Monday morning, 14 November:
our first experience in Cambodia

Before the walk (big image, small).

Hung and Albert, Audra in the distance (big image, small).

Lyn climbs (big image, small).

On the trail (big image, small).

I would not call the vegetation that you see in the pictures
above particularly scenic or at all jungly.

Breakfast in our hotel, and then to the hiking. My journal says, «Our first walk today was another climb, this time up to the River of One Thousand Lingams. These phallic sym­bols would hardly be re­cog­niz­a­ble as such to any west­er­ner, since they’re just bos­ses, low knobs mostly about 2½" in diameter.

One pleasing vista that we got on the way up to the falls (big image, small).

«The climb itself was tricky but not as Bad as the previous two days’. There were only a few break-leg spots, and quite a few staircases to facilitate the climb. The whole trail is just 1500 meters, so slightly less than a mile, but in this case, it’s not the linear distance that counts.

«At the top of the trail, the river pools before dropping in several cascades. The water runs over the lingams and past a sculpture much smoothed by time and, at high water, by the stream. Upstream from the main bunch of lingams by a few yards, Mark spotted a bas relief of a woman, apparently dancing.

«We went downstream below a little falls, and in the pool, kids were frolicking. More lingams.»

And then we walked back down the same way we had come up. Lunch followed, but I don’t have any worthwhile pictures from then. There are enough pictures from later in the day that I’ve put most of them in a separate page. There you’ll see my pictures of the ruins of Ta Prohm. A third page has pictures of Angkor Thom, perhaps the raison d’être of the whole trip, at least for me.

But first, a couple of videos of water, flowing and falling, from this morning: