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Published: August 13th 2010
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And now it’s time for, arguably, Cambodia’s main event. Drum roll please…
The Angkor temple complex. Angkor was the last capital of the Khamer empire and the 9sq km city is full of temples. Boggling, beautiful, decaying, glorious temples. At the centre of all this is Angkor Wat (Wat is the Khamer word for temple) which is the single biggest religious building in the world.
What a Wat!
Ahh but it is easy enough to read the stats, and you might even manage to memorize how many temples there are (I didn’t), and know how many faces are on the Bayon temple (I don’t). But, today at least, the beauty of Angkor isn’t just in the facts, or the height of the biggest tower. Instead it is the way that all these things weave together. I’m not talking about one or two buildings- it’s a whole city planned and developed over hundreds of years. This is to temple building what Emelda Marcos is to shoe collecting or Easter Island is to square foreheads- this is where it’s at.
And of course it’s all in the jungle, so you shouldn’t be thinking a gentle stroll around a
stately home with manicured lawns and the occasional peacock. This is temples fighting for space with enormous trees, funnel web spiders and monkeys. Awesome.
Ok, so I was a little economical with the truth, I do know a few factoids about Angkor.
- The buildings in the city were built between 800-1430 (ish).
- It really came into its own during the reign of Jayavarman the VII who assumed the throne in 1181 and later declared himself a god king.
- The temples are a mixture of Buddhist and Hindu.
- While London and Paris wallowed in their own squalor, Angkor had a population of over 1 million people.
In spite of the fever which compelled the royal families to build the temples and develop the city, Angkor was eventually abandoned after the Ayytthaya invasions and the capital moved to Phnom Penh.
Although there are accounts in 1600 describing it as similar to ‘Plato’s Atlantis’ it lay largely forgotten about until it was ‘rediscovered’ by a French explorer in the 1860s. You may know the saying that time and tide wait for no man, well whoever said that obviously hasn’t seen the roots of the silk cotton
tree. When Angkor was rediscovered many of the buildings lay in ruin after centuries of decay and the ever increasing vegetation.
Incidentally, we had a guide for the three days of our visit, he was brilliant but my favorite ‘lost in translation’ moment was when he said that the vegetables had taken over the temples. The combination of his mispronunciation (he meant vegetation of course) and my dyslexic brain meant that I did spend about an hour wondering how a bunch of potatoes had done all this damage. I know, I know, England has lost a great mind…
Moving on… We started our tour at the South Gate, the best preserved of the 5 entrances and from there went to the Bayon temple.It was probably our favorite temple so nothing else quite captured our imagination like this one. Don’t get me wrong they were all amazing, and surprisingly different, but this one really took our hearts. It has 52 towers, representing each of the Cambodian provinces at the time, and is covered in enormous carvings of faces (Ok, so it’s more Easter Island than Louboutin). Huge sandstone blocks were placed together and then carved. Now that the ‘vegetables’
have been removed none of the pieces quite align but in my opinion this only adds to its charm- but don’t worry I’m not going to write another poem about it or anything.
I wont list all of the other temples because to you, dear reader, it will simply be temple this and temple that. We liked them very much but I’ll simply stump for saying that:
- Preah Khan a huge temple that we had almost to ourselves, so beautiful in the morning light and covered in green lichen. I think Luke liked it best because we found a Praying Mantis on one of the pillars.
- Angkor Wat, huge, well preserved, an amazing project but a bit flat compared to the diverse and crumbling temples that surrounded it. We got up at 4am to stand by the moat and watch the sun come up over it’s five towers. Ok, that bit was quite cool.
- Ta Prohm, aka the Tomb Raider temple. The authorities have undertaken an enormous project to remove the vegetation (vegetables!) from the other temples and rebuild them. They left this one as they found it so that tourist can see what it was
like. Frankly, it is like something from a science fiction film. Huge tropical trees with fleshy roots probing through the building. Probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. Tragically ruined for us by an enormous tour group mob.
- Banteay Srei, a little out of town but some of the best carving we saw on the trip. And some funky wildlife too!
- Just before we visited the Banteay temple we went to a waterfall a few miles out of town. The Kbal Spean river flows down into Siem Reap from here and there were lots of carvings of ‘lingas’ in the rock under the water. The river is the drinking/agricultural supply for Siem Reap and, at the time the carving was done, people believed that the water flowing over the linga would be purified/blessed.
While we weren’t seeing temples we were living it up in Seam Reap. Although it is pretty far off the beaten track they have so many tourists the town is pretty well like any other SE Asian town. We managed to rustle up a great veggie restaurant, Chamkar restaurant, (obviously in my opinion a veggie restaurant is the indicator that a
town has really made it) and an amazing traditional Cambodian, ‘Touche’, restaurant where we ate things like banana flower salad and drank ‘Khamer mojito’, made with rice wine instead of rum- and highly recommended (Dad I thought of you). Best of all this restaurant was incredibly cheap.
Note to self, do not visit temples/do anything in 35 degree heat on a hangover…
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Dmitriy
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Awesome wildlife
Guys, still loving the blogs. Keep posting them. Awesome wildlife, I hope I can see some exotic creatures too. Now be honest, did the guide tell you what they were? Can't imagine either of you having detailed knowledge of SEA butterflies. Be safe, keep it real. Dmitriy.