Apsaras are alive and well in modern-day Cambodia and can often be seen posing for tourists at Angkor highlights, Angkor Wat and the Bayon. Even celestial nymphs need to earn a crust and charge tourists a dollar a pop to be snapped with them.

It’s all very much part of the circus that Angkor has become in recent years; an ant hill crawling with 3 million visitors a year. Professional photographers even stump up the cash to ensure they get a contrived pose for their portfolio.

More interesting for me was to sit quietly and wait for an unguarded moment when no customers were around.

The reward was capturing golden Apsaras flitting through the ancient grey stones, decorating each others hair with flowers, showing each other poses…

..and, as you would expect of a celestial nymph, wearing slippers.

Visitors to Cambodia soon add a new word to their vocabulary – Apsara. Often appropriated as a name for resorts, travel companies, and restaurants, Apsaras are mythical female celestial dancers that graced the walls of Angkor-era temples as early as the 8^th century AD.

Scholars of Khmer art and archaeology often differentiate between the sensual flying nymphs or Apsaras and enigmatic standing figures known as Devatas which are thought to be guardians of the temple. Exquisite bas-reliefs of the highly stylised figures can be seen in abundance at Angkor Wat where over 1,700 have been recorded, and at other ancient monuments at the UNSECO World Heritage Site.

Today the spirit of the Apsaras has been revived by Cambodia’s bourgeoning tourist industry and they appear in performances of beautifully choreographed Khmer dance drama.

During a recent visit to Angkor I developed a bit of an Apasara obsession and ended up photographing dozens of them, many weathered by time into beautiful and ghostly images.

It’s all very well having a photo blog but actually getting round to posting is another issue altogether. I realise I have been pretty lax of late but a punishing work schedule means it is all writing and photography but no time to post.  So, time to hurriedly get something up before heading off to Chiang Mai for a few days. Or should that be daze. It’s all becoming a bit of a blur.

I recently returned from a whirlwind trip to Cambodia, spending a couple of nights in Phnom Penh before heading down to Kampot on the coast.

On my first day in Phnom Penh the sky was white and lifeless; not what my client wanted so I spent a bit of time playing around with silhouettes at sunset in front of the National Museum, a rather striking building in the heart of the city.

The beautiful red building of the National Museum houses a wonderful collection of over 5,000 ancient Khmer works of art and sculptures.  Due to the increase in visiotrs to the country recent years have seen a blossoming of Khmer arts and crafts and the are many boutiques clustered on Street 240 and a host of art galleries close to the National Museum on Street 178, commonly referred to as Art Street.

Fortunately the sky was a gloriously blue for the rest of my trip and I got some acceptable shots in Kampot and upon returning to Phnom Penh. I’ll try and post a few more soon.