Temples - part 1

So after bacon and eggs for breakfast (yes, yes YES!!!) i set off in my tuk tuk, my driver, Vuth was also who my guide... first we went to Angkor Thom.

We approached through the east gate, lined with stone soldiers all holding up a giant Naga, the five, or seven headed snakes that you see quite a lot decorating buildings and temples and monuments in Cambodia

Naga are thought of as guardians. The bridge once spanned an enormous moat, but there is only a little water now, so cows graze on it, but in some areas these moats are still deep and wide. The east gate is the most complete, and one can still see the Buddhas faces looking down.

First stop, the Bayon. This was the central temple of the royal palace built by Jayavarman VII. Approached along a raised walkway, it's a mindboggling towering maze of temples within temples, with 54 towers in all. This was of Buddhist origin, with steep stairs, and wonderful ornate carvings on every surface.
With every turn within this building you see another treasure for the eyes.. most of which are impossible to photograph effectively and give you, as a reader any real idea of the wonders I was looking at. That and my terrible photography. Will try not to load exhaustive boring photos, but it's very difficult :). Besides you can find far better pictures on the net, not taken by me.

So much of this building has tumbled down, that vast quantities of rocks are piles haphazardly against the against the outer walls because no one knows where they should go if they were to rebuild it. That is not to say that there are not ongoing restoration works in every temple we visited, as well as typically scary looking "suring up" that looks dubious to say the least but, I suppose as these temples have stood for thousands of years, they are not likely to come crashing down today.

Next stop Baphuon..(pronounced Bah-poon) which means "merry mountain". Massively tall and horribly steep, I decided to have a bit of an explore, but it's not the most impressive. Next was Phimineanakas which, if the last one was steep this was utterly ridiculous. Really really scary....

Nevertheless, it had to be done, so I got a grip on myself and my vertigo, and climbed to the top. Here I am, nearly there, feeling really quite pleased with myself.
And this was taken, halfway down, contemplating the rest of the way. As you can see, very very high, and this was only halfway. So...Do you go down backwards safely and look like a twat or very slowly forwards gripping the railings with both hands, white knuckles blinding fellow climbers, also looking like an idiot as others run past you like mountain gazelles on the old stone steps?

*note to self: when being photographed close pockets and don't wear money belt at the front. It has no figure enhancing qualities.

Everywhere you walk around these buildings, despite all the tourists and people trying to sell you stuff, it really is joyously peaceful, and everywhere the smell of of incense from prayer offerings to the many Buddha statues infuses the air. If you stray from the prescribed paths crickets sing to you as you wander, and dragonflies dip and swoop around you guiding you to tranquil pools and statues. Next I continued on my hike around the complex, and next came across the terrace of the elephants, where reliefs of marching elephants are ended with lovely carved elephant faces, (tusks now sadly gone) side by side.

And the terrace of the Leper King, which is named (rather unfortunately for this king) not because he actually had leprosy, but because of the blooms of lichen that have grown all over the carvings of him that just make him look like he did. Poor chap.... I'd be pretty cheesed off about being remembered as the Leper king if I never had leprosy in the first place. It's a bit like being remembered on facebook as "the bird with the monstrous acne" just because someone had posted a photo of you that was a really bad job done by Snappy Snaps.

Anyhoo....... at lunch I succumbed to buying some beads off one of the children there, only to have every child in Angkor Thom descend upon my table, whilst i furiously looked through my phrase book for the words for "No" "No more beads" "Ï do not want a Guide book" "I do not want a T shirt" and "look, just please go away"

Despite being politely, then exhaustively told no, then studiously ignored for over 10 minutes one girl still followed me back to my Tuk tuk continually whining

"But i gieeve you good plice..... Look it very nice shirt... looook"

"No thank you...de .Ah goon...No!"

"but it so niiiiice"

"yes, there is no doubt in my mind that its a probably a triumph of modern tailoring, however I still do not want it or like it"
"but whyeee?"

"because it would barely fit over my head let alone on my body. it is at least 8 sizes too small"

"You could give it someone else?"

"Yes but i don't dislike anyone that much"

"but why you not buy?"

This went on until my Tuk tuk gathered enough speed to get away.....

Now came a real treat. Ta Prohm... (also known as the Tomb raider temple where Lara Croft was filmed.) According to sanskrit inscriptions it was built by King Javarman VII and dedicated to his mother and held thousands of precious stones and gold and pearls. Since then virtually everything has had a go at destroying it. The Buddhists because it was a Hindu temple so they altered quite a lot, removing the original statues and then adding their own distinctiveness; The national museum who took pretty much any surviing statues to phnom penh and stuck them in a very dull museum; The Khmer Rouge, shooting up carvings and destroying faces of the gods because they didn't agree with any organised religion as it might distract people from worshipping the Angkar or Pol pot, and lastly nature itself has had a jolly good go at it too.. everywhere enormous trees twist and pour their way around the walls of this temple, their roots slithering into vulnerable cracks, grappling with the walls in an ancient and continuing battle.
Everywhere you walk you feel like you are discovering and seeing it all for the first time, but seeing just a glimpse of something that once was so great, and still is so great.

I particularly also liked these big stone walls that looked like doors. I felt if i only knew, like Indiana Jones, which special carving to press they would slide apart with ancient but still working mechanisms to reveal new and undiscovered passageways to unknown treasures and knowledge.

I asked a passing guide about them, It turns out that these once were doors in the Hindu Temple, but the Buddhists blocked them on 3 of the 4 sides of the temple when they removed Vishnu and placed their statues of Buddha there, so no one could approach Buddha from any other way than from the front. My tomb raiding dreams were crushed.

I dragged myself away, and we continued on the tour, past a temple which I think is called Ta Kao. This temple has no carvings or pictures or statues in, which is considered to be unlucky here, and is therefore known as the "Unlucky Temple" which didn't encourage me to go in.. It also had incredibly steep stairs, so I decided not to tempt fate and just took a very bad picture. Unlucky.