Angkor

OK then, I know I've been back a month, but for mum's sake, here's the rest of the Cambodia trip, with some piccies. Then I can retire, smoke port and drink cigars.

Ben and I disembarked from the bus. We'd lost any vestiges of sanity many hours before and were more like walking zombies than ever before (including during sports). However, I still had my bloody mindedness and determination not to be ripped off in full quantities. Since this was the famous scam bus, we were forced to elbow past a number of large unfriendly looking Cambodians in order to escape from the guest house we'd been dropped off at.

"Escape" was only a relative term since we ended up walking into at least 4 random Cambodians with motorbikes and disturbingly rickety wooden seats sticking off the back. To say that these guys were pushy sellers would win the understatement of the millennium award, even next to statements such as "Muse are a good band" or "Fatal disease is rarely fun".

Anyway, we got to a guesthouse and survived the night.

In the morning, we got up at 5.15 in order to make it to Angkor for the sunrise. Our little driver was waiting, as requested, so we hopped on the back of the thing and away we went.

First, we paid a visit to the biggest, grandest, most famous and most ornate of all the temples of Angkor - Angkor Wat itself. Angkor Wat is a huge three-tiered pyramid with five towers rising 65 meters from the ground.

That's a plan of Angkor Wat, we entered from the west and walked all the way to the centre. Climbing up some exceedingly steep stairs on the way. Then we proceeded to explore the walls of the three tiers and took a look at the massive forests surrounding the temple. The plan on the left only shows the inner temple itself, around this is a massive expanse of grass, with a number of pools and smaller ruins. Here's a shot from the end of the middle tier of walls, showing some trees, some grass, some stone structures and a bit of forest peeking over the top. Oh, and that's a hot air balloon in the distance. Not the sun.

OK, so after a few hours here, having toured the bas relieves on the walls (even less fun than it sounds), we hopped on our transport and headed to the Bayon, a far more crumbling ruin on a smaller, though no less amazing scale.


The Bayon is a pretty ruinous ruin. There are 37 towers, and almost all of them feature 4 stone faces, each one facing in one compass direction.

God knows who's actual face it's supposed to be, but hey, if we knew that, we'd know why they wanted him to freak people out for hundreds of years.

The bayon was not our favorite temple, because when we arrived it was distinctly busy and thronging with Chinese tourists. I have nothing against the Chinese, and I don't really want to fall into the cliche of abusing their tourism practices, but they were quite annoying in large numbers. Gererally, tourists in large groups were like a plague in the temples, they'd sweep through, drop packets on ancient ruins and generally pay very little attention to their surroundings.

Anyway, we liked it much more once we found some inner courtyards that the tourists had missed. We were hanging around in this sort of area for a long time and didn't see a single other person.

Once we'd finished with the Bayon, we had lunch. It was a bit early for lunch, but heck, we did it anyway. Then, after a suitable pause, headed towards our third temple of the day. The temple of Preah Khan. Yep, sounds like a villain from the Lion King, but hey, it's also a massive temple of Angkor. Built along the same plans as the Angkor Wat, it's the same size and is also made of stone. Here the similarities rather end, since Angkor Wat is very well preserved and mostly intact. On the other hand Preah Khan is a complete ruin - passages are frequently blocked with piles of blocks, the outer walls are falling in, tress sprout from stone domes and it was the most explorable place around.
Originally it served as a Buddhist monastery and school, with over 1000 monks, but now is top of my list of favourite places of worship of all time. St. Paul's Cathedral is dull, (a trait it shares with pretty much any Christian monument). Even the monuments at Ayuttia, north of Bangkok were distinctly dull in comparison.

Something about the way we saw only 3 other people the whole time we were there, and were forced to climb over piles of crumbling masonry, and at every turn was a new sight, an angle over the ruins I'd not seen before. Unfortunately I was so completely enthralled by the whole experience that I completely forgot to take any pictures, except the one below of two trees appearing to mate. Pretty cool, no?

O.K. so once this was completed we headed to our last temple of the day, Ta Prohm, which was a simply incredible sprawling monasteric complex. It's been left partially unrestored, though, to be honest, there were bits of this temple I disliked. Picky? Yes. Frankly, it was too busy, but that's pretty much expected at the more popular temples these days. Also annoying, unlike Preah Khan, all the designated walkways were clearly marked with wooden boarding and the rest of the temple was closed off with signs threatening collapse. While this is probably for the best, it meant that much of the appeal (exploration, discovery) of the temples was lost, and although there were a number of amazing views to be had, they were often spoiled by waiting for the queue of people who wanted their photographs taken along side bits of history. I don't really get quite why this is necessary.

Anyway, exploring the Temples of Angkor was the most amazing experience, and one that I would easily trade another two days of my life travelling to do again. I'd like to be there longer, to be better stocked with history and information, and really, to block off the place to other people for the duration.

If you ever, ever visit south-east Asia, go to Siem Reap, go to the Temples of Angkor. If you don't, you've wasted a trip.

Dom.

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P.S. - Since I've been home for ages, and this is the last thing I did, pretty much, I guess this marks the last post on this blog. I'll leave it here for the time being, though, and if I startup a normal one about my incredible exploits, I'll keep you informed.

P.P.S - All the photos are Copyright ME. So there. The plan of Angkor Wat is from www.canbypublications.com, a very good tour guide to Cambodia.

P.P.P.S - Thanks for reading, everyone!