happy holiday everyone!

...& farewell my friends

as some of you may already know, i have decided to cease blogging and this will be my last post. my sincere apologise to those of you who had recently joined in my blog for my decision to leave blogger.

my thanks to:

...14th bird for flew over the ninth sunn & kept returning back ever since. i just hope i didn't turn you into a coo coo bird (lol, only jogging dude). 14th bird was my first passer to leave his kind comments on my blog. not only that, you're recommended all your visitors to check out my blog. that was most kind of you to do that. thank you.

btw guys, check out his new blog site, 14th birds eye. there're some serious great photos & i'm sure, there's yet many to follow.

also among my first visitors were jess & framing images and memories. thank you both for all your encouraging messages ever since.

...jess, i can't thank you enough for nominated me twice on your blog. it was nice gestures of you to have done that. i'm well chuffed. your photography is going from strength to strength. keep it up, jess. i wish you every success on your study & your future in photography world of which i'm sure you will.

...fi&m, for put up with all my dry sense of humour comments on your blog. i hope you didn't get offended by it all & see the funny side of it. i enjoyed visiting your blog because you always came up with interesting & creatives work each time i visited. they are most inspiring & good to see you back.

...i was lucky to have linda & bridget as followers. ever since you discovered my blog, especially linda, you returned back without failed, each time i posted new blogs. you gave me encouragements & motivations to keep on blogging for the past months. what's more, i felt like as if i was living in america through your blogs. i got to know of your culture, your environment & your way of good family living. thank you both for sharing!

...trojan, andrei paul, veredit & the rest of my followers...thanks everyone for stop by & found interest on what i had to share with you all. it's been a great experience & i've learned so much from each individual of you from many different part of the world. thanks again for sharing all your wonderful work to the rest of the world to see & learn from one & another. it's been most inspiring to all of us!

thank you guys...

...and have a great festive celebration

best wishes to everyone for the new coming year

& stay safe!

the last journey

angkor thom

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bayon

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phnom kulen

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bantey srey

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angkor thom, the great city, was the third & the last capital city of khmer empire. at the centre of the city found the prasat bayon. jayavarman VII dedicated the bayon to the buddha and on the tower consisted four faces looking out to the north, east, south & west. it was believed that the faces were based on jayavarman himself.
the top three photos are of the gate to the city. each side of the gate lies a row of statues pulling a tug of war with nagas (dragons) as rope. on the right hand side represented the good god fellows & the other side are the big bad giants.
where as the three photos of phnom kulen, this was built buy king jayavarman II, the founder of khmer empire. throughout the surface of the river bed were carved with shapes of hindu sacred symbols where supposedly one would wash off one sin. while we were there we were pointed out by the local that there's a large statue of visnu in the middle of the river. but the water was quite high & the current was strong. we never got to see the statue but take their word for it.
this will be my last post on my hometown. it's just a fraction of the city i've shown you here. i hope someday you'll be able to visit & see it yourself in true forms. it's really worth the trip.

sleeping city

preah khan

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ta som

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bantey kdei

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all temples shown here were built by king jayavarman VII. the first top five were from preah khan site. and from what i was told, this temple was originally built as victory over the invading chams but he later dedicated it to his father in 1191 as he did with ta som.

enigma

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ta prohm

recently, best known for tomb raiders of lara croft. the temple was badly disrupted during the thai invasion at the end of khmer empire in 1431. the citizen abandoned angkor. and forest trees took over and embedded the city that became known as the lost city.

this temple is called ta prohm and was built by king jayavarman VII in 1186 dedicated to his mother. for us, he was our greatest king of all time. also known as preah ang thom, the great king.

king jayavarman VII didn't get the throne not until in his early 60s. only when the cham (vietnamese) invaded the country, between 1177 & 1178, that he came into historical prominence by leading the army & ousted out the invaders. as a result he claimed himself the next king of khmer empire and ruled as a brilliant king for over 30 years. the cham persisted & returned back during his early reign but he repelled the attack right back to the north & took control of champa (vietnam).

with the influence of his wife, he became religious & devoted to buddhism. he built a large number of new buddhist temples. such as the above ta prohm, preah khan, angkor thom, bayon & many few others (see my next posts). In addition, he constructed rest houses, roads, hospitals & reservoirs.

jayavarman VII remains a potent symbol of national pride for the present day cambodians. as a buddhist king in a now buddhist country he is regarded with great respect. during his lifetime he succeeded in creating a legacy that no other leaders in our history have been able to equal. he died at the age of over 90 in 1218. ever since, cambodia became from bad to worst and the country's been successfully destroyed by its late successors to this day.

the rise & fall of angkor

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angkor

i thought i give you a quick history about cambodia so you know a bit of its past. let's go back from 802ad. when the khmer king jayavarman II, the founder of angkor, pronounced himself as a universal monarch & declared independence from java. back then, cambodia was known as the Khmer empire. thailand, laos , malaysia &, later, vietnam were all once part of khmer empire. right up until 1431ad when the thai invaded & sacked angkor & caused the khmer elite to migrate to phnom penh what is now the capital of cambodia.

above are from the famous angkor vat. means the city temple. it was built by king suryavarman II in the early 12th century (1113) to honour the hindu god “visnu”. it took over 37 years to completed. though he never lived to see the finish temple. he died just before it was completed. the design itself was based from the hindu architecture and it was to represent the mount meru. a sacred mountain in hindu, buddhist cosmology. it is considered to be the centre of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes. it is the largest religious architecture in the world. it was in this region, angkor, the original capital of cambodia.

quite honestly i don’t think my photos do justice to the real thing. the scale of these temples are phenomenal (another must see if you can). the walls are covered with bas reliefs telling stories of its era. above are some the carved sculptures of dancers known the apsara dance. it's where our tradition classical dance was originated. influenced by the indian hindu forms & inspiration from the mythological court of the gods and from its celestial dancers. thoughout its rulers, the dance took on its own unique form adding movements and meaning & made into khmer identity.

prior to the angkor era, cambodia, was the java invasion (8th century), before that was chenla (550ad - 8th century) and even before that was funan (1st century – 613ad).