Friday 23 September 2011

Angkor WAT

Day #39 - Angkor Wat Pt1

The saddest thing happened while creating this post. I spent FOREVER typing it out and Blogpress (the app ive been using) decided to die on me because the blog post was too big. No matter what i did, I could not open my saved file :( to avoid this again, Angkor is going to be broken into a two part post.

Our first full day in Cambodia was spent at Angkor Wat, one of the symbols of Cambodia.


Angkor Wat is a temple complex at Angkor, Cambodia, built for the king Suryavarman II in the early 12th century as his state temple and capital city.



As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious centre since its foundation – first Hindu, dedicated to the god Vishnu, then Buddhist. It is the world's largest religious building


Coleman and I got up at four in the morning so that we could depart for Angkor bright and early to watch the famous Angkor Wat sunrise. Unforutnatley, we had two things working against us: 1) it was so cloudy that we coudlnt even see the sun, rendering getting up at four completely pointless, and 2) there was restoration/conservation work being done, therefore having a ton of green stuff covering a lot of the temple. Sucky. Could have slept in more.





The whole complex covers more than two hundred acres, containing more than forty temples built through various reigns.






Throughout the Angkor temple, there were carvings of the reigh of the king, wars, daily lives of the Khmer people, the churning of the ocean of milk (ancient mythology), etc





When this site was declared a Unesco World Heritgr site, they put in several wooden stairs to facilitate the viewing of the temples. The original stairs are very, very, very steep and i guess due to time, have become slightly slanted downwards and therefore dangerous.






As mentioned earlier this was previously a hindu temple and after different reigns, there are also buddhist Items in the temple. Out of respect, women had to have their shoulders and most of their legs covered. It was over thirty degrees outside and i had to put on pants and jacket. Grrrrooosssss.



Some of the temple entrances did not have stairs leading up to them, its just a huge door really high up. These were meant for the king to ride up to the temple on an elephant. Only the people below him walk up stairs.


We lucked out with some beautiful blue skies that day. Considering its the rainiest month of the year, blue skies were a rare site to see. Unfortunatey, blue skies also meant scorching hot weather, especially near stone? Hot hot hot.





All around the complex, you would see little kids selling water, trinkets, guide books etc. I have been strongly discouraged to not buy anything from these kids because it gives them the message that they dont need to go to school and can just sell souvinirs to tourists. Not the kind of message we want to send.








See that yellow dot in the middle? Its a hot air balloon that allows people ot have an aerial view of the Angkor complex. Had there been no restorations going on, I actually might have considered it. Everything in Cambodia is relativley cheap...


Our tuk tuk for the day cost 15usd. He picked us up at five am and dropped us off at four pm. 11 hours of work! And he just waited for us ALL day. I wish we had these in canada, could ride one to work inatead of walking the ten mins it takes me lol.


This next temple is a pretty famous one, Bayon temple.


What makes it so famous is its towers..


There are fifty four towers representing the fifty four provinces of the Khmer Empire at the time this temple was built.









On each of the four sides of thr towers is a face, a face with a soft smile. Some say its the face of the king, some say its the face of his god, some say its meant to represent both. In any case, it was meant to show that he was watching all of his provinces in all directions and smiling upon them.





It should be noted that temples were built in stone because stone was reserved for the gods. People, including the king could only use wood for their living necessities.






Similar to the Angkor temple, this temple also had carvings of wars. If you look close enough, you can actually see different races in the people carvings. In this particular one, you can see that the chinese people are fighting along side the khmers, identified by their hair tied in buns and long beards. Cool eh?








Outside these temples, the area is covered in vegetation, trees trees everywhere!





See this here? No, its not a lake, not a river...do you know what it is? Its a swimming pool! Or was....it WAS the king's swimming pool back in the day. This photo doesnt really do it justice though, the pic doesnt even show one quarter of its size. What does the king need such a big pool for? Aparently for his TWO THOUSAND concubines. Lol.



Oops, i almost forgot to show these. The tickets have your photo on them! To ensure you dont sell them or give them away. Lol, government wants their money! As you can see, i was not ready for that pic lol.

Please see next post for continuation!

Location:Angkor, Cambodia

1 comment:

  1. Your hair is longer... That shows how long I haven't seen you. - Lucy

    ReplyDelete