I knew very little about the Angkor Wat before coming here. But the name Angkor Wat actually refers to the main and biggest temple in the ancient city of Angkor, which was the capital of the Khmer Empire between 10-12th century. It was the largest preindustrial city, larger than the next biggest city by the Mayans by several folds.
While I always pictured it as this glorious golden temple, what exists today are actually ruins of the ancient temples. Everything else from the Angkor city have been lost through time with erosion from weather and forest. I did some reading on wiki travel, but did not do so much reading on the Khmer history.
My initial thoughts of exploring said temple was trying to find a tour guide and driver through our hotel, but clearly that was not a good idea as our guesthouse had terribly reviewed tour company. The next option would be to venture out, but given that exploration should start early the next day, we though we could go to the office of tourism and try to find tour offices along the way.
This would have been a good idea except we went the wrong way... Totally missed the side street right next to us which had all the little booking offices and instead made the mistake of trying to head the tourism office, which was closed. We then decided, no guides, just a tuk tuk driver. There were two tuk tuk drivers just outside of this office, who asked for $20 for day going around the small circuit. At this point, we knew nothing except the price should be around $15, and that there were very few cars or tuk tuks on the street. After we walked away, we encountered another fellow who offered $16. This seemed reasonable and he seemed knowledgeable, so we hopped on.
Off we go on said ride to the Angkor. The first stop is the ticket booth, which is in front of the main entrance, and traffic is pretty crazy right there because of all the tourists. The line wait is not too bad and turn around is pretty good for the picture taking.
The first thing we came upon was the moat that surrounds the Angkor Wat temple itself. What for? This was apparently part of the elaborate irrigation systems built by the Khmer people and remains with water even during the dry season, but it still does not explain why there is a moat around a temple. As you can see, this moat is very wide and certainly provides a barrier to entering illegally, though the walls surrounding the temple are not super high or have watch towers to fight off crossing invaders.
The bridge leading to the entrance tower has the right side repaired and is smooth but the left side appears to be less recently restored.
The entrance tower sits at the end of the bridge. It's fairly small, but upon first viewing it, I was very impressed by the sandstone structure and the intricate designs of all the reliefs on the stone. Between the moat, the bridge and the tower, we must have spent about 1 hour just taking pictures.
We took the left hand exit to reach the temple proper, but just to note that there were lots of peddlers selling bootleg copies of the guide book. The initial asking price was somewhere between 11-18. I was able to bargain it down to $4 with the vendor at the far side of the left exit, but I wasn't able to reach this price the next two days earlier in the day. And I did not buy the book at the end as it was already getting hot, and the prospect of lugging a book around seemed terrible...
From the left side, we skipped the library as it didn't seem that great for pictures (and we were getting too hot) and instead headed straight for the water basin on the left side. A note here is that we were lucky to reach earlier in the morning as all the water lilies closed their blossoms around noon.
The Angkor Wat itself is best known for the extremely wide bas relief etched into the walls of the first tier. This is where a guide would come in handy as these involved a lot of mythical and historical references, which without a guide becomes boring after a while, though most guides I saw were giving a rather brief explanation and just pointed out the important figures in the reliefs. We had a good time interpreting the reliefs on our own and trying to understand the story. However, these do not show any everyday life and is mostly a tribute to the mythical figures and the god-king Suryarvarman II, whom the Angkor Wat also served as his Mausoleum.
The second tier did not have the bas reliefs. One can see the architecture fairly well. Interestingly, because of the way the second tier is built, with walls surrounding a courtyard, I forgot that I was actually quite high off of the ground. It was not until the third tier did I realize how high the third tier is from the actual city grounds.
The third tier appears to be the actual place of worship. This is the place that have been used by the local people since the time of Suryarvarman II to worship, so it is considered a sacred place and there are controllers at the entrance to deter tourists who are not dressed appropriately. Shirts without shoulders and shorts/skirts above the knee are not allowed. I was told to take off my hat as well. As can be seen above, the stairs leading up to the temple was quite steep, which was a prevalent theme for the rest of the larger temples. At the end of a tiring day, these steps can be an overwhelming challenge...
There is a Buddha statue at the top of the third tier. Oh, I got scammed in this temple as there are all these people who hand you incense and tell you to pay respects to a Buddha statue and then ask you for a donation. Given I had no riels, I had to give a 5 rmb bill (that was the smallest in my wallet..). Otherwise the view was nice, and you can explore the 5
towers up top. We probably spent about 3-4 hours exploring the Angkor Wat. I was quite dehydrated and exhausted at the end, so I caved in and bought this "palm juice", which really looked like the dirty moat water:
It tasted like bamboo leaves with sugar water, and I wasn't sure if I would be sick or not at the end of the day, but I drank it anyways. Other than some funny feelings in my tummy later that night, did not have any other problems. The drink was quite refreshing and was key to the rest of the day which we powered through without lunch...
This post is getting long. Alright, Part 2 to come.
No comments:
Post a Comment