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Published: February 23rd 2011
The Causeway over to Angkor Wat
The causeway over the moat and one of the gated entrances into Angkor WatHey Guys, I am back in Singapore and I finally have the time to try and tackle getting across the beauty and majesty of the temples at Siem Reap..... Not sure I am going to succeed, but I'm all you've got so..... :P
On our second full day (15th Feb) in Cambodia, Vig and I decided it was nigh on time that we went exploring some temples. Little did we know how knackering it was going to be. We opted to do the mini tour of the temple complex, which incorporates Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm, so armed with a tuk tuk, a tuk tuk-driver and a tour guide, we were ready to go.
First stop was Angkor Wat, just about the most famous temple in Cambodia (unless you count the temple featured in Tomb Raider as the most famous...). Angkor means city and Wat is the Khmer word for temple, so Angkor Wat mean City Temple and when it was first built for king Suryavarman II, it was the main state temple and the capital city.
It is magnificent. When you arrive you see that the temple is surrounded by a huge man-made moat,
fronted by a carved grey sandstone gate, with the temple itself jutting up from behind, the five towers the highest things in the whole of Siem Reap. The five towers are supposed to represent the five peaks of the Buddhist holy mountain Mount Meru, with the central peak also representing the Universe and thus the moat around the temple, the ocean.
On the walls inside the main temple, there are carvings depicting stories from the Hindu religion, other walls show great battles; both mythical and historical, and there are even carvings depicting the hells and heavens of Hindu mythology. The hells show unfortunates being punished in a certain way depending on the crime they committed; those who damaged other peoples property are shown having their bones crushed and broken.
Probably the most famous wall carving is the one that shows the 'Churning of the Sea of Milk', where the Asura (power-seeking deities that are considered sinful, so somewhat like what Christians call demons) and the Deva (Hindu gods) use the serpent Vasuki to churn the Sea of Milk and create and elixir of immortality.
Our tour guide, Dino, told us that Angkor Wat has been both a Hindu
temple and a Buddist Temple depending on what the King of the time believed. Originally it was Hindu (hence all the Hindu mythology carved on the walls) but as you walk around in the present, you seen modern statues of Buddha with incense burning in front of it helping to bring the temple alive to all of your senses.
The negatives about Angkor Wat are the number of tourists wandering around (like yours truly) making it near impossible to get a picture without an unwanted guest in it, and the fact that the exterior carvings on the temple are very much eroded (being carved into grey sandstone which isn't particularly durable) and thus less impressive than I had been led to believe. However, I feel that Angkor Wat is still a must see, even though it didn't end up being my favourite temple in the complex.
Next stop was Angkor Thom, which means 'Great City'. It was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer empire and it is pretty darn huge. The city is completely walled, and once again surrounded by a man-made moat. There are two gates (the north and the south gate) into
The causeway over to Angkor Thom
The south gate is in the background and behind the snakes head you can see the Devas and and Asuras pulling the snake to churn the 'Sea of Milk'. the city, with causeways over the moat; on the left-side of the causeway are carved Devas and on the right, Asuras, again depicting the 'Churning of the Sea of Milk' story.
We entered through the South gate, as the Devas and Asuras on the South gate causeway are in the best condition (most of the carvings on the North gate causeway are headless) and the first stop after passing through into the walled city, was to the Bayon, the state temple of the time, situated at the very centre of Angkor Thom. While the tuk tuk was driving to Bayon temple, you realise that the temples are just about the only things that have survived from the original city to modern times. At one point the city would have been filled with wooden houses, which housed everyone from the lowliest peasant to the King himself and only temples or buildings with religious significance would have been made from stone. Obviously time has rotted away the wooden structures, making it a little difficult to imagine what the city would have been like in it's heyday with people bustling everywhere, a living and thriving city.
Bayon Temple was built a
Hindu temple and is decorated with many sculpted faces. Historians to this day are unsure of the significance of the faces and of who the faces are supposed to represent. Maybe the King or some guardian deity? Each tower in the temple is decorated with four faces and there are 54 towers in total. 5+4 = 9 and 54 x 4 =216, 2 + 1 + 6 =9. This is very significant as the number nine is very important in Hinduism, there are nine major celestial bodies in Hindu Mythology and Vishnu has had nine avatars.
Next we went to see the Elephant Terrace in Angkor Thom. This is where the King used to entertain his guests. There are twelve small temples facing the Elephant Terrace and this where the entertainers would be performing. Sometimes, the performers would tie a rope between two of the temples and then tight-rope walk across from one temple to the next. Pretty scary stuff as the temples are high and I doubt there was much in the way of safety harnesses or anything back then, if you made a mistake that was it for you.
It was then time to
Me and Vig at the Tomb Raider place
This is where Tomb Raider was filmed at Ta Prohm leave Angkor Thom and head to our last temple of the day, Ta Prohm. This temple is the most spectacular in my opinion as it still seems part of the jungle and you feel as though you are one of the first people to discover it, just about the first person to see it in hundreds of years. Spung trees grow all over the temple, sometimes with roots either side of a wall and sometimes with the tree 'sitting' on top of one of the temple buildings.
The other thing I found fascinating about this temple is the carving of a stegosaurus on one of the walls. How did they know about dinosaurs way back then? And how were they able to know exactly what it looked like??
Thankfully that was it for the temples for the day, Vig and I were shattered! It was such a relief to be able to heard back to the hostel and shower the dust and sweat off of ourselves. I have no idea what the temperature had been but it had been a very, very hot day.
After our showers, it was time to head into town to
Traditional Khmer Dancing
The orphans at ACODO orphanage performing for us. meet up with a University friend of mine called Henry, who had just arrived in Siem Reap. We had told him to meet us outside the ACODO orphanage, where we were planning to go that evening to see the traditional Khmer dances that the children perform. I can't tell you how surreal it was to see a friend from home, standing outside of an orphanage in Cambodia. It just brought it home that I am a million miles away from everything I've ever known.
The dances the children performed we so good, and the costumes were beautiful. Afterwards, we found ourselves mobbed by the children, who all want to come and play with you and practice their English. It was such a worthwhile experience going there and talking with the children, and when you denote money to the orphanage you know it is going to such a good cause and can see how well cared for the children are. I would definitely recommend that people go to the ACODO orphanage while visiting Siem Reap.
Then we headed into town to meet up with Emily (the friend Henry is travelling with) and have dinner. We were all very, very
adventurous and dinner consisted of BBQ snake, cambodian frog and crocodile as well as the safer options of beef, squid and prawns!! We were given a pyramid shaped bit of metal, with a burning hob inside the pyramid to cook our meat on. It was all delicious, though to be honest, the beef was my favourite!
The Wednesday was Vig's last full day in Cambodia as he was having to head back early as some urgent work had cropped up that he had to fly back to Singapore to sort out. We decided to spend the day in town as Vig needed to grab some souvenirs as presents for his family and work colleagues.
After a little bit of shopping in the old market, Vig went for a beer, while I opted to have a fish foot massage. You guys might have seen them in the UK as there are a few popping up (there is a new one in Tunbridge Wells), they involve putting your feet in a tank with some fish and they suck and nibble at your feet. It tickles like hell to begin with but after a while I got used to
it, and just sat there enjoying it, watching the world pass by.
Vig then decided to indulge himself further and go for another massage, but at $40 USD for the cheapest massage I decided that I would go read on a bench by the river and wait for him.
Once Vig had finished with his massage (an hour and a half later), it was evening and we needed to get to the Angkor Night Market to catch a 40minute movie on Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge that we wanted to watch. It was horrifying to learn about what happened from people who were there and experienced it. For years they lived in a relative hell. Starving to death or killed off by disease or the Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot was responsible for the deaths of a quarter of his people. I found the movie especially moving as the book I was reading at that time (the book I had been reading while waiting for Vig by the river) was all about a young girl of five living at that time and how her life changed. The book is called 'first they killed my father' and you learn
Traditional houses of the Khmer People
The houses of the Khmer are on stilts to protect them from flooding in the monsoon and from the animals of the jungle. It also offers them some shade to relax in during the heat of day that over a period of four years, she loses both her parents, and two of her siblings to the Khmer Rouge and disease, and almost starves to death numerous times. The movie showed us pictures of Pol Pot, and it was strange to look into his eyes and realise that he was human, and yet he could do all that.
The movie ended with us being told that Pol Pot was never tried for the monstrosities he inflicted on his people, instead he was charged with the murder of his wife and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. He died alone and unmourned.
Vig left very early on the Thursday at around 5am, meaning that I had the pleasure of a room to myself for the first time in 17 days.
I got up early (though considerably later than Vig) to meet up with Henry and Emily as we were going on the Grand Tour of the temples, going to the Landmine Museum and going to visit a far off temple outside the main temple complex.
The first place we went to was Banteay Srei, the temple outside the main temple complex, around
28km away. It was quite a fun ride by tuk tuk, over bumpy, dusty road, but it meant we got to see how people live in the country and get a true sense of Cambodia, that the touristy Siem Reap cannot possibly ever show.
Banteay Srei is the only major temple at Angkor not built by a monarch, instead it was built by the advisor to one of the great Khmer Kings. The temple is built from beautiful pink sandstone, which is more hard-wearing than grey sandstone, this means that the carvings are still just about in pristine condition and were more spectacular then any carvings I saw on any of the other temples. Banteay Srei means 'Citadel of Women', and it is believed that this modern name of the temple came about due to the many carvings of female deities in the temple. The walls of the temple are covered with the carvings of Hindu stories and Sanskrit.
Then on the way back to the main temple complex we stopped at the Landmine Museum. The museum was created by Akira, a man who was once a child soldier for the Khmer Rouge and responsible for laying many
of the mines in the first place. He deflected from the Khmer Rouge and joined the Vietnamese army in fighting them, and after the war ended he dedicated his life to finding and disarming landmines and helping the victims of landmines.He is seen as a hero in Cambodia, as it is thanks to him that many areas are safe for farmers and their families to farm, and he takes in child victims of landmines and offers them a better life and a good education.
After a quick lunch and a stop at the Happy Place (the Cambodian words for toilet, and boy was that confusing the first couple of times I was asked if I wanted to go to the Happy Place....), it was time to commence the Grand Tour.
The first temple on the Grand Tour was East Mebon, a temple that was built on a man-made island as it used to be surrounded by a huge reservoir (which has now dried up). Hindu worshippers used to have to row on boats to reach the temple. I could imagine how spectacular it looked surrounded by water (and god did we half wish the water was still there
with 35+ degrees of heat baring down on us), with it's huge steps (damn hard to climb) leading up to th main tower. At each corner of the small island, there were beautifully carved elephant statues that have survived the test of time to an amazing extent. One of the elephants still has a bullet in it from when the Khmer Rouge passed through, destruction of all religion and it's symbols on their minds.
Next was Ta Som and this temple like so many of the others was built by King Jayavarman VII; who was responsible for a grand program of construction during his lifetime, to elevate his peoples sufferings both physically and spiritually, with 102 hospitals built along with all the temples. This temple was small in comparison to some of the other temples we had seen but it reminded me of Ta Prohm with a spectacular tree growing over one of the gates to the temple, with the roots framing the archway.
Then it was on to Neak Pean, which means 'surrounded by sacred snake'. It was a small Buddhist temple on a tiny man-made island, seemingly situated in a pond (though there was no water
Neak Pean
The temple in the centre of the main pond. in it at the time). The temple itself looked like a decorative pond feature, as though it could have easily been a fountain. The water around Neak Pean is supposed to represent a mythical lake in the Himalayas that was believed to have healing properties. Historians think that Neak Pean was originally built as a hospital and later converted into a temple. It too was believed to have the ability to heal through restoring balance to the body of the sick person. The main pond is surrounded by four other pools with a small chapel like structure on each. The pools represent fire, wind, water and earth and depending on what element you are supposedly lacking in, thus the reason you are ill, dictates which pool you should bathe in. You can tell which pool is which as when there is no water in the pools, you can enter the chapel like structures and see what statue is inside. Each has a different sculpted gargoyle in it. We were told by our guide that the lion head represents fire, the horse represents wing, the elephant represents water and the human gargoyle represents earth.
The temple also had a statue of
Gateway to Preah Khan
I decided to play with my camera settings while at this temple.... a flying horse, this was Balaham an ancient symbol of drowning prevention, necessary if you have a lot of ill people bathing in deep pools trying to cure themselves.
Last but by no means least we visited Preah Khan, meaning 'Sacred Sword'. Built again by Jayavarman VII, it was dedicated to his father (where Ta Prohm was dedicated to his mother). This was a pretty big temple (although nothing to Angkor Wat) and my favourite aspect of the whole thing was that as you approached the main part of the temple, the doorways got smaller and smaller, forcing you to 'bow' and show respect. Angkor Wat has steps that do a similar thing (although they are now covered by wooden steps with a handrail after a tourist died from falling down them), they were so shallow, with such a small ledge for the feet that someone climbing had to watch their feet at all times, thus their head was bowed as they climbed to the main tower.
Before parting ways with our guide, I asked him why every time, I met a Cambodian they put their hands together like they were praying and bowed slightly. He told me
that their hands represent the lotus flower and that this was a traditional greeting called the Som Pas, and it is done when you greet someone when you arrive somewhere and again when you are departing from each other. It means that you wish the other person luck and fortune.
We all parted ways (hands in the lotus position), me to my hostel and Henry and Emily to theirs, so we could all shower and wash a days worth of dust and grub from our skin, which had turned our feet orange!
The next day (18th of Feb) was Henry and Emily's last day in Siem Reap so they decided to go and see Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm. Having already seen them a few days before with Vig and being unwilling to face the extreme heat again, I bowed out and said that I would meet up with them later.
A couple of hours later, when they were done, I met up with them in town and ventured back into the old market and bought two pairs of what Vig had dubbed 'Aladdin pants' but were actually known as Cambodian trousers. If you have ever watched Disney's
Aladdin then you know exactly what they look like, though mine are rather brightly coloured..... Then we all just chilled around the pool at Henry and Emily's hostel, reading and napping. We had an early dinner together so that they would be ready to catch their sleeper bus at 7pm.
Saturday was my last day in Siem Reap and I spent it wearing my new purple Aladdin pants and just relaxed around my hostel, reading, writing postcards and catching up with emails and things that I had put off for too long. Then I watched a couple of movies and went to bed early as I had to be at the airport just after 6am the next day.
And so concluded my wonderful trip to Cambodia!!! I definitely hope to make it back there again some time soon, when I have more time so that I can explore it properly. I hope you guys enjoyed this blog and the pictures, please let me know what you think as it is lovely to hear from you all. xxxx
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Shoshana in Asia
Shoshana
Nice blog. Thanks.