Ankgor Wat
Trip Start
May 08, 2008
1
6
25
Trip End
Ongoing
Siem Reap,
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Sunday, May 25, 2008
For day one we hired bicycles and quickly coverd the 8km or so from the hotel, picking up our 3 day pass en route. We'd quite a late start so we decided to confine ourselves to just Angkor Thom, the ancient walled city, built as capital by Jayavarman VII who seems to have been quite the construction junkie. Most of the largest temples around here were his babies, so fair play to him. There was a policy of constantly outdoing your predecessors with the construction projects and he seemed to be determined to be numero uno. Angkor Thom covers about 10km square with thick high walls all round and huge entrance gates on each side. Outside each entance is a long causeway with elaborate sculptures on each side from Hindu mythology The causewasys span a 50m wide moat wich surrounds the entire city.
Within the city we went to the central building , the Bayon, first which is quite amazing, 54 square towers with a carved face on each side. Its supposed to represent a god figure but apparently closely resembles the king himself. I suppose that given the fact that he was seen as an all-powerful god king this makes sense but there you go.
There a load of other buildings and temples in there that I won't bore you with but they're amazing. Its also amazing what an almost unlimited army of slave labour can accomplish! My favourite building there was the Baphuon, a decrepit temple. I actually didn't like the temple very much but the story is great. Back in the 1960s a cerrtain restoration technique (can't remember the name now) was in vogue which involved taking the building apart, recording where everything went, cleaning and restoring the stones and then rebuilding. Unfortunately while restoring and all that the civil war broke out in 1970 or so after which the Khmer Rouge (remember those psychos?) took over. They were complete retards, thugs and illiterate fools who thought that the destruction of all wealth, power and culture was the way forward and to make a long story short the records for the Baphuon were destroyed during their reign. So archaeologists were left with what can only be described as the world's largest jigsaw puzzle. Ouch! I think thy're nearly finished after over 10 years working on it.
That was day one over and given the fact that it was hot, damn hot (mid 30s) we were back in the city by about 4. For day two we arranged a tuk tuk as we wanted to go to a far off temple which had incredible carvings all over it. First we started off with the incredible Angkor Wat for sunrise. This is the real signature temple and there were quite a few people there. I'm not sure why, maybe time of year, but the sun rose to the north east rather than directly behind the east facing temple which was a surprise. Anyway that place is spectacular and is believed to be the biggest religious building in the world. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to climb it as there is preservation work going on. That's fine, most monuments around the world don't allow climbing but as we went there thinking we could it was a little disappointing. Vast in scale Angkor Wat is surrounded by a 198m moat which had steps down to it all around for bathing. Within the compound is a lot more construction and temples. Very interesting.
So to the carvings. Much smaller than the more central temples, Banteay Srei is nonetheless a stunning feat of architecture. Having taken a look around and (in a separate process) decided that the Koreans are the new Japanese we took the long way back towards the centre via several more old temples. Seriously when you've seen 10 you've seen them all. Still we were able to appreciate the beautiful Preah Khan temple built by the same fellow, apparently in honour of his father. We had the generous service of an police officer there as our tour guide. Seems the pay is crap there and he was trying to make a little extra. He knew his stuff but really chanced his arm looking for $6 for 20 minutes talking! We gave him a little less but he was happy enough.
On the third day we hired bikes again and went to Ta Phrom, overgrown temple where the Tomb Raider films were set. Very impressive indeed, and far more so that they lead you to believe because its marketed as the jungle temple where nature still rules. They don't tell you how much of it is in good state and overall its probably my favourite of the lot. After another good day of relaxing we were ready to return to Phnom Penh and make our way to Vietnam. No problems back in the capital, staying more central this time.
