The Temples of Angkor

Well hello!
It has been a few weeks since I've updated the blog. Looking back to Siem Reap...

What a tremendous experience. After a restful New Years day we hired bikes and headed for the temples. It was almost 20 minutes to get there, and around 30km of biking within the park. Needless to say that we were both sore and tired by the end of the day.
Some monkeys in the park!

Day 2 in the temples was really incredible. We say the Bayon, the one with the faces.

Here's a picture:



This is easily the second most recognizable structure at Angkor and was absolutely amazing. There is no question as to the artistry and lofty ambition of its builders. The place is massive and required lots of climbing to get in and around it all. Leighton and I developed a system to see as much of each of the temples and avoid the 1 trillion Korean tourists at the same time. We walked in the main gate and then around the lower level (where most of the best-preserved bas reliefs are anyway) to the far side before ascending the "mountain-temples"- so called because they were built as symbols of the holy mountain of Hinduism (think Mt. Olympus rising above four flanking mountains at each corner). The Bayon was in this style but was built by a Buddhist king (brief history of Angkor: Hindu then Buddhist then conquered, then unconquered and Hindu again at which point most images of Buddha were desecrated) so it is unique because the faces take the place of the normal closed-lotus design of the "mountain peaks."

We saw lots of other amazing temples on Day 2, but too many to mention individually. Just close your eyes and imagine a city of over 1 million people and how big an area that would cover, then imagine temples, some 4 tiers high, rising over the canopy and comanding the attention of the gods... that is Angkor. It is, in the only words I can use, the most incredible thing I've seen. Go there. Now.

Day 3 went similarly... more biking, more burning quads. We saved Angkor Wat for last, and it was worth the wait. We thought some other temples were cooler, but none of them can compare to Angkor Wat. It is the largest religious structure in the world, built around 1100 AD, a contemporary with the Gothic cathedrals of Europe.

The outer wall is about a mile by a mile (1500m x 1400m) and surrounded by a moat that must be at least 100-200m across. The inner complext, which lies at the back of a large "lawn" or "mall," to use a D.C. term, is about 1km square at its base. This lower level has on its wall a bas relief that runs around the length depicting famous Hindu myths of war. The East wall is etched with "the churning of the milk" which is a depiction of the epic effort to create the elixer of life by both demons and gods who pull alternately on either end of a great naga, or many-headed sea serpent, thus churning the ocean.

Picture:This is a model of Angkor Wat at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. This is the inner structure, 1km square.


Finally, our last temple was the one that appeared in the Tomb Raider movie (Angelina Jolie was rumoured to favorite a few different eateries in town while on site and, of course, this is where she picked up her first foreign baby). It is the most jungle-eaten of the temples and is in massive disrepair. This, however, creates the best ever setting for templing. It was peace from chaos. The jungle planted its roots in the rock walls and wrenched them apart like they were pebbles. Nature shows its power here and from that exertion of force comes a sense of peace and harmony. It was mine and Leighton's favorite temple to be in, even though it wasn't the best preserved or most important or most unique.

Pictures:

Next stop was Sihanoukville on the coast. Beach here we come!