Towering Over Tourism

The towers of Angkor Wat

(Andrew) In Cambodia, we had two different experiences, Cambodian Living Arts and the temples of Angkor Wat. We visited 4 temples in the Angkor complex: Angkor Wat, Bayon, Ta Prohm and Banteay Srei. All of them were stunning and had their own special feature. For Angkor Wat it was its massiveness, for Bayon there were huge stone faces smiling down at us, for Jungle Temple it was the trees grown over the rock and for Banteay Srei, it wasn’t its hugeness, it was its intricacy. It’s remarkable that the Khmer Rouge didn’t destroy these temples during their anti-religion times.

A couple of things that really struck us were the size, detail, symmetry and the building process of the ancient temples. Angkor Wat was just MASSIVE. The tallest tower is 250 feet. What is cool about the size is that the whole thing is symmetrical: towers, galleries of stone stories, and the stories themselves. The detail of everything was amazing. Even on the top of the tallest tower, there was some design. On one of the stone stories there was a turtle biting someone’s butt. Which shows you that the builders weren’t just hitting away at stone and making a scene, they were really paying attention to what they were doing. The building process was amazing. They lifted 1 ton stones to the tops of all the towers which is just mind-blowing given that I am talking about the tenth to twelfth century.

A few other things that were amazing in the Angkor Complex were the apsara dancers, the nagas and the stories depicted. Apsara dancers are the heavenly dancers. In Angkor Wat alone; there are 1,700 of these Bas Relief sculptures, with 36 different hairstyles. The nagas are the 7-headed snakes that protected Buddha from the rain and the sea. They were in all 4 of the temples that we visited. Their bodies made the balustrades of the temples.

Trees creating a stone graveyard at Ta Prohm

The Jungle Temple was a Yin Yang of tree and rock. When we saw all the roots of the trees slithering over the old temple walls we were flabbergasted. This temple was abandoned by the monks so the vegetation grew over, unlike Angkor Wat which was taken care of. The trees would break their way into the rock and then rip it apart so in front of every tree there was a stone graveyard.

Angkor Wat was a big part of what made me put Cambodia in my top 3 favorite countries (so far.)