The first day in Angkor was a huge day for me as this place has been somewhere that Ive wanted to visit for a VERY long time. Apart from seeing it in lots of films, and computer games, its one of the greatest cities of the ancient world and at its height (in the late 12th Century) it had a population of over 1,000,000 people covering 1000 Sq kilometres- when London had only 50,000 people...
Heres a map of the area that most of the temples we visited are marked on.
This is only a small amount of the temples that you can explore in Angkor, and we only got to see a selection of whats on this map. On the first day we decided, with our new Dutch friends (Arnika and Albert), to work our way in from the outside, saving the best till last, Angkor Wat.
We had 3 days, so on the first day we started at Preah Khan, to the north of the area, and started to work our way around the road clockwise, finishing with Pre Rup.
Below you can see the entrance bridge to Preah Khan.
After a walk across the bridge, crossing the now dried up moat, and a short walk of about 400 metres we arrived at the entrance gate to the temple.
So far I have to admit to feeling a little unimpressed, but the excitement of being in this place got to me the moment we went through the gate and saw the temple itself. The pictures don't really show the scale of the place, or give the sense of tranquility that you got whilst exploring these ancient buildings. This one was built in the 12th Century and so is actually one of the newest here.
Unfortunately records of the time are very hard to come by as the Kkmer wrote on specially treated palm trees or on animal skins, meaning that none of the original records still exist. The history and even the uses of the buildings has been pieced together by historians and archaeologists over the years from documents that have been kept by others and by studying the sanskrit that covers a lot of the buildings. This does mean though, that a lot of it is actually guess work.... but then so is most history in its way.
As you can see we could get right inside the temple and follow it through to the other side. At the time is was occupied it is thought that it was used as a temple/monastery/university all at the same time, and so you can imagine the place bustling with activity back in the 12th century.
Here you can see some of the sanskrit in one of the doorways as you walk through.
The carvings all over the temple were to cater for worshippers of Buddha, Shiva and Vishnu, plus over 282 more Gods. This really was a multi cultural city!
As we came through to the other side, we entered the 'Hall of Dancers'. I couldn't find any dancers myself......
And then getting to the other side, we got a great view of the way that nature, in the form of fig trees mainly, has been slowly reclaiming the city for itself.
When I did finally exit the temple we came across this massive spider in the path, about the size of a hand. It looked either as if it was about to jump, or that it had been ran over......... After quite a bit of watching to see what it would do a huge wasp wandered over and dragged it of in to the grass,..... never to be seen again...........
After this I read a bit more in my book and discovered that we had missed two completely intact sculptures of King Jayavarman VII wives. They were very hard to find and so a challenge was set..... One that only I seemed to want....... Find them, take a picture and be a winner!
After about 20 minutes of searching I found a few ways through some collapsed temple and could smell some incense. So, following my nose, I began delving deeper into the ruined temple. After a few more minutes, with the smell of incense getting stronger, I came upon this dark vault with one of the sculptures of King Jayavarman VII wives, and lots of offerings and incense. I couldn't believe my luck and so I got out my phone to take a picture........ and it was full! You as well as Jo, Arnika and Albert will all just have to take my word for it that I found it.
AND IT I FOUND THE PICTURE!!!
On my way back to find the others, I did meet a very old monk who offered to give me a blessing, and so feeling that I could do with a little luck I let him say his prayers, sing his songs and then gently blow on my hands and forehead (quite pleasant since it was so hot)...... but unable to hold back my feeling of hilarity at the situation I dissolved into goggles. This didn't seem to phase him in the slightest though, as he giggled away with me and then attached a cotton bracelet to hold my luck in. A surreal but lovely experience.
After I finally caught up with everyone else we made our way back to our tuck-tuck driver and carried on to the next temple. Strangely no one believed my story about finding the sculpture..... but I know the truth!
The next temple (above) was called Neak Prean and you walked up to it across a long walkway. During the rainy season this whole temple becomes an island and is constantly hidden behind the forest that seems to grow out of the moat around it. I didn't know what to expect as I walked up to this but once you get in it becomes obvious that this was once some kind of water feature, just on a much grander scale!
The central pool (above) looks as though it feeds several outer ones and so it is thought that this could have been a baths or maybe even one of the healing pools that are described in texts of the time. Again, you have to use you imagination. I personally think it was some kind of baths, with water slides, wave machines and loads of other fun stuff back in the day.
The next temple was just up the road a bit further, called Ta Som. This as you can see from the photos below was a very similar temple to the first one we had seen, Preah Khan, but smaller. This was also a lot more beautiful as it was very much more intact but this point everybody was fading in the heat and so we went looking for lunch.........
The heat was intense, around 35-40 degrees all the time but as you can see we managed to survive on coconuts! The lunch time drive with our Tuk Tuk was also a bit of a trial for four hungry foreigners as it seems that the driver would get fed at which ever establishment he dropped you at. This meant that the first place he took us too was so touristy that the prices were actually more expensive that I would pay in England for the same kind of thing. Egg and chips for the equivalent of £9-10 is a rip off no matter were you are, except maybe Japan......
In the end we managed to get him to take us to one of the local places by the side of the road, which had no air conditioning or high prices and took ages to serve you as they killed the chicken and gutted it seconds before cooking it for you! Fresh food but according to our driver they were a bit dirty. Good excuse mate but I thought it was great!
The only thing I didn't like about this was that I was stupid enough to order a steak on chips..... Chips are all hand made out here and they don't make proper chips, they make french-fries, so the labour that goes into them is intense. Also there were no cows anywhere to be seen....... When I eventually got my meal, the beef tasted like jerky... or rat......... neither of which I like that much......... but I ate it and we carried on.
The next two temples were a bit of a blur as we were very tired after dinner, and with all the exploring in the heat. The next temple was behind us as we ate and is called Eastern Mebon. It was very tall and had a lot of steps to the top which gave the most amazing veiws of the forest surrounding us.
The very last temple of the day was Pre Rup. This was built in a ziggurat style and must have been very impressive in its day but by this point I was more interested in taking silly pictures and checking of the elephants that were guarding each corner!
We went home totally knackered and prepared for another day in the Angkor area............
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