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“WOW” |
having found ourselves an over enthusiastic tuk-tuk driver we started the day late but got ourselves 3 day passes for the Angkor Archoelogical site. the driver had his owb ideas for the route and the dyas visit. this was handy as the site is somthing like 90km sqaure!
the main and most intact temple is Angkor Wat, this is also the most popular.The building is breathtaking in many ways, The scale of the temple is massive, its supposed to be the bigggest religuous building in the world. its design represents the hindu and buddist sacred mythical land (in short! alex read more about the meanings of the buildings then i did),
the wonderment of the visual impact is carried from the overall form right down to the intricate detail applied to every stone's surface. its clear that the worshipper wiould have been moved from the first glimpse of the buildings right down to the detail of the window mullions. in many ways this could also be said of the great anglcan catherdrals.
we climbed to the top up the final 34 steps which aere high and also very shallow. this forces you to ascend pointing you feet sideways and thus not at the buddha at the top as this is a sign of disrespect. while we were at the top the wind suddenly picked up and the light sideways rain showers blew across the tenples interior.this was both refreshing and made for less tourists but climbing back down did give me the fear!
the rest of our visits looked at the less complete but equally dramatic sites. Highlights were Ta Prohm (tree roots eating walls) Bayon (famous smiley faces in the stone) and banteay srei.
During the night times we headed back to siem reap for typically rubbish tourist food and cheap beer. we eventually braved a market stall which was good grum and better value. however alex did get a belly ache!
previous travel blog entry
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