Sights> The ruins of Angkor Wat

I've piled up posts a lot lately. Not that I haven't been doing stuff, but for some reason there are still drafts standing in the list. I'll offload them sooner or later, but now y'all deserve to see some of the Angkor Wat photos.

The Trip: Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat is unmissable. You shouldn't come in the vicinity if you can't go and see it, that important it is. I don't want make comparisons, but I had to think of it relation to Tikal in Guatemala, the first major ruin I've seen, and Angkor Wat may just beat it, if not in vibe, in sheer size and variety.

Of course, these tourist attractions are tricky to navigate sometimes. I had two full days to dedicate to the temples, and the morning of the first woke up at 4.50 am to go and see the main temple in sunrise. Well, so did about 2,000 other people. It was insane, elbowing through a crowd at 5.15 am to catch a glimpse, let alone a photo of the towers without others looking through their digital viewfinders, a thousand-headed herd of three-eyed visitors waiting for the sun to rise. Further - the stupid thing was partly covered by scaffolding. Duh...

I quickly made my way to the inner temple. I couldn't see the silhouette against the dawn that way, but I'd also lose the herd. It was fun for a while, but I was more concerned about getting to the places I really wanted to see - Ta Phrom being the first one.

Sure enough, the tourist buses and tuk-tuks and taxis all move clockwise on the trail, so I asked my tuk-tuk guy to go the other way, counter-clockwise, skipping one temple and heading straight to Ta Phrom. He protested at first, probably on the grounds "but it's always done this way", but did my bidding.

And if it wasn't worth it. I had all of Ta Phrom to myself at 6 am as the first rays of the sun made their way through the thick jungle surrounding the wild ruins. Majority of my photos are from here, this is what I had come for, to witness the sheer power of the jungle against the huge stone edifices made by man centuries ago.

We did the smaller circuit that day and the next day I both ventured further and returned to some of my favorite places, but the rain and the amount of people on the second day deducted from the experience.

So I did snap some photos, and while I was at it, I was wondering about the whole tourist photography thing. In Siem Reap, the town built on the popularity of Angkor Wat, had quite a few oversized billboards advertising Nikon's and Canon's latest pro-level digital SLR cameras. We are all photographers, now, and the simple lessons of composition and light are quickly learned and applied. There are artists among photographers, but the line is blurring. Maybe we are all artists some day.

A photo extends the experience. The 'something to remember this by' is just that - unwillingness to let go, to extend the experience as far into the future as possible. And the photo, seemingly immovable, has a promise of time frozen into eternity in it. With a photo, it seems we can hold on for ever, and we just love the thought of eternity. Playing with the frame, we can focus and solidify that memory further, and when it works out, it much better than the memory of the real thing. Ever first seen a photo of something, then seen the real thing and been disappointed? Not necessarily the case with Angkor Wat, but you get my point, maybe.

Another thing I was thinking about among the massive rubble in the beating heat: everywhere Ta Phrom was mentioned in more than two sentences, the information that it was used in filming Tomb Raider was also supplied. If Ta Phrom survives, I wonder how historians in the year 3,997 CE will attribute the place? As the stage that finally cemented the enormous revenue potential of films by pouty-lipped actresses?

EDIT: Lifehacker just posted this on the Nikon Digital Learning Center. Looks good. It's on Flick though.