Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm: Week 11 / Day 71 / March 22
Siem Reap, Cambodia: Our second day of the Angkor Archaeological Park takes us to Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm. The first is a large walled in area with a central temple. The second is most well known for its appearance in the Tomb Raider movie and is often referred to as the Tomb Raider temple.
The name Angkor Thom derives from the earlier name of Nokor Thom. The word Nokor is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning City and Thom is a Khmer word meaning Big or Great. Nokor was converted to Angkor over time due to similarities of the two words and mispronunciations. Angkor Thom was once a big city. Its walls are three kilometers long on a side and it enclosed the capital city built by Jayavarman VII for his empire. The city is believed to have had 80,000 – 150,000 residents. Unfortunately, all of the secular buildings within the walls have disappeared and only the temples remain.
At the center of the city was the Bayon Temple. This temple is best known for its many faces that appear on the towers throughout. The identity of the faces is unknown and may have been Jayavarman VII himself, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, mythical guardians, or someone else entirely.
The overall condition of this temple is not nearly as good as that of Angkor Wat. However, the faces in the walls and towers are very striking and visible at all places throughout the temple.
Similar to Angkor Wat, there were bas relief galleries (although much smaller due to the smaller scale of the temple and breaks in the walls), depictions of Asparas, and detailed carvings of patterns within the walls.
Moving further into the temple we could see the faces on the towers more clearly.
There were also many active shrines within the temple that had offerings and candles burning at them.
Interestingly, there were multiple spots where small holes in the floors were simply filled in with chunks of carvings that had fallen off the temple walls or ceilings.
We continued to walk through the temple looking at the carvings, the passageways, and small chambers.
Eventually we left and began to make our way over to the neighboring Baphuon Temple.
On our way to the Baphuon Temple we passed a large Buddhist shrine (Preah Ngoc) and rubble from other buildings in the area.
In front of the Baphuon Temple there was a group of monkeys. One of them was sleeping and startled awake due to noises in the trees as I was taking his picture.
As you can see, he fell back asleep pretty quickly even though I was about 10 feet away from him.
The Baphuon Temple was built in the 11th century as a temple for the Hindu god Shiva. It is a three tiered temple mountain that was converted to a Buddhist temple in the 15th century.
Walking through the temple we saw evidence of how the rocks were held in place without mortar through the use of tenon and mortise joints.
We continued to walk through the temple before heading over to the nearby Royal Palace area.
Passing through the Royal Palace area, we exited through the main gate and headed towards the Terrace of Elephants.
On the front of the Terrace of Elephants were a number of bas relief galleries of elephants (shocking, I know), garuda, aspara, and battle scenes.
Leaving this area, we headed to met our tuk-tuk driver who was waiting for us near another set of buildings – North Kleang.
I think anywhere else people would be fascinated by these structures. Here, because there are so many ancient buildings everywhere, people just look at them and say, “Yep, those are some old buildings” as they are getting into their car, bus, or tuk-tuk in the parking lot. In the time I looked at them, I did not see a single person walking in them or towards them.
Our tuk-tuk driver next drove us over to Ta Prohm. The most fascinating thing about this temple is that it looks largely as it did upon its rediscovery following its abandonment in the 15th century. There has been work done to reinforce structures and reconstruct some others, but the trees and jungle plants that encroached upon it have largely been left in place.
In many cases the roots look like snakes as they go along the tops of the walls and through doors. They also extend far from the tree and can disrupt buildings far away.
We walked all the way to the back of the temple, not actually that far, and then began to make our way back through the middle of the buildings. At one point I heard someone ask a guide why they planted the trees so close to the walls since they seemed to cause so much damage. I don’t think he considered the possibility that no one actually planted them.
The carvings and artwork here were as impressive as elsewhere.
But, it is really hard to notice anything other than the trees and their roots at times.
We slowly wandered through the remainder of the complex and eventually made it back to our tuk-tuk.
We headed back to Siem Reap to rest for a bit and then went out to a nearby temple (Wat Preah Prom Rath) of more recent vintage that we had visited briefly last night.
The majority of the temple grounds were tiled.
There were also a number of placards throughout that presented some interesting perspectives.
From these I gathered that life is difficult no matter who you are, and that #7 on the second one is a good rule to follow.
The temple itself was very similar in layout and adornments to others we have seen, with the main differences being in execution and stylistic choices.
I think my favorite thing at this location was the depiction of what I assume should have been a scary, wild cat. The only fear I would have upon encountering this would be hurting myself laughing.
Finally, I forgot to mention yesterday that we went to a nice French / Cambodian restaurant, but still remarkably cheap. The most interesting part of the meal to was that they gave us our drinks with straws that were green onions with the bottoms cut off. I was surprised that they worked very well and imparted no taste to the drink.
