What can we ever say about Angkor Wat and it's surrounding temples that can possibly do it justice? 'Awesome' sort of helps but I think it's one of those places that one simply has to see for oneself.
We purchased a three day pass late on the Friday afternoon which allowed us free entry from 5 p.m. until sunset without jeopardising the three days. So this we did. We rushed in to see at least one temple in the setting sun, a great time to visit and to see the fading light on the temple walls. We chose a small one, Ta Prohm (circa 1191), which has had less reconstruction than most but it has incredible ancient trees and roots growing up and between the ruins which makes it very special. The fading light also added to the spectacle. It was love at first sight.
The following day, we arrived back at the grounds before sunrise to watch the sun come up on the main attraction, Angkor Wat (built in the first half of the 12th century), along with half a million other tourists. Where do they all come from! However, Angkor Wat is huge and the masses were soon dispersed throughout with the exception of the waves created by the arrival of yet another dozen or more tour buses filled with Chinese and/Japanese tourists rushing through at a rate of knots.
WOW, it really is spectacular in every way. There didn't seem to be anything, inside or out, that wasn't covered with some form of carving or relief work. And what makes this more amazing is the fact that it only took 37 years to build though there were a myriad of wall reliefs depicting the flogging of hundreds of slaves which could explain this.
The grounds cover some 200 hectares including it's wide surrounding moat and the vast scale enabled the Khmer of that era to give full expression to religious symbolism. It's a pyramid of three levels, each one enclosed by a gallery with four gopuras and corner towers and the summit is crowned with five towers in a quincunx. In short, it's positively stupendous.
After one circumnavigation, we decided to go over to another amazing temple, Bayon, for a quick look around before we had to get back to Siem Reap to meet Di and Wattie, good cruising friends who decided to join us for a couple of days while flying out of New Zealand on their way to South Africa. So fabulous to see them again but we hardly gave them time to breathe before we stuffed them into a tuk tuk to head back to the temples. Bayon was another incredible spectacle.
I could go on at great length about each and every site we visited naming names, dates, history or interesting aspects but I'd have to write a book to do it justice. Suffice it to say, it was an experience of a lifetime and one that we'll never forget; a definite highlight in what was already an amazing trip starting from the moment we left Calypso behind in Malaysia five weeks ago. When we finally get back, I'll be spending a month of Sundays offloading my photos onto my PC in the hopes of sharing just some of our experiences in photo form.
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