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Published: April 25th 2006
April 10 - 15, 2006 -- Siem Reap and the Temples at Angkor
Written April 24, 2006 from our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City
Having completed our often harrowing ride from Poipet and the border to Siem Reap we were relieved to find our hotel, Villa Siem Reap. We didn’t find it right away, mind you. We stumbled around in the heat for a few minutes before settling in to have a Coke, ask directions to no avail, and then stumble around until getting directions from a chef named Raymond (a Chinese man married to a Vietnamese woman living in Siem Reap, suspicious for his friendliness and excellent English). Villa Siem Reap is a lovely new guest house near the center of town that appears to be a part of a boom in the city. Following years of turmoil Cambodia appears to be on course to fully capitalize on the appeal of the magnificent Angkor Wat ruins just a few miles from town. The hotel offers a variety of services and promptly arranged for a tuk tuk driver, Mr. Chantha, to drive us to the park to buy our tickets and to view the sunset. For sixteen dollars the
villa also packed a cooler with treats for us to enjoy as the day ended at Angkor. Along with our cooler packed with white wine, cheese, olives and bread, we headed out to Pre Rup, one of the ruins best positioned for a view of the sunset.
Tickets to the park can be bought in one day, three day, and one week increments and must be used consecutively (something we hope will change - not only would you be able to rest between days of exploration, but it would keep you infusing much needed cash to Siem Reap a little longer). We purchased our tickets, three days for forty dollars each, and were given a few hours that night to see the sunset at the ruins before starting our three days on the clock.
We arrived at Pre Rup and began hiking around, astonished to find that the ruins are completely open for visitors to climb on or over the 1,000 year old relics in every imaginable way. The ruins are remarkably well preserved for their age and the number of visitors they receive. Numerous towers still stand defiant of age in much the same shape they did
when they were new, and remnants of windows, pools, and individual galleries are clearly outlined in stone and earth.
The feeling at Pre Rup is one that was to be echoed the next three days. You step behind ancient walls into a ruin that actually resembles something the architect may recognize today, a thousand years after he died. It’s antiquated, for sure, but its very presence demands that you admire its mastery over time. The wood, paint, fabric, and jewels are long gone, of course, but the immense importance of the place is pervasive. You are at once master of the temple, not beholden to any long lost traditions or social morays, and humble guest, dwarfed by the five towers, the steep steps up the sides, and the quiet jungle outside the walls. The sky is open above you. And while the air is wet with the growth and decay of the jungle you can still smell the clean scent of the sandstone that makes up the marvel. As you walk around, touch, and climb on the building it feels gritty beneath you. It ends up under your fingernails. It’s a miracle it made it this far being so
easily scuffed. And as magnificent as Pre Rup is, it is part of an enormous complex covering the countryside. You know this. You know that you are in the middle of an empire, each massive building one piece of an impossible set. Years of war, vandalism, theft, and enthusiastic exploration may have dulled the corners but the magnitude of achievement of each building that makes up Angkor remains tangibly in front and around you.
No more than a few minutes after our arrival we encountered a very young girl offering bracelets for sale. We knew to expect the army of local children selling items to tourists and managed to hold firm despite the adorable little girl’s charms and broken English sales pitch. After a little more exploring we met a young man, Grom, who would not be so easily deterred. He offered us beer and, when we refused, began to follow us around offering facts and trivia for the ruins. Grom’s a sweet but serious young man of fifteen. His deep eyes add several years to his somber face though he remains boyish in any other obvious physical ways. His white shirt was torn and his flip flops, which
he manipulated masterfully as he climbed around the ruins to keep up with us, looked too big and too old to be of much use. Grom has a deep cough that sounds like a more chronic problem than a cold and a large gash across one of his toes that would keep most of the rest of us from handling the terrain as he did. He was very well-informed about the temples and offered interpretations of various carvings and the history behind both Pre Rup and other structures in the area.
As the sun was nearing the horizon we tried to find a quiet place to settle for the show and to enjoy our gourmet picnic. We took advantage of Grom’s departure to offer beer to new arrivals and found a secluded corner some fifteen meters high from which to enjoy the show. Though our spot was completely out of view from anyone above or below Grom found us after only a few minutes and plopped down to sit with us. As you may imagine this kept the lid of our cooler closed.
We coaxed a good amount of information out of Grom, who seemed shy if he
wasn’t pitching beer. He lives nearby, likely in a village that is closely monitored and restricted in terms of development because of the proximity to the temples. He is the youngest of five and attends school each day until about 12:30, after which he pedals to the ruins where he works until sunset. As the colors of the sunset began to flower we crept out on our ledge to take a photo and drew the attention of five or six girls, all working at selling bracelets and postcards. The kids flooded down around us and it became clear that any thoughts of a romantic, secluded Cambodian sunset would need to be re-imagined to include our young friends.
Grom stayed back a little as the girls highlighted their wares, though he never went too far, and after the initial sales pitches failed he plopped back down with us and the three girls who did not leave for better opportunities. Our sunset party now included Mua and Sophea, each fifteen years old, and Kong, a spirited ten year old with a face full of freckles and dirt smudges. The girls promptly began drawing us pictures of flowers and chatting about all
sorts of things with Amy. They wanted to know if we had sunsets in our country and if we could see them, had we seen a sun rise, and was it hot or cold or “not too hot” and “not too cold” where we lived? Were we married? Did we have kids?
The three girls were particularly warm and friendly and never asked us for money after their first attempt to sell us merchandise failed. As we rode off the same direction they rode their bikes the girls continued to wish us “best luck” with smiles and waves. While Grom had not mentioned money since we rebuffed his offer of beer, his manner changed when we got up to leave. We had let our guard down when we thought the young man was simply joining us and were probably a little too emotional after the exchange. Roger told Grom that he was a very nice young man and that we enjoyed talking with him but that we could not help him. The length of the walk from the top of the temple to the front gate he only said “Please mister, give me a dollar so I can go
to school.” As we walked to the dirt driveway to board our ride Grom remained somberly in the ancient temple gate as the light faded.
This isn’t a new conflict for us or for anyone who travels the world. For a month we have been surrounded by the impoverished. And in this case impoverished doesn’t mean families with hot and cold running water and cable, it means people who live in a manner completely foreign to us in virtually every way. People whose kids work the tourists selling beer before returning to homes without any running water, open walls, and farm animals crawling under the space where they sleep.
As we sped away in our tuk tuk for a night watching the latest episode of Lost on our laptop while drinking our white wine and eating olives in the air conditioning, we wrestled with this “third world” we were witnessing and with our place in it. It is vexing to say the least. It’s only a dollar. Amy, who immediately said that it would have been okay to give Grom money if Roger wanted to, also astutely pointed out that the dollar Grom wanted for nothing was one
fifth of what our tuk tuk driver was getting for maintaining a tuk tuk, incurring risk, and driving us around and waiting for us while we explored. Grom asked for a dollar after being asked for nothing and, unlike the three girls who asked for nothing, had not drawn us a picture. We are told not to encourage behavior that turns kids into beggars. We are also keenly aware of the lack of opportunities and freedoms these kids have. And it’s only a dollar. This may get easier for us to handle as we become desensitized, but the core issues are not ones we can resolve even in our own minds.
Our wealth, as educated and professional Americans, is wildly beyond that of the majority of people we will encounter in Southeast Asia. And it’s obvious. In many places it’s the color of our skin. It’s the label on the front of our passports. If those are not indicative of our economic and social status the wicking clothes and high-tech footwear is probably a dead give away. This First World - Second World - Third World thing is utter nonsense. It is terminology created by bureaucrats to funnel money
Bathroom Sign at Angkor
Thanks for clearing that one up(at great administrative cost) from the industrialized world to a world largely run by dictators and single party states. In Bangkok alone we encountered all three “worlds” situated between the hovels that line the canals and the shopping center that sells Ferraris (in this instance the two are less than a half mile apart). Some Thais lived very “developed” lives and have a helluva lot in common with our American peers, while others couldn’t even imagine the Sky Train ride to the mega malls and the Hard Rock Café in Siam Square. We need to expand our thinking beyond the antiquated terms of bureaucrats. The lines are too easily drawn and they confuse things. They rob some of the neediest on earth of an authentic identity and they blur global perceptions of nations. The “First World” we are constantly told is a handful of western nations that neglects the Third. Maybe that’s true, but there are plenty of people in the geographic “Third World” who live removed from the realities of poverty and neglecting the conditions of their own nation. Borders and UN placards can’t and don’t paint a fair picture of the world.
The sunset, the actual setting
of the sun behind the dark and hazy jungle from our perch atop thousand year old ruins, was beautiful. It was orange and pink and grey and blue. More than the daily ritual of the sunset we will long remember the kids who joined us. Their sweet smiles and earnest faces made the experience far more powerful.
The Temples of Angkor April 11-13, 2006 The approximately one hundred temples that make up the Angkor area include dozens of ruins in every imaginable size and shape. The Khmer empire constructed the various structures of Angkor between the 9th and 14th centuries. The more grand temples (the kind you see on postcards or in action-adventure films) were generally built between 944 and 1219. Most of the remains are temples, though several walls, towers, pools, and peripheral structures remain (including remarkably well preserved carvings, bas relief, and murals). You might expect that the ruins of such an empire to include buildings other than temples but stone was generally reserved for the construction of temples while wood was used for most other buildings (including palaces of the various kings). Once you see the park and the vast expanse of jungle that surrounds
the temples you can clearly understand why anything made of wood may have been absorbed over years of growth, rain, and erosion.
Despite the vast diversity of time of construction, size, and the distance between temples, most are made out of the same materials, sandstone and laterite, mined from the nearby mountains. This grants a certain uniformity to the wide variety of temples that is startling. The sandstone was used as the outer, aesthetic layer, and the laterite as more of a foundation or filler. One distinct characteristic of Khmer architecture common at Angkor is the “mountain” temple - a massive construct of earth piled to steep, dizzying heights, and then covered in the laterite and sandstone. At the handful of temples undergoing a restoration you can see the sandstone in its natural sandy beige color, a stark contrast to the black and grey streaked stone that remains today after years of wear and tear (wood, paint, and other coverings would have dominated the temples in their time, as well).
The mass of workers and residents of the empire dedicated to the construction of the temples was enormous and placed a significant drain on both the resources of
the kingdom and the natural resources required for food, clothing, and shelter. For this reason there is not necessarily a “main” set of ruins as various conflicts, wars, and recessions demanded breaks from worshipful temple construction. The sprawling, tiered, five-towered Angkor Wat, essentially the Elvis of the ruins at Angkor, was constructed over 32 years in the first half of the 12th century during the rule of King Suyavarman II.
We decided to try and do the park as fully as possible for our three days, adding a hired guide along with our tuk tuk driver. Our guide, a young man of 26 called Rada (rough spelling), would meet us each day along with Mr. Chantha. For $12 per day Mr. Chantha and his coach would be at our service and Rada would provide historical background and guided walks through each temple for $25 per day (our days started about 8 am and concluded around sunset). We spoke very little with Mr. Chantha, who spoke very little English, over the course of the three days (and the sunset at Pre Rup) but found him to be a safe driver, friendly, and eager to please. As we walked and talked
with Rada almost constantly we had a much more in-depth experience with him. He talked in great detail about the features of each temple, the architecture, and the Khmer ruler who constructed it. Though Rada spoke English with great confidence, his accent often obscured his insights (and he clearly spoke more fluently than he heard, often completely missing the point of a question the first three or four times it was asked and rephrased - and it’s not like we were asking for the square root of 1776 in Spanish). Amy particularly found him very hard to understand.
We have read that some Cambodians have a tendency to exaggerate or overly emphasize certain facts in an effort to garner sympathy or money. After three days we were sad to find ourselves somewhat skeptical of some of the things Rada shared with us. We want to report faithfully what Rada shared with us, but encourage people visiting Cambodia (or anywhere, for that matter) to be skeptical of what they hear when there are motivations other than simple conversation at work. It is important to note that we have no reason to doubt anything specific that Rada told us about the
temples, the Khmer people, or his own background, but that we seemed to identify certain inconsistencies in some of the things he talked about (unrelated to the temples). We could easily be paranoid, overly skeptical, or suffering from misunderstandings due to the language barrier, as well.
Rada is from a rural village in Cambodia, though he currently lives just outside of Siem Reap. His parents still live in his village and he visits when he can afford to. He is one of thirteen siblings, six of whom were killed during the years of turmoil caused by the Khmer Rouge. Rada spoke with great venom about the Khmer Rouge and several times told us that Pol Pot was as bad as Hitler and asked if we had heard of how bad Hitler was. Rada said he was too poor to marry and that he didn’t like being a guide (though he was also very open about how much study it took to become a guide). He dreams, he told us, of owning his own small business and working for himself. An ongoing topic was the tremendous poverty of Cambodia and the enormous wealth that we had as Americans. We felt
at times that Rada was judging us whenever we elected not to purchase merchandise or give money to beggars. He often mentioned how poor he was although in three days with us he made three times the average monthly wage in Cambodia (and he had previously told us that he has consistent work as a guide which pays well by Cambodian standards).
Rada is a short, very slight man with dark skin and dark eyes. He’s going bald slowly from the front of his head. His uniform each day consisted of blue pants, a white button-up shirt, and a white cotton safari-style hat with the sides tied up. He hunched over a little from the middle of his back and is slightly bow-legged. If you see him from a distance he looks like a cowboy thoughtfully examining the trail ahead of him. Rada is a Buddhist, though for some time in his teens or early twenties he was a Christian. The morning conversation on day two of our tour started with him asking us if we knew who “Chjaysoo Krease” was and if we could name his “twelve assistants”. Speeding through jungle lined roads to 1,000 year old ruins
discussing the gospel of The Twelve Assistants of Krease with a Buddhist is an experience we hope to have again, though we have no idea where we might find such a thing.
For those who may have paid for Amy to attend Catholic School please note that she can not name Chjasoo’s Twelve Assistants.
A very brief but complete, chronological accounting of the temples and sites we visited over our three days follows:
Day 1
Angkor Wat
Angkor Thom (including The Bayun, a “city” dominated by 54 towers containing 216 giant carved faces, The Baphuon and its 70 meter long reclining Buddha, Phimeanakas, the Celestial Palace, the Royal Enclosure, sandstone pools, the Terrace of the Elephants, the Terrace of the Leper King, The Twelve Towers of Prasat (lining a Khmer gaming area in the vein of the Roman Coliseum).
Preah Khan (built to honor the father of King Jayavarman VII*)
Ta Prohm (built to honor the mother of King Jayavarman VII)
* Jayavarman VII was the ruler of the Khmer empire from 1181-1219 and is responsible for some of the most impressive and extensive structures of Angkor.
Day 2
Ta Keo
Banteay Kdei
The giant reservoir
Sras Srang
Eastern Mebon
Ta Som
Preah Neak Pean
Pre Rup
Break from temples to visit a landmine education center and home for victims and an existing Buddhist temple that houses and displays the bones of local victims of the Pol Pot regime that were unearthed in a nearby field.
Day 3
The Roluos Group (constructed by King Indravarman I in the 9th century, these temples are the earliest large temples of the Khmer empire, and include Lolei, Preah Ko, and Bakong - some 15 kilometers outside of Siem Reap)
Banteay Samre
Banteay Srei
Angkor Wat (a second visit to see the temple in the light of early evening)
Phnom Bakheng (located at the top of a steep hill, popular for its view of Angkor Wat, sunset viewing, and loathsomely treacherous pathway - steep, gravel covered, gouged and uneven)
A few highlights and the photos will have to speak for themselves:
Angkor Wat is enormous. Surrounded by a wide moat, and then an intimidating wall, the temple itself is more than a half mile back from the entry point of the complex, giving you a lot of time to soak in the massive relic as you walk
toward it. The temple itself features an outer walkway lined in carvings and murals and the inner space features ceremonial pools, galleries, and rooms of all sizes. In the center stand the five towers representing Brahma, Shiva, his wife, Vishnu, and his wife. You can scale the steep stairway to the upper terrace which sits in the middle of four of the towers and includes the fifth.
The Bayun at Angkor Thom is like a lost city. Towers extend over your head in every direction and there are giant, oddly smiling, faces carved everywhere. The “city” extends below, as well, and there are plenty of long, dark corridors to explore. It is here that we discovered a subtle money making scheme employed at many of the ruins. A person, generally a very, very, old person, sets up a small offering plate of sand, incense, fruit, and fabric. When you walk in they offer you a stick of incense to place in the sand and, as you rise from your mimicry of an ancient sacred ritual, hit you up for money. Similarly, we discovered a very, very old man in one of the lower hallways apparently praying near an old
well. Our guide showed us the well and was offered the use of the man’s flashlight for a brief second to illustrate the depth of the well. No sooner could our guide return the light than he was prompted to pay. The experience wised us up enough to avoid future entanglements, but we still wonder how so many very, very old people can scale the ruins to run the racket. Virtually every basement corridor, chamber, and tower showed some signs of an existing or recent offering place.
A motoscooter-taxi driver parked near our tuk tuk, who later asked us to adopt him, made a point of asking how many languages we spoke before telling us that he spoke six. While we appreciate the man’s gift for language we thought the stab at starting a conversation with how smart he was as an attempt to show up the westerners (something we feel we have seen in other places on this trip, as well). It’s harmless enough, but is tied again to the way people here perceive us because of our appearance. He was pleasant and funny but just a little too old to adopt. The last thing he said to
us was “I like mommy.”
Preah Neak Pean is a small temple intended to stand in a large square pool of water and monks and worshippers in the day were to row to the temple for any ceremonial purposes. Around the four sides of the pool there are four smaller square pools set somewhat lower in the ground. These pools each represent different symbols and signs and bathing in the pools was said to cure illness (if you could figure out which sign provided the proper fix for your ailment). The pools are associated with elements - earth, wind, fire, and water, and an animal whose stone head acts as a spout or the delivery of water into that pool - elephant, lion, horse and man. This temple highlights the variety of temples available for view at Angkor. No matter how hot or tired you become, the next temple awaits and provides ample reward.
After three days of touring we were probably wearing a little thin on temples and ruins and the intense heat of the afternoon was absolutely belittling. The temple of Banteay Srei,, however, is one of the most impressive of all of Angkor’s sights. The
stone here is less scarred and stained than at many other ruins and retains a rose colored tone. It is also somewhat smaller than most of the places we visited, but made up for any lack of size in its volume of detailed stone carvings. For a tourist in 2006 it is impossible to gauge the wonder of stone that you don’t see - that which has been carried off by thieves or explorers - but Banteay Srei appears to retain so much of its glory that you feel as if you are walking through an art gallery. Every doorframe, archway and relief needs to be studied.
Finally, around each temple the local villagers have established small markets and restaurants. Unlike the ruins, each is exactly like the other - a large open dirt lot lined with thatch rooftops sheltering plastic tables and chairs and coolers of drinks. When a tourist pulls up they are bombarded by kids selling books, bracelets, drinks, and postcards. Their mothers, slightly behind them, are calling you to eat at their place. Once you settle in the kids generally continue to bombard you, particularly if you are as soft as we are when it
comes to kids. As Cambodia’s currency is tied to the dollar (and, in fact, is the dollar - you get greenbacks from the ATMs here) everything pretty much costs a dollar - one bracelet one dollar - one drink one dollar - one ANYTHING one dollar. Our feeling is that this is a keen tactic by the locals who understand that “one dollar” is considered to be a small amount of money to a westerner, so even though a plate of food might be two dollars, a soda or a thatch bracelet half that price is “cheap.” The longer you sit the lower the price gets - revealing the real value of the item - one girl went from one bracelet for a dollar to two bracelets, three, and all the way to fifteen for one dollar. It is important not to resent the hustling for cash at the monuments despite the fact that it may be the only unpleasant moment in an otherwise surreal and pleasant day. As we mentioned, those who live on the park grounds live in great poverty and with tremendous limitations on what they may do to develop their community or make money.
While
you are at Angkor, you are generally surrounded by children as you leave and enter a temple and also when you stop for a snack. You will also encounter some children in the temples themselves. They are all adorable and speak impeccable English (along with several other languages in order to reach all tourists). They all have the same sales pitch which generally involves getting you to agree to purchase merchandise if they can tell you the capital in the state or country where you are from. We had read this and were prepared and we can tell you that they know the capital of every place they profess to (Iceland was close, but we’re happy to admit we stumped the children (and Amy) with Greenland which we’re sure won’t happen again). They all tell you that they are using the money to pay for school and that they’re parents are at home. None of the kids in any group is related and they will tell you they are just friends. Rada confirmed to us that at the restaurants the kids selling are often the children of the adults running the restaurant although the kids do not want you to
think that. If you tell them you want to think about it, they will affirmatively state “ok you buy from me when you leave”. If you won’t buy postcards or bracelets, they will say “you didn’t buy postcards from me so you buy a soda”. It is sad and tiring and uplifting (when you make a connection, which is difficult) all at once. We generally just bought drinks but found even if we had wanted to buy much more it would have been difficult because if you buy from one child, the other seven surrounding you want you to buy from them.
We took more than 400 photos in three days and could have taken more. The Angkor experience is remarkable. The temples each maintain a different feel and uniqueness (although Amy was less able than Roger to appreciate all of their uniqueness after awhile), and almost all areas at almost all temples are open and accessible to visitors. Years of neglect yielded significant theft and damage to the structures by the encroachment of the jungle, but the temples as they stand today are each magnificent in their own way - Angkor Wat is a juggernaut of perfection and
tidiness, while Ta Prohm is so heavily covered by giant trees and roots, worming through the stonework, that it is unsafe to walk through. It is a wealth of history, architecture, natural beauty, and culture that is virtually unimaginable even having seen it.
Following our three days of exploring the ruins in tremendous heat we took a day off to relax at Villa Siem Reap. Between the tasty food, small patio restaurant, decadent fruit shakes, cold beer and free wireless internet we did not feel compelled to go too far after covering Angkor. The guest house is owned by a young Australian couple and run with a staff of young and very friendly Khmer people. The staff of Villa Siem Reap was in fact one of the highlights of our time in the city and a very big part of our last day in town. Our last day also overlapped with the first day of the Khmer New Year celebration, a holiday that dominates all aspects of life in the country for five days each year. While we were a little embarrassed not to have taken the staff up on suggested cultural experiences relating to the holiday, we spent
a lot of rewarding time speaking with them about their families, education, and aspirations. Each meal at the hotel included many “sank you”s and “plees enjoy”s delivered in a sing-songy manner that never failed to tickle us. We were thrilled that one of the young men who works at the hotel at night while finishing high school during the day has already emailed us to see how our journey is going.
We were also pleased to have a chance to speak with the owners of the hotel about their experiences and the challenges they face in trying to offer western-style service in a non-western culture. They place a great premium on service, which shows, and focus keenly on educating their staff in a way that will provide long term benefits (they offer English courses and take on more staff than necessary, often starting with apprentice-style training that focuses on learning to plan and invest for the future rather than grabbing for short gains). The hotel has been open for about one year and is likely to show positive change in the near future as they continue to improve upon the facility and as the staff develops greater confidence. As
we did not book in advance we stayed in a total of four different rooms at Villa Siem Reap (ranging from $15 to $25 per night), all of which were cool, comfortable, and clean.
Siem Reap happens to be a small town six kilometers from one of the world’s great ancient wonder. The town already shows signs of blossoming to accommodate the many visitors who come to see Angkor, and we suspect it will be a very different looking place in the near future. It already houses several luxurious hotels with rooms costing as much as $1,000 per night. In a country where the average wage is $30 a month it’s hard not to think that that money could be spent more productively. Angkor itself will likely take on subtly different looks over time as well, as some preservation and restoration is taking place on a variety of temples large and small. Unlike the centuries that the temples were relatively unknown or unvisited the jungle will not eat away at the structures anymore, but for many the damage is already done. Several important temples have enormous trees literally growing over and above them. To remove a tree, or even
a natural collapse by a tree, would smash one of these ancient wonders to rubble. As our guide pointed out regarding Ta Prohm, one of the most tree-invaded spots, it may “only last another 200 years.” Not a bad run, all in all. But that’s what makes Angkor so amazing - the overwhelming presence of such impressive buildings that were not only constructed with artful uniqueness, but that they retain that individuality even in decay. It’s a living antique made vital by the people who live near it and scamper over it. On the off chance that you forget the dynamism of the ruins there’s the lush, ever-changing jungle full of birds and monkeys calling out from every direction to remind you.
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Jeff Revell
non-member comment
Great Journal
Thanks for the great information on Siem Reap and the Angkor temples. I was especially pleased to read your review of the Villa Siem Reap. I am traveling to Cambodia for the first time in late June and have booked a room at the same guesthouse. It sounds like I made the right choice. I will be there for 8 days so I won't have to keep the frenetic pace you did around the temples. I am hoping to make some excursions to the surrounding country side during my stay. I read that the Villa can arrange bicycle tours. Did you do anything like this? Once again, thanks for all of the great information. I will be traveling alone and being a photographer by trade, I can only imagine the number of photos I will take in such a majestic place. Cheers, Jeff