We spent our final days in Cambodia at
the temples of Angkor Wat. We started with a sunset at 5.30 am.
Unfortunately, it was a bit cloudy, but the view was still beautiful.
We stood with several hundred people at the same pond to see Angkor
Wat reflected in the water ,but were early enough to stand at the
front row. After that, most tourist in tour groups went back to the
city for breakfast which meant the temples of Angkor Wat were
relatively quiet. The next lines are also a reminder for ourselves
and might be of less interest for people who have not visited Angkor
Wat.
Most are surrounded by a moat temples
and are accessed by a bridge. The bridges are nagas, snakes with 5-7
heads with their body as balustrade. They bring rain and and
symbolise the rainbow, the connection between earth and sky. The
temples have two guardians standing in front, an evil and a good one.
They are followed by a gopura, or entrance tower. The gopuras often
have beautifully carved pediments and lintels, with representations
of several gods, like Shiva, Vishnu or Indra. Shiva is the protector
of the universe and his wife is Lakshmi, goddess of fertility and
abundance, while Vishnu created the universe. Indra is king of the
gods.
We have severeal pictures of Indra on
the 3-headed elephant Airavata and Shiva on Nandi the bull.Each
temple has multiple prasats, or temple towers. They reproduce the
sacred mountain Meru.
The temples are made of sandstone,
bricks and laterite. The first material is reasonably preserved, the
laterite has a lot of small holes, but the brick structures often
partially collapsed.
A lot of the buildings have murals of
devatas which are dancing women deities. Unfortunately, a lot of
Buddhas were destroyed or removed because of a short revival of
Brahmanism.
King Jayavarman 7 has built a lot of
the temples at Angkor Wat and is responsible for making Buddhism the
state religion.
Angkor Wat was built in 1113
and is dedicated to Vishnu. It is also the mausoleum of the builder,
Suryavarman 2. In the 13th century it became a Buddhist
wat (temple). It has a lot of beautifully preserved murals and
devatas. It is a huge temple and has several elevated terraces. We
spent almost the whole morning discovering the temple.
Banteay Kdei has beautiful
entrances with 4 heads on the entrance tower. It was build in 1181 by
Jayavarman 7 and was probably dedicated to Buddha. The heads
represent the bodhisattva ( a person who has forgone Nirvana to help
humanity to reach enlightenment) Lokeshvara, with whom Jayavarman 7
identified himself as god of infinite compassion. As background info:
the dalai lama is seen as the human representation of Lokeshvara on
earth.
After lunch, it was time for Ta
Prohm. This temple was build as well by Jayavarman 7 in 1186 and
was dedicated to his mother. The decoration is of the Bayon period.
This temple is known by a lot people, because it was used as a film
setting in the movie Tumb Raider with Angelina Jolie. The temple is
beautifully overgrown with trees who have only been partially
removed. The entrance gopura has 4 heads of Lokeshvara as well. The
temple was a bit confusing and we lost the route described in the
guide book, but we made a lot of nice pictures.
We ended the day at the complex of
Angkor Thom. We run out of time so we missed part of the big
complex. We did however visit the best part, the Bayon and the
Terraces of the elephants and leper king. Around 1 million people
lived within the walls of Angkor Thom .
The function of the Bayon is unclear,
but is was dedicated to Buddha. Again there are several towers with
Lokeshvaras, 216 faces in total. The Terrace of the Elephants has, of
course, a lot of elephants and is over 300 m long. After 10 hours of
visiting, we were getting a bit tired but still noticed the sunset
over the Royal palace. The Terrace of the Leper King provided us with
some nice murals since they were only recently discovered and
therefore almost intact.
Our second day started with one of the
other temples near Angkor Wat, Pre Rup. Build already in 961,
it was dedicated to Nandi, the bull of Shiva. Only a small temple,
but with the nice early morning light and hardly any tourists a
delight to visit.
The next temple was a tuk-tuk drive a
bit further out, Banteay Srei. Unfortunately, it was also the
starting point of many Japanese tour groups. Worming ourselves
through the tourists and waiting them to get out of the way for
pictures, we still enjoyed this temple because of the many statues,
colors and general lay-out. A lot of the temple is still intact and
was built by two brahmans in 968 who were landowners in the area. The
local name, translated in The citadel of the women, was given because
of the voluptuous devatas.
After lunch, we visited some smaller
temples. East Mebon was built in 952 and dedicated to Shiva.
The temple has some well preserved elephants at the corners of the
temple. Ta Som is also partially overgrown but is build much
later at the end of the 12th century. Again it has two
entrances with Lokeshvara on them. Neak Pean was not
particularly interesting, but the nice part was a big moat
surrounding the temple divided in four parts with walkways to the
entrances. The temple is in the middle of a pond but because of
restorations work we could not get close.
The final temple of this day was Preah
Kahn. Built by Jayavarman 7 in 1184 and dedicated
to his father was a city in itself and a famous center for learning.
We did not have enough time to explore the entire complex because
Angkor Wat closes after sunset and the tuk-tuk driver decided earlier
in the afternoon to drive of to Siem Reap and let us wait for an
hour, but the half we saw was pretty impressive with several walk
troughs and side temples.
Day 3 was spent at 3 temples much
further away. The ruins of Beng Mealea, the jungle temple of Koh Ker
and the much disputed temple on the border of Cambodia and Thailand
and Unesco World heritage Preah Vihear. I will update this part
later.
After three long days we moved to
Bangkok, Thailand. The easy bus ride proved to be less comfortable in
a minivan instead of a normal bus and took much longer than expected,
mainly because of the border crossing and change of vans. All the
minivans drive on lpg, but it takes a long time to get in the fuel,
so and extra hour was spent on the gas station waiting to continue.
Instead of 3.30 pm it was 8.00 pm, but we made it to Bangkok were we
had dinner in a wonderful restaurant with a nice view on a well
lighted bridge.
A last minute flight brought us to
Clark Airport near Manilla the next day. It was a small disaster to
get in Manila. The promised two hour bus trip turned in a late
arrival because of the rush hour (Sunday was no exception). Instead
of 5.30 pm it was 8.30 pm before we arrived at the hotel. We weren't
in the best state of mood at that time but after a good night sleep
we were ready to explore Manila. Hotel rooms without window are quite
common here, since the cars, buses and jeepneys are really testing
your hearing. After a morning walking next to roads it is nice to sit
inside with only the noise of the airco.
Besides the horrible traffic Manila is
not particularly interesting. We still had to find out what the best
places to dive are in the Philippines and unfortunately the flight we
wanted to take was a bit too expensive which I meant we spent more
time in Manila than we wanted to. We did have an interesting
conversation with the Department of Environmental resources for the
possibility of volunteering in their ongoing biodiversity, marine and
coastal research and walked around at the wildlife center compound,
looking at all the confiscated animals who cannot be released in the
wild because they are exotic/ maimed/ earlier maltreated.
Unfortunately, part of the cages were way too small for the animals.
Seeing two tigers together in a 4 by 5 m cage did not make us happy
but they do the best they can.
The old center of Manila was mostly
destroyed at WW 2 and most buildings have been rebuild. The most
interesting location was the Asian mall, which was huge. A lot of
electronics are definitely a lot cheaper than back home. The amount
of fast food chains are incredible, which show the ties with the USA.
Tomorrow we fly to our diving destination.
