Siem Reap Day 1

I arrived in Siem Reap at 07:50 thinking, I have no US dollars, I have no idea how much a taxi is going to cost so I might get ripped off and I have no idea about anything about this country...
Stepped off the plane and straight into the Visa queue. Got a visa for $25 and off I went. Outside, you can get a motorbike taxi anywhere for $2. As I only had a rucksack I decided to do that as it sounded more fun than a car or a tuktuk! (there's a cash point in the airport... Phew!)
Got to my hotel and had arranged to meet a guide a few hours later so chilled out for a bit. It's so hot here'. You walk out of air con and you're sweating.

I met my guide at 11. He took me to Tonle Sap lake and sent me off on a boat ride. The guys told me it was $25 for about 2 hours. After paying it I realised I should have haggled. Oh well, you live and learn. The boat trip was awesome. Saw the locals living on their boats and stilt houses. The lake was like the sea. Huge. It's about 55km across in rainy season, which is now.
We passed a floating orphanage school where the kids parents had passed away due to illness from the water or they had left the kids behind and moved on. This was pretty sad to hear.
On the way back they stopped at a community food centre and told me I could buy food and take it to the orphanage. I wanted to do that... Until they tried to make me pay $85 for a sack of rice. I could send it from England cheaper than that! I asked about a bag of sweets instead which was about 10 packets of small crisps. $5 I was told. I'm not paying $5 for a few crisps to take to a load of kids where it's not even going to go around 10 of them... I felt really bad not buying anything but the prices were ridiculous. It's not like I'm a rich westerner who has money to burn. Even if i was, thats just absurd! After that the feeling I got from the guide was that they didn't like it that I hadn't bought anything and I couldn't wait to get off the boat. when getting off talk of tips started and because they went on at me when they'd already made me feel bad I didn't want to leave anything. I didn't know if leaving just a dollar was being offensive but after paying $25 for 2 hours I didn't see the justification anymore. Bearing in mind my tuktuk guide was $15 for most of the day!
I left them feeling guilty but I didn't like that they became rude because I didn't do what they wanted.
After meeting my guide again we drove back towards the city and I went to the Angkor Wat museum to find out what the meaning of all these temples was.
It was interesting but I was shattered from only having slept an hour the night before and working weird hours in Singapore, plus the heat didnt help!

Following this we drive to the killing fields and learnt about Pol Pot. A disgusting dictator. I need to read up more on the goings on of Cambodia. But this man was terrible. More on him later.

In the evening I went to a local restaurant which was a Cambodian buffet with Cambodian dancing. The food was good and I ate as I sat watching the tens of little lizards crawling across the ceiling! the dance show was good, if a little slow! But a good insight into the culture, clothing and dance.
By this point I wanted my bed and I had to be up at 4:45am to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat the next day so I went back and chilled at the hotel pool bar for a little while. It was then I heard thunder... 5 mins later and I thought the trees were going to come flying at me and the hotel staff were rushing around madly trying not to let the hotel flood. A rain storm had begun and it's the craziest rain I've ever seen! it was like someone had opened up the clouds and instantly all the water in the sky decided to drop down!
I sat watching it and listening to the thunder for a while, while skyping home to show them the rain! then decided I better go to bed before I got soaked! The 2 seconds I had to walk outside to get to my room got me drenched!

All in all I found my first day in Cambodia pretty hard. Being on my own and not strong willed enough to brush people off or be rude got to me a bit and I felt a bit worried about the rest of my stay. Hopefully tommorow will be a better day!

Travel list - 1st check!

I have made it to one of the countries on my travel list! I have just arrived in Cambodia-Siem Reap.
I flew from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur for the night then onto Siem Reap. Spent the day shopping in some oversized mall and ended up buying a bigger memory card, a filter and a camera bag. All because of my over excitedness about my trip to Cambodia! My main reason to come here is to explore and take photos. I'm only here for 3 days and have hired a photographer/tuktuk driver for 2 days! Hoping he can take me to some cool places, having a shared interest and learn off each other!
I found him on a photographers blog funnily enough. This guy had come out to Cambodia a few years back and hired a tuktuk and the driver seemed interested in the camera so long story short, he let him have a go and ended up buying him a camera and getting him proper training! Looking forward to meeting him!

I booked some cheap hotel in KL and forgot to really look at location.... As I was in the room for a total of 6 hours it wasn't a bother but the area was like a little India. That place definitely isn't making it to my travel list!
I got a cab at 3am to go to the airport and got quite a shock. Right, religion...
Actually I'm not going to go off on that right now... Im too tired and I want to go exploring. Basically the taxi driver was a Muslim man in full attire. Nothing wrong with that. I'm in a Muslim country. But playing chants... For the hour journey to the airport in your taxi? Not just chants... Shouting... about how Allah is the greatest. Telling me i belong to him, everything belongs to him... Not telling, shouting. I even tried paying attention but he was shouting at a hundred words per second.
Each to their own, and I'm interested in people's beliefs... But i wasn't impressed by what I heard. more on religion another time... !!

It's so HOT here. you walk outside and break out in a sweat. And I'm not sure how to dress. Im going to temples.... So I should dress respectfully but it's so hot!!!!! I think i need to leave my gold sequin bikini top and pink hot pants in my suitcase and bear the heat in trousers and t-shirts....
By the way... For those who don't know me... I am joking. but the thought of going out in this heat in trousers and long sleeve tops makes me hot just thinking about it. hmmmm I'll have to compromise somehow...

Time to go out and bear the heat!

Never any normality

Just finished what felt like the longest race ever. Doing Singapore is fun but tiring due to the time changes. We start the week in Singapore time then half way through switch to European time...so dealing with jet lag and working is not the most pleasant experience. Also means that when the week is over, like now, and I'm on holiday.... I can't SLEEP!!!!

I've stayed out in Singapore and am at sentosa island. I'm going exploring for a few days though. Off to Kuala Lumpur today then Cambodia tommorow. I'm so excited about going to take photos in Siem Reap. I've hired a tuktuk driver/photographer to take me to Angkor Wat and booked the most random hotel I can find :)

My life's changed so much in a year. A year ago I would have been too scared to go off travelling alone and exploring random places, my head was in a different place. I'm now excited about finding new things and can't wait to get to Cambodia!

Now i have a few countries to visit and a few weeks work to do!

Will update on Cambodia in a few days!
If anyone has been to Cambodia and can recommend anywhere to visit, please comment!! Thanks :)

Ciao

I'm in Italy! It's 1am and I have a flight home to catch in 4 hours and I cannot sleep. This is becoming a regular occurrence. Maybe it's all the pasta I've eaten this week!
I'm lying here in my 70's decor hotel room feeling like I'm lying on a plank of wood and frustrated that my eyes won't go to sleeeeeeep!!! My body is telling me I am absolutely shattered but my brain doesn't seem to want to listen.

I'm in a part of Italy I've never been to before... There's not much around... Lots of trees and a LOT of Mosquitos and funny green insects.
The food has been really good and I've enjoyed having lots of different pasta. It feel like ages ago that we were sat having a coffee after arriving... And that was only 4 days ago.

It's funny how life changes when you least expect or without you even realising. Things seem to have taken a 180degree turn in my life. I realised that what I thought I wanted wasn't actually what I wanted and turned out to be something i judged completely wrong. And something made me quickly realise that. And I'm so glad it did. I do believe that everything happens for a reason. It certainly has in my experience! If certain things hadn't happened, I'd never be where I'm at right now!
I'm smiling lots and can't wait to get back to the UK. I have a few days to make the most of before we start our Asian stint. It's going to be a long 4 weeks!

Anyway, last week, we found a derelict cinema which has been derelict for about 5 years. We went photographing and exploring. It was awesome to explore and find everything still in its place, although most things broken and falling apart. My photos didn't come out so well as I was slightly distracted by my thoughts but it was yet another experience to learn from in terms of photography.
I need to find another place to explore now. :)

I can't wait to be back home in my own bed again! I need to be in front of a good film and chilling out :)

My 3 lessons....

It's been a weird month. Since the last race I've got back into being based in the UK for a while and it feels like I've been back here for ages now. Feels like forever ago that I was in Hungary!

I've also learnt a few lessons. In life and technically!
I believe that you create your own destiny. If you want something, you have to go and get it. If you don't, or you choose the wrong actions, you only have yourself to blame. That goes for everything that's been going on in my life over the last month.
First thing I've learnt is never be fooled by perception. You can have a perception of something but actually it ends up being something totally the opposite. I have learnt that I am too quick to judge a book by it's cover and not get to know what's really inside, in this case, no words. I'll remember to look beyond the cover in future and reveal the true words!

Secondly I've been on a few training courses. One of which was an IT related one and the other being Photography. I loved the photography one. I finally got to learn what I'm actually doing rather than thinking I can dodge the manual and pick it up as I go along. 2 years of doing that and I eventually realised I needed some guidance! I'm not good with manuals. I'm too impatient to sit and read about it... I just want to do it!

Since doing the course I've been actively looking for things to photograph. And I've found that as soon as I've started to look, more things are jumping out :) I've still got a way to go before I'll be happy with my photographs but I'm hoping I'll get there soon enough.  I'm probably annoying everyone around me, constantly looking for something to take photos of, but everywhere I go, I see a frame for an awesome photograph. I have to practise until the day I can look at a scene and think "this is what I want it to look like", snap a pic and it looks exactly how I imagined it in my head.

Last weekend I went to London for the weekend, to get away for a bit and smile and laugh. It was awesome, and it worked :) Lots of smiles, dancing, chatting, chilling and a "few" drinks :) I actually made it a whole night in heels! What an achievement. haha The dirty chicken burger/kebab on the way home is never a good idea... why did I not remember this from my uni days!

My 3rd lesson was as I said in the beginning, to concentrate on my goals in life. Having had many thoughts over the last month about various things, I realised I need to be more proactive about what I want and what I don't. I need to stop wasting time on things that don't make me happy and make more time for the things that do! So, I'm now on a mission to continue taking lots of photos, see more of the world when I can and photograph it, surprise surprise, and see old and new friends more and have lots of fun times. The last few weeks has been awesome. I've met new people and caught up with the old.

I have found that over the last year, things that I haven't been happy about have led me to finding new things which do make me happy. I've been and explored new places, seen new things, eaten new foods and met lots of amazing people along the way and some, not so amazing!

So thank you to all the bad experiences and people/things that have caused them over the last year... without them, I wouldn't have experienced all the amazing things I've found because of them :)

Anyway enough of my babbling... my next stint of travelling starts again soon and it's going to be a long one. 4 countries in 5 weeks and the lack of my own bed for that long too. But, I get to go to some cool places and eat lots of nice food and fill up my suitcase with random Japanese sweets so it makes it worth it :) Being away from it for a while, makes me forget about the long hours, working in a garage full of boys and the constant pressure... but I'll keep living in dreamland until the day I have to go again! :)

Here's a couple of pictures I took last night of someone I work with, who is amazing with fire! :)

“I demolish my bridges behind me...then there is no choice but to move forward” 

Fridtjof Nansen

A picture tells a thousand words

I am SO excited.
I have just booked a photography course for the next two days to go and learn the basics of photography and then to go out and learn how to take better photographs. All in my favourite part of London, Southbank.
The photographs I have seen from the tutor are amazing and he seems to have the same style of photography that I want to be able to do.
I don't like taking normal photographs. I like taking photographs of unusual things, or not even unusual things, but what would normally be boring things but making them look interesting with different light, backgrounds or focuses. I don't like taking portrait photos of people looking directly at the camera. I prefer to catch them unaware as you capture real emotion that way. As soon as you say "Hey, look at me", peoples expressions change as they stare into your lens. Some embarrassed and not knowing where to look, wishing I would go away and others loving the lens and making all sorts of faces.

I've never been one to read a manual. Since buying a camera, I've been too impatient to sit and learn the technicalities of it. I prefer to learn by experimenting, which is what I have been doing for the past 2 years but recently I've had less and less time and my camera has been sat gathering dust.
I thank the various people who have tried to explain what the shutter speed and aperture etc are and how to calculate them... numbers and I do not mix well. But I appreciate the help and I did try to listen... it just didn't sink in. You all gave me lots of motivation to experiment though :)
I'm hoping now that I have a little time and a renewed motivation to try to capture a photograph without doing any post-processing, the next two days will further my knowledge so that I can finally understand what I'm doing and take a couple of pictures and get what I want instead of taking hundreds of pictures at lots of different settings.

What you can do with a flash amazes me. I am not interested in using a flash to light up my subject. I'm interested in learning how the flash can effect the subject and make different affects on objects/lighting/scenery.

I have a plan to take more random courses here and there, when I can, to try to learn as much as I can so that eventually, I can take a photograph and know exactly what I'm doing and capture the image and upload it without having to put it in Lightroom to "make it look better".

Anyone can be a photographer. I saw a photograph on Twitter which was a photograph used on the front page of a newspaper, taken by a spectator of the Olympics with his Iphone. I don't want to be just a photographer. I guess I want to be an artist. To create images that aren't like anyone elses' and that people wonder where and how I did it. It's going to take a long time but it's something I've wanted to do for a long time..and I'll get there eventually... hopefully... and yes, I know everyone says that... Personal goal. ;)
This leads me on to my question about Art. I have never understood Art. Who judges that a piece of Art is worth millions of pounds? I may like it, but you may not. So how can it be decided that one piece of art is different to another?

Anyway I better go to bed and wake up bright and early to get upto London to start my journey into the art world :)

Things that go bump in the night...

The last few weeks have been eventful.

I saw a quote on my friends facebook which was "One of life's hardest decisions is to decide whether to try harder or walk away". Very relevant in my thinking at the moment. And I think that if you have to make a conscious effort to try harder it means the sensible decision is to walk away. So onwards with my journey I go.

So... I went to see Woman in Black in the theatre yesterday. I was a bit sceptic as to whether a 2 man show would entertain me. I have a tendency to start thinking about other things and lose concentration if there's lots of talking and not much else going on. Especially with a play. I love musicals. If I had to start my life again I would continue to learn how to sing and dance and be trying hard to get on stage. I am in awe of anyone who has a natural talent to be able to sing, pick up an instrument and play what they like. I wish I could.

Anyway this play was amazing. At first I was wondering how 2 men on a stage could make reviewers say they were scared and jumped lots. It's a play in a play and the acting was awesome in the sense that they make the audience use their imagination, subconsciously, to set the scenes.

It wasn't as scary as I thought it would be, being a complete wimp when it comes to horror. When I was younger, I would watch horror films and be to scared to go up the stairs to go to bed and would be constantly on the look out for ghosts and zombies coming to get me. In a sense I guess I am still the wimp that I was. I can't watch a horror and be alone. Otherwise my imagination takes over and I scare myself.
I think it's ghosts that scare me... It's the fear of the unknown I guess.
In Japan, in August they have a festival called Obon, which is according to Wikipedia:

Obon (お盆?) or just Bon (盆?) is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist-Confucian custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves, and when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. It has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.

If I was in Japan at this time, I would be scared and although I'd take part in the activities surrounding it, I would be constantly scared of what was actually going on. It didn't help that the leading 3 days to the festival they show constant ghost stories and horror on TV and horror in Japan is pretty scary. I once read a Japanese book which was a ghost story about a girl who read a ghost story and it happened that if you read the book, you would be cursed and would end up in the same situation. I finished the book and it told me that now I had read it, the same thing was going to happen to me. I spent the next few weeks petrified. Bearing in mind I was about 12, I think now that that was a bit harsh that a child's' book should make me feel like that!
I have a few strange fears, which I am petrified of but although I am scared I like to find out more. Ghosts are one of them. I hate the fear surrounding ghosts, but I'm interested in hearing ghost stories and seeing random photos of the so-called unknown etc... weird. Snakes is another thing. I hate snakes... and I couldn't have one of those things draped around me, but I could stand and watch them for hours, mesmerised.

My friend and I visited a theme park in Japan and one of the attractions was a ghost house. We made it in the first door and saw a woman with long black hair and white make up making her way very slowly against the wall, towards us. We stood in fear for about 5-10 minutes trying to go through the door into the house, but didn't make it. We ran out screaming which led the tiny Japanese girls behind us to follow us out, screaming. What a bunch of wimps.

Anyway, if you get a chance to see Woman in Black, it's worth a watch. :) I'd write more about it but then I'd be giving it away :)