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Published: January 30th 2007
Sunset at Phnom Bakheng
That man's head is on fire!Yeah, it's time to don the lycra, climb into the Land Rover and follow in the footsteps of Lara Croft. Angkor here we come! Well almost. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was indeed filmed at various Angkor sites. However Lycra never did me the favours it did Angelina Jolie. Here a Toyota Land Cruiser is the vehicle of choice for high rollers; I contented myself with a Tuc Tuc.
The Angkor period is generally designated as the 630 year stretch from 802 to 1431. Starting with Jayavarman II, there was a succession of perhaps 30
devarajas (devine kings). The Khymer kings adopted the Hindu trinity of Shiva, Braha, and Vishnu and became the focus of cult worship. Most new kings carried out new building programmes; sometimes the moving the capital and/or court wholesale. The extent of each new building program depended upon the wealth of the Khmer kingdom and vanity the new king.
The two greatest builders were Suryavarman II and Jayavaraman VII. Suryavarman II was responsible for Angkor Wat amongst other buildings. Under Suryavarman II the Khmer Empire expanded into present day Malaysia, Thailand, Burma and Vietnam. Suryavarman II had a disasterous military campaign in northern Vietnam where his
troops were decimated by fever on jungle marches. Jayavaraman VII was responsible for Angkor Thom (the Bayon, walls and gates, Royal Palace), Ta Prohm, Preah Khan, and other sites. Jayavaraman VII was also seen as being responsible for pretty much exhausting the Empire, its people and its resources, and signalling the decline of the Khmer Empire.
There is exactly one eye-witness account: Customs of Cambodia by Zhou Daguan. Zhou visited Angkor on a Chinese diplomatic mission in 1296. Zhou described a glittering city of palaces and pagodas, palanquins and elephants, concubines, celestial dancers, and slaves. He details how the kings family occupied all the important posts, but if a commoner were chosen for office, the king offered his daughter as a royal concubine, so he would become family anyway. While Zhou was not admitted to the Royal Palace, by his estimation the king lived with five wives, and about 3000 concubines. Zhou observed the obvious attractions to visiting Chinese sailors:
Chinses sailors coming to the country note with pleasure that it is not necessary to wear clothes, and, since rice is easy had, women easily persuaded, houses easily run, furniture easily come by, and trade easily carried on, a great many sailors desert to take up permanent residence
Before pressing on with this account, I would suggest that the reader looks up "Map Angkor" on Google. There are so many different names of sites; it helps to be able to lay them out on
a plan. Before
I press on I would like to thank Moon Handbooks and Michael Buckley in particular for his excellent guide to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. His background information for many places, especially Angkor, have been excellent. This particular blog and my enjoyment of Angkor owe a great deal to his guide.
Doing Angkor will take you at least two days, though since a three day ticket is the same price as a two day ticket you may as well buy a three day and take your time. You get your first sunset for free; that is to say, if you buy your admission ticket after 4-40pm, you can go straight in, but the first day on your ticket is actually the following day. I took Phnom Bakheng for my free sunset.
Day Zero: Phnom Bakeng. Phnom Bakeng is a temple-mountain, a 13 metre pyramid on top of a 60 metre hill - or mountain as they call them in Cambodia. A popular spot for sunsets there had to be hundreds, perhaps more than a thousand people there! With an atmosphere more like a pop concert the crowd certainly provides some unusual foreground for the sunset shots!
Strategically important, some bullet holes and an embedded bullet casing betray the fact that it was once a troop encampment.
Day One: Departure. My new found companions are useless. We had arranged to share a Tuc-Tuc at 8-30AM. They stayed on later at
Angkor Wat?, the night club on Pub Street, than I did. I was washed, breakfasted and ready. They were not. We had all bought tickets to what is probably one of the five greatest wonders of the world. They were sleeping off hangovers. Useless. I dumped my new found companions and took a Tuc-Tuc for myself. "Taxi for one" syndrome strikes again!
Day One: Angkor Wat. Angkor Wat is the best preserved of all the Angkor sites and its magnificent towers are rivalled only by the faces on the Bayon as an icon for Angkor. The greatest treasure at Angkor Wat though is the incredible bas-reliefs. Around the first terrace there are 600 metres of two metre high bas-reliefs. There are eight panels in all - each one is 75 metres long! The second panel depicts Angkor Wat's Suryavarman II readying his troops for battle. Sword in hand he is shaded by his 15 ceremonial
umbrellas. The most famous panel is the fourth panel, the magnificent creation myth: Churning of the Sea of Milk. Churning of the Sea of Milk is a celestial tug of war. On the left there are 91 demons, anchored by the 21-headed demon king Ravana; on the right there are 88 almond eyed
devas gods, anchored by monkey god Hanuman. The rope is a giant serpent Vasuki. Vasuki is wrapped around the tower mountain Mount Mandara. The tug of war is so great it agitates the mountain, threatening to sink it in the Sea of Milk. Luckily a giant tortoise, an incarnation of Vishnu, steps in to prop up Mount Mandara. The agitation of Mount Mandara churns the Sea of Milk to a cosmic froth which creates a devine ambrosia,
amrita, the essence of life and immortality.
Note to Reader: the Churning of the Sea of Milk theme is a recurrent throughout the Angkor sites. For example the bridge at the South Gate at Angkor Thom has devas tugging the serpent Vasuki on the west side and demons tugging the serpent Vasuki on the east side.
Day One: Angkor Thom. The above mentioned South Gate of Angkor Thom
is magnificent and specifically designed to admit elephant and rider. Angkor Thom is home to the magnificent Bayon. The faces of Bayon provide a rival icon to the towers of Angkor Wat. (Next time you watch Appocalypse Now look out for the Bayon faces in Colonel Kurtz' jungle fortress.) To get the best of Bayon it is probably best to go early morning in the wet season. Few tourists and a misty mysterious atmosphere. Dry seaon, midday, I played hide and seek with South Korean tourists. A great set of bas-reliefs again. I especially enjoyed the victorious battle of the Khymer over the Cham. Ruthless, the Khmer feed the Cham to the crocodiles on Lake Tonle! That was me for Day One.
Day Two: Dawn at Angkor Wat. Can't get enough of this place. It has a big pond in front, thoughtfully added by Suryavarman II to improve sunrise shots of his temple. Leave hotel 0500, arrive at pond 0545, still pitch black. Just in time to claim one of last dozen or so pond-side spots. Deploy mini tripod and soon start taking 60 second exposures around 0610. Sure enough the extended exposure combined with the activities of the
Churning of the Sea of Milk
East Gallery, Panel 4, Angkor Wat pond life give the surface a mysteriously shimmery finish. 0630: sunrise; the money shot; time for breakfast.
Day Two: Bayon. Feel I didn't do it justice Day One, so go back to get some better pictures. Lunch at Restaurant 19. Chat to owner. Says I should by some presents for my girlfriend. Point out to her I don't have one. She offers to fill in the post... North of Bayon I do the Elephant Terrace and the Leper King Terrace. At the sombre Ta Keo I acquire an unwanrted and unlooked for 16 year old guide. Then its the funky Ta Prohm, where the archeologists have left the giant trees to consume the ruins.
Day Three: Dawn at Sras Srang. Can't get enough of this dawn stuff. This time tourists ghost around the extended exposure shots. Sras Srang for dawn does not have the big ticket pull of Angkor Wat at dawn, so there are only a dozen or so tourists. Even before dawn there are as many child vendors as tourists. Pre-dawn through to sunrise takes best part of an hour. That makes for quite a bit of fending off of vendors. I ended up with about
six T-shirts. My favourist vendor is pictured - who could resist that smile?
Day Three: Pre Rup, East Mebon, Banteasy Samre. From all reports Banteasy Samre's colouration has deteriorated since it has been fully cleared. A small site and another game of hide and seek with South Korean tourists. Amazing bas-reliefs - look closely at the picture "Monkey army in action". The stone is carved in a fashion more akin to wood turning with delicate leaves that curl out of the stone.
Day Three: River of a Thousand Lingas, Ta Som, Neak Pean, Preah Khan. The River was a nice walk, nice waterfall shower, but most of the "thousand" lingas carved from the stone river bed were about 3cm tall. A shiva linga is a phallic symbol of worship and 3cm doesn't measure up. Ta Som is a small site, but charming. Preah Khan had the real Tomb Raider feel about it, so much to explore and I saw barely five people on site. There was also a magnificent linga - see the picture.
Day Three: Sunset from South Gate, Angkor Thom. Yes, my Tuc-Tuc driver was really earning his corn on Day Three: Dawn 'til Dusk!
As a sunset site, this was my idea and we got there just in time. The reflected regular trees along the moat edge gives the picture a Mandlebrot Set feel, I like to think.
If you have got this far through the blog, I admire your stamina. Thank-you to the staff of the Home Sweet Home, you were great. Thanks to Bayon II for staging shadow puppet theatre each night at 7-30pm. This is starting to sound like an oscar speech... time to stop.
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Ozzie Doug
non-member comment
Good Work Mr Griff
Glad to see your self portrait of yourself made it in as well, try smiling though next time. Happy to be the first comment and all the best with rest of your travels. Cheers, Doug from Hue, but not really