What I thought of as Angkor Wat is totally different from what it is . There are a whole load of ancient temples in Siem Reap and Angkor Wat is just one of them and I would say in my opinion not the most impressive. All of the temples have their similarities but also there differences so I won't bore you with all the photos I have taken, there is a common expression that the Asian countries we have been in use, which is Same, same but different and that is how I would class the temples. It took us three days to visit the ones we did, we did not do them all and by the end I was all templed out, David said he could do more!
On the first day we visited three.
The first was Prasat Kravan this is a small temple compared to the rest, it has been open a lot to the elements so there was a lot of erosion and weathering but some of the carvings that were still there were nice.
The second was Banteay Kdei across from it was Sras Srang which is the King's bathing pool the only thing we saw getting washed in it was a cow.
No Kings today!
Banteay Kdei was more ornate with a lot more stone statues and more to explore. A lot of the temples are made up of lots of corridors which are very maze like and easy to get lost in. I was constantly losing David maybe he was doing that deliberately!
There are a lot of carvings in the stone, which are very intricate and detailed, even the bits that aren't obvious places to look, have carvings.
The last temple of the day was Ta Prohm, also known as the jungle temple. This temple has become overgrown with trees and looks like it has come straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. I liked this temple, in fact I liked all of the temples that had trees in them. This temple is getting restored at the moment and there are some arguments that the trees should be removed. In some places although the trees have obviously caused some damage to the temples, they are in other places holding it up.
A doorway with roots growing over it. (I don't know why it has the strange black border around the photo)
Look at the size of the tree compared to David.
Ta Prohm was built from 1186 and was originally known as Rajavihara, which means Monastery of the King, it was a Buddhist temple. As I say a lot of restoration work has been done here and it was nice to see the before and after pictures of what had been done. This is a very popular temple with lots of bus tours in, blooming tourists everywhere!
On the second day we started with Angkor Wat which has a huge moat around it. It does cover a lot of area but a lot of that area is grassland. The photos below show us in front of Angkor Wat
The main entrance, there were a lot of Buddhist monks at this temple so you will often see flashes of orange in the photos. We actually saw what was their equivalent to a bus tour , or school outing there was at least 4 tuktuks in a row, with about ten novice monks in each. Tuktuks are ideally built for 4 passengers so they were all squashed in, smiling away and waving, was quite a sight.
They have built wooden steps over the original stone steps to protect them. A lot of the steps in the temples are very steep , some being nearly knee height which made them very hard work when you did have to use them.
The Cambodians take a lot of pride in Angkor Wat and it is used on their flag.
Angkor Wat was built by Suryavarman II, he was different from earlier kings religiously in that he was devoted to Hinduism in particular the deity Vishnu, to whom he consecrated the temple.
Nowadays there are statues of Buddha in there. Angkor War was built around the same time as Westminster Abbey.
The carvings shown below, known as bas reliefs stretch around the outside of the central temple. They are under cover so are well preserved, some of them still show bits of their original colour. This is very impressive to see mainly due to their length, 800 metres in all but also the detail put into them
is extraordinary.
Next we headed to Angkor Thom, there are four entrances or gates to this area, each one has these amazing statues either side of the road. A lot of the statues are very worn but some restoration work has been done on them. Can you guess which ones have new heads?
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