The temples of Angkor

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The Angkor temples is the name given to a large group (more than one hundred) temples located around Siem Reap with the main group, including Angkor Wat itself, being just a few miles north of Siem Reap. Angkor Wat is particularly famous, primarily for being the largest temple in the world, but many of the others are also iconic in their own way.

I had allowed myself a full three days in Siem Reap so that I could spend two days looking at the temples with a third day if required. In the event two days was plenty at one go and if I was going to look at some others I would like a gap between them!

Sunday 7th August

I decided to view the furthest away ones that I was interested in first so on my first morning I hired a tuk tuk with driver for the day. A single access permit is required that covers just about all temples within a 50-mile radius of Siem Reap, so our first stop was the ticket counter. You can buy a one-day (20 dollars), three-day (40 dollars) or week pass so I opted for the three-day pass. Your photograph is taken and printed on the pass so that you can't simply lend it to someone else. There are checkpoints at the entrance to each site where you have to show the pass to be allowed in.

I wanted to visit the furthest away point first and then work my way back so we headed for Kbal Spean which was about 40km away and took about an hour and a half to reach. Kbal Spean doesn't actually have a temple but it is well known for some rock carvings done directly into the rocks of a river bed, and is covered by the Angkor pass. Arriving at the Kbal Spean car park, my tuk tuk driver header for the food stalls while I set off on the 2km walk up to the start of the carvings. It was a hot morning but luckily most of the walk was on a clearly defined footpath through the jungle so there was plenty of shade. When I arrived at the river I could immediately see many 3D carvings, some just out out of the water and some below the water level - they had clearly been done during a dry season! I then followed the river downstream seeing various other carvings until I came to a waterfall. The path then returned and re-joined the original path back to the car park.

We left Kbal Spean and headed back in the direction of Siem Reap to the temple of Banteay Srei which we had passed on the way out. This temple is not in a very good state of repair compared to many others, but is famous mainly for the quality of its carvings which are considered the best in the whole of the Angkor temple area. Most temples have an incredible amount of stone carvings but the ones at Banteay Srei are particularly skillfully done. As I finished the temple tour there was a group of landmine victims playing traditional Khmer musical instruments. I bought a copy of their CD only to discover the next day that quite a few of the more well-known temples had similar music groups, however they do appear to be genuine. As it happened, my next planned stop was the Cambodian Landmine Museum which was just a few more miles further on. This placed was the home of a famous Cambodian DIY mine clearer who, as well as still continuing his mine clearance work, runs the museum and an attached orphanage for children orphaned or injured by mines. Cambodia is still littered with thousands of landmines from the American-Vietnamese war and also from civil wars within Cambodia, and people are still regularly being killed or injured by them.

Whilst I was in the landmine museum the rain had started and it was by now a heavy downpour. In Takeo the rain had been less regular and we had often had a run of days with no rain, but here in the Siem Reap area it seems to rain heavily pretty regularly every afternoon. However I had still planned to visit three more temples on the way back so we headed to the next one, Banteay Samre. It was after 4pm by the time we got there and this temple is one of the less popular ones, so that together with the rain, meant that it was almost deserted when we got there. It was quite different to Banteay Srei in that most of the main walls were still standing so although there was not that much in the way of spectacular carvings, it was a much more enjoyable visit, quite peaceful.

Next we went to a small temple called the Eastern Mebon, again not a very popular one and the site of much continuing restoration work. The final temple for today, which I had deliberately timed for about 6pm, was called Pre Rup. The design of this temple was very similar to the Eastern Mebon but much larger. it is one of a number of popular sites for viewing the sunset which happens at about 6:30pm, because it is surrounded by jungle and the view to the west, in the direction of the setting sun, is quite dramatic over. There were quite a few other hardy souls braving the rain but I decided that by the look of the sky there was not going to be any magnificent sunset to seen this evening so we just set off back to my guest house in Siem Reap.

Monday 8th August

Today was the day for seeing the main group of temples which are only about 10-15km from the centre of Siem Reap so I decided to cycle there as I thought that cycling would make it easier to stop where and when I wanted more easily. My guest house had a variety of bikes to hire so ar about 9:15am I set off north. The roads around here are very flat so even though the bike had only one gear it was very easy going and in about half an hour I had reached Angkor Wat. Nothing you read ahead of time, or however many photos you've seen, properly prepares you for seeing for the first time in the flesh. It's enormous - just getting to the centre of it takes 20-30 minutes and as you walk along the access causeway and look down at the massive stone slabs you are walking on, you are reminded that every single piece of stone you see was transported 50 kilometres just to get it here. The outer walls form a rectangle 1.5 by 1.3km and this is surrounded by a 190 metre wide moat. There are then 3 more sets of rectangles each inside and on top of the previous one. Around the outer of these 3 inner walls there is carved into the stone a bas relief that combines some Buddhist mythology scenes and some historical battle scenes. These bas relief are about 3 metres high and stretch an incredible 800 metres around the temple - it took me about an hour just to walk round the whole thing, stopping to look at some of the carvings in detail from time to time. Eventually I moved on to the next level, eventually climbing to the top platform of the inner temple which is as high as you can get.

After this marathon sight-seeing exercise in the hot sun I needed some refreshment before the next one so I stopped at a food stall and bought a coconut and a straw - these are a cool refreshing drink which are much more preferable than a can of something fizzy. The food stall was opposite the next temple - Phnom Bakheng. Phnom in Khmer means hill and this temple was on the top of a hill so as well as having to climb the incredibly steep steps that most temples seem to have (apparently it's to make you work harder the closer you get to heaven), this one also involved a stiff climb up a dirt track as well. At the bottom of the hill there is an elephant-mounting platform but there were no elephants around at the time I was there. This temple is one of the top sunset-viewing spots but it was about midday when I was there so I guess they bring the elephants out when hordes of tourists appear in the evening. As it was, it was pretty deserted so I reckon that was a pretty good time to visit.

After Phnom Bakheng I came to Angkor Thom. Angor Thom was actually the Khmer capital city for a while and contains a few different temples. It is enclosed by a complete square 12km long city wall and has major gates facing in all four compass point directions. the main temple in Angkor Thom is exactly in the centre (these ancient Khmers had a real thing about geometry etc) and is called Bayon. Bayon is another iconic building, not for its size this time - it is nowhere near as big as Angkor Wat - but for the giant face carvings. Most Angkor temples have a number of square towers - 5 is common (one central surrounded by four others) but Bayon has 54 of them, and every one of these towers has 4 of these enormous carved stone faces smiling out, again one in each direction. Each face is approximately 3 metres in height. Like Angkor Wat, Bayon also has hundreds of metres of carved bas reliefs showing many scenes similar to those of Angkor Wat.

My final temple for the day was to be the other iconic one - Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm really is in the centre of a dense patch of jungle and this is its main claim to fame. Because it was 'lost' for so long, the jungle simply carried on growing after it was abandoned - this means growing around it but also in it and through it, so the temple has many enormous trees appearing to grow out of the middle of walls, out of roofs, and big thick roots that look like enormous snakes trying to strangle the rocks. Because it is also surrounded so closely by dense jungle it is also much darker than the other temples and the trees have caused so many of the buildings and walls to collapse that there are enormous blocks of stone piled up on each other, making it look as though it has just been bombed. It is not surprising that this temple has been used as the background for a number of major films, most notably Tomb Raider.

I had only just arrived at Ta Prohm when the heavens opened again and there was another torrential downpour which also made it even darker and gloomier than normal. It also meant that as I cycled back to Siem Reap, I got absolutely soaked! I had intended to go to Pre Rup again in the hope of seeing a nice sunset, but it was obvious that that was not going to happen this evening either. The journey back was made worse because the chain on my bike now decided to keep slipping off every couple of kilometres.

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Photos

Kbal Spean
Rock carvings in the stream bed

Banteay Srei
Carvings above one of the door lintels

Eastern Mebon
One of the 4 guardian elephants

Pre Rup
The main steps to the temple level

Banteay Samre
The central temple building

Angkor Wat
View from the main pathway

Angkor Wat
Detail of one of the main sets of carvings

Phnom Bakheng
Viewing the sunrise from this platform is very popular

Angkor Thom
Figures lining the way to the south entrance to the city

Angkor Thom
The terrace of the elephants

Bayon
Detail of one of the main sets of carvings

Bayon
Some the famous giant faces

Ta Prohm
One of the well-known tree roots encircling the buildings

Ta Prohm
Some of the rubble caused by giant trees demolishing buildings