Angkor Wat

Where to start about Angkor Wat? It’s the largest religious building in the world and also used as shorthand to refer to a site of over a thousand temples in the Cambodian jungle built over the course of hundreds of years in the ancient Khmer capital city of Angkor. You can say it’s a magical and mystical spiritual centre, an engineering marvel, a doorway into an ancient civilization or the setting for some scenes in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.
Let’s start with how you really need solid lower body joints and a good sense of balance to go up and down all the stairs and raised interior thresholds. It’s up and down and lots of up and the exact same amounts of down but with a level of wear, steepness, and narrowness of tread that you underestimated on the way up. It’s probably the real reason the civilization disappeared. They all broke their necks on the steps.

We were told that the multi-level temples were for the gods, as a representative of heaven. Angkor Wat is meant to represent Mount Meru, home to the Hindu gods. Once you ascended to heaven, you really didn’t want to come down. Flatter complexes would have been for the royal family and attendant priests. It’s true that coming down all those steps feels like hell.

We arrived at 4:30am for sunrise. Sunrise isn’t until 6:15 so it seemed a little mean, but our guide was competing with all the other guides to get us in the gates and in place by the lake. Our morning was heavily overcast so we waited by the lake for a sun that never offered us any rosy fingered dawn. Nonetheless, it was impressive to see the towers of Angkor Wat slowly emerge from the blackness as if turning into a 3D image. Ultimately, being overcast protected us from exploring the ruins under the searing sun that we had been experiencing. By the time the sun was fully up we were seeing the image of Angkor Wat that is on the Cambodian flag.

Angkor Wat, the building, is unusually oriented to the west. Temples are usually oriented to the east. The west is associated with death - riding off into the sunset and all that. Was that because it was initially for Vishnu, who is associated with the west, or because the king who commissioned it intended it to be his funerary building? There are hints to the latter in the iconography of the building and a possible funerary urn was found in the central tower. 

Cambodians had been animists (ancestor worshiping) until the 1st century when they were introduced to Hinduism by India and the earliest temples were built as Hindu. Then there was a shift to Buddhism and the Hindu god statues lost their heads to be replaced by Buddha, Hinduism reasserted itself and Buddha lost his head(s). A lot of stone heads rolled before these temples ceased being used. There is rarely a properly headed god to be seen in any of them. Apsaras (heavenly dancers) excepted. Garudas (mythical bird people), nagas (multiheaded cobras) and hamsas (lions) also managed to keep their heads. 

The buildings of Angkor Wat are mainly approached by a long wide road or walkway that crosses a moat or multiple moats and the walkways are framed by jungle. Some have moat bridges made of Nagas being held by a row of men who are mainly without heads and Hamsas standing guard. It makes for an impressive and deeply peaceful approach to a temple.

The entire site was a series of temple cities begun by different kings at different times. It doesn’t seem that many to any were 100% completed. You almost always see parts that were left uncarved or roughly hewn. Around the complexes but inside the moat lines would have been filled with teak houses on stilts where “important” people of the city lived. It’s unclear where the people who built and fed the city lived but it was a cleared and active area in their time and now it’s all jungle around and between the temples. 

The temples were re-discovered by different parties at different times. In the early 20th century there was an effort to clear the jungle from the buildings and see what was there and, of course, that was interrupted by the Khmer Rouge who used it for hiding out and target practice. Looting took its toll as well. It wasn’t properly protected until the 90s until it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The jungles I love so much must be regrowth after being cut down to be checked for landmines.

Unlike in other heritage sites, the temples aren’t being restored but being stabilized and sustained by a series of countries. The piles of rubble you see through the windows and doorways are being left in situ but they are restoring the odd area so you get an idea what it would have looked like and they are trying to keep them from falling down further. Japan is working on Bayon, which is the temple with all the faces, India is working on a gate at Ta Prohm, China, Singapore and Germany were working on others. Cambodia is doing some of the work as well. It’s a real international effort and will take generations to complete.

We learned that the temples were built of sandstone covering lava rock and foundations were built of laterite. Inside all the stone, however, was sand and sand that required water to stay solid. As the moats were not maintained and dried up, the foundations of the buildings began crumbling. Much of the stabilizing work is being done on them.

The famous three are Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm. Angkor Wat is a Mount Meru of the Hindu gods, recreating heaven in its upper level and 9 towers and its earthly levels for the royal family and priests. Bayon is the temple with all the faces of Brahma built into the gates and the towers. He looks like a smiling friendly guy. Ta Prohm may be known to some from scenes in Tomb Raider. Lara Croft does some shenanigans around temples surrounded by trees growing around and through them. Massive honking white trees. It’s super scenic, but with trees this huge, you just can’t convey it in photos. 

We spent two days zipping around the Angkor Wat site and saw a lot of amazing temples that kinda blend into one another in my mind. The real image I have is walking down a dusty wide road surrounded by jungle with a marvellous stone temple in the distance before me.