As I siad, Angkor What?

Well I've finally found a bit of spare time in my extremely busy schedule of being on holiday to note down some thoughts, feelings and observations about Cambodia and the temples.

They are hell cool! (I got that phrase from a 19 year old)

We spent a flat out day ay Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom on the 31st of May. For those who don't know, Ankgor Wat is a temple complex built in the 12th century by the Khmer civillisation, on a mind boggling scale for something that predates the Sistine Chapel by 400 years. Being a religous and pretty industrious lot the ancient Khmers started with small house size temples, built out of sandstone with a nice moat and carved with lots of pictures about life in the fields and fighting the Chinese. Having got the hang of the small temple they went bannanas, constucting initially Angkor Wat and then the city temple complex of Angkor Thom which in its prime was a city of more than a million people at a time when London was a small town of 50,000. The temples are huge, as are the irrigation ditches that they dug in perfect squares around the various sites.

Ankor Wat and Angkor Thom are about 10 Km's out of Siem Reap, Cambodia's second largest city. We had a tour organised for us so we got on the bus early and set out to see the sights. Through the gate, where you get a ticket with your photo on it (apprently to prevent Koream tour companies from runnung - literally running - 3 tour groups a day through on 1 set of tickets) and firstly to Angkor Thom, through the south gate and to the temple of Bayon. This was a huge temple with 54 towers, one each for the provinces of the Khmer civillisation at the time, many ordained with a large smiling Bhudda faces. Much of the sandstone has been washed away damaging the ornte carvings, however there are still plenty of sanskrit inscriptions and murals to check out.

After walking around the Bayon we went to another temple name Baphuon that predated the Bayon by a couple of hundred years and peeked around that for a bit. It was in mid restoration by the French in the 60's when they were booted out of the country and forced to abandon the job. Whilst they left the partly deconstructed temple in a well ordered state, 30 years of civil war led to much looting of the statues, carvings and even foundation stones leaving a big mess of rubble and turning what was a difficult restoration job into a 50 foot high and 150 foot square giant, ancient jigsaw puzzle for the UNESCO restorers. Good luck team. Since it was a Saturday we couldn't go on this bit so we waled around to the oldest temple in Angkor Thom, Phimeanakas, which is a sort of Mayan Style pyramid. This we were allowed to climb so Shell and I darted up the top, interrupting the obligatory hippie meditating with some incense burning at the top. Now maybe I wasn't in touch with my inner Bhuddist enough but I reckon they look like try hards. To each thier own..

From there we avoided the heat by scamperin past the statue of the Leper King and the Terrace of the Elephants, respectively a statue of a king that is missing the ends of his nose, toes and fingers prompting the locals to suspect he had leperosy, and a wall with lots of carvings of elephants, and into the air conditioned bus.

After a nice lunch, we hit Angkor Wat which is the largest temple built by the Khmers, and let me tell you, it is big. Wheras Angkor Thom was a 3km by 3km city with temples scattered amongst it, Ankor Wat was one large temple, set on a 1.5 x 1.5 km area surrounded by a moat. We walked around it for about 2 hours as the guide explained all the intricate details of it's construction and murals. It was super excellent and if you want to know more, then visit it! Seriously this place is unreal and when dinner costs US$3 for a big plate of whatever and beers are US$1 your are mad not to. Oh and there is also some wonders of the world to wander around..

After Angkor Wat we went to the Indiana Jones Temple of Ta Phrom. Also known as the Tomb Raider temple (parts of the movie were shot here), it is a jungle temple with strangler figs all over it that have become structural. Check out the photos I posted last week to see what I mean.

After that we went out for a nice dinner at the Soup Dragon restaurant and then a few beers at the Angkor What? bar. The next day we went to the floating village on Tonle Sap which was interesting if a bit smelly. Also if you lived on a lake, why would you keep large estuarine crocodiles in a bamboo cage under your house? Seems like asking for trouble to me. The rest of the day was spent wandering around and it was early to bed because the next day we were off to Kampong Cham, where Michelle takes over the story telling....