Quite simple: Magnificent

---

I must admit I had no idea of the magnitude of the buildings before I had arrived and was wandering around them.

Now I have to admit I was a bit of a cheapskate and didn't actually hire a guide to tell me about the buildings (I have a completely unreasonable dislike of all guides) so I don't know anywhere near as much as I should know. nor did I buy one of the books (they are sold by these gorgeous street children to help their families earn a keep).

So first up I'll give you some background on the buildings (and apologies if I am repeating stuff you already know, but its all pretty fascinating).

The buildings were built by the Angkors between the 8th and 13th centuries. Angkor Wat is actually a major temple complex that sits next to Angkor Tom which is an ancient City. Both of them are walled and have a moat around them - the moats are enormous: the one around Angkor Wat would be at least as wide as the Brisbane river along coronation drive. In fact, if you imagine the river went in a square around West End, that would be about the size of precinct of Angkor Wat. Angkor Tom is much larger. They are two jewels in the crown of what used to be a major city (about 40 square miles) with about 1,000,000 residents at its peak. The stone buildings are all that are left of the city as the rest of the city was built of wood. The Angkors believed that only gods had the right to reside in Stone and hence these incredible buildings where reserved to the gods. In that day the Kings were considered gods in their own right, so I am presuming the king got to live in a stone building.

Actually, an interesting segue, the King of Camobodia (up until 2004) was considered to be a god in the same vein as the Angkor kings. but he abdicated to his son in 2004 (this was unconstitutional but didn't seem to stop him, like the fact that Polpot was a homocidal maniac didn't stop him, as the then monach-in-exile, throwing his support behind the khmer rouge..), which would leave an interesting religious question for the country as to whether the new King is also a god (can there be two gods in one country?). It seems to have confused the cambodians who have pictures of both new and old King on their walls!

Back to Angkor: Angkor Thom has a whole series of incredible buildings scattered throughout and around it (at least 20 or 30) of which I got to see about 10. It took me three days to see 10, which i guess gives you an indication of their size. These include temples, universities, cermonial halls, ornamental pools and loads and loads of temples. Angkor Thom also has these incredible five gates (north, south, east, west and the victory gate in the centre) which have this serene massive stone faces atop the gate with a guard of honour of about 20 stone figures (each standing about 2m tall) on either side of the bridge as you approach the gate (travelling over the moat). The Victory Gate in the centre was apparently the most impressive, but the figures leading to the gate were stolen by the Thai's (who I am presuming are refusing to give them back - the Thai's claim they built Angkor which, according to the Cambodians, is the most ridicuous thing anyone ever said. lets just say the relationship between the two countries is still at boiling point over this issue. In fact, alleged comments by a Thai actress visiting Cambodia in 2003 that they should "just give it back" caused massive riots: Angkor Wat is part of the psyche of the Cambodians and to suggest something like this would be like trying to outlaw beer in Australia).

In fact, Siem Reap (the name of the town next to Angkor Wat) in Khmer means "Thai's Defeated". The Thai's invaded Angkor around the 14th Century and occupied the city for at least a century, then there was a big battle (and here my knowledge gets a little woolly) but I think Cambodia eventually got rid of them, but by that time it had gotten all too hard and they abandoned the city.

The last people to occupy the city were the Khmer Rouge who hid in the city when it was still hidden in the jungle. They caused a lot of problems in doing this, because they destroyed a whole bunch of archeological records made by the french in the early 1900s when they dismantled at least one of the major temples in Angkor Thom (they were going to put it back together again in an attempt to stop it collapsing). Basically what is now left is a whole bunch of hand carved stone lying on the grass (covering the area of about a football field) all of which have little numbers on it. the Khumer Rouge destroyed the information on how to put the building back together again. There is a new bunch of french archeologists working on it now, but they call it the largest jigsaw puzzle in the world.

I just realised how long this email is getting, so I'll start getting to the questions!

Type of stone

This is a really good question and the answer varies really widely. If I had a guide I would be able to tell you a lot more, but what I can say from what I observed is that varies significantly with each building. I think most of the temples are built from sandstone, but the colour of the stone varies quite a lot from buiding to building. For example, Angkor Wat has sandstone with a magestic blueish grey hue, whereas Ta Phrom (another temple which is astonishing for its raging battle with the surrounding jungle. imagine massive 100 year old trees growing up out of walkways and atriums and tumbled massive stone walls collapsed by vines) is made from sandstone that is pink. Its quite a vivid pink colour (even though it has not been cleaned) highlighted even further by the green moss that covers much of the stone.

I have absolutely no idea where the stone came from and I really marvel as to how they managed to transport it there...

Tools

As you enter Angkor wat along the bridge over the moat there is a school which is training Cambodians in the restoration of the temples. They were chistling the stone. yup, just mallot and chistle. When I realised that this was the way they had built the temple (and then scolded myself - how did I think they built it? pre-fab sandstone casts??!) my jaw hit the ground (again). I still can't quite fathom that they built the whole thing that way. particularly when you see the carvings which are just phenomenal.

Well, this has now turned into a mammoth tome, so I'd really better sign off (before they throw me out of the internet cafe or you die of complete boredom!). there really is no way to give you a good mental picture of Angkor: apparently the first westerner to see Angkor was a portuguese monk (in 1586) who said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen". and I have to agree. I can only encourage you to go and see it for yourself!

hope you are very well!

---