Photography in Angkor Archaeological Park

Riding a bicycle through one of the UNESCO world heritage sites should definitely be on your bucket list.

If you are like me, you will want to document the entire trip. There are right ways to do this, as well as wrong ways, so I decided to make a quick list of the necessary things for when biking through Angkor Archaeological Park.

Here are a couple of tips for when you eventually manage to get to Cambodia, hire a bicycle, grab your GoPro along with some gear, and make the amazing round trip through Angkor Archaeological Park:

1. Bring your Chesty – Remember to bring your GoPro Chest mount, as it will enable you to get some interesting FPV (first person view) shots of the unique temples and the lush green forests which surround them. Also, remember to bring along the GoPro itself.

2. Remember extra batteries – You will most probably spend the whole day riding through the park and wandering through the temples, so make sure you bring along a few extra GoPro batteries and a fully charged camera.

3. Bring your handle bar mount – Obviously, as you will be riding a bicycle, the GoPro Handle bar mount will come in handy.

4. Pack a few water bottles – Your body needs to refill its water supply quite often, and the intense heat and humidity of central Cambodia combined with the exercise from the bicycle ride will leave you very thirsty for some of that sweet H2O.

5. Fruit it up – Yes you will get tired quickly, so do yourself a favour and stop at a food stall and order some delicious tropical fruit. Contrary to popular belief fruit contains a lot of healthy sugars which will help replenish the energy drained by the sun and the bicycle ride. To boost, it tastes amazing as well.

6. Bring some sunscreen – Even though the majority of the park is covered by a dense green forest canopy, those sneaky sun beams will still find a way to make it to your fragile skin and leave you with some nasty sun burns after the day’s ride.

7. Beware of the monkeys – They might seem friendly at first, but as soon as I got close, they started making their way closer and clambered their way up my bike. One particular monkey, made a grab for my water bottle and my arm, before giving me a suspicious gasp and running off.

(Also don’t feed them, but hopefully I don’t have to tell you that.)

8. Take your time – This is probably the most important tip. Angkor Archaeological Park is quite large, so don’t try and make the trip around the whole park all in one day. Rent your bicycle for another day and take it easy. Stop at the temples and walk through them, don’t just rush past them and try and only visit the ones that look most interesting from the outside. Some of the most quiet and uninteresting temples turned out to be the ones that left the most memorable impressions.

So there it is. That’s just a short list, but I hope it will come in handy for when you are making your way through Angkor Park on the back of a baby blue colored ladies bicycle, like I did.

Before I go, I thought I’d leave you with a short list of the equipment we used on this trip:

GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition.

GoPro chest mount & handle bar mount.

Kata Bumblebee 210 DLight Backpack.

Canon EOS 650D DSLR Camera.

I would also recommend hauling a nice zoom lens along with you if you have the energy, as it will enable you to get some beautiful photos of the untouched regions of the temples.

So that’s it for today! I hope this post helps you on your journey!