February 26, 2007
It’s funny to me now, but when I was growing up I was a bit obsessed with the paranormal. I always used to come back from the library with books about UFOs and Cyptozoology, scary stories and unexplainable phenomena. I loved watching Unsolved Mysteries and later, The X-Files, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is still one of my favorite Spielberg films.
As time went on my worldview grew increasingly rationalist, and I became convinced that the source of all those alien abductions and ghost stories was most likely the brain of the person experiencing them. I no longer believe in Nessie, Chupacabra or Bigfoot, and although my degree in Engineering probably served as the last nail in the paranormal coffin, I still sometimes find myself up late at night reading websites dedicated to urban legends and mythical creatures.
The thing is, I want the world to be more mysterious than it usually appears to be. Like every young boy, dinosaurs were another major interest of mine, and I loved the idea of those incredible creatures surviving for millions of years past their supposed expiry date in the murky depths of Loch Ness (or pleasant Lake Champlain), the African Congo, or the jungle canopies of Papua New Guinea.
So when I discovered one of those cryptozoology websites claiming that a monument in Angkor appeared to contain evidence of something very strange, something unexplainable, I knew I’d have to investigate it for myself.
Continue Reading…
It’s funny to me now, but when I was growing up I was a bit obsessed with the paranormal. I always used to come back from the library with books about UFOs and Cyptozoology, scary stories and unexplainable phenomena. I loved watching Unsolved Mysteries and later, The X-Files, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind is still one of my favorite Spielberg films.
As time went on my worldview grew increasingly rationalist, and I became convinced that the source of all those alien abductions and ghost stories was most likely the brain of the person experiencing them. I no longer believe in Nessie, Chupacabra or Bigfoot, and although my degree in Engineering probably served as the last nail in the paranormal coffin, I still sometimes find myself up late at night reading websites dedicated to urban legends and mythical creatures.
The thing is, I want the world to be more mysterious than it usually appears to be. Like every young boy, dinosaurs were another major interest of mine, and I loved the idea of those incredible creatures surviving for millions of years past their supposed expiry date in the murky depths of Loch Ness (or pleasant Lake Champlain), the African Congo, or the jungle canopies of Papua New Guinea.
So when I discovered one of those cryptozoology websites claiming that a monument in Angkor appeared to contain evidence of something very strange, something unexplainable, I knew I’d have to investigate it for myself.
***
Earlier I described Ta Prohm as one of Ankor’s most interesting sites due mainly to its unrestored state and the cascades of giant roots that are slowly tearing the place apart. But it’s also interesting for something that most visitors never see, and is not mentioned in any of the Angkor guidebooks. The only reason we found it is because we were looking for it and had some very savvy tour guides- the three local boys who showed us around the complex.
The boys didn’t speak much English, but I only needed to say one word before they were pulling us along through the ruins, over fallen sections of roof and under low doorways, and then out to a small courtyard surrounded by walls carved from top to bottom.
The word I said was “dinosaur.”
I knew what to expect as I peered past a small brown finger to a shape on the wall, but I still couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There, surrounded by carvings of familiar animals such as stags and monkeys, in a Khmer monastic complex that was built in 1186 A.D. by people with no knowledge of paleontology, was a carving of what could only be a living, healthy Stegosaurus.
At a loss, I pointed the carving out to a nearby German tourist, and he immediately tried rationalizing it, just as I was doing.
“It could be… a water buffalo,” he offered feebly.
“But what about the plates along the back?” I asked.
“Yes, that’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he said.
Obviously, the existence of this carving requires a plausible explanation. I could only come up with four of them.
Hypothesis #1: The carving depicts a common contemporary animal like an ox or buffalo, the plates are really just background decoration.
Which is it?
Response To Hypothesis #1: I don’t buy it. One thing that humans are extremely good at is identifying patterns. When shown a picture of the carving, my cousins Mason and Spencer (aged 4 and 6, respectively) immediately identified it as a Stegosaurus. The only reason that adults start thinking of alternatives when they see it is because we “know” it must be something else.
Hypothesis #2: A complete fossil of a Stegosaurus was discovered by Khmers 900 years ago and was subsequently incorporated into the carving.
Response To Hypothesis #2: Extremely unlikely. In the 1800’s when dinosaur fossils were first discovered and presented to the public, paleontologists became infamous for putting them together incorrectly- they would combine fossils from different species into the same skeleton or use bones in completely wrong places. The chances of the Khmers finding a Stegosaurus skeleton, putting it together, and then correctly guessing what it looked like covered with muscle and skin are pretty much zero.
Hypothesis #3: The carving is a hoax, produced sometime during the last 150 years.
Response To Hypothesis #3: Impossible. The dinosaur carving is exactly the same depth as the carvings surrounding it, and bears the same amount of rain wear and aging. Also, what would be the point? 150 years ago, not enough was known about either dinosaurs or Angkor to make the carving seem anachronistic to a mischievous Frenchman with a chisel.
Hypothesis #4: Some dinosaurs survived long enough to be seen by men and considered as commonplace as the other animals carved nearby.
Response To Hypothesis #4: If a large population of dinosaurs did survive to modern times around Angkor, wouldn’t they appear in carvings at many locations? Chinese emissary Zhou Dugan documented 13th century life in Angkor, surely he would have returned from Cambodia with tales of real-life monsters living in the forest, but he didn’t. And besides, dinosaurs went extinct 75 million years ago, right?
***
In the end, the mere existence of the Stegosaurus carving is more satisfying to me than having an explanation for it. It is physical evidence of the mystery and wonder that the world is brimming with. Over the years I’ve come to realize that the actual nature of the universe, both cosmological and terrestrial, is so fantastic that it seems almost disrespectful to clutter it with beings that haven’t earned the right to inhabit it. I’d much rather focus on all the real strangeness out there, like how scorpions glow under a blacklight and how the Fibonacci sequence shows up in pinecones and nautilus shells and galaxies.
The greatest outcome of the Enlightenment was that it replaced superstition and ignorance with a means of accurate perception while simultaneously increasing the world’s ability to astonish. A visit to a coral reef, an astronomical observatory, or even a man made place like Angkor Wat is proof of that. And it turns out that Sea monsters do exist, but it was not until last year that one was photographed alive and later caught.
As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet (I, v, 166-167):
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
For all my skepticism, I still believe that most of all.
February 25, 2007
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
Our third day exploring Angkor involved a lot more traveling time between sites but no less gawking once we arrived at them.
We began by heading directly east of Siem Reap about 7 miles, towards the modern village of Roluos. The three temples of Lolei, Preah Ko, and Bakong are the oldest Angkor monuments that open to the public, dating back as far as 879 A.D. The Roluos group was once the capital of Angkor, during the reign of Jayavarman II.
Lolei
The biggest difference between the Ruluos monuments and the others at Angkor is how much more modest they are. The carving and architectural styling is very similar, but it’s obvious that the Kings they were built for was far less ambitious than those to come.
Lolei features attractive false door and lintel carvings, but it is also poorly preserved. It once sat at the center of the Indratataka Baray, the largest local reservoir at the time of its construction.
Continue Reading…
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
Our third day exploring Angkor involved a lot more traveling time between sites but no less gawking once we arrived at them.
We began by heading directly east of Siem Reap about 7 miles, towards the modern village of Roluos. The three temples of Lolei, Preah Ko, and Bakong are the oldest Angkor monuments that open to the public, dating back as far as 879 A.D. The Roluos group was once the capital of Angkor, during the reign of Jayavarman II.
Lolei
The biggest difference between the Ruluos monuments and the others at Angkor is how much more modest they are. The carving and architectural styling is very similar, but it’s obvious that the Kings they were built for was far less ambitious than those to come.
Lolei features attractive false door and lintel carvings, but it is also poorly preserved. It once sat at the center of the Indratataka Baray, the largest local reservoir at the time of its construction.
Preah Ko
Preah Ko is currently undergoing extensive preservation efforts, so it was difficult to imagine without the scaffolding surrounding it.
What I liked most about Preah Ko was its coloring- none of the other temples look like they’ve been kiln-fired.
Preah Ko also had several finely carved temple guards whose bodies and garments were all very realistic.
Bakong
Bakong is the largest of the Roluos group, and the most similar to other temple mountains in Angkor.
The temple has naga balustrades leading across its moat, and each of its five levels feature lions statues by each staircase and elephant statues at each corner.
Because each of the tiers is unusually wide, Bakong is one of the few temple mountains where the central sanctuary at its peak can be seen from everywhere on the monument.
***
After visiting Roluos we went back through Siem Reap and then north, far past the Angkor monuments we had already visited. Our next destination was Banteay Srei, and it took almost an hour by tuk-tuk on rutted dirt roads to get there.
Our travel time was spent getting to see rural Cambodian living as it has probably been for hundreds of years. It was extremely poor, but many of the homes were well kept, their residents proud, and their children smiling and waving as we passed. Smoke lifted up from cooking fires in front of the stilt houses (built that way to handle flooding), and small groups of strong gray water buffaloes waded around the grass green rice paddies nearby.
My biggest regret that day, and during most of our time in Cambodia, was that there was no way for us to actually get to know these people, and so their lives would for now have to remain dark and indistinct, like shadows on a wall.
***
Banteay Srei
Banteay Srei means “Citadel of the Women”, and there is definitely something feminine about the monument. Maybe it’s the rare pink sandstone that the entire complex is built from, its graceful rooflines that are unique in Angkor, or maybe it’s Banteay Srei’s small size and the delicate carving that covers every square inch of its walls, its pillars, and its doorways.
Not since our first moments in Angkor Wat had I felt the same stunned disbelief at a place like this really existing. Banteay Srei seems like something out of a fairy tale, a gingerbread house made of stone.
Brianne and I walked around Banteay Srei slowly and deliberately, our eyes attempting to absorb all the incredible details that this one place throws at you.
Some of the carving was so deep and dimensional, I couldn’t even figure out how it had been accomplished, or, after being accomplished, how it had survived for over a thousand years so intact.
After a while we found a nice vantage point and watched the afternoon light playing through the halls and courtyards. A boy and his two sisters were walking around, not selling or begging, just enjoying each other’s company and the ancient gem they happened to live near enough to walk to.
It was getting late and we wanted to be somewhere special for sunset, so we hopped back in Khop’s tuk-tuk and were soon on our back to the heart of Angkor.
Return To Angkor Wat
Because Angkor Wat had impressed us so much two days before, we decided that it would be fitting to end our tour of Angkor at the same place it began, only this time at sunset.
We didn’t ask him to, but this time Khop dropped us off at the rear entrance of the temple, saying that the front would be too crowded. The large rear gate that we passed through looked like an ancient stone train station- amazingly, this building isn’t even on the maps!
The path leading to Angkor Wat was surrounded by dark jungle, and we were all alone as we walked down it.
It was fascinating to me to see the same place under completely different lighting conditions, and to capture some of the incredible ways that that light gets manipulated by the structure. After a while Brianne left to go find something cold to drink, and I was left to explore the temple by myself.
Can you see the spiral?
As I walked around the bas-relief galleries, it became very clear how fortunate we had been to have those seemingly endless halls all to ourselves that first morning. Hundreds of people milling around and talking and pointing really affects how much you can get out of the stories being told.
Before and After
Even with the crowds, I was able to find some bas-reliefs and apsaras that were just out of the way enough to be ignored.
Only one of the staircases leading up to the central sanctuary has a steel safety bar to use while getting up or down, and it was completely blocked by flabby tourists. The light was fading fast, so I scrambled up the staircase and found a traffic jam of people waiting to get down. There must have been about 200 people up there.
From the top I looked out at the direction that we’d come. I could just barely see the rear gate from the uppermost tier.
Angkor Wat is a really strange place. There can be thousands of visitors milling around at any given moment, but pass through the right door and suddenly you’re all alone in half of the complex, not another person in sight.
As I ventured out front looking for Brianne, I happened to notice two small shapes scurrying around the roof overhangs. “Monkeys!” I thought. We hadn’t seen any monkeys the first time we were at Angkor Wat, or anywhere else in Angkor. I walked along the front of the building to get a closer look.
Every so often one of the little critters would peek his head over the tiles, as interested in me as I was in him. Further on I noticed several small monkeys chasing each other around at ground level, so I walked over to where they were playing.
I watched as two of the monkeys tossed over a garbage basket and began finishing off a coconut and sipping juice out of plastic cups. I really like the sensation of being in a cageless zoo, and having wild monkeys running around you really provides that feeling. Of course, seeking it will probably get me bitten or mauled one day…
You know that scene in Jurassic Park when the Galimimus all start running away and it turns out they can sense a Tyrannosaurus approaching? Well all the little monkeys turning tail and escaping up the walls and onto the roof should have been a clue that something bigger was coming, but I didn’t notice the creature that was about four times bigger than the others until it was walking along the pedestal that was immediately over my left shoulder.
When I saw it I immediately backed up, but I could only back up a little- a crowd of ten people was standing behind me, and behind them was a 15-foot drop off to the ground. Suddenly the big one charged to the edge of the pedestal, hissing at taking a swipe at me.
It wasn’t that close, but there was nothing preventing it from hopping off the pedestal and continuing his assault, which meant it was time for me to go. I still like the little monkeys, though. Crazed, tiny humanoids make excellent subjects.
I found Brianne relaxing under a large and gentle tree, and we slowly made our way back around the temple to the rear entrance.
Khop’s decision to bring us to the rear entrance turned out to be a great photographic coup- while everyone else gathered at the reflecting pool for the final hour before sunset, we were all alone as we walked east, catching the setting sun behind Angkor Wat.
I walked a short distance away from the building in order to frame the sun between two spires, and remarkably, this geometric pattern of circles in squares appeared out of the glare. I had never seen anything like it in any other picture I’ve taken, and it seemed to me that Angkor Wat, in my opinion possibly the most beautiful structure ever built, was letting me take a little bit of its magic with me in that photo. It was one of the most satisfying feelings while leaving a place that I’ve ever felt.
February 23, 2007
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
The previous day had made it clear that as much as Angkor deserved to be seen at sunrise and sunset as much as possible, it just wasn’t feasible if we actually wanted to enjoy ourselves. So we planned to start a bit later the next two mornings and stay until sunset.
We met Khop the tuk-tuk driver around 7:30 a.m. and headed directly for Ta Prohm. We had an idea of what to expect, but that means very little in a place as dense with wonders as Angkor.
Ta Prohm
When people think of Angkor, they usually picture the towers of Angkor Wat, the faces of Bayon, or the root covered ruins that are most numerous and astounding at Ta Prohm.
The morning sun had not yet risen over the exterior gates of Ta Prohm, so the rapidly lifting mist still hung in the air, diffusing the light and making the trees and stone seem as mysterious as they must have been to the first explorers to visit Angkor.
Continue Reading…
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
After Angkor Wat we headed North through Angkor Thom (the city center), passing under giant gates and glimpsing many wonders along the way. Because Angkor Thom is one of the most popular monuments in Angkor, the bus tour crowds had already begun to swarm. We decided to save Angkor Thom for another day and have our next stop be Preah Kahn, a nearby but less visted monument.
Preah Kahn
Preah Kahn (meaning “the sacred sword”) was completed in 1191 and is different from Angkor Wat in several important ways- building type, religion, and preservation.
There are two primary types of religious structures in Angkor- temple mountains and monastic complexes. Temple mountains are meant to represent Mount Meru, which in Hindu cosmology exists at the exact center of the universe and is home to the gods, and these structures are all multi-leveled with many towers reaching high up from the ground. Angkor Wat, Bayon, Baphon and Ruolos are all temple mountains. Monastic complexes are single-level and often cover more ground area. They were residences and places of learning, but this in no way limited the attention given to their beautification. Banteay Srei and Banteay Kdei are monastic complexes. So is Preah Khan.
Because Preah Kahn was built by a Buddhist king, there was less Hindu iconography than we saw at Angkor Wat. And the state of preservation of Preah Kahn is far worse than Angkor Wat, so it was the first Angkor ruins that we saw that actually looked ruined.
Continue Reading…
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
At the time of the Khmer Empire’s dominance of Southeast Asia between the 9th and 12th centuries, the capital city of Angkor near modern Siem Reap, Cambodia was the largest pre-industrial metropolis that had ever existed up to that time.
Due to a combination of political discord, ecological pressures and increasingly common attacks from the Thais to the West, the Khmer empire eventually moved its capital Southeast to Phnom Penh, and eventually collapsed altogether.
Although the existence of the ruins were never forgotten, it was not until around 1860 that a French expedition to Angkor led by Henri Mouhot presented the lost city to the Western world.
By the turn of the century efforts to reclaim the once grand city back from the jungle and prevent its further deterioration had begun, and those efforts continue today despite the conservators having to contend with underfunding, civil war, looting and vandalism.
Today the Angkor Historical Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as Cambodia’s largest tourist draw. The elected government of Cambodia is dedicated to the protection and restoration of the monuments, and is being assisted by various international organizations in doing so.
Angkor also happens to be, more the any other destination on our trip, the place I was most looking forward to visiting.
Over the course of three days we explored over twenty-five temples, monuments, monastic complexes, gateways, and man-made reservoirs. These next few posts will document each places of interest, and our experiences along the way.
Continue Reading…
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
The previous day had made it clear that as much as Angkor deserved to be seen at sunrise and sunset as much as possible, it just wasn’t feasible if we actually wanted to enjoy ourselves. So we planned to start a bit later the next two mornings and stay until sunset.
We met Khop the tuk-tuk driver around 7:30 a.m. and headed directly for Ta Prohm. We had an idea of what to expect, but that means very little in a place as dense with wonders as Angkor.
Ta Prohm
When people think of Angkor, they usually picture the towers of Angkor Wat, the faces of Bayon, or the root covered ruins that are most numerous and astounding at Ta Prohm.
The morning sun had not yet risen over the exterior gates of Ta Prohm, so the rapidly lifting mist still hung in the air, diffusing the light and making the trees and stone seem as mysterious as they must have been to the first explorers to visit Angkor.
Ta Prohm is a bit of an anomaly regarding preservation efforts. It’s one of the only places in Angkor where the jungle growth was largely allowed to remain, though 10 years from now the magnificent trees might be gone- saving the structure at the cost of its currently unequalled atmosphere.
Frankly, I’m not really sure that rebuilding these ruins is the best way to preserve their historical significance. The fact that such an amazing place was left for centuries and be reclaimed by the forest makes the trees themselves as historically significant as the stones, and I think the first archaologists working in Angkor recognized this. In any case, I felt really lucky to see the place still unmolested, exactly as MacDonald described in his book Angkor and the Khmers (1965):
“Stone and wood grasp each other in grim hostility; yet all is silent and still, without any visible movement to indicate their struggle- as if they were wrestlers suddenly petrified, struck motionless in the middle of a fight. The rounds in this battle were measured not by minutes, but by centuries.”
We explored Ta Prohm like children in a playground- making little discoveries around every corner, up stairs and over piles of fallen stone, and as if to the certify the analogy we were soon joined by three little boys for whom Te Prohm is their playground. Acting as pint-sized tour guides, they showed us arond the complex excitedly, pointed out notable tree/stone formations, carvings, and anything else we might like to see.
I had come to Ta Prohm with one particular thing that I most wanted to see, and when I mentioned it to the boys they didn’t hestitate grabbing our hands and leading us through a maze of halls and rooms to exactly what I was looking for. I’m being vague about the details because something this strange deserves a post all to itself.
After a few more sights and posing for pictures with our guides, we paid them in candy and left Ta Prohm behind. Each day was shaping up to have a favorite monument, and although it was difficult to imagine anything topping the sights that our first stop had yielded, that didn’t mean we wouldn’t try.
Banteay Kdei
Our visit to Banteay Kdei was memorable not because of the building itself, but who we met there. It’s almost impossible to visit anywhere in Angkor without being swarmed by 2 to 5 children, all of them selling postcards (”10 for one dollar! One, two, three, four…”), silk scarves (”buy one for your girlfriend?)”, or bamboo flutes (”three for one dollar good price!”), and as much as we don’t want to say “dey, ah koon” (no, thank you) 500 times a day, it has to be done.
We passed into Banteay Kdei without being accosted, but soon after entering “the hall of the dancing apsaras” we were joined by a little girl named Sarendya who claimed to be six years old but looked about three, tops. She was so tiny it was stunning, and as she held up a packet of postcards towards Brianne and her little voice said “one dollaaa?” I looked at Bri and said, “Well, if there was ever a time to buy postcards…”
Brianne agreed. Buying the card from this child (a baby, really) wasn’t going to set off a feeding frenzy, and she was much less insistent than the others. During the transaction we asked her name, age, and if she minded if we took a picture. She understood all our questions and answered them in English- maybe she was six after all.
Sarendya left us to continue her postcard sales and we began to explore the rest of the complex, though our minds were both elsewhere at that point.
Banteay Srei is not the only monastic complex with a “hall of dancing apsaras”, but they always strike me as a little out of place since they are all semi-nude, very beautiful, and very female. For a group of men that were presumably sworn to celibacy, the apsaras seem like serious distractions on the path to enlightenment. Maybe that’s why they’re all smiling the same knowing smile- women (even stone ones) love to tease.
Srah Srang
Directly across the road from Banteay Srei is Srah Srang (royal bath), a large lake with a beautiful terrace on one end leading down into the water. Carved nagas and lions stand guard over the landings, and we were lucky enough to arrive while several workmen were still around. They were all Cambodian, so I had to gesture emphatically to get a look at their plans, but it was cool to see how detailed they were. I took a picture of the plans and the terrace- and was impressed at how every single stone had been numbered and drawn to scale:
Ta Keo
Ta Keo is an stunningly high (72 feet) multi-tiered temple mountain with a more geometric design than most in Angkor. It was never completed, possibly because the its builder, King Jayavarman V, died during its construction.
The center tower pretty remarkable- it’s hollow inside, and 72 feet is a long way to hoist sandstone blocks using bamboo scaffolding and vines.
The next several monuments were closer together and smaller than most, so we were able to see a lot in a short amount of time.
Chapel of the Hospital & Spean Thma
During his 39 year reign, King Jayavarman VII built 102 regional hospitals. This single tower served as the chapel of one of them, but nothing else remains.
Spean Thma means “bridge of stone”, and that’s what it is. It used to cross the Siem Reap river, but the flow of the river has changed and now the land below the bridge is dry.
Notice the use of corbeled (flat stacked) arches in Spean Thma- keystoned arches hadn’t made it from Rome when Angkor was being built, so this more primitive arch is how all the gateways and towers in Angkor were constructed. Unfortunately, corbels are much less stable than the arches you’d find in a Roman viaduct, which is part of the reason why these are crumbling and those are still in use today.
Chau Say Tevoda & Thammanon
The monuments of Chau Say Tevoda and Thammanon are brother-sister temples, similar in size, layout, and located directly across the road from each other just outside Angkor Thom’s East Gate. Thammanon is smaller but better preserved. They might have been impressive if we’d started with them, but they were nothing special after everything else we’d seen so far.
Terrace of Elephants & Terrace of the Leper King
Located inside the gates of Angkor Thom, these two monuments are close together but very different from each other.
The scale of the Terrace of the Elephants is rediculous- nearly 1000 feet long and impossible to capture in a single shot. I ended up standing in the center to take this picture, and even that doesn’t do it justice. Carved along the entire length of the terrace is a procession of 10-foot tall elephants, all with riders and all covered with finely carved blankets and other adornments.
Each stairway features three-headed elephants collecting lotus flowers with their trunks, and the north end depicts five-headed horses surrounded by smaller figures.
The Terrace of the Leper King is located just north of the Terrace of the Elephants. It is small, squarish, with tall interior and exterior walls that form a canyonlike hallway and are everywhere covered with mythical beings, beautiful women, animals, giants, serpents, garudas, and designs. Someone really had a field day with this one.
On the upper platform of this terrace sits a naked figure with braided hair. The identity of the figure and the name of the terrace are both a mystery- there are lots of different theories about both, but nobody knows for sure.
The placement of that saffron robe got the best of our curiosity and after scanning around someone who might be offended, we moved the robe aside enough to verify that figure was indeed naked, but also as anatomically featureless as a Ken doll.
Phimeanakas & Baphuon
Phimeanakas is located inside the royal palace compound and is the temple where the king worshipped. By this point in the day we were both a little tired of climbing stone steps, so we stopped to take it in and then moved right along.
At Baphuon we couldn’t have climbed the stairs even if we’d wanted to. It is undergoing an intensive restoration and is gradually being rebuilt, but in the meantime visitors are not allowed inside. I was a little disappointed by this- Baphon has many bas-reliefs and was built in 1060, quite a bit earlier than much of Angkor.
Bayon
Bayon really deserved more time than we gave it. It should be explored early in the morning like we did with Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm, but with limited time we ended up visiting in the late afternoon which meant the light wasn’t great and there were people everywhere.
Even with that going against it, Bayon is an exceptional place. Its large stone faces are the monument’s most famous feature, and they deserve to be. Every one of its 54 towers is carved with four broad Khmer faces pointing in each of the four cardinal directions, and it’s difficult to find anywhere in the temple without noticing several of those mysterious faces gazing back at you.
We spent a lot of time in Bayon just sitting quietly and studying the nearby carvings- large and certainly less detailed than Angkor Wat’s but no less fascinating up close.
Bayon also has a series of bas-relief galleries around its perimeter which are interesting because they depict everyday 12th century Angkor life- markets, wrestlers, festivals, fisherman and more, and I went to explore them after Brianne found a shady spot to relax.
It was fun getting lost in Bayon, and easy to do due to a series of plan changes during its construction that created covered halls, open galleries, dark corners and lots of little hiding places. The screeching of bats could be heard in several of the towers, and the screeching intensified whenever I’d shine my flashlight up into the darkness.
Down one hallway I discovered one bat that was not irritated by light- but only because it was dead, clinging to the stone like a tiny furry rock climber.
By the time we left Bayon it was after 4 p.m., which meant that we had to hurry to visit a couple more sites and still reach our last destination of the day before sunset.
Angkor Thom South Gate
As we left Angkor Thom we passed under the massive south gate, and I asked Khop to let me out to take some photos. Along the moat crossing leading up to the gate are balustrades made from a line of giant men supporting a naga. The proportions of the men’s bodies are all grotesquely large, but their stone faces are some of the most realistic we’d seen anywhere. I almost expected them to open their eyes at any moment.
Baksei Chamkrong
Baksei Chamkrong is a small pyramid of four tiers and one central tower with sharply drawn lines and some well preserved carving. The steepness of its stairs is dizzying, and as much as I complain about crowds everywhere, I was actually surprised to find that we were completely alone while exploring such a nice little temple.
Phnom Bakeng
Phnom Bakeng is not the largest or best preserved of Angkor’s temple mountains, but it is the only one that is also a mountain temple. The steep, dangerous staircase leading up the hillside to Phnom Bakeng’s hilltop hope has been closed to visitors, so we spent 15 minutes hiking along a much safer elephant track that brought us to the same place.
We arrived before the sun was very low in the sky and before the sunset crowds had gathered. We walked around the monument, enjoying incedible vistas in every direction and trying to imagine Angkor as it had been centuries ago, when it was a thriving metropolis and heavily deforested.
Angkor Wat in the distance
A few monks were milling about when we arrived at Phnom Bakeng, and I watched as they began to descend the East stairs and for just a moment create a triangle of orange against the grey stone. I only captured it because I’d stopped putting my camera in its bag while in Angkor- I’d already missed too many moments like that.
At one point I noticed that the tiers of a tower matched perfectly the profile of Brianne’s lips, and asked her to old still for a second so that I could grab that shot, too.
The swell of tourists began to fill the West side of the top tier, and finding a shot without people in it became very difficult. As the sun finally started to turn the sky that pure deep orange that we’d seen at sunrise, the shapes of the towers seemed even more foreign than usual. This was planet Earth?
We descended the same way we’d came and found Khop amidst a traffic jam of tuk-tuks and buses. Angkor day two had been as great as day one, so we had no doubts at all about how great day three would be.
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
After Angkor Wat we headed North through Angkor Thom (the city center), passing under giant gates and glimpsing many wonders along the way. Because Angkor Thom is one of the most popular monuments in Angkor, the bus tour crowds had already begun to swarm. We decided to save Angkor Thom for another day and have our next stop be Preah Kahn, a nearby but less visted monument.
Preah Kahn
Preah Kahn (meaning “the sacred sword”) was completed in 1191 and is different from Angkor Wat in several important ways- building type, religion, and preservation.
There are two primary types of religious structures in Angkor- temple mountains and monastic complexes. Temple mountains are meant to represent Mount Meru, which in Hindu cosmology exists at the exact center of the universe and is home to the gods, and these structures are all multi-leveled with many towers reaching high up from the ground. Angkor Wat, Bayon, Baphon and Ruolos are all temple mountains. Monastic complexes are single-level and often cover more ground area. They were residences and places of learning, but this in no way limited the attention given to their beautification. Banteay Srei and Banteay Kdei are monastic complexes. So is Preah Khan.
Because Preah Kahn was built by a Buddhist king, there was less Hindu iconography than we saw at Angkor Wat. And the state of preservation of Preah Kahn is far worse than Angkor Wat, so it was the first Angkor ruins that we saw that actually looked ruined.
We approached the entry tower (called the gopura) and noticed large garudas (bird-men) placed at regular intervals along the outer gate. Of all the Hindu mythological creatures, garudas quickly became our favorite. Unlike the delicate bodies of almost every other god or creature, the garudas are all depicted as fearless, capable, and sturdy. Vishnu uses one as a vehicle, which is handy because is addition to carrying your butt around a garuda will put out fires and join you in battle when neccesary. Anyway, garudas rule.
It’s amazing how quickly a person can get lost in these complexes- every hallway invites you to follow it, every courtyard features multiple entrances and exits, and collapsed stone roofs and walls determine the route as much as anything else.
Preah Kahn houses a large and complete linga- a Hindu phallic carving that does not typically glow on the end like E.T.’s finger, despite the picture I took.
Placed below the linga is usually a channeled basin called a yoni, which is the complementary female carving to the linga. Considering all the yonis and lingas around, I can just imagine an old temple guard back in 1200 A.D. complaining about how much sex has permeated contemporary society.
Although preservation efforts are ongoing for all of Angkor’s monuments, I have to wonder sometimes who is judging what to fix next. For example, we walked under several sections of Preah Khan’s roof that were resting solely on a tiny point of rock- an awful lot of weight to trust to a tiny section of surface friction.
We left Preah Kahn after a bit more exploration and posing for photos. Nearby Neak Pean was next.
Neak Pean
Neak Pean means “the coiled serpents”, and two large snakes are indeed carved around the base of the island temple. Since we visited in the middle of the dry season the pool surrounding Neak Pean was empty. This allowed us access to the center temple but was kind of a disappointment because all the pictures in our guidebook showed it with water around it. Maybe next time.
Ta Som
We left Neak Pean for Ta Som, a tiny unrestored temple with some lovely gate carvings and a titanic ficus tree intertwined with the east gate.
All the ficus trees I’ve ever had die within a month, so maybe the secret is to plant them on a pile of rocks and then leave them alone for 800 years.
East Mebon
East Mebon was not the nicest or largest temple mountain that we visited, but it was interesting because it was built in the middle of Angkor’s East Baray, a giant man-made reservoir that is now dried up and overtaken with trees and plants.
Angkor boasts several rectangular Barays of sizes ranging from huge to gigantic. The East Baray was 1.2 x 4.3 miles when filled, and took an estimated 3,000 workers three years to build. The West Baray is even larger- 1.3 x 4.9 miles, and it remains partially filled today.
It’s difficult to imagine East Mebon as a massive island in an even more massive body of water, but that’s what it was. I managed to find a lintel there with one of the best preserved and gently carved elephants that I’ve seen anywhere in Angkor or Thailand- I thought it really captured the quiet grandeur that I felt during our time at Lek’s Elephant Nature Park.
Preah Rup
Directly south of East Mebon is Preah Rup, a temple mountain of very similar layout and size. The biggest difference is the dark orange sandstone that provides a wonderful contrast to its tan sandstone towers. It also seemed a bit sharper than East Mebon, more balanced and commanding.
***
By 2 p.m. our early morning start was catching up with us, and we decided to call it a day. I was happy with the ground we’d covered in our first day, and my enthusiasm was higher than ever. I knew the best (with the exception of Angkor Wat) was yet to come.
We spent the rest of the day walking around Siem Reap, shopping for souvenirs at the markets and buying mutant sized fruit from street vendors. After seeing a softball-sized lime, all the others are a bit of a disappointment.
Click C.J.’s Angkor Map to enlarge
At the time of the Khmer Empire’s dominance of Southeast Asia between the 9th and 12th centuries, the capital city of Angkor near modern Siem Reap, Cambodia was the largest pre-industrial metropolis that had ever existed up to that time.
Due to a combination of political discord, ecological pressures and increasingly common attacks from the Thais to the West, the Khmer empire eventually moved its capital Southeast to Phnom Penh, and eventually collapsed altogether.
Although the existence of the ruins were never forgotten, it was not until around 1860 that a French expedition to Angkor led by Henri Mouhot presented the lost city to the Western world.
By the turn of the century efforts to reclaim the once grand city back from the jungle and prevent its further deterioration had begun, and those efforts continue today despite the conservators having to contend with underfunding, civil war, looting and vandalism.
Today the Angkor Historical Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as well as Cambodia’s largest tourist draw. The elected government of Cambodia is dedicated to the protection and restoration of the monuments, and is being assisted by various international organizations in doing so.
Angkor also happens to be, more the any other destination on our trip, the place I was most looking forward to visiting.
Over the course of three days we explored over twenty-five temples, monuments, monastic complexes, gateways, and man-made reservoirs. These next few posts will document each places of interest, and our experiences along the way.
***
Angkor Wat
The night before our first day at Angkor was the first time in as long as I can remember being too excited to fall sleep. Bad timing- we’d asked our tuk-tuk driver to meet us at 5 a.m. in order to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat, and with less than three hours to go I was still lying restlessly and imagining the days to come.
Eventually I dozed off and awoke to the evil sound of Brianne’s wristwatch alarm indicating that it was time to leave. With that specific kind of nausea that goes along with sleep deprivation, I tossed on my clothes, and we ventured into the chilly darkness of early morning Siem Reap. Our driver, Khop, was out front to meet us, so we hopped into his scooter-towed-rickshaw and headed for Angkor.
Our taxi was one of many in the pre-dawn procession towards the park, and after arriving we joined a line of visitors who were all as bleary-eyed and bedheaded as we were. After posing for the hilarious snapshots that would be used on our 3-day passes, we rejoined Khop and were driven to our first stop of the day, Angkor Wat.
Angkor Wat is the primary temple of the Angkor complex as well as the largest and one of the most intact of all the surviving monuments. It was built by King Suryavarman II between 1113 and 1150, which was also the period of that king’s reign. Sometimes people refer to the entire area as “Angkor Wat”, but that isn’t accurate. The entire Angkor region covers about 77 square miles, and Angkor Wat accounts for only 1 of them. The magnificent building is a symbol of national identity, and adorns both the Cambodian flag and its currency. It is one of the most famous monuments in the park, drawing many thousands of people from sunrise to sunset, every day of the year.
At around 5:40 a.m. our tuk-tuk pulled into a large gravel parking area, and we warily followed other visitors into the darkness, our tiny flashlight illuminating a few feet beyond us but nothing more. Eventually we came to a large terrace guarded by giant stone lions that that led to a 40-foot wide sandstone causeway that led us East. As the random beams of other people’s flashlights angled away from the sandstone blocks we were walking on, we noticed dark water on either side of our path. We were crossing Angkor Wat’s gigantic moat and we couldn’t even tell until we were halfway across it.
The causeway led to a impressive entry tower, its flanks disappearing into the darkness to either side of us. As we crept up the entry tower’s steps we shone our light towards the ceiling. A large section of stone roof had fallen away, and the space beyond was filled with stars.
Continuing inside the entry tower we saw our first glimpses of color- down halls to either side of us sat stone Buddhas wrapped in orange silk. We were tempted to explore the building further, but decided to continue East, out of the entry tower and onto another walkway. On both sides of the walkway were stone banisters that terminated with large five-headed snakes known as naga.
In the distance we could see small stone structures known as the libraries, but we still had not glimpsed the temple itself. A crowd was gathering by the West bank of the North reflecting pool, and we made our way across the lawn to join them. As we walked he walkway disappeared into the darkness, and soon we were crowding near the reflecting pool with about a hundred other people, all of us waiting, patiently, for the Earth to spin enough for us all to see the sun.
At first a reddish haze began to form near the horizon, and the sky began to lighten enough to just barely make out the five distinctive towers rising from Angkor Wat’s upper tiers. Slowly, the red turned that orange-purple that can only be produced by atmosphere and sunlight.
By now the crowd had tripled in size, and cameras were being fired off rapidly. As I took a few pictures and then waited for the sky to change enough to take some more, I eyed the view screens of other people’s cameras, envying some shots and dismissing others.
Like a battle of color being waged in the sky, orange conquered the horizon while the space above it turned the hazy white that makes taking photos nearly impossible here by midday.
Once the orange orb had risen fully above the structure, the crowd began to disperse. Some walked into the temple, some walked West back down the causeway, and others, like us, followed a persistent young man to have breakfast at his mother’s café stand. I had read that noodle soup is a traditional Cambodian breakfast, so both of us ordered that, sitting with the sun and the temple at our backs. Breakfast was great- the soup was slightly spicy with lots of carrots, greens and peppercorns. The warmth of it drove off the last of the morning chill, and after breakfast we began our long walk around the waterlily-filled reflecting pool and up the sandstone steps that lead into the imposing structure.
***
Entering Angkor Wat is like walking into a piece of fractal art. At the macroscopic level, it is a gorgeously balanced, impressively scaled, fearfully angled work of architecture. Drawing nearer to it brings into view medium sized carvings of apsaras (celestial dancers) and devatas (female divinities), as well as incredibly ornate leaf-like patterns carved in every column, repeating motifs on the walls like textiles made of stone, and layered flower and animal patters running along every terrace.
We noticed that the majority of the numerous Buddha statues within Angkor Wat are missing heads- the result of theft by antiquity dealers and vandalism by the Khmer Rough.
After walking deeper into the structure and climbing a harrowingly steep set of stairs to the upper tier, I paused to examine the exquisitely fine detail on one of the apsaras’ headdresses.
And then I sort of lost my mind.
A sensation washed over me that I had not anticipated. Walking through the building had provided a sense of its scale, and the carvings I had seen along the way had revealed the fineness of the details, but then those two extremes crashed together in my head, and I suddenly realized that every surface of the building, the roof tiles and the walkways and the under hangs and the towers, the lintels and the cross-bracing and the columns and the terraces, they had all been as skillfully carved as the fraction of work I had just seen.
Imagine a cube sitting on a table. If each face of the cube is one square foot, the total visible surface area of the cube is five square feet- four sides and the top. Five square feet is about the size of a small coffee table. How much work it would take to carve, say, a pattern of inch-wide daisies across that entire area of stone?
Now imagine Angkor Wat, a building with a perimeter of almost a mile that has multiple tiers, endless galleries, thousands of columns, and a maximum height of 213 feet. Just as with the cube, imagine flattening out the surface area of the building into one continuous plane. Now, instead of daisies, imagine filling that massive area with arguably the finest stone carving that the world has ever seen.
And don’t forget, the carving couldn’t begin until all the sandstone blocks required to build the place were quarried, transported to the construction site, lifted into place, and worked together so close that even today a knife blade won’t slide between them.
Oh, and the perimeter walls, moat, causeways, temple construction and carving work, it was all completed in only 30 years.
My head was spinning, and we hadn’t even seen any bas-reliefs yet.
***
After watching the sun slowly turn the upper tiers gold, we descended the stairs again and stepped back out to the lower tier where the galleries are all located.
Angkor Wat’s bas-relief galleries cover the seven-foot-high inner wall of the entire first level, 12,900 square feet in all. The four sides are split in two by the entrances found in the center of each, and the sections all depict different scenes drawn from Indian epics, legendary Angkor battles, and other works held sacred to Hindus.
Arriving for sunrise, far less visitors were present than would be there later in the day, so Brianne and I were mostly alone as we walked slowly along the galleries stretching off into the distance. The excellent guidebook I brought (ANGKOR, by Dawn Rooney) explained each scene in detail, so I read the stories aloud as we identified the main characters, followed the action that was unfolding before us, and marveled at the incredible skill evident everywhere we looked.
Several of the battle scenes depicted melees as intense and violent as something out of Braveheart or Gladiator, and another was split into three horizontal bands- heavens depicted in the upper band, earth in the center, and hells on the lower band.
I was constantly impressed by the creative ways used to tell the stories. For instance, one gallery depicted Krishna riding a bird-man called a garuda as he travels across the land to defeat a evil king named Bana. What was interesting is that Krishna’s image is repeated many times, each time closer to Bana and each time overcoming a different obstacle. Walking the length of the wall was almost like turning the pages in a flip book- the first animated sequence made of stone.
All of the bas-reliefs were amazing, but the real standout was the gallery depicting a scene from the Hindu epic Bagavata-Pourana, ” Churning The Ocean Of Milk.” It depicts a seemingly endless line of men engaged in a tug of war using the serpent Vasuki as the rope. In the center of the scene Mount Mandara serves as a pivot, supported by Vishnu in the form of a turtle. The churning of the milk ocean is intended to produce an elixir of immortality, and the participants have been working at it for 1000 years. The body of the serpent separates the sky from the ocean, with sea monsters and fish swimming below and thousands of beautiful apsaras flying above.
In addition to the fantastical subject matter, the scene is remarkable because it is the most delicately carved and naturalistic of all the bas-reliefs. The bodies of the pullers look more like muscle over bone than seems possible to achieve using as course a material as sandstone, but there it is, someone actually did it.
We left Angkor Wat four hours after we’d arrived, truly awed by what we had seen and looking forward to the discoveries that were sure to follow.
