holiday!!!!

hi gimps. I have spent the last two weeks in thailand and cambodia doing things. Here is a pictorial presentation of some things I did.

Interestingly, there are not so many photos of Thailand. Not because nothing happened but because I kinda took the same photos as last time (lovely blue water, longboats etc:) and also because I kinda took a lot of photos of the same thing, i.e 70 photos of sunsets (none of which are worthy for this fine literary work).



higgins the quivering pony II. i was hoping to devirginise myself at horse-riding, but the owner said, 'you too big! small thai horse.' as you can see, the little thai horse wouldn't have been up to it. nevertheless, mel was lucky enough to ride the petrified beast.


our accom at Ko Lanta


caving in Lanta. it wasn't as adventurous as this picture looks, but it was still awesome


from my one day stopover in bangkok on my way home. i spent half the day being scammed and the other half at the grand palace. which is certainly grand


some more grandness


just a fraction more grandness for all you palace fans out there


whiling away the time at Phi Phi


the road from the Cambodian border to Siam Reap was appalling. it must be the worst, frequently used road in the world. our car punctured a tire so i had a chance to take some traffic photos


some more zany Cambodian traffic. i also saw a motorbike with a whole family of 5 on it crash (very gently thankfully)

Ok. Angkor Wat time. This was by far the coolest and most impressive thing I've ever seen in my life. It truly is astonshing to see. Unfortunately, my photography didnt do it justice. I dont actually have a decent picture of Angkor Wat itself, but the surrounding temples are equally, if not more, impressive.


bayon temple. my joint favourite of the day



the many faces of bayon



trying to get creative



some dudes. phenomenally well preserved dudes i should add


ta prohm. my other joint favourite. nature has completely overrun this temple, making for some fascinating sights. some part of tomb raider was filmed here. i probably have the picture but i havent seen the movie. maybe this is it?

poe, our lovely tuk-tuk driver for the day. he picked us up from our hotel at 5.30am so we could see sunrise (by we, i went with two lads i shared a taxi from the border with) and drove us around for 11 hours. all for the princely sum of $5 each (plus a $1 tip). Comparitively, it cost mel $50 to get a taxi from darlinghurst to the Sydney airport. go figure

a chaotic market at phnom penh

Now it gets grim. The following photos are from the killing fields and the S-21 museum. Although I took hundreds of photos, I'm not posting many cause I don't want to ruin the experience for others that might go there. It was such an intense day, just unbelievably horrific what happened and this was only 30 years ago. By the end of the day, I couldnt wait to get out of the museum.

the pocked landscape of the killing fields. doesnt look like much, but remember all those holes are mass graves. nearly 9000 bodies have been exhumed from here. there is a Stupa in the middle of the fields with around 8000 skulls in it, arranged by age and gender. its intense.

a victims clothing sticking out from the ground

a cell from S-21. this musuem is so brutal. there are graphic photos and paintings of torture. the box, when it had a lid, was used to jam a victims hand whilst someone pulled out his fingernails with pliers. the chain is what they were attached to. lots of the museum has been left largely untouched which gives a stark impression of what it would've been like.

so there, i did things. it was a great couple of weeks. great to leave the cold of Japan and get some sun. there were other non-photographed things that happened; 10 mins of a ping-pong show in Bangkok, my first motorbike crash, visiting a landmine museum, snorkelling, going through an underwater cave, feeding an elephant etc: which i might tell you about one day. but for now, im out!!!!

tim