Angkor Wha? Or, the most obvious pun ever

7th November 2010

Last night me, Hanna and the German girls (see Chiang Mai and Pai posts), Josefin and Anna and their new German friend Lisa had a few drinks and decided to head to Angkor the next day at eight. Yes, let's have drinks and get up at eight, what a fantastic fucking idea . . . stupid Germans.

If you don't know anything about Angkor, you probably know more than you think. The primary temple is the massive Angkor Wat (Wat means temples), hence my truly awful pun of a title.

[note from the future: as I finish this off, I've discovered that I am not the only one with a terrible sense of pun-age - there's a bar in Siem Reap called Angkor What? And since I had already made the joke here, I immediately bought one of their t-shirts for my own enjoyment. I now wear it with a sense of pride in my own idiocy!]

Some of these temples have served as the setting for several films, including Tomb Raider, so some of them might actually be recognisable to you . . . you know, if you can remember that awful awful film.

So anyway, Angkor is a large district that consists mostly of the ruins of old temples. The reason why there are so many temples and few other structures is a religious conceit that only the Gods deserved permanent, stone structures, so whole temples and shrines were built from stone, homes were built from wood, which was either destroyed in a number of invasions and natural disasters, or simply degraded over time. As a result little remains except for some hundred major temple sites, and hundreds of smaller ruins scattered over a huge area. In terms of size, the spread of the original city probably rivalled that of modern day Los Angeles.

Angkor Wat is the main, and biggest temple, but on the urging of Hanna, we decided to go against the flow and visit Angkor Wat last.

We started with Prasat Kravan, which is apparently quite unique in its design for a Khmer structure. It was a decent place to start, being quite small compared to some of the others.

You can read a much more detailed account through that link there, but basically it's an old Hindu temple, dedicated to Vishnu and has images of Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi carved directly out of the brick used to build it.

By the way, to enjoy some of these temples, you have to really like old stuff, or temples, but I'm good in that department.

Afterwards we headed out to the Tomb Raider temple, perhaps one of the most famous of the lot, Ta Prohm. It's not only famous for being in Tomb Raider, but also by the degree to which it has been reclaimed by the forest surrounding it. It's a very eerie place, where you can see exactly how much nature gives a shit about the works of man. Trees grow up through everything, ruining brick litters the area and dispite ongoing conservation efforts, still place is more ruin that any of the other temples we visited.

I think this was one of my favourite places here. It looked amazing, and seemed like something out of some many books I've read, ruined cities, dead in some apocalypse or another, a warning or a promise of some future cataclysm to come for the rest of us. Were the population of Ireland to disappear tomorrow in less than a hundred years, our homes and town would be forests, the tumbled bricks poking out here and there, whole cities subsumed into forest. And since my imagination was running away from me anyway, I could just about conjure the faces of old, dead gods slumbering beneath the ruins, ready to be awakened, some fabulous beasts emerging from some story - a story that part of me is already writting, a story sprawling across Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, maybe even Vietnam . . . but who knows, let me get the first book out before I get to this one maybe?

After this we headed to Ta Keo, which was fun because it involved walking up steps designed for a midget's feet at an almost vertical angle to a height of 21 metres above the ground and I have a slight aversion to heights. But it actually was quite fun!

We climbed in shifts, four ahead and one behind with the cameras - all the cameras, to take pictures at each of the different terraces. Some of them were actually quite a distance from each other, so the ones of me are all very hard to make out but there's a decent one of all the girls (and some bloke who walked across at the last second), which is better anyway because they're much prettier than me. And you know what I look like . . . unless you've already forgotten . . . :-(

The way down was a bit more interesting, for me at least. Turned around and walked down backwards. It's just easier. The last thing I wanna see before I die is the ground rushing at my face like a train - I'd rather watch the sky as I fall backwards!

Afterwards, we headed for Angkor Thom, which contains two temples and two terraces full of wonderous goodies that I won't talk about all of because you'll probably kill me. Bayon (above) is the main temple here. It's quite cool, and filled with bas-relieves, which I think I put on Facebook - I'll check and add them if not. There isn't room here for everything.

Two most interesting things about this temple are this. It's built on three levels. The lowest is Hell, though this is more of a purgatory than the Judeo-Christian version of Hell as an eternal prison. The second is earth, while third, pictured here, is Heaven.

There are also dozens if not more of these huge faces carved into the rock. Someone told me there are 54, each representing a region of the Khmer Empire. There are also another few hundred statues with the same face. Apparently these are of Avalokiteśvara, "the Lord who looks down", a benevolent guardian spirit. Some researchers think that the face may actually be of the King who built the place, so it's also a little weirdly Big Brother too.

The next place on the walk was Baphuon, described as the world's largest jigsaw puzzle. It was largely collapsed and ruined but a restoration effort was ongoing in the 1960s which involved taking apart some of the remaining structure. When the Khmer Rouge (see upcoming blog on the Killing Fields) came to power the notes and maps were lost, leaving only a pile of rubble behind. Efforts to restore the temple began again in 1995.

Next up was the Terrace of the Elephants, which wasn't up to a whole lot, but did have some really cool sculptures of elephants - did you see that coming? I beat you did, you're clever, you are!

Next up was the slightly creepy but also very cool Terrace of the Leper King. It was originally thought to be dedicated to a particular, leperous king of the Khmer but actually, it seems to be a shrine to Yama, the Hindu Death God.

Take a look at a few pictures please.

This particular one on the right is my favourite, a weird and worn demon face shrouded in cobwebs in a death-god shrine? Why wouldn't I love it?

In this Shrine you walk around a you shaped corridor full of these carvings, and then walk up a small hill to the statue of Yama that you'll see below. The coridor seemed long at the time and there were so many awesome carvings, though as I said my favourite is the one up there.

Let's scroll down and take a look at Yama shall we?

I stopped here to say a brief prayer. Some of you may find this odd, although I don't. Were we members of a polythesistic culture, I really do reckon I'd probably say my prayers to Death. Does that sound awfully morbid? It probably does, but only because you aren't seeing it the way I do. Death is a terrible thing, tragic and hard to deal with, but Death-Gods are not the bringers of death. In fact, they have little or nothing to do with the dying of a person in most mythologies, but rather with the afterwards. They are most often psychopomps (guides) who lead the spirit of the deceased from life into death, helping them to make the transition. Perhaps the best representation of Death I have ever come across is Neil Gaiman's Death of the Endless, a spunky little Goth in appearance. Death is never easy, but I think sometimes we forget about what it must be like for the dead, if there is an afterlife. If there is nothing then it doesn't matter, but if there is some life after this, I like to think that something was there when my grandfather and grandmother passed, something to comfort them and help them along their way. It doesn't really matter if it's an angel or some God or spirit or a Goth with frizzy hair and too-pale skin. It would just be nice to think that someone was there on the other side to hold your hand and tell you, "You know what? It's gonna be okay?"

So yes, I stood at the shrine of Death and thanked him for his service to my dead and bid him look after them and those of mine that come after, and I honestly don't care how strange that may seem to some of you.

We did visit other temples but they all get a bit same same after awhile, so I'm gonna jump from here all the way to Angkor Wat.

I'm not even sure what to say about this place other than IT IS FUCKING HUGE!!!! Seriously, I could go on and on and on, but you still wouldn't get how big it is.

It's not my favourite but it is the most popular, probably because it's so big. It is cool though, don't get me wrong.

Of note was all the Buddhist monks around. Although it started out as a Hindu temple it was later reconsecrated as a Buddhist one and the Hindu statues removed. I suppose it's a major site of pilgrimage for Buddhists, seeing as its the largest temple in the world. Here's two monks walking out the main door.

There's quite a lot of fantastic bas-relief work around the temple but to be honest the wiki article does it more justice than I can do it so it might be worth your while to flick down through that. Some of them are awesome.

I don't really know what to say about the whole thing. You kinda do just have to see it to get the scale, and Angkor what is all about scale.

I did get this one really cool picture though, see just below. Dunno if you've seen the Searchers, with John Wayne, but I've always loved that final image of the door, looking outside from the house, where you see him on his own, seperated by an open door from the family setting of his brother's household. He's something apart, as this gunslinger figure.

Anyway, this shit is very reminiscent of that I think, though in the distance you can see a large statue of Buddha, looking back and for me it's more of a seperation of me (or the looker) and the Buddha as an idealised, abstract figure enclosed in a different space. Anyway, there you go. I think too much, in case you never noticed that.

So anyway, some more pictures and then I'm gonna leave Angkor. This is a shot of one of the four towers of the inner enclosure. There are outer ones too.

We also climbed to the highest spot, which houses the shrine to Buddha and is pretty cool, but restoration work is continuing all over the temple so there are plenty of spots where it isn't open at the moment. Probably, the whole thing will never all be open at the same time. Which is a pity, but what can you do? Something like this should be conserved so I can't complain. There are so many European sites that are lost and gone, like Carthage and Troy, that it would be amazing to be able to see.

It's important to appreciate the ones that are left and make sure we don't lose them, and we're very lucky we haven't already.

Anyway, it was about four at this stage and we were dusty and wrecked and it was time to go home, so we told our driver, home dude, let's go home.

It was about a forty minute drive and I nearly fell asleep. Dropped Hanna off at her place and then barrelled up to the room and changed straight into my swimming togs and hit the pool. The Germans did the same and we had a very pleasant hour throwing plastic balls at each other and chatting to a few of the other people around the place.

I had ordered some chips as a snack so had to jump out and eat them and then straight back in. Felt soooooo much better afterwards, it's not even funny. There was actually a bit of a surreal moment when I was getting back in, because about five more girls had arrived and was the only bloke in there, but to be fair I got over it and I really don't think they gave a shit.

We were all pretty wrecked after the day, so that night we just chilled in the hostel, me, Anna, Josefin and Lisa. Hanna was back in hers, also wrecked. We watched Yes Man, and then me and Josefin played the longest game of pool ever, because the table sucked and neither of us is in anyway good at pool, at all. And then in the end I won! Yay!

So that was Angkor guys, hope you weren't bored. I wasn't!

Anyway,

Talk soon, and much love and all that,
Shane.