Everyone thinks Lara Croft and Indiana Jones; I think the Romans have nothing on the ancient Cambodians.
After arriving late on Wednesday, December 21 at our hotel — which we understand is a beautiful resort — in the dark we wake up on Wednesday at 4:00 am to go to Angkor Wat to see the sun rise. Only it’s a bust because of the weather, and we go in a different entrance to the temple, and manage to beat the worst of the crowd.
Instead, we watched the temple light up during the dawn
The next few days are a blur of early morning rises and all day tours. This is best told not as a timeline, I think, but as a sort of gallery:
Angkor Wat is the largest religious building in the world. Its size is impressive indeed
But what is more impressive to me is the amount of care put into its construction, and the detail involved. The sandstone blocks are joined without mortar, and in many cases, even after a thousand years, the structure is totally sound and the seams between stones are difficult to see.
These long hallways are lined with incredible carvings, for example these, depicting battles between good and evil and the expulsion of Muslims long ago.
That’s not to say the temple is pristine. The gold that covered the towers is long gone, and the statues of Buddha have been pillaged as well.
One sight that is overlooked by many visitors to Angkor Wat is this beautiful statue of the Protector of the Universe. Now that’s an entity I think should not be ignored!
Sometimes one can’t resist trying for a ‘money shot.’
At sunset the temples get a beautiful orange glow.
The most popular temple in Angkor is Ta Prohm, which was overrun by vegetation.
And here is the most famous view of the temple. I’m told it’s featured in a Lara Croft movie.
What is incredibly great to me about visiting these ruins is that, unlike, say the Coliseum in Rome, you can walk pretty much where you want, and get up close to the carvings. Creationists point to this particular carving at Ta Prohm as absolute proof that dinosaurs lived contemporaneous with humans.
Another favorite temple of tourists is Bayon, which has 54 towers, each one with four Buddha images, reported in the literature to actually be portraits of the current king. Here is one of my favorite of multiple photos of those towers.
The sandstone for these temples was mined from a mountain about 25 kilometers away and hauled down by trains of elephants. The rut they made is now a waterway. The river that flows down the mountain is called Kbal Spean. We hiked up the mountain to see the falls near the headwaters of the river.
It is considered sacred, and its stone bed is carved with sacred images and over a thousand Shiva Lingas.
My favorite, though, is Banteay Srei, one of the very oldest temples. It’s made of pink sandstone from no one knows where, and features the most delicate carving.
The reservoirs of Angkor are what I refer to when I say the ancient Cambodians rival the ancient Romans in engineering. They store — because they are still in use today! — the water of the monsoons for irrigation during the dry season. There is a connection to the largest inland lake in the region, Tonle Sap. During the dry season, water flows out of Tonle Sap; during the monsoons, the river reverses direction and fills the lake. We went out to see the lake, which at the moment is fairly low. Here is a picture of a large fishing village on the lake, with houses built on stilts. (I really get a kick out of the TV antenna on the long bamboo pole!)
There is an island on the lake with a village and a Buddhist temple, or Wat. Mary had fun giving the kids there some balloons. The kid with the orange shorts is waiting for her third balloon.
Not all the littlest ones wore shorts.
On December 23 we finally get a break. It’s only a half-day tour, and I get to work on the Hoi An entry to the blog after swimming in the pool. It really is a beautiful place, the Phum Baitang, now that we see it in the daytime. It’s made up of about 20-odd buildings. There’s Reception, a small gift shop, two restaurants, and housing for guests. Some are ‘villas’ have two suites, like the one we’re in. All this is set in a large, walled compound mainly filled with rice paddies! The place is rustic looking, but luxurious. Every comfort I can think of.
This place is a two-page spread out of the most fantastic travel magazine I can imagine. Here’s a view of the grounds from where I’m sitting writing. The two figures at the far left are scarecrows. The two in the middle are working in one of the rice paddies.
Here’s a photo of our villa.
Mary just messaged me this, taken from our villa:
Some of the groundskeepers are not as handsome as others.
My photos don’t do the place justice. If you want to see more pix of Phum Baitang, look online, though I think their photos only come closer.
I’m writing this on December 24th. Today we get to enjoy the resort some more. I’m writing using a table in the bar; Mary’s been reading and swimming. We’re ‘all Watted out,’ as Mary puts it.
Tonight we leave at 9:00pm to catch an 11:20pm plane bound for NYC. But before that, we have been invited to join in the resort’s Christmas celebration — caroling, special food, and so on. They’ve extended our checkout time to 9:00pm!
After a stopover in Seoul we board the final leg into the US at 10:00am Christmas morning, ETA NYC 10:00am!
Next: Some final thoughts