Angkor Wat is just the beginning of the temple-touring options built by the Khmer Empire nearly a thousand years ago, writes Mike Yardley.
It's been three decades since the Angkor Archaeological Park was declared a World Heritage site. But amid the head-spinning trove of temples and ornate structures prised out of the jungle, Angkor Wat is the most timeless anchor of wonder.
On a previous visit to Angkor Wat, my guide looked visibly mortified when I went to swat a critter that landed on my nose.
"It’s a butterfly!"
I had assumed it was a more menacing buzzard, but his life-saving plea for mercy stopped me from abruptly flicking it away. The butterfly was a vivid black- and green-winged beauty, who gracefully fluttered away into the pale refuge of the temple’s interior. Yes, butterflies are sacred creatures in this spiritually-charged sanctuary. After all, Angkor Wat was rediscovered 150 years ago by a French naturalist, Henri Mouhot, while searching for butterflies.
Gazing in awe at one of the world’s most recognisable landmarks doesn’t require you to take in the sunrise after an ungodly wake-up call at 4am. It may be a tourist pastime, but chances are, if you have my luck, you’ll strike cloud and heaving throngs of tourists.
The only time I would consider sampling sunrise would be if you’re in town for spring or autumnal equinox. That’s when, as if by magic, the sun precisely rises over the pinnacle of the temple’s central tower, underscoring the Khmer Empire’s meticulous astronomical brilliance.
As the world’s largest religious monument, proudly emblazoned on the Cambodian flag, Angkor Wat was the spiritual centre of the Khmer Empire, which lorded over the region from the 9th to the 15th centuries. The city of Angkor and its surrounding areas housed up to 1million residents at its height in the 13th century, and at the time, it would have ranked as the largest city in the world. That still blows my mind.
Dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu and built in the 12th century by King Suryavarman II, later transformed into a Buddhist temple, Angkor Wat’s postcard-perfect western entrance is flanked by balustrades of gigantic serpents which apparently represent cosmic fertility.
At Angkor Wat, you will want to take the time to admire the five spires of the main temple, reaching over 65m in height, reflected in the waters of the pond; it is an indelible experience. Acclaimed for its intricate ornamentation, harmony and striking beauty, those five beehive-like spires form a giant lotus bud at the centre of the complex.
Steep staircases will haul you up to the higher perches and incredible panoramas over the sheer immensity of the complex.
The terraces are decorated with images of Hindu deities, many of which have sadly lost their heads to looters during the Khmer Rouge regime. But the artistry of the temple hits its zenith in the extensive bas-relief work that covers its walls.
Don’t miss the first-level reliefs depicting the mythical churning of the ocean of milk, a legend in which Hindu deities stir vast oceans in order to extract the elixir of immortality. This churning produced the apsaras, Hindu celestial dancers. Roughly 2000 of them are liberally scattered throughout the temple.
But with over 50 Angkor temple ruin sites now reclaimed from the jungle and opened, Angkor Wat is just the beginning (many others are still submerged, and some are out of bounds because of the insidious presence of land mines).
There is such a bewildering array of temple-touring options on offer that knowing what to see and where to go, to get a rich flavour of Angkor’s diverse delights, needs expert guidance. My local guide deftly led me around a curated selection of enticing temple ruins.
We hot-footed it north to Angkor Thom, by air-conditioned SUV, well before group tour coach-loads descended on the scene. Translating as Great City, this walled and moated royal capital was the last constructed under the Khmer Empire, by King Jayavarman VII, in the 12th century.
I was led to the sublime South Gate, where on either side of the road, a stone causeway is flanked with 108 sculptured demons and gods, locked in a tug of war with a nine-headed snake, in a scene played out from Hindu mythology.
Once inside the South Gate, shafts of golden sunlight streamed through the leafy forest, as cheeky monkeys scampered about and cicadas droned lustily after the dawn showers.
Beyond the forest glade, I stood before the prize draw, Bayon temple, stunned and bedazzled. You may well recognise it from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. A magical, eerie and mysterious place, where 54 sculpted towers pierce the skyline, extravagantly carved with curiously smiling faces, as enigmatic as the Mona Lisa. Locals refer to Bayon as the Mona Lisa of Southeast Asia.
No fewer than 216 carved faces, in deep-relief, infuse the temple with a soothing, feel-good calm. The face is believed to be a depiction of the king himself.
After being abandoned in the 16th century, in 1933, French archaeologist George Groslier excavated the main prang.
He took the fragments of a colossal statue of King Jayavarman VII to the National Museum of Cambodia.
As we continued exploring the temple, we interacted with beaming elderly matrons selling Buddhist incense sticks, giving you the opportunity to make offerings, in a very non-pushy, Buddhist way. I also lapped up the bas-relief galleries speckling the temple, depicting an empire full of stories and legends, illustrating warfare and spirituality. Check out the grisly images of crocodiles eating the carcasses of fallen soldiers. What a way to go.
You’ll glimpse spear-toting Khmer soldiers riding elephants, a crouching lady getting burned on a fire, a man handing a turtle to a chef and soldiers sacrificing a buffalo to ensure good luck in battle. As much as Angkor Wat is monumentally magnificent, it’s the drama, humanity and personality of Bayon that make it such a heart-stealer — and my favourite Angkor temple.
Beyond the beauty of Bayon, head to the beautifully lush royal square in the Angkor Thom complex for some endearing spectacles.
The royal bathing pools are colossal. One was reserved for the king, while the other was the ladies’ pool, where his 500 concubines would take to the water.
The Elephant Terrace was the long performance terrace of the king, so named because of its exquisite reliefs of elephants, whose trunks double as decorative columns. The 350m-long concourse serves up a theatrical carved medley of circus acrobats, wrestlers and images of hunting elephants in the wild.
Ta Prohm is a heart-stealer, widely regarded as the jungle temple. This Angkor ruin has deliberately been left untouched from nature’s march, wildly molested and monstered by the towering tentacles of trees, vines and tree roots devouring half-collapsed structures.
Nicknamed the "Tomb Raider temple", it captured the world’s imagination in the Lara Croft blockbuster.
Thick roots of fig, banyan and kapok trees zigzag through the floor and clamber up walls, nibbling at doorways, all but consuming the built environment. There is a beauty to the brutality. It is a temple held in the stranglehold of trees, where stone and wood clasp each other in grim hostility, like petrified wrestlers, struck motionless in the middle of a fight.
Hauntingly silent and still, it gives you a tangible taste of the astonishment the early explorers must have felt when they came upon these monuments in the 1860s, like Henri Mouhot who "rediscovered" the legacy of the ancient Khmer civilisation while admiring butterflies. — The New Zealand Herald
