Angkor: Angkor Thom

Long time, no post... I know!  

Back to the sights and stories of Angkor Archaeological Park, starting with Angkor Thom!

Angkor Thom means "Great City" in Khmer.  It is a walled city built by King Jayavarman VII in the 12th century and it was the last capital of the Khmer empire.

Leading up to the city's walls you cross over a large moat:

 

The moat crossings are over causeways flanked by these statues of giant demons and gods holding the body of a Naga (great mythological snake creatures), engaged in a sort of tug-of-war:

After crossing the bridge you enter through one of the 4 city gates (one for each cardinal direction)... each gate is 23 m high and has 4 large, carved faces, one facing in each direction:

Here, from the vantage point on top of the city wall, you can see one of the gate's faces straight on and the profiles of two others:

The base of the gate is built to look like a three-headed elephant:

The three elephant trunks:

Once inside the city, we headed over to the Terrace of the Elephants (although somehow I have no photos of said elephants), a large platform used for royal audiences and as a spot from which the king could view his army:

Then we headed to check out some of Angkor Thom's temples.  First up: Baphuon (at least I am pretty sure the photos below are all Baphuon... honestly, we saw a lot of temples this day!)

Baphuon is a three-tiered temple originally built in the 11th century, dedicated to the Hindu god, Shiva.  Lots more on it here if you're interested!

We opted to make the (steep, sweat-inducing) climb to the top of the temple:

One side of Baphuon has been covered by a giant, 70 meter long, reclining Buddha added after the fact when the temple was converted to be a Buddhist temple in the 15th century.  You can just make out Buddha's face below:

Baphuon was pretty cool viewed from across the reflecting ponds:

Up next: Bayon, Angkor Thom's coolest looking temple, deserving of its own post!

Angkor: Ta Prohm Temple

Ok, back to our Cambodia trip after that little detour into the world of strangely flavored potato chips. 

Angkor Archaeological Park: the largest and probably most well known of all of Southeast Asia's ancient temples complexes.  Angkor was built around the same time as other temples we've visited in the past few years, including Borobudur (blogged here and here) and Prambanan (blogged here and here) on Java as well as the Champa temples at My Son in Vietnam (blogged here).  I didn't realize before going, but Angkor is not just one temple, but hundreds of 400 square kilometers of temples, ancient cities, carvings, statues, moats, etc.  Impressive, to say the least.

Our first stop within the archaeological park was Ta Prohm, a temple built in the 12th-13th centuries by King Jayavarman VII for his mother, as our guide explained.  It was a Buddhist monastery and university that housed thousands of people in its prime, but was abandoned in the 17th century at the end of the Khmer empire, at which point the jungle overtook it.

You might recognize some images of the temple from the movie Tomb Raider (hopefully that's all you remember, because it was pretty bad)... lots of folks in Siem Reap refer to Ta Prohm as "the Tomb Raider Temple" as I'm sure having Angelina Jolie come to your country, film a movie, and adopt a baby is pretty memorable.

As you can see, Ta Prohm is basically being eaten by the crazy roots of these trees.  Unlike the other parts of Angkor, Ta Prohm was left essentially as is after it was rediscovered.  In some cases the roots are propped up to prevent further damage, but somewhere along the way, the decision was made to maintain the temple in a state of "apparent neglect" for aesthetic reasons.

The trees and roots with bas-relief carvings peeking out do provide a pretty picturesque setting, that's for sure!

 

This root is so big it needed supports:

 

 

 

The moss covered walls are pretty cool, too.

 

 

Some lovely carvings, too, although not quite the massive narrative carvings of the other temples within Angkor:

 

Grocery Games: Important Update

Long time, no see.  Not sure why I haven't been updating this blog of late... I've got tons of Cambodia stuff to blog about, but I am having some writer's block.  While I work on remedying that situation, please accept this very important update to my most recent Grocery Games post.

While perusing the snack shelves during a 7-11 beer run here in Bangkok, I spied this bag of Lay's below.  From what I can see, it is scallop flavored, thereby completing the anthology of sea-creature flavored chips available in Thailand (see also: lobster hot plate, hot chili squid, salmon):