I’m finally here to post some pictures I’ve taken in Bangkok, before this blog collects too much dust. Well, what to do? It’s the most hectic term for both students and teachers during this period.. so..

Before entering the Grand Palace, one can already see the golden pagoda sitting behind the lush field.

I’ve finally visited this "must-go" tourist attraction after bypassing it during my previous 3 trips to Bangkok. Not many people (especially Singaporeans) want to visit the Grand Palace for some obvious reason. A typical Singaporean would think of Bangkok as a shopping haven rather than a place with historical attractions to visit. So anyway, I had the chance to visit the Grand Palace this time round, and I’m here to put up some pictures that I’ve taken.

Statues of mythological giants (known as yak)

The entrance to the Grand Palace is free for all Thais, but costs 200 baht for tourists. I visited on a Tuesday, and was pleasantly surprised to see many tour groups in the Grand Palace. Makes the place more crowded yeah. Haha.

I decided to travel light for this lone trip, so I dropped the idea of lugging my tripod and monster DSLR but instead brought along my smaller sized rangefinder.  

Also, I was too lazy to compose my shots properly, so whatever you’re looking at are just merely snapshots.

Colourful Buddha Gandhara

A worker restoring a painting on the wall

As it was crowded with people that day, I thought it was not a bad idea to include tourists in some of my shots, rather than just taking symmetrical  pictures of the buildings and roofs that might just bore people to death. 

A local kneeling down to pray as tourists walked past. 

Gold Buddha and wall pictures 

Upclose 

Praying 

The lady at the left was filming as her partner (guy in white) dipped a lotus flower into the holy water and sprinkled it onto the praying lady’s head. Using the lotus flower to sprinkle water onto the head is said to give good luck. 

One of the tour guides explaining some details to the tour group. 

Full of tourists who were enthusiastically taking photos.

One part of the long stretch of painting on the Wall Gallery. This whole stretch of painting along the long corridors depicts the Rhamakien Story. 

Out in the open space again, heading the Dusit Palace.

A tourist posing in front of the camera, while other waited on. 

Just another picture, I’ve run out of description. 

This is a guard, standing still in front of the reception hall. Apparently, he had a double duty. Apart from guarding the entrance of the hall, he also needs to look smart and photogenic.

Because tourists just love to take pictures with him!! 

This is way cool, relaxing in the hotel room, eating chips and blogging from my laptop! The hotel room is much better than I anticipated, and internet connection from the LAN cable is free. Realised that there’s a fridge here, so maybe I’ll go buy some milk to store tomorrow.

Well, anyway I had a tiring day travelling in the plane for half a day. Because of the new law against carrying any form of liquid on-board, I almost dehydrated. At about 5pm (no time difference here), all of us finally touched down at Xi’an, and we took coach that brought us to the City Wall of Xi’an, the only attraction that we would see today.

A view of the Xi’an airport from the bus

Our tour guide was a nice lady by the name of 小燕. During our 1 hour bus journey to the City Wall, she brought us through, quickly but quite thoroughly, the history of Xi’an. I had an enjoyable time listening to her interesting speech, and I’m sure the rest did as well.

We’ve finally reached the City Wall of Xi’an! This wall was built initially during the old Tang dynasty, but was enlarged during the rule of Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of Ming dynasty. The wall stands 12 metres tall, 12-14 metres wide at the top and 15-18 metres thick at the bottom. It has a perimeter of 13.7 km, making me tempted to run a complete round of the wall. Haha! The picture above shows the entrance of the south gates. The performers were on standby, ready to bring our student group in.

The students, all donned in the yellow tees, were waiting excitedly to walk into the Wall.  

This is our group walking past the south gate.

And this was how the performers were positioned as we the guests were escorted in.

After everyone gathered in front of the stage, the performers wasted no time in putting up an impressive display for us. Below are some pictures taken during the performance.  

Taken from the second storey of the walls.

Another shot, showing the elegance of the lady dancer.

And end of the performance! All the performers came together to receive applause from the audience.

Anyway, below are some shots of the City Wall itself.

Our tour bus!

And a last picture, taken from inside the bus as we were heading towards our hotel.

I guess that’s about it for tonight. Gonna sleep soon and get ready for tomorrow’s sight-seeing!

Angkor Wat is a temple at Angkor, Cambodia, built for king Surtavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city.

The largest and best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre - first Hindu, then Buddhist - since its foundation. The temple is the epitome of the high classical style of Khmer architecture, and has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag and being the country’s prime attraction for visitors.

Below are more pictures that I’ve taken inside Angkor Wat.

Under the morning sun, the towers resemble bricks of gold.

At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. 

One of the many altars in Angkor Wat.

A tourist praying in front of a Buddha statue. Tourists are to make a donation after praying. 

The other side of the alley.

This is a view of the tourists attempting to climb the stairs up to the upper part of the temple. The very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of gods. 

The panoramic view of the temple from the top of the stairs. 

This inner gallery, called the Bakan, is a 60 m square with axial galleries connecting each gopura with the central shrine, and subsidiary shrines located below the corner towers. The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas.

A monk sitting at the steps of the outer area of the temple. Interestingly, he was smoking.

A little out of point, but we spotted this horse grazing the grass freely when we were about to leave Angkor Wat for the next destination.

That is all I’ve got for Angkor Wat. You can view more pictures at my photobucket album here.

Group Photo!  

We had to travel for almost an hour by tuk-tuk to reach Banteay Srei. The moment I saw the entrance of the temple, I was immediately awed by the beauty of its structure and colour. The time spent travelling was definitely worth it.

Banteay Srei is one of the most unusual temples of Angkor. It lies 20 km due north of the main group. Banteay Srei stands out from the other temples in Angkor because it is built largely of red sandstone, which is covered with elaborate and deeply carved decoration.

Consecrated in 967, Banteay Srei was the only major temple at Angkor not built for the king; instead it was constructed by one of king Rajendravarman’s counsellors, Yajnyavahara. The temple was primarily dedicated to Shiva. The temple was subject to further expansion and rebuilding work in the eleventh century. At some point it came under the control of the king and had its original dedication changed; an inscription of the early twelfth century records the temple being given to the priest Divarakapandita and being rededicated to Shiva. It remained in use at least until the fourteenth century.

Banteay Srei’s style is a mix of the archaic and the innovative. It is built largely of red sandstone, with brick and laterite used only for the enclosure walls and some structural elements. Although Banteay Srei’s coloration is unique, sandstone of other shades was later to become the norm. 

Decoration covering almost every available surface is deeply sculpted and figures rounded.

A portrait of a friendly old lady at Banteay Srei.

Well, there are more pictures here if you want to take a look!

After 2 days in Phnom Penh, we set off on a bus journey to Siem Reap. Siem Reap is a small charming gateway town to the world famous heritage, the Angkor temples.

The Bayon is a temple at Angkor. It was built in the 13th century as the state temple of king Jayavarman VII, and stands at the centre of his capital, Angkor Thom. Its most distinctive feature is the multitude of smiling faces on the tower that rise up to its central peak.

The Bayon was the last state temple to be built in Angkor, and the only one to be built primarily as a Mahayana Buddhist temple.

It was the centrepiece of Jayavarman VII’s building program, and the similarity of the faces on the temple’s towers to other statues of the king have led many scholars to the conclusion that the faces are, at least in part, representations of Jayavarman VII.

The walls of the temple are crafted with galleries that depict a series of historical and everyday scenes. It is quite impressive how the people in earlier days could actually possess such great skills and perseverance to sculpt the endless walls in the temple into such beautiful galleries.

Below are more pictures from Bayon. You can view the whole gallery here.  

A shot at the inside of the tall tower. Observe how the stones are stacked all the way to the top! 

That’s all for today, folks!  

S-21 (stands for Security Office 21) was originally a high school since 1962. In May 1976, when the Khmer Rouge was in power, it was converted into Angkar’s premier security institution, specifically designed for the interrogation and extermination of anti-Angkar elements (Angkar means commander). There were many similar prisons located at other parts of of Phnom Penh at that time.

All the classrooms of this former high school were converted into prison cells. Windows were enclosed by iron bars and covered with tangled barbed wire to prevent possible escape by prisoners.

The classrooms on the ground floor were divided into small cells, 0.8 x 2 meters each, designed for single prisoners. 

From the picture above, you can see the bed frame and some iron bars on it. The iron bars were used to shackle one or both legs of each prisoner. By doing so, the Khmer Rouge could ensure that their prisoners were unable to make any escape.

The rooms on the top floors of all four buildings (as seen above), each measuring 8 x 6 meters, were used as mass prison cells. On the middle floors of these buildings, cells were built to hold female prisoners.

There were a lot of workers in the S-21 complex, totalling a number of 1,720. These workers are categorised into four main units: Internal workforce, Office personnel, Interrogation unites and General workers. Most of the "general workers" were under confinement.

Within each unit, there were several sub-units composed of male and female children ranging from 10 to 15 years of age. These young children were trained and selected by the KR regime to work as guards. Most of them started out as normal before growing increasingly evil. They were exceptionally cruel and disrespectful toward the presoners and their elders.

The above picture shows iron bars of different lengths used to mass-shackle the prisoners. The short iron bar was about 0.8 meters up to 1 meter long, and was designed for 4 prisoners. The longer one was 6 meters, and held 20 to 30 prisoners. Prisoners were fixed to the iron bar on alternating sides, so they had to sleep with their heads in opposite directions.

Every morning at 4:30am, all prisoners were told to remove their shorts, down to the ankles, for inspection by prison staff. Then they were told to do some physical exercise just by moving their hands and legs up and down for half an hour, even though their legs remained restrained by iron bars.

The prisoners had to defecate into small iron buckets and urinate into small plastic buckets kept in their cells. They were required to ask for permission from the prison guards in advance of relieving themselves; otherwise they would be beaten or receive 20 to 60 strokes with a whip as punishment. In each cell, the regulations were posted on small pieces of black board. The regulations read as follows:

1. You must answer accordingly to my questions. Do not turn them away.

2. Do not try to hide the facts by making pretexts of this and that. You are strictly prohibited to contest me.

3. Do not be a fool for you are a chap who dares to thwart the revolution.

4. You must immediately answer my questions without wasting time to reflect.

5. Do not tell me either about your immoralities or the revolution.

6. While getting lashes or electrification you must not cry at all.

7. Do nothing. Sit still and wait for my orders. If there is no order, keep quiet. When I ask you to do something, you must do it right away without protesting.

8. Do not make pretexts about Kampuchea Krom in order to hide your jaw of traitor.

9. If you do not follow all the above rules, you shall get many lashes of electric wire.

10. If you disobey any point of my regulations you shall get either ten lashes or five shocks of electric discharge. 

Because of such regulations, the inmates were frequently severely beaten. Bathing was irregular, allowed only once every two or three days, and sometimes once a fortnight. Unhygienic living conditions caused the prisoners to become infected with diseases like skin rashes and various other diseases. There was no medicine for treatment.

In the wake of its renovation following the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime, Tuol Sleng, the historical museum of genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime, opened in 1980 and welcomes the public to come and visit. About 50 people visit the museum on an average day.  Once they come to the Kingdom of Cambodia, tourists seldom miss visiting this horrifying educational site.

Above picture shows the mug shots of the little children being held prisoners at S-21. 

The above pictures are just few of the many mug shots of the genocide victims taken during the Khmer Rouge regime. Other pictures on display (like the one below) show evidence of the brutality the Khmer Rouge used to torture and exterminate their prisoners.

Yet another collection of skulls of the victims in S-21. 

Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum hopes to preserve "S-21" as a reminder not only of Cambodia’s recent history but of the inhumanity that sometimes overwhelms ordinary human beings.  

On our second day in Phnom Penh, we visited the Killing Fields of Cheung Ek by tuk-tuk. This part of the tour was quite a solemn one. As our hired guide unfolded the cruel deeds that the Khmer Rouge once commited here, I couldn’t help but felt for the poor victims that died here.

Killing Fields of Cheung Ek is situated 15 kilometres south-west of Phnom Penh, and it was a place where more than 17,000 civilians, adults and little children, were killed and buried in mass grave; many of them transported here after detention and torture in Toul Sleng (S-21 prison camp).

The above picture shows a Buddhist stupa. This stupa has acrylic glass sides and is filled with more than 5,000 human skulls (from the victims that were killed here). It was opened to tourists, so I had a chance to step in to see the skulls that are being displayed at various levels.

We could see some skulls being shattered or having cracks or holes. From observing the skulls, researchers were able to tell how the Khmer Rouge tortured the civilians to death. Blunt objects were used to hack repeatedly on the heads, holes were drilled into the skulls, or simply bullets were shot into the heads until the victims died. These were few of the many brutal methods in which the Khmer Rouge applied to silence the innocence.

As we left the stupa and moved on to other areas of the Killing Fields, we came across these bones and tattered clothes (above) on the ground. They were being dug out from the ground that Khmer Rouge used to exhume the bodies after the assinations. When we were walking on the soil, we could easily see traces of white coloured bones half-revealed on the surface of the ground.

The curvatures on the ground that you see in the above picture might be pleasant looking, but they are not. Buried skulls and bones were dug up from the ground, leaving these pits as they are. During the days of Pol Pot regime, bodies were just thrown into these mass graves. Till today, no one is able to give an accurate figure of how many people were being killed and buried here, although it was estimated that around 2 million Cambodians around the country died by starvation, torture or execution during their rule.

This shed was a mass grave of more than 100 children and women victims, whom majority were naked at the time of death. 

This shed which looks similar to the one above was a mass grave of 166 victims without heads. Presumably, their heads were chopped off and might have been thrown into the river beside this killing field.

Quoted from a signboard near the entrance of the Killing Fields:

The Most Tragic

Even in this 20th century, on Kampuchean soil the clique of Pol Pot criminals had committed a heinous genocidal act. They massacred the population with atrocity in a large scale. It was more cruel than the genocidal act committed by the Hitler Fascists, which the world has never met.

With the commemorative stupa in front of us, we imagine that we are hearing the grievous voice of the victims who were beaten by Pol Pot men with canes, bamboo stumps or heads of hoes. Who were stabbed with knives or swords we seem to be looking at the horrifying scenes and the panic. Stricken faces of the people who were dying of starvation, forced labour or torture without mercy upon the skinny body, they died without giving the last words to their kith and kin. How hurtful those victims were when they got beaten with canes, heads of hoes and stabbed with knives or swords before their last breath went out. How bitter they were when seeing their beloved children, wives, husbands, brothers or sisters were seized and tightly bound before being taken to the mass grave!

While they were waiting for their turn to come and share the same tragic lot.

The method of massacre which the clique of Pol Pot criminals was carried upon the innocent people of Kampuchea cannot be described fully and clearly in words because the invention of this killing method was strangely creul so it is difficult for us to determine who they are for: They have the human form but their hearts are demon’s hearts, they have got the Khmer face but their activities are purely reactionary. They wanted to transform Campuchean people into a group of persons without reason or a group who knew and understood nothing, who always bent their heads to carry out Ankar’s orders blindly. They had educated and transformed young people and the adolescent whose hearts are pure, gentle and modest into odious executioners who dared to kill the innocent and even their own parents, relatives or friends.

They had burnt the market place, abolished monetary system, eliminated books of rules and principles of national culture, destroyed schools, hospitals, pagodas and beautiful monuments such as Angkor Wat temple which is the source of pure national pride and bears the genius, knowledge and intelligence of our nation.

They were trying hard to get rid of Khmer character and transform the soil and wateres of Kampuchea into a sea of blood and tears which was deprived of cultural infra-structure, civilisation and national character, became a desert of great destruction that overturned the Kampuchean society and drove it back on the stone age. 

My heart goes out to the innocent victims who had suffered and died during the cruel years of Pol Pot regime. 

"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."

The above quote was from one of Suu Kyi’s famous speeches during a demonstration fighting for democracy in her motherland, Burma (more widely known as Myanmar now). There are two reasons why I’m writing about Suu Kyi. Firstly, I admire her strength and courage for tirelessly fighting (without violence) for the freedom of her country. The second reason that prompted me to write about her is that Burma’s military government has extended her house arrest for another year instead of freeing her.

To start, let me give some background of Burma. Burma had gained independence from UK in 1947 with the help of Aung San (Suu Kyi’s father). Unfortunately, not long after, a rogue leader from the military planned an assasination against the key leaders of the ruling party (including Aung San) and overthrew them. Therefore, since 1962, Burma has been under military rule (which was despised by many people in the world because of its terroristic ruling).

For a long time, no one managed to challenge the military government effectively. Then, Suu Kyi (who previously studied and worked overseas) came home to attend to her ailing mother. Seeing the bad state that Burma was in, and feeling the need to continue what her father had failed to accomplish (keeping the country in good shape) because of his assasination, Suu Kyi stepped into her country’s politics, formed the "National League for Democracy" party and ran for elections in 1990. Although she had a landslide victories over her military rivals, the military refused to hand over its power and nullified the results. The unhappiness shown all over the world did not help pressurize the military government into stepping down. Instead, seeing that Suu Kyi was a threat to them, the military had been putting Suu Kyi under house-arrests. 2003 was her most recent house-arrest and it was set to expire 4 days ago. Unfortunately, the military extended it for another year, refusing appeals from the United Nations.

Sometimes, doing things for a good cause doesn’t seem to pay. Like Suu Kyi, she has been fighting for her country’s freedom for half her life (and counting), but all she had gotten were obstacles and negative treatment from her political opponents. While we may not need to try accomplish something as noble as what Suu Kyi is doing, there’s always something good that we could play a part in. All it needs is enough courage, and having the heart to do it. Instead of submitting to obstacles, on the contrary, we should be made stronger by them and continue our cause (without the thought of getting rewards for doing good, of course).

You can read more about Suu Kyi and Burma here and here. 

(I apologise if any of you who read this post found the writings to be incomplete or badly phrased. I rushed it through. =P) 

Yesterday late afternoon, I finally went to the Old Changi Hospital at Netheravon Road with my buddy.

The hospital was built in the 1930s and has a rich history of over 70 years. Initially, this building was not meant to be a hospital, but was used as military command quarters and barracks before the japanese occupation.

During the Japanese assult, Changi was one of the first places to be attacked. (I found some bullet holes on some of the window panes!) Soon after, this building was converted to a military hospital to attend to all the wounded soldiers and civilians. After the war ended, it was converted to a public hospital. 

In 1997, OCH was closed and its hospital operations were replaced by the newly built Changi General Hospital. It was left vacant there since then.

Below are some photos that I’ve taken during my trip there. Some parts of OCH were a little eerie, but no unusual sightings were observed (in case you were wondering).

#1: OCH from far

#2: Dilapidated Rooms

#3: Haunting Corridors (Green light produced from sunlight through tinted glass, not spirits)

#4: Broken

#5: Through the Windows

#6: Finally, beautiful sunset from OCH rooftop!

Hope you people enjoyed the photos! You can view the entire series HERE.