Angkor temples
Oct. 26th, 2008 05:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julietBloody hell, I am knackered. This may have something to do with the 04:40 start this morning.
Cycling up to Angkor Wat at 5am with no lights was - entertaining, but I didn't fall off the road so all was well. (I really should have got my torch out, but it was pretty and I could see the stars!) It was, as anticipated, pretty busy for that time in the morning, but not at all obnoxiously so. And the sunrise - the temple is aligned east-west, so the sun rises right behind it - was beautiful.
This also meant that there weren't many people there when I went to finish wandering round it once the sun had done its rising thing. Nor at my next stop, Phnom Bakheng, which has a fantastic view (it's a temple-mountain, i.e. a temple built on a mountain, & well above everything in the vicinity) and is apparently spectacular at sunset. So everyone saves it for then, and at 08:30 there was just me, the Site Police chap having a nap, and a German couple. Clambering round one side of it I found a bit where the stone cladding has fallen away, and you can see where they used the stone of the mountain itself for the sides of the temple.
Onwards after that to Angkor Thom, the old royal city. And it was getting noticeably warm already. Pottered around and through the jungle, and again encountered surprisingly few people. I guess the tour-groups will tend to focus on specific sites, whereas I tend to wander off to look at random bits of collapsing stone. (Many of the temples, especially the smaller ones, are being or have been already enthusiastically taken over by the jungle.)
Bakon - which is famous for being covered with pillars with smiling faces on all 4 sides - was getting a bit crowded, so I might go back there another time to look at the bas-reliefs again. They show cool stuff like people washing in the river, and people gambling on cock-fights, and crocodiles eating fish, and so forth.
Due to my near-pathological dislike of the whole being-guided-around thing, I bought a book instead of hiring a guide, but overheard some of the official guides & they did sound pretty good. I am happy with the book, although already having a working knowledge of Brahminism, Buddhism, and how sculpture[0] works has I think been helpful.
In between all of this I consumed copious quantities of Coke, water, and fried rice with veg. At outrageous prices, obviously, there being a captive audience.
In the afternoon I headed up to look at Preah Kahn, which is mostly collapsed (and thus a mixture of bits you are allowed into and NO ENTRY DANGER signs, large piles of stones, etc). Despite producing some very impressive buildings, the Angkor-era Khmers had a surprisingly poor grasp of building principles. You know how if you build a wall, you offset the bricks as you go up? Not them: they put them straight on top of each other, leaving vertical faults (so the weather can get in); and used no mortar, just cut them tightly (so the weather once it gets in has a field day). They also never really bothered with any form of roofing other than the corbelled roof, which is where you just stack pieces of stone on top of each other, each next one up sticking out by a third, until the sides get close enough to stick something over the top. Obviously you can't do very wide roofs like this, so corridors tend to be quite narrow. To be honest I am increasingly surprised that any of the temples are still there at all.
(right, I will stop architecture-geeking now. I have photos of corbelled roofs on the camera, you know. I am PROUD of my geekery.)
I was meaning to head back after that, due to being knackered, but somehow instead found myself cycling a 20k loop. Which wouldn't normally be that far, granted, but with a badly-fitting bike, in 30deg heat, it felt a lot further. Didn't bother staying for sunset as I was far too knackered for it to feel like fun and not sure where would be nice to go anyway; I shall consider the issue tomorrow.
Now: shower, dinner, bed. [yawn]
[0] Thank you Sara Watson who taught me Classical Civilisation at A Level. Which was a very enjoyable course all round, in fact, although I could have happily lived my entire life without ever reading the Catalogue of Ships.
Cycling up to Angkor Wat at 5am with no lights was - entertaining, but I didn't fall off the road so all was well. (I really should have got my torch out, but it was pretty and I could see the stars!) It was, as anticipated, pretty busy for that time in the morning, but not at all obnoxiously so. And the sunrise - the temple is aligned east-west, so the sun rises right behind it - was beautiful.
This also meant that there weren't many people there when I went to finish wandering round it once the sun had done its rising thing. Nor at my next stop, Phnom Bakheng, which has a fantastic view (it's a temple-mountain, i.e. a temple built on a mountain, & well above everything in the vicinity) and is apparently spectacular at sunset. So everyone saves it for then, and at 08:30 there was just me, the Site Police chap having a nap, and a German couple. Clambering round one side of it I found a bit where the stone cladding has fallen away, and you can see where they used the stone of the mountain itself for the sides of the temple.
Onwards after that to Angkor Thom, the old royal city. And it was getting noticeably warm already. Pottered around and through the jungle, and again encountered surprisingly few people. I guess the tour-groups will tend to focus on specific sites, whereas I tend to wander off to look at random bits of collapsing stone. (Many of the temples, especially the smaller ones, are being or have been already enthusiastically taken over by the jungle.)
Bakon - which is famous for being covered with pillars with smiling faces on all 4 sides - was getting a bit crowded, so I might go back there another time to look at the bas-reliefs again. They show cool stuff like people washing in the river, and people gambling on cock-fights, and crocodiles eating fish, and so forth.
Due to my near-pathological dislike of the whole being-guided-around thing, I bought a book instead of hiring a guide, but overheard some of the official guides & they did sound pretty good. I am happy with the book, although already having a working knowledge of Brahminism, Buddhism, and how sculpture[0] works has I think been helpful.
In between all of this I consumed copious quantities of Coke, water, and fried rice with veg. At outrageous prices, obviously, there being a captive audience.
In the afternoon I headed up to look at Preah Kahn, which is mostly collapsed (and thus a mixture of bits you are allowed into and NO ENTRY DANGER signs, large piles of stones, etc). Despite producing some very impressive buildings, the Angkor-era Khmers had a surprisingly poor grasp of building principles. You know how if you build a wall, you offset the bricks as you go up? Not them: they put them straight on top of each other, leaving vertical faults (so the weather can get in); and used no mortar, just cut them tightly (so the weather once it gets in has a field day). They also never really bothered with any form of roofing other than the corbelled roof, which is where you just stack pieces of stone on top of each other, each next one up sticking out by a third, until the sides get close enough to stick something over the top. Obviously you can't do very wide roofs like this, so corridors tend to be quite narrow. To be honest I am increasingly surprised that any of the temples are still there at all.
(right, I will stop architecture-geeking now. I have photos of corbelled roofs on the camera, you know. I am PROUD of my geekery.)
I was meaning to head back after that, due to being knackered, but somehow instead found myself cycling a 20k loop. Which wouldn't normally be that far, granted, but with a badly-fitting bike, in 30deg heat, it felt a lot further. Didn't bother staying for sunset as I was far too knackered for it to feel like fun and not sure where would be nice to go anyway; I shall consider the issue tomorrow.
Now: shower, dinner, bed. [yawn]
[0] Thank you Sara Watson who taught me Classical Civilisation at A Level. Which was a very enjoyable course all round, in fact, although I could have happily lived my entire life without ever reading the Catalogue of Ships.
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Date: 2008-10-26 02:31 pm (UTC)