tourguide

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Time changes everything- Boeng Mealea temple Cambodia

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The previous post in this trip series is here..

Our first day in Cambodia started with a nice early breakfast at the Golden Temple resort hotel. Our guide and driver Sarak was prompt and picked us up. We had a quick chat with him to introduce ourselves. Told him we can walk fast. We can walk and talk and listen to him to save time. We preferred to go to places less crowded to get pictures. He understood the assignment. He was also a very creative photographer and San was happy that she had two photographers to cover her during this leg of the trip.

Our first stop was Boeng Mealea temple (also known as Indiana Jones temple.. even though no Indiana Jones movie was shot here!). This was built for the flower in the pond that used to grow in the place and was a temple to honor the kings daughter who died as a child. The entire thing is in ruins. It is an amazing place that is still being restored.

The trees have taken over the stones! What caused the stones to slide off without any damage is weird!

These pictures don’t put this ruin to scale!

More photos in portrait format.. the first photo below will be very useful for folks planning a trip. Buy the 3 day pass if you are going to any temples in this complex all three days.

A highlight reel of our day 3 till this point..

We had started before 7AM and were pretty much the only people in this temple that early. We were coming out of the temple when a big bus full of people showed up. We were going to hit our next stop before the buses showed up there..

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Lover's hill - A step by step guide to embarrassing your kids

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The previous post in this series is here..

The second stop in our all day tour was Lover’s hill aka aşıklar tepesi. This is also called as sunset point.

There is a flat edge from which you can see the rock structures in the valley and get nice pano views. There are cute photo spots and a cafe here. While the kids and our fellow van tourists took a break, we decided to do a 360 view video to Turkish music. The guy who ran this gig promised an edited version in 5 minutes. I was more curious about his editing skills and wanted to sign up. San was already practicing local dance moves with our guide.

If I had a dollar (okay, a 1000 dollars given inflation) for every time I heard “Appa please”, “Please appa”, “Appa NO!”, “let her do it”, “I will never talk to you again”, etc in the five minutes that led up to me getting on that little jig, we could have paid for the entire trip and more. However that is step 1 of of this guide. You declare intent.

Then you act like you are considering their suggestion. Then you go “nah!”, I am going to go for it. Much like how they did things to you when they were babies.

The video highlights reel here is for your absolute enjoyment! This went on the tour guide service’s reels. They contract for Viator. But first, some photos.. given where this was going, the kids took one photo and ran as far away from us as possible. Had to beg Jr. to take a video of our video being made (she Zoomed !)

when we drove out saw a baby horsie walking around with a pack.. These had no owners, they were wild horses. Apparently this place is famous for this type of horse, which was once exported to other parts of the world 1400 years ago!

The HIGHLIGHT of the 40 minutes spent here!

Normally cut out any music that will be flagged as copyright, but in this case, the dancing does not go well without the music, so left it in. Youtube promptly flagged it and said the video will not be visible in a lot of locations. My apologies if you cannot see this video..

Was thinking of setting up this jig at the top of one of our local peaks with a pano view and making life interesting. The guy has some really good edit skills but was thinking I can do “comparable if not better” with all my blogging and video editing experience. He airdropped it right away!

Thoroughly enjoyed this experience.. before we moved on to the next stop..

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The magic of Charles bridge and the Vltava river

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The previous post in this series is here..

Good thing the photos and videos are bringing back memories.

After our visit to the castle complex, our guide walked us down the hundreds of steps to the Charles bridge that was built starting in 1347 AD!

It is a fantastic bridge as are the statues on it.

We walked down the steps and right before we got to the bridge we got some funnel cake. It is a local delicacy. We missed it in Budapest.. but got it here. It was close to a Churro..

After this walk across the bridge, we got to see the old Jewish Quarter, one of the oldest areas in Prague, followed by a lunch with local cuisine (which doesn’t have much in the way of Vegetarian options).. so we ate fried cheese and bread.. the rest of the group loved it. This was a restaurant in the basement of a 800 year old building. They had to put special wiring in to light the place with bulbs. It was interesting.

This was followed by more walking and finally a boat cruise on the river to see all the landmark buildings from the river. When the cruise was over, we said bye to our guide. He told us to walk back to the hotel through a gap! We went “duh”.. why did we Uber here in the morning. we could have just walked it!

a few photo galleries.. We walked past the place where they shot the first Mission Impossible movie and actually recognized it. Our guide was full of information on events that we could recognize from famous movies, famous artists who came to Prague and were inspired, there was a lot of talk of Duran Duran, etc. He was an “all things Prague” guy!

A lot of photos in the Portrait format gallery.. tall structures, small roads, go figure!

The clock tower in the old square was supposed to be a highlight and our guide said go there and don’t miss it. San and me decided to walk around a bit. We also got to spend time at the Kafka head which turns every few minutes. When we saw the head, we realized it was 300 feet from our hotel. So we decided to take a break go get changed and then get back to the square.

A video highlights reel of this part of the Prague tour..

The last part of our evening in another post..

Copyright © 2012, Sundar Narayanan. All rights reserved.