A Pictorial Tour of Angkor Wat

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Woolly says – I’d been up since dawn and having crept onto the balcony I was dismayed to see that the sky was full of clouds, I tried blowing to see if I could chase them away, but they remained in place, I ambled back inside to tell Jo the bad news, for some reason she didn’t seem pleased to see me and merely grunted at my sad tidings.



Who would be pleased to see him at 5.30am! Having listened to his sighs for as long as I could bear I climbed out of my comfy bed to access the weather conditions.



Woolly says – The clouds hadn’t budged a single inch and as Jo checked the weather forecast I felt a sense of despondency, was this going to be the same troublesome greyness that had followed us to Halong Bay? I peered over her shoulder and didn’t like the look of the rest of the weeks predictions, if anything the weather was going to get worse. I slunk back inside and sat sulking until breakfast time.



Luckily for us and our ears by the time we had eaten the sun was breaking through the cloud base and as our tuk tuk pulled up at the huge ticket office he had started to complain that he was to hot!



Woolly says – Jo arrived back with our tickets which included photographs of us to stop anyone from using our tickets and we sped along the last few kilometres to the largest religious structure in the world. Angkor Wat covers 162.6 hectares (1,626,000 m2; 402 acres and was originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire, gradually transforming into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century. As the capital of the Khmer Empire, Angkor became the state temple and eventual mausoleum for the king. Its famous outline is used on the countries flag and it is the biggest tourist attraction in Cambodia. Bouncing onto the carpark we thanked our driver and headed off across the rather strange bouncy bridge, within a few feet I fell over someone taking a picture, humans were everywhere and as I took in my first real look at the magnificence I couldn’t say I blamed them.



The place was immense and having found a quiet corner to sit in the first area Woolly and I wondered how on earth we could write a blog without using the same sentences repeatedly, our solution is to give our highlights and let you look at the pictures.



Woolly says – There are hundreds of corridors with carved balustrades in the windows, each corridor has freezes running the length of a football pitch and leads you into another area. The architecture is incredible with even the rooves being sculpted, we were amazed at how much of the original decoration was still intact. The inner areas of the Wat house the wonderful former Hindu temples that you can climb if your mad enough and have no fear of heights, watching Jo go up and down was a sight to behold in itself. The views from the temples were panoramic with the green trees giving sharp contrast to the brown and grey buildings, it really was a sight for sore eyes. Steps took us up and down each area with seemed to open onto even more wonders to look at, at every turning we reached another endless corridor to take in. We made our way towards the rear of the complex and found more buildings tucked away in the woods that skirted the moat that surrounds the Wat, each structure had so much to appreciate in its construction and decoration. Four hours of walking and climbing up and down had left us exhausted and making use of the onsite market area to acquire drinks and a seat we sat and stared at the buildings some more. Some places live up to expectations, but Angkor Wat surpassed everyone that I had and a few more.



Enjoy the pictures, I’m going back to take it all in!

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Temples, temples and more temples
Big temples, little temples... Wolley temples.. ah just kidding.

[traveltalesofawoollymammoth]

And more to come!
Haven't found quite the right one for the mammoth yet but there's a few more to see!