Hong Kong bound

So I've arrive in Hong Kong for more mining conference based fun. I went for a walk around to see the area round my hotel and then took the obligatory harbour shots of the city:

Then one of me because I was bored

I've just realised I missed one story about why it was had to leave Cambodia. As I was going through security there were two pretty security women who were checking anyone who set off the metal detector. As I went through I did a mini celebration at getting through without setting it off (because I'm just a large child) and they started laughing. Just as I was picking up my bag to wander off one asked me if I had a girlfriend. They then followed up by asking if they could be my girlfriend. I though the reply "how would I ever choose between you" was a suitable line to end with however I had no counter to the follow-up of "you wouldn't have to". At that point any ability to look composed left so I smiled then ran off to go and read my book.

Like I said, next James Bond here I come...

Angkor Wat day two

On my last day in Siem Reap I had a morning to fill before heading off to the airport so managed to fit in some more temples. In the first one you can see my guide who was with me for both days, he was a really nice 25 year old local called He Narath who helped his mother sell breakfast by the road at 4am before going to work as a guide. At one point our tuk-tuk was overtaken by a Toyota Camry which I saw him staring at as it went by. As he noticed that I'd seen him looking at it he said "what a lovely car" (I wasn't really in agreement but never mind) a comment which he then followed up with "but I'll never be able to afford one". They're $10,000 USD over here and he has 2 jobs which means he works 4am-4/6pm every day. I made a mental note to increase his tip... Leaving was very hard too as it was such a nice place. It was made even harder when I went to shake my tuk-tuk driver's hand when he dropped me off at the airport. He looked at it, then looked at me then gave me a hug instead. (The police nearby found it highly amusing as there was at least a foot and a half's height difference). Then he backed off, beamed the huge smile that it seemed to wear like it couldn't be removed then hugged me again. Very strange and sums up why I adored the Khmer people. It's a bit strange being back in Singapore and walking past British people who would rather get hit by traffic than return a stranger's smile.

Either way we decided to head off to some temples slightly further from town and having picked up some palm fruit (amazing stuff, basically chewy fruit with refreshing liquid inside like a capsule) and some very sugary cane juice we headed off to the first temple whose name I can't remember but which I will call Brian as it's just easier.

The view from the top of the above temple

The next set of pictures are all from the pink temple which is around 900 years old. How the carvings are still so intricate I've no idea but it makes for an amazing sight.

The temple with it's surrounding moat as seen from the outer wall and it's main entrance:

A depiction of Shiva placing a mountain onto the Daemon King who was trying to disturb his meditation:

I can't remember what this one was about so I'm going to plump for it being a record of Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield's second fight from 1997. well that or John Terry's latest night out...

An elephant statue standing guard on the temple of Ganesha. I was all carved from one piece of sandstone which is quite good work seeing as the block it was carved from must have been huge and came from over 60km away.

The centre of the temple with the ever present protective lion statues:

The Southern entrance to the temple. The statues on either side were used to hold candles which would've made for a pretty impressive walkway at night time

Another tree eating a temple
Looking back through the centre of the temple from the southern doorway. The central corridor runs through the entire length of the building and consists of 27 different towers. All in all quite impressive.
The carving at the top of the door above. I think it's based on a cctv still captured on the M25 last year after a massive pile-up.

That's it. I'm off to Hong Kong tomorrow for another epic conference where I'm sure there will be shenanigans aplenty, then it's back to work for a few months. Bit boring really as I'm quite enjoying the whole travelling and not working thing.

keg

Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples

Based only about 7km north of Siem Reap (a bouncy 20 minute journey by Tuk-Tuk) the first temple you come across having entered the site is Angkor Wat itself. It's an absolutely stunning place which you get to by making your way over the massive moat (something like 1.6 x 1.2km) by taking the stone path below:

Having gone thorough the building at the end of the bridge above you are immediately faced with the stunning heart of the Angkor Wat complex. Interesting piece of advice, if you get asked "what is the Khmer word for temple" by a guide with only an ok grasp of the English language don't do the crap Wat/what pun when you answer as it will go on for 10 minutes and he will end up feeling like you're a very strange individual for continuously repeating the word Wat after he said it.

Running along a number of walls on the outside of the centre there are epic tales which have been carved into the sandstone which makes up the temple. The one below features a fight between Prince Rama and the Daemon King. Prince Rama is supported by a monkey army, the reason for which is explained in another set of carvings further on round the temple. The final major work is called "the churning of the sea of milk". I could explain the story but what with the elephants, daemons, elixir of life, angels, Vishnu, a giant tortoise, a churning device made of a large snake and a mountain and finally the sun and moon gods getting occasionally swallowed by a beheaded daemon I'm not sure how good a job I would do...

The next two hopefully give an idea of the the middle part of the central temple

A statue of a Buddha being protected by a multi-headed snake while meditating

Finally a look out from the top of the inner part of the temple. The strange yellow globe is a hot air balloon I believe.

Next we headed into Angkor city through the Southern gate. There are 5 gates in total and all resemble this one. The encircling wall is about 8m high and is still in good condition for the majority of it's length.

As much as I liked my Tuk-Tuk driver I couldn't help but think that these looked like a more interesting mode of transport:

Next up was the temple of Baphuon which contained a myriad of towers with 4 faces of Buddha looking out in every direction. It's absolutely stunning:

Finally I'll end with some photos of what is known as the jungle temple (or Angelina Jolie's temple after it featured in Tomb Raider...I vetoed this though). It's an amazing sight as the trees have just reclaimed (and are slowly destroying) almost all of the stone walls. There was a fair amount of renovation work as well as some tree surgery to ensure that any potential for further damage is curtailed.

As much as I loved my trip I would love to come back someday in the wet season when the waters are full and the land is a lush green as I can only begin to guess at how beautiful it would be.

Height (+ other) stats part 2:

Volleyball game invitations in town - 3

People calling me handsome - 7

Number of those who then gestured in such a way that it was obvious that they meant tall - 6

Times I was told by my guide to watch my head - over 100

Number of times I hit my head - 8

Amount I was used as a human measuring post by locals - 11

Number of Canadian couples who tried to set me up with their 6ft tall daughter back in Vancouver - 1

Amount of recent trips booked to Vancouver - 1...

Siem Reap or other

Ignore the fact I've already done that shit pun in the blog title please...

Singapor to Siem Reap took just over 2 hours which would've been a lovely little flight if I hadn't sat next to a lady called Jennifer. Jennifer was in her thirties and from Nashville (she had the drawl and everything). She was also a mother whose son was at university. Apparently she was married at 16. Anyway about an hour in (just as I was getting to a really good part of my book) she decided to start trying to make small talk. After the customary "where are you from" 's and such had been got out the way I quickly discovered that she was a Jehovah's Witness. Not only that but she was determined that my lack of any religious belief was an obstacle that could be overcome with dogged persistence. Tedious. To give her credit she did provide one moment of unintentional light relief when the subject of America came up. I said I'd love to go to Yellowstone before it explodes (unlikely to happen any time soon...) to which she replied "oh not you too". Confused I asked her to explain what was so strange about thinking that at some point in the future a volcano such as Yellowstone might explode. This was met by a sigh of relief and the comment "oh phew, I thought you were one of those people who think the whole world is about to explode". Needless to say I enquired as to who the hell thinks that's about to happen. Apparently it turns out her daughter is part of a group of people who firmly believe it will happen in the near future due to the level of our sins. I'm not sure my comment that "English scientists have proved that it won't last beyond 2018" really helped her thoughts on the matter come to think of it...

After that delight I arrived at Siem Reap and got met by my guide for the next few days whose name I simply can't understand but he seems really nice. Either way this 3-wheeler turned out to be his and so we set off to the hotel. It's about 30+ degrees here right now so it was nice to have a bit of breeze going past. The dust from the vehicles in front was less pleasing though.

Having settled into my hotel I decided I'd head to the reception to see if there were any half day trips that they would recommend. As I left my room I looked outside to see some unknown local standing in my shoes laughing. When he saw me his laughing intensified so I went out and tried his trainers on. I didn't get very far as they must have been about a size 5.

After he finally got out of my shoes and headed off I went back in to the reception and discovered that there was a floating village on a nearby lake which was worth a look. Having been dropped off I got a boat to myself and a driver who was just fantastic, I think he was called Loin but he didn't know how to spell it. He spoke quite good English and we ended up just messing around mostly. Below is the trip in photos:

Setting off down the river to the lake. It's the dry season right now, normally the water would be up by those houses on the left.

A Man Utd supporting fisherman

Some tit driving the boat

The floating village

The local florist

Someone travelling around between the houses

A friendly smiling chap at the floating crocodile farm

Some idiot posing with probably often bothered snake

Feeding time at the catfish farm

Off to Angkor Wat tomorrow so expect another update then

Keg

Singapore

I think the pore part is a misspelling of poor as this place is ridiculously expensive. Thankfully everyone else seems to be well paid and generous so my outlay is acceptable. Also thank god for expenses...

I came here for a 2 day mining conference which was huge amounts of fun and I can categorically say that at no stage was I bored enough to walk round the event taking every single freebie on offer. These were:

13 packets of mints

1 yoyo

1 laser pointer come flash drive

3 other flash drives

a baseball hat

17 pens

2 wind up torches

2 golf balls

Some tea

and the piece de resistance...

a keyboard cleaner

Naturally enough I gave the baseball hat, pens (all bar 2), yoyo and ten packets of mints to my taxi driver as a present. For some reason she seemed confused but after a couple of minutes (I think once she'd work out that I was also going to pay with money) she accepted them graciously enough.

I'm currently staying with Maz and Paddy and have been taking today slowly while last night wears off. I like to think that when someone ordered 6 escorts to our table at the club I dealt with it in a particularly smooth way. That is to say I said "one moment" to the dubious girl now sitting to my right and scampered off quickly to another part of the club where they were showing a replay of Bolton vs Everton. I'm clearly destined to be the next James Bond.

Now I've got some time to kill until I got to Hong Kong for another show on the 29th so decided to get a flight to Cambodia tomorrow morning which gets back to Singapore on Saturday. I'm not 100% on what I'll be doing/ where I'll be staying so it should be fun. All I know is that I want to see Angkor Wat. Also I got a new camera today so will be updating with pictures when I get back. I will also be not spending much when I get back to Sumatra as I'm now feeling distinctly poorer...

Keg

I love Jakarta

Well love is strong, maybe "find disappointing" would be a better choice of words. Seriously how can it take 3 hours in a taxi to get from the airport to my hotel 20km away? Fun. On the plus side at least my taxi driver was entertaining. I've been instructed to only take the Bluebird taxis which are the main company here but quite frankly an unlicensed one with a driver who recognised Norwich City from the badge on my t-shirt is surely worth the extra couple of pounds. He said he was a Rochdale fan which wasn't quite what I was expecting to hear.

The only downside was that he turned out to be hugely religious, so much so that he believes every word of the bible. I was quite happy debating with him until he said "well I hope I'm not wrong as otherwise I'm wasting my life preparing for what will happen after I die". He looked so crestfallen at the idea that I couldn't help but change the subject. Interestingly he did believe that a tribe in Kalimantan was capable of using magic to fire daggers at far away targets without having to touch them. I thought this was a fun idea so lied that there were people in England who were capable of causing fires just by looking at objects. Should be fun for the next Englishman who gets into his taxi...

Finally it turns out that there is only 1 English show which is popular over here (which isn't sport related), in fact it's so popular that I've seen it on tv seemingly whenever I've turned one on. Still I guess Mr Bean was pretty big at home too for a while. 15 years ago.

Off to Singapore to stay with Maz and Paddy on Monday while I attend a conference then off to Hong Kong afterwards for another one a week after. As long as I don't get my hands removed for doing something stupid I'll update if anything entertaining happens.

Keg

This bird has skills

Or it's just gone stir crazy from being taken out of the wild illegally before being shoved in a cage and hung outside a shop. They say it's illegal but seeing as how almost every shop has a couple of cages outside it I'm not sure how much anyone important cares.

On the plus side a bird doing backflips is always entertaining.

Or maybe Saturday...

Thanks to some friendly loggers our logistics team were unable to get to the camp (too many felled trees blocking their way) and so we've had to come down. Quite how I managed to get through a blockade of trees and they didn't I don't really know, (although to be fair to them it did add an extra 2 hours to the journey and we weren't carrying big sacks of food). Still, at least it enables me to follow Norwich's glamour tie at Huddersfield in full tonight.

Now I do have some pictures but these were all taken at least 2 days ago due to an incident involving me, some slippery rocks, a lot of water and my camera. If anyone knows how to de-waterlog a camera then please feel free to let me know as my attempts of putting it in a ball of toilet paper and looking upset have yet to bear any fruit. On the plus side the loss of the camera was put into perspective when I narrowly avoided getting hit on the head by a rock. All I knew of it was a large splash behind me (it was about half a metre wide) while I was examining a small cliff. According to someone who was watching a tree fell over up the slope resulting in a domino style event. That at least would explain why about 5 seconds afterwards I found myself covered in leaves and twigs. Needless to say I seem to glance up a bit more often when I'm working now...

Actually if it had hit me on the head then at least I would no longer have to face the cook's idea of "western cuisine". Basically I think he noticed I struggled to finish all the rice based treats we normally get so went out of his way to ensure that I would get food I was more used to. Sadly it appears that he's not so familiar with this food as he is the local stuff. Over the past 5 days I have been served the following:

- Cold pasta for breakfast. Not bad when you're eating it as leftover from the night before, not good when it simply hasn't been cooked.

- A condensed milk and sausage sandwich. Apparently he learned that we often have milk with our cereal so why not milk with sausage? The sausage was also cold.

- Jam and Tuna sandwiches. Seriously. I love jam and I love tuna but up to this point I'd never considered putting them together, funnily enough I still wouldn't... (I did enjoy one guy's definition of the jam being "lazy jam". Presumably he was looking for the word viscous but as I don't know what either word is in Indonesian I should probably be quiet.)

- A tomato and lettuce sandwich. Now that seems fair enough and indeed it is. The only issue I had with it was the addition of chocolate sprinkles. A bold and unusual culinary decision which displays a level of creativity rarely seen outside the confines of the Fat Duck.

What's great is that everyone seems to have cottoned on to these monstrosities so wait with baited breath every time a plate arrives in front of me just so they have an excuse to enjoy a good laugh before dinner. Bastards. Actually what's really annoying is that the cook (despite me learning the Indonesian for "stop giving me so much") has decided that I'm very big and therefore need to whole plates of his delicious concoctions at every meal. I've tried to make a point by always leaving one plate untouched but apparently the message still hasn't got through. It's like trying to complete a maze where every turn is a dead end, infuriating.

One big change for this week was that one of the locals brought a guitar with him and promised that he would play me some "real music". For real music lovers I dare say the noise that he created would have left a better impression than it did on me (clearly I'm not an expert in the area) as i have to say that it sort of felt like he'd found the guitar a day or two previously and was still seeing what noises it could make. Thank god for mp3 players...

Anyway enough words have some of the pictures I took before failing to teach my camera to swim:

- Butterflies gathering where I empty my mug after every cup of tea

The next two are of a theme. The titles being "I must learn the Indonesian for 'no I really don't want to have my photo taken here' " and "Stop making me pose in front of waterfalls". On the plus side it's always good to be seen with a geological hammer in your hands.

Now the connoisseurs amongst you will enjoy the next one. Following on from my name-making photo "monkey, what monkey?" I treat you to the next in the series "I swear the little fucker was still there when I took it". Originally this photo was designed to be a monkey caught in a natural leafy frame but thankfully I caught myself just in time and instead waited until he left a monkey sized hole in the foliage. I'm sure you'll all agree that this is a much more evocative and thought provoking piece...

Balls.

So to make up for it have a picture of a ridiculous looking butterfly which was almost the size of my hand:

keg

I'll be back on Sunday

Off back into the jungle now for some more high octane geological work so will be back on Sunday unless I do something stupid which enables me to return earlier...

Keg

Some friends I've made so far

Got to love a praying mantis hanging around outside the office:




This butterfly decided that he wanted to drink up whatever moisture had accumulated after a days walking round in the jungle. Lovely...


Seemingly though this is a popular pastime for them

The perspective is slightly ballsed up on this one as the pen is flat whereas the millipede is heading off at around 45 degrees downhill. He must've been about 10"-12" long though.

Mum can skip this next photo.

I actually wouldn't have noticed him (as I'd been walking just shy of 4 hours and was quite tired) however the guy leading the way did this bizarre little hop off the path and almost fell off the side of the hill (about 2 feet left of the snake). No idea if he's poisonous or not but he seemed pretty chilled.

Now for 2 contenders for "wildlife photograph of the year" ....

In this one note how I beautifully managed to miss the three Hornbills which have just flown past the trees on the left. Textbook.

Even better though, in my opinion, was this effort of 9-10 monkeys:

Trust me, they're all in that bush and they were big too. I actually had ample time to photograph them out in the open but instead chose that time to stand there smiling and saying "monkeys" to anyone who'd listen. Naturally as soon as I got my camera out they all fucked off into a particularly thick tree. I'll get them next time though. Possibly.