Phnom Bakheng, Spring 2008

Elephants wait to take visitors up the hill to Phnom Bakheng.	More waiting elephants.	After riding or walking up the hill you reach the main building.	It was nearing sunset so the sun is creating a birght halo over the trees.
Climing up the steps. This is a popular place to take pictures of Angkor Wat from a distance as well as the sunset.	A warning about the steep climb.	The steps don't look like much in photos.	But as you can see from the way Coach is climing, it's not that easy.
Way out there lost in the atmospheric perspective is Angkor Wat.	A closer look.	Zoomed in even further, now you can make out the details.	A view of Phnom Bakheng's courtyard.
A slightly different view of Angkor Wat through the trees.	One more view of Angkor Wat up close.	Birght sun and lens flares.	An Apsara.
Slight color changes over Angkor Wat as the sun sets.	Some elephants in the courtyard below Angkor Wat in the distance.	A silhouette of Phnom Bakheng.	A slightly closer version. I think those are dragonflies again, not birds.
A bull statue with some incense offerings.	Another view of the bull with a woman praying.	Tree silhouettes.	Sunset with trees.
One last tree sunset silhouette.	That evening we went to a restaurant that had a shadow puppet show. This is the interior of the restaurant looking down from the top floor.	Here is the stage for the shadow puppet performance.	The story was a bit hard to follow but I enjoyed seeing the puppets.
The puppets are made of leather.	These are the performers, they all looked very young.	Musicians provide the music for the performance.	During this part of the story the two characters have their bulls fight.
I thought the trees were neat as well as the vines they used to create the top frame.	Some of the puppets had a lot of detail I wonder how fragile that makes the leather?	There was a lot of action in this story.	The end written in English, Japanese and Khmer I assume.