Angkor Temple Complex

So I fell victim to a common mistake. Angkor Wat is just a temple, but it is a small part of a massive temple complex, all of which is breathe-taking. I had read about a few of the lesser temples, and I figured that two days would be plenty of time to see everything...boy was I wrong. Two days was plenty for temple sight-seeing, but it wasn't near enough to see all of the awe-inspiring structures in that area. For the first day of exploration, we got a guide and more history than we bargained for. We were both praying silently for the man to be struck dumb by about lunch time. The information was all very interesting, but when he started with unpronounceable King the I and progressed through unpronounceable King the VIII with several intervening kings, we were hopelessly lost. I also got confused through all of the changes in religion. They mixed and switched between animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, and different Kings supported different ones, so the deities in the temples were rubbed out and switched a number of times, and sometimes just eliminated all together. Consequently I bought a book. :)

So while the temples in Thailand were ornate and gorgeous, the temples of Angkor are rugged and imposing. They have truly been hacked back out of the jungle, and in places, the banyon trees are so old and large, that they look to have grown out of the ruins as well as over them. There are areas that still have beautiful carving, but the spine tingling aspect is really how ancient everything looks as it threatens to fall down around you. The idea that people could build such large complex structures with such detail is mind blowing when you consider that these temples were started in the 800's. I'm afraid I'll fail miserably if I try to describe the structures to you, so I'll just give some pictures and some names.

This is the Bayon temple. Every spire is topped with this king's face, pointing toward the four cardinal directions:
Ta Prom was also spectacular in the havoc nature has wreaked with it. This is the one famous for having the massive banyan trees um, invade it I guess. I think it's been in some movies. The picture of the tree is just to give you some perspective on how big these suckers are. I couldn't get most of it in the picture!


Next is Angkor Wat. I don't think it needs introduction, but you should definitely be humming the Indiana Jones theme song as you scroll through. I added one of the murals because both the Bayon temple and Angkor Wat are famous for the stories carved on their walls.

Many of the structures have very similar elements, so I can illustrate most of what I saw with pictures of a few. We actually visited about 13 separate structures, but I'm only adding pics of one more that I found particularly awesome. Bantay Srei is way off the beaten path...it's a good 45 minutes further out from the rest of the temple structures, but it is well worth the ride. In addition to seeing some more rural village life on the way, the structure itself is gorgeously carved and the sandstone is still quite pink.