Angkor Thom - Bayon

 Angkor Thom (meaning "great city") is the walled central city of Angkor. The exterior walls are about three kilometres on a side. This area, built (really renovated and expanded) in the 12th century by Jayavarman, contains his temple of Bayon. Just north of Bayon is the older temple of Baphuon, built in the 11th century, and north of this is the royal enclosure, Phimeanakas, the site of the no longer extant royal palace. To the east of Phimeanakas is the city's central square and the twin terraces of the Leper King and the Elephants.

I'm going to talk about Angkor Thom in two posts, primarily because of the number of images I still have, even after a thorough culling. This post will deal with Bayon.

The  crowd scene is the entrance bridge to the south gate of Angkor Thom, just up the road from Angkor Wat. Everyone arrives at Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom at about the same time, just after breakfast. As we cross into the walled city and again minutes later as we approach Bayon we are overwhelmed and disappointed by the throngs.

However, moments later, as the crowds spread out in Bayon we find ourselves remarkably alone. Popular spots are populated, but there is always a corner to turn, and a quite spot to contemplate the architecture. This indicates the size of the temples. Bayon is over 22,000 square metres. More importantly it is a warren of compressed passageways, on multiple levels, that open up onto small terraces of the inner gallery.

While Angkor Wat's architecture has been described as classical, Bayon is baroque. It is singular among all of Angkor's structures for the massive four faced heads that rise up from the inner gallery. There are (or were) about 200 faces.

Speculation is that the faces, very similar in appearance, are either of Jayavarman himself, or a bodhisattva, an enlightened being, often who stays behind to the guide the way to enlightenment for the rest of us.

While the great attraction of Bayon is the big heads, the outer perimeter of the structure is ornately engraved with images that tell stories of the mundane, historical events and daily life.

My own bodhisattva appears at the end.

Angkor Wat

When we came back from our week in Siem Reap (with our friend Sandra) and Battambang I warned that I had taken about 800 pictures with the new digital camera. Even (mostly) I was overwhelmed by that number. I'm still not sure what to do with them all; how to present them to you.

We had three days at the temples so I'll give you three postings. The bus trip from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap is about 6 hours (in Canada this would be about a three hour trip). 

The entire trip is one continuous beeping of the horn as we pass slow moving car, trucks, bikes, people, cows. Drivers here like to start beeping early and keep beeping long past the "obstacle".

Siem Reap is about 5 kilometres south of Angkor, which itself lies within a jungle forest preserve. We rented bicycles outside our guest house and rode up to Angkor Wat on day one. 

We had fled the river festival in Phnom Penh, celebrating the reversal of the flow of the Tonle Sap river. As Siem Reap had its own, smaller version of this, we planned a shorter day at Angkor so we could get back for some of the action. This included dragon boat racing—not the small dozen seaters we use here. These had crews of twenty to thirty.

A shorter day at Angkor Wat still took six hours. On day two we covered Angkor Thom; and a variety of outlying temples on day three took us on a 40 kilometre circuit east and north or Angkor Wat and Thom.

Three days is a bare minimum to cover the core of Angkor; a week would be more appropriate. Or in our case, perhaps a second visit.

Angkor, the heart of the Khmer empire, covers a metropolitan area of about 200 square kilometres, the largest pre-industrial city on the planet. The greater Angkor area spreads out 50 kilometres in most directions. This includes the walled city of Angkor Thom, the temple structure of Angkor Wat (literally "city temple"), and dozens of neighbourhood temples, barays and canals, and later religious and civic centres.

Though the empire had pretty much collapsed by the 15th century, the temple of Angkor Wat has never been untended and unused. So unlike most temple ruins in Cambodia and its neighbours, Angkor Wat was never swallowed by jungle or left to rot. There are still monks resident in the temple. Think of it as a working ruin. This means it is remarkably good nick. Included here is a photo of Anna-Marie getting a blessing from a nun.

Angkor was one of the reasons we ended up in Cambodia; a desire to experience Angkor led us to find an excuse to live in Phnom Penh. 

This page contains a (small) selection of the photos of this magnificent spot.

Up next, Bayon and Angkor Thom. Then, temples and trees.