Today we have saved the best for
last… the walled city of Angkor Thom, one of the largest Khmer cities ever
built, and Angkor Wat, the grandest of all Khmer temples and the worlds largest
religious monument.
Our tuk-tuk driver picked us up
at 5:30am and it was straight off to Angkor Wat with the hordes of other
tourists. We arrived at 6pm just
as dawn was breaking, crossed the causeway over the 190m-wide moat, and walked
through the west gopura (entranceway) to
view the five magnificent towers of the temple at the end of another causeway
(this one 350m long). Looking
east, the towers are silhouetted against the morning sky, and are a popular
place to watch the sunrise. Seeing
the sun rise behind the towers was truly majestic and a little eerie – the
photos come nowhere close to doing it justice! As all the tour groups were leaving to head into town for
breakfast, we headed inside for a wander around and managed to get a couple of
fairly quiet hours before they all returned.
It’s difficult to describe Angkor
Wat, but the guidebook we bought seems to do it succinctly: “a pyramid of three
levels, each one enclosed by a well developed gallery with four gopuras and corner towers. The summit is crowned with five
towers in a quincunx.” It is
impossible to describe any better than that, and equally as impossible to
capture on camera, but we have tried!
The immense scale of the temple and the incredible detail of the stone
carvings throughout is mind blowing!
The galleries contain bas-reliefs (basically carvings into the stone)
depicting scenes of everyday life, the gods, war battles, myths/legends and
more. All up we spent about 4
hours there. By 10am it was
already stinking hot and humid and we knew it was going to be a scorcher.
We jumped in the tuk-tuk again
and headed for Angkor Thom. The
city is 9 sq km and its walls enclose numerous temples and carved stone
terraces. Its jewel is Bayon in
the centre, intended as the symbolic centre of the universe and empire. The temple itself isn’t overly big but
is extremely complex, with 49 face-towers (only 37 are still standing) creating
a stone mountain of ascending peaks.
Underneath and surrounding the towers is a maze of small enclosures and
galleries with bas-reliefs.
Totally amazing stuff! We
walked around for ages, all the way finding great photo opportunities around
every corner – photography nerds be warned (Tigger and John especially!), if
you come here you may never leave!
After lunch we took a wander to
some of the other smaller temples in Angkor Thom, including Phimeanakas,
Bapuon, the hidden reliefs in the Leper King Terrace, and the Elephant Terrace,
taking lots of rest breaks due to the stifling heat and humidity! Again it’s really not possible to
describe how amazing these temples are, you’ll just have to take our word for
it and come and visit for yourselves
J
We got the tuk-tuk driver to drop
us back at the guesthouse for a rest before heading into town for a cold beer,
yummy Khmer food, and some internet time.
Tomorrow is a travel day, we are heading to Vietnam! Catching a bus to Ho Chi Minh city (aka
Saigon) via Phnom Penh – another early start and I think the bus ride is close
to 12 hours.
