Cambodia - Part 2

 

After the horrors of Phnom Penh it was nice to get out into the countryside for a bit. Siem Reap is the location of the famous "Angkor Wat" temple complex and was the capital of ancient Cambodia from around 1150 to the 1600s. Over this long history it was attacked, sacked, rebuilt and extended many  times and there are many hundreds of ruined temples and buildings in the surrounding jungle. The picture above is the one that most people will be familiar with, it shows the main temple at sunrise, it's a magnificent structure and contains some fascinating insights into both Hinduism and Buddhism having transitioned in it's lifetime from one religion to the other, somehow managing to merge ideas from both. We visited a couple of different places while in the area but the main temple was probably the most impressive, you can't climb the towers anymore (too many visitors causing too much wear and tear) but you can wander around freely pretty much everywhere else.

The picture above shows the temple at Bayon, this is another complex at Angkor and is often called the "smiling faces" temple as it consists of many stone towers most of which have a smiling Buddha carved into the stone. This temple, built in the 12th and 13th century, looks like it's more degraded that the main Angkor Wat structure although you can still wander around most of it to look at the wall carvings and internal corridors and rooms.

We also visited the temple at Ta Prohm which is another large complex built in the early 13th century, which in its time was a centre of Buddhist learning and built entirely without mortar. This temple is mostly famous these days for being the one used in the film "Tomb Raider" and features many old silk-cotton trees whose roots, looking more reptilian than plant, are slowly penetrating the stones and breaking the temple up, see picture below.

I couldn't leave Ta Prohm without snapping a picture of the famous spot where Laura Croft did her thing, so here it is in all it's glory (below)! Although I have seen the film I couldn't remember the scene, personally I thought the place more reminiscent of the monkey palace sequence from Jungle Book!

There were some amazing structures to be seen, far too many to put here but here are a few shots that show some of the interiors of the various temple complexes.

After some sweaty excursions (the heat was fierce) to the various wonders of the Angkor temple complexes we retired to the nearest large town of Siem Reap, where we were lodging, for some refreshment and entertainment, more in part 3.