and Gentlemen in Malayu), I'm back from Cambodia!!!!! Its such an awesome place and I'm really glad that I went. Although it was a war-ravaged country that regained peace and tranquility like 18 years ago, still it was a good experience for me. Guess I should start from day 1 at Changi Terminal 2.

We are getting on a SilkAir A319. At first I was a bit worried when I saw that our tiny plane has to carry like 160 people but my mum pointed to a nearby Beechcraft 1900D "so you mean this plane can't even fly?" The trip was estimated to be 2hrs and 10min. The view of Cambodia in the air was marvellous, there ain't any skyscrapers, just farms and swamps. When we touched down, we realized that our flight was the only plane in the airport, damn cool.

We've got 6 planes on our tail XD Final approach to Siem Reap Angkor International airport

The hotel that we'll be slacking in is Empress Angkor, a good hotel with excellent service. We've got a brilliant view from our balcony overlooking the fields. Our afternoon was free so we decided to make a trip to Tonle Sap lake to watch the sunset. Along the way we saw the true rural areas of Siem Reap and it was saddening to see those people living in houses not bigger than our bedroom for some it was not even the size of our toilets!!!

See those huts on the water? Its houses!!!!
Our boat trip to Tonle Sap lake

Life on water

We had a bit of a 'pitstop' on a large floating platform on the lake and they have all kinds of weird pets like anaconda, spiders and even crocodile!!!!!

Hang on! am comin down to feed you!!!

At about 5.30pm, we went back onto the boat to sail out into the lake to watch the sun slowly sink into the water. It was such a romantic and emotional moment.

Dinner was at a local buffet restaurant. The food was perfect and we can even watch a live Cambodian dance and it cost only US$12/ pax!!!

Me drinking beer? You sure?

Day 2

Our hotel provided us with a scrumptious breakfast that fired our energy level to the max for the day. We started with the Angkor Thom tour that takes us to the Bayon temple. Here there are 54 statues of Smiling faces that was dubbed as the "Khmer's smile". Although it was a remnant made 800 years ago, it was in good shape.

South Entrance to Angkor Thom

While touring the site, our guide directed us to a position, told me to sit on the ledge and took a photo of me. At first I didn't know what he was up to, but then...... Kissing with a statue?!

We then proceeded to the nearby royal palace area and the terrace of the elephants before moving on to our next sight-seeing location, Preah Khan. There we saw the Banteay tower and the area where swords were once stored. They call this a tower? It is only 2.5m tall!!!

The last place that we went to before our lunch was the Neak Pean. It was a hospital for the people during their times. There are four different pools that housed 4 statues of animals: elephant, lion, horse and human. The people will first go to the central lake to scoop up water, then depending on their illness, they will pour the water behind one of the four caves that housed the respective animal. It was believed that the water flowed down from the elephant statue can treat blood illnesses; body injuries for the human; internal organs for the lion and the respiratory diseases for the horse. I mean a hospital that relied on beliefs to treat people??? kind of ridiculous isn't it? Neak Pean

After Lunch, we went to the most famous Angkor Wat, it is a temple that was featured on the Cambodian flag and was the most well-reknowned structure in Cambodia. I have to admit that Angkor Wat is probably the most awesome structure I've seen in my life. Imagine people from the 11th-12th century were able to construct such a majestic place from only stones and boulders. I think it can definitely compete with China's forbidden city or any other structures. It is absolutely brilliant. But sadly, there are some conservation works going on so part of the building was inaccessible.

Angkor Wat

We were able to make it for the sunset at the top of the nearby Mount Bakheng. We had to walk a long claypath to reach the top and it wasn't over yet. To have an unblocked view of Cambodia as well as the sun, we still have to climb up a temple and beware, the steps are really steep and small. If you have no idea of how the steps looks like, try looking at your wall, it is that similar. Many people were reluctant to climb up because it looked really dangerous but guys, I'm doing it just for you.

We had dinner at the Pub street near the famous Old Market. The street was full of restaurants and we decided to eat at a local Khmer BBQ. I was dead hungry and went a bit crazy for a moment =D We had BBQ frogs, chicken beef and salad. It was fantastic.

Get away from my food!!!!!

There are no taxies in Siem Reap. But they have motorcycle carriages which they called 'Tuk-Tuk'. Without our driver, we decided to take a 'Tuk-Tuk' ride back to our hotel. It cost only US$1/pax. Feels good.

I'm in a 'Tuk-Tuk'=D

Hi folks I'm flying off again, this time to Cambodia. People say Gods must be crazy but I think humans are more of a bunch of lunatics. Take for example a guy who knew he has a lot of work to do and instead he travels, play and fool around all day. Gods must be crazy????? Eric must be crazy.

7 days before the Malaysia trip 30Nov--> I was supposed to finish at least half of my schoolwork before I go and have fun with my band-its. Instead, I googled and youtubed around for some videos and infos about plane crash. Crazy? Sort of.......

3 days before the Malaysia trip--> I started packing my backpack and luggage. My parents asked me why the rush? I answered 'dunno'

1 day before the Malaysia trip--> I started googling my ass off again. Now my parents know why the rush for backpacking 3 days ago.

2 days after the Malaysia trip--> People say that a person is emotional especially after a trip.......true. I did nothing except running through my photos for like X times. Eric must be crazy.

9 days before my Cmabodia trip--> I had planned to finish at least all of my Econs homework before I go for the trip which I expected it will turn my brain crazy again.

3 days before the Cambodia trip 17Dec--> I went to watch 'Avatar' with Jonathon Cheng. It became the turning point as I slept through the morning of the next day and screwed up my entire plan for completing the work. Not good

2 days before the Cambodia trip--> Bloody hell this is only 11.30 in the morning I just woke up, nothing much to write. Bye for now

Wings of Words

Hi folks I'm back from somewhere on Earth. I had previously witnessed my friend flashing a London air ticket in my face so don't tempt me. They had either gone to Australia, China, New Zealand, London e.t.c but where did I go? Kuala Lumpur!!@#@$@$ I'm not complaining about the trip, it was marvellous. The tour guide has effectively bored us to death along the way, telling us a lot of random things that comes out of nowhere. Some things to note is that the food is good, the band exchange is good and all the SHOPPING*u*!!!!!!!!! However (moving on to the spoilers), the room sucks. 5-star hotel as it claimed it is looks more to me like a 3-star hotel. And the ridiculous thing was that we each got different rooms. Some got the much larger suites while others got the normal rooms with dilapidated decorations. The bathtub was as small as you could have imagined. One of my friend actually got a room that looked and felt like a presidential suite in the 1980s with a kitchen, living room, bedroom, 2 toilets (with full sized bathtubs). And also, the hotel management sucks, it took them 1 whole day to change some of our faulty rooms. The facilities I have to admit was good. We've got some sort of a private bowling alley in the hotel and it is free of any noise so we could play in peace.

On the first day, we went to see a performance by the Malaysian Philharmonic orchestra and they were marvellous and the ticket was so *CHEAP*!!!!!!! 10RM for a stall seat and I was staring at it for almost the entire performance. We had a bit of shopping before going to the horrific hotel. People please remember that it is called Holiday Villa Subang Hotel. Don't ever go there in the future.

We had a bit of city tour in the morning of the second day rushing from one site to another in order to remain on schedule. Had Indian buffet lunch at the famous batu cave and proceeded to a local university for an exchange with their band. They were damn hell bloody good (obviously, they were uni students in the music course). After that, its shopping again at the Sunway pyramid. I loved that place. The ice-skating ring was exposed to the entire shopping center all the way up to level 5 and the feeling of ice-skating when there are hundreds of people watching at you was terrific. You can never experience this in Singapore!!!!!!! One thing I don't understand is why girls like to shop so much. We were strolling after ice-skating when our seniors just ran past us without realizing that we are waving RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM!!!!!! XD Think I spent about 29Rm there?

Third day. We had a wonderful morning training in the hotel's ballroom. The sound was excellent. We sounded loud, rich and clean. Lunch was a very good buffet that will normally cost around 35-50RM/head. We then went to a local school for exchange and the students there I have to admit they have better discipline and also at an age of 14-15, they were just awesome. They kept asking us "How do you all do warm-ups?" "How do you all train staccato?" They spoke mainly chinese with accurate usage but different pronounciation. Bare in mind they are effectively trilingual; they can speak malay, chinese and english, some even know hokkien. We had a memorable interactive session where we just sat down and chat with each other. Through this, I think I had a better idea of how life was in those places. Last thing on our schedule was shopping. When we went to KLCC at the petronas towers, we thought that it was the biggest shopping centre with well-knowned brands but then we saw Sunway Pyramid which was easily bigger then that. However, welcome to Mid-Valley shopping centre, the largest of them all. We had a tough time of distributing some 2-3 hours of shopping to visit all levels. We were seriously awed by the size of the mall. It comprised of an area not more than 2 vivo-cities.

Last day, I'm back in Singapore.