Thursday, 4 June 2009

Temple Watch: Welcome to Angkor Wet


Written by Dave perkes
Thursday, 04 June 2009

I visited Angkor last week to get some rainy season photography. Black and white shot against the light with people carrying rain-soaked umbrellas always make great subjects. It's one of the occasions when I love to see tourists, especially bedraggled tourists. Of course they usually smile when they see me juggling my camera equipment and fighting with a brolly, that is attempting to self-destruct in a sudden rain-sodden gust. If I were lighter in weight, I could do a Mary Poppins, flying across the heavens like an Apsara. Instead, I am on terra firma in the middle of the Angkor Wat causeway, just about equidistant from any nearest shelter. It's at times like these that Angkor Wat seems big, very big. In fact, it can seem so big in the rain that those celestial oceans that surround the temple appear to be travelling to the ends of the earth. My expensive camera equipment might be water-resistant, but is not designed for this kind of tropical deluge. Come to think of it, my folding umbrella is designed to do precisely what it is doing right now - self-destructing - in anything more than a light breeze. Why did I ignore the boy selling rain macs 10 minutes earlier?

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