Lost in Angkorian Times

Hello my friends, out there in the world of Blogdom. I have been gone a while. Why have I been gone? I’ve been lost in the Angkorian period!

About four days ago I went with my family and a friend's family on a trip up to Siem Reap. We took a lovely air-conditioned bus (complete with its own built in bathroom). I spent the bus-trip taking pictures out the window, listening to music, and day dreaming. The total bus trip took six hours.
Once we reached Siem Reap we went to our hotel. There I was delighted to find that my room (which I shared with Kristine and Hannah) was all in threes. There were three beds, three towels, three soaps, and it was great. Sadly, we did not get three TVs, or three fridges, but we made do. The first day we didn’t do much. We went swimming (yes, I was convinced to get into that nasty ice-cold pool. Yuck.), had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and had ice cream at the Blue Pumpkin. The next day we were going to visit the temples.

The next morning we woke up bright and early, ate breakfast, grabbed our cameras, and headed for Angkor Wat. In the morning we planned to visit Angkor Thom, inside of which we intended to visit Bayon, The Terrace of the Elephants, and Ta Prohm. As we drove inside of Angkor we caught our first glimpse of the moat surrounding Angkor Wat. It was humongous! The moat was as big as a lake—much larger than your average moat. We drove by it and managed to see the gates of Angkor Wat on the other side of the moat. It was ten times larger than I had been expecting. I had heard that it was large, of course, but I had not expected this! We drove on until we were in front of Bayon. We did not go into Bayon immediately, but instead walked on the other side of the moat that surrounded it and went to look at some small temple-outposts. One of them was incredibly large for a “small” temple. There was a steep staircase going up the side of the temple… Let me describe it for you:

Imagine a step about the width of your foot (width, not length), add on a few more inches and you have the first step. Now imagine the next step a bit over a foot (not your foot, the measurement) above the previous one. Now you have the steps on the staircase. Now imagine this staircase not sloping forward like most staircases, but going almost straight up. And there you are. Angkorian staircases.And I climbed it. Yes, I did. I felt like Gollum creeping up the side of a cliff. It was amazing. Not to mention scary. Oh, and did I mention that the rock the staircases were made out of had partially crumbled away? It really was amazing.

At the top of the temple there was a small room. We walked around to the side where we found an open door. Inside was a Buddha statue, lying on its side. There was writing carved into the walls. We looked around a bit before beginning to make our descent down the staircase.

We then headed into Bayon Temple. As we crossed the bridge I looked at the stone statues that lined the bridge leading into Bayon. The gods and the demons, carved in stone, battling over the Näga snake. On our left were the gods. Most of them were in pretty good condition. They each clutched the Näga, you could see their hands and their feet. They had serene smiles carved into their faces. On the right were the demons—also clutching the Näga. They did not smile, however, but frowned. It was amazing, and it also really got me thinking.

After the bridge, we went inside Bayon. The faces on the towers were incredibly detailed. The way that they seemed to gaze down on the people below was unnerving. How could anyone in the twelfth and thirteenth century build such a thing?

We explored the temple for a bit, looking at the bas-reliefs (which were, also, incredibly detailed), examining the faces, and climbing up nice normal stairs (ok, so normal doesn’t quite describe them. But more normal than the others—they had been recently added to the temple). Kris, Han, and I eventually got separated from the adults. Good for us, bad for them. We explored on our own for a bit and eventually found a gorgeous, empty, chamber. There were no tourists. You can imagine how shocked we were. We sat there for a while, talking and taking pictures. Then, finally, Dad came and found us. We left Bayon and headed on to the Terrace of the Elephants.

The Terrace was beautiful, long and thin and one of the walls was, of course, covered in bas-reliefs of…elephants! We spent a bit of time there, taking pictures, and I succeeded in breaking the sole off my shoe. Thankfully, there was a shop nearby selling souvenirs and they just happened to have superglue. I was very happy. We then headed on to Ta Prohm.

The first thing I noticed about Ta Prohm was that it was not nearly as well-kept as Bayon. The temple was completely fallen into disrepair, and trees grew all over the walls and inside the buildings. It was also much smaller than Bayon. The trees were absolutely beautiful, and I have made the astounding discovery that they are, indeed, the descendants of the Mallorn of Lorien (ha!). Kris, Han, and I succeeded in getting lost there too, so Dad ended up calling us and telling us to come back (L). We took a few family photos in front of a tree that was completely growing over the wall, and then we left Angkor for lunch.

After lunch, a swim (yes! I went swimming, what is happening to me?), and a nap, we headed back to Angkor. This time we were going to Angkor Wat itself.

There is a good reason that Angkor Wat is called the city-temple. It is huge. Definitely large enough for a city. We crossed the moat and then walked down a long, stone, pathway. We passed two stone libraries—bringing to mind the fact that the people in the Angkorian period were quite advanced. Inside the temple we did a bit of exploring. We got to see the bas-relief the “Churning of the Sea of Milk” which was amazing. We also went and tried to climb up to the very tip of Angkor, but sadly it was closed off for renovation. We still climbed around quite a bit and I have a sneaky suspicion that Trevor (Hannah’s Dad), actually did climb up to the top. We watched the sunset from one of the towers in the side of Angkor, and then headed back out of the temple. I have never seen such an amazing piece of architecture. And it was built in the twelfth and thirteenth century. Amazing.

The day afterwards, us girls—Mom, Helen, Hannah, Kristine, and me—went to the Angkor National Museum. The museum was relatively new, and certainly could use some work, but we saw some amazing artifacts as well. The most amazing thing was that the Khmers knew about seven of our planets! There was a statue with representations of each of those planets, as well as the sun and the moon. We also learned quite a bit about just how much Hindu and Buddhist culture and religion blended during the Angkorian period. It really was all jumbled up. The room of 1,000 Buddhas was also quite interesting.

That night our parents told us that they had a “surprise” for us. We were all quite excited and we had no clue what this surprise was going to be. But then, when we were getting tuk-tuks to take us to this “surprise”, Helen told a tuk-tuk driver to take us “To the balloon”. So much for a surprise! But even if it wasn’t a surprise, we were very, very, excited. We were going to go up in a hot air balloon to see Angkor Wat at sunset!! We had a tuk-tuk race to get there. When we finally got up into that air-balloon I was amazed. It was huge, and we could see the sunset, the surrounding landscape, and Angkor Wat, all incredibly tiny. They didn’t actually let the balloon off of a big wire thing that it was tied to, but it still was great.

We didn’t do much the other days—just watched Star Trek with Hannah (I will make a trekkie of you yet!!). But I will never forget my experience at Angkor.

The bus trip home, however, was a little different than our bus trip there. We had gotten another bus in the hopes that it would be even nicer than the first. How could we have been so wrong? It was horrible. The place smelled bad. If it was air-conditioned than the word “air-condition” has completely lost its meaning, there was no good food, the seats were cramped, my legs were jammed into the chair in front of me, and the colors clashed. Oh, and did I mention that they were blaring music and playing stupid Chinese sit-coms? I have yet to figure out how I survived. But at any rate, it should make an interesting addition to my autobiography.

The whole trip was simply amazing and I will never forget it. Hopefully it won’t be my last trip to Angkor—actually, I’m sure that it won’t be my last.