The temple of Big Heads
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
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148
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Siem Reap,
Cambodia
Monday, March 31, 2008
Bayon is famous because it has 216 faces peering out of its 54 prasats in all directions. It's really cool, and not a little bit creepy. You see, Bayon was built by a rather self-involved king whose likeness forever lingers in the enigmatic smiles of Bayon.
South Gate of Angkor Thom
And all of the gates leading into Angkor Thom. And a bunch of other places as well. The king was Jayavarman VII, and he was responsible for most of the big temples that visitor to Angkor go to see. I took to calling him "our buddy Jayavarman" when explaining to Travis about various sites. We spent quite some time wandering around the outside of this temple examining bas-reliefs, too, but I think most of our time at the temple was spent by Travis taking pictures of faces. And Buddhas. You can tell the Chams by their flower hats. That is a round-about way of saying that the bas-reliefs on Bayon tell stories of Khmer life and history, including servers handing out tankards to blokes roasting pigs on spits. Great stuff. Unfortunately, its state of crumble means that it doesn't look like much at a distance. So when you look at a photo and say, "Why would they take a picture of that weird pile of rocks?" it's because that's Bayon. Next I really wanted to see Bauphuon. As it was being reconstructed immediately before the Khmer Rouge takeover, and as the chosen method of reconstruction involved taking the whole thing apart, and because the Khmer Rouge was insane, and all the plans were destroyed, Bauphuon is said to be the world's biggest puzzle. You can't go in it, and you can't really see the Buddha reclining on the back of it (though it's worth a try), so it's really not that interesting
deities holding a naga
. Maybe in a few years. In the area next to Bauphuon is the royal complex. We did not deign to go inside the royal complex, so I can't tell you anything about it. What we did spend quite a while exploring were the terraces. The first terrace you see is the Elephant Terrace, so why everyone mentions the Terrace of the Leper King first I have no idea. The Elephant Terrace is covered in super awesome elephants. The ones at the corners and stairs stick out with their trunks down - all the others are in bas-relief doing various things. We found one strangling a cow. Right before you hit the Terrace of the Leper King the Elephant Terrace gets really interesting. If you climb up on top of it you'll see that the decorative staircase elephants have lotuses in their trunks. Also, inaccessible from the front, you can climb down into a little pit with great carvings and five-headed horses. And more neat elephants, of course.
It was at this point we ended our first day of explorations. We were caught in the middle of a thunderstorm while exploring the Terrace of the Elephants, and we set out to finish after the storm passed, but by the time we had finished with that it was getting dark and we decided to see if we could catch the sunset over Angkor Wat
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. We didn't. The next morning we started back where we left off, taking advantage of the bright morning light for photos. It was an excellent scamper. The Terrace of the Leper King is so called because the statue of Yama resting on top of it resembles a leper because bits of it were worn away. Also, one Khmer king was rather famously a leper. The terrace was the site for royal funeral pyres, hence Yama (the god of death) and the weird ghoulies in the carvings surrounding the terrace. The really crazy thing about this terrace is that it has two facades. The outer one is there for all to see, but some years ago researchers were surprised to discover a hidden wall covered in bas-reliefs set behind the outer wall. You can walk through the tunnel and look at all the carvings and the nagas stick out their heads at you. A strange and mysterious place is what the Terrace of the Leper King is. And the carvings on the terrace are immense. There are seven tiers, all of which are covered in small figures doing different things. It must have been an enormous amount of work.
Our last stop in Angkor Thom was at Pallilay. I have no idea why Travis was so insistent that we visit this particular temple, but he was, so we did. Pallilay was built during the first Buddhist period, so the lintels and pediments tell Buddha stories rather than Hindu ones
naga
. It was also defaced during the second rise of Brahmanism, so many of the carvings are unintelligible. I was attempting to discover things in our little book, but Travis was much more interested in climbing on the rocks and tree trunks, so I left him to it and had a nice sit. Other than the fact that this temple was an out-of-the-way ruin's ruin, I found it particularly interesting because it is situated in a sort of village smack in the middle of the park. We found the place by following the directions of two bicycling boys. They seemed quite used to directing strangers around and pointed us toward Preah Khan, but we didn't want that, so they pointed us in the direction of what ended up being their hangout. As we were leaving Pallilay a young woman came out of the trees to fill a water pail from the communal pump, then the boys shouted goodbye and asked us if we found what we were looking for. Oh, and when we first entered the area we found a huge colony of monkeys eating coconuts in the trash pile. All in all, it was an unexpectedly intriguing place.
Erin
