Coming from a sales and marketing background I could not help but see a huge opportunity for the company that manufactures and distributes “Wet n’ Forget”, the house, roof, and sidewalk cleaning product. I can see the slogan now….”Use Wet n’ Forget…. Buddha approved for your little temple!” The only problem is that they would need multiple fire trucks with their large volume hoses to do the application! This place is huge!
The wall in the front is over 3000′ long
Huge enough in fact, to be the largest religious complex in the world. It is roughly twice the size of the Vatican in Rome, covering over four-hundred acres. Age-wise, it’s about a thousand years old but that’s not the cool part because wherever we go everything is a thousand years old! The cool part is that it lay dormant for about one hundred-fifty years until the Europeans “rediscovered” it back in the mid 1500’s. The place was so overgrown that no one knew exactly how large it was because remember, it’s a jungle out there (literally!) and jungles have a nasty habit of consuming anything that gets in their way including giant stone temples.
Age wise it is a contemporary of Mesa Verde in southwest Colorado, and if you had an airplane back then (or better yet a Transporter if you are a Star Trek fan!) and were able to fly from Cambodia to Colorado, you would witness two future World Heritage Sites in their full glory as they were developed and built at exactly the same time, 1150 AD.
“That’s fascinating Donny, but you neglected to tell us why something as grand as this fell into disuse, c’mon, it’s not likely that they forgot it was there!”
“Right you are Indiana! It’s all because of politics!”
“Huh?”
Ok, so let’s say that you are the new ruler in town and your plan was to build a new place cuz you wanted everyone to know about you, not the other guy!
“Huh?”
Plus…. It started out as a Hindu temple and when a more pacifist ruler came into power he converted it to Buddhism. But….. a little later, the next guy, who wanted to be more aggressive, said “Buddha out! Shiva in! and this went back and forth for a while, temples came and went, Buddhas and Shivas argued until the funds ran out and it was forgotten for about a hundred and fifty years…..
“Huh?”
Yup… or something like that. Anyway, the trees grew up, the vines smothered everything and more sooner than later, Poof! no one went there anymore! In trudges a few Portuguese explorers who “find” it, document that they were there and then forget about it. Compounding all of this confusion are the constant wars between the Siamese (Thailand), the Khmer (locals) and throw in some messes from China and India and you’ve got a real mishmash of a recipe. That is, until a French guy shows up a hundred-plus years later and starts the ball rolling for restoring it all……… and controlling the entire region, soon to be known as French Indochina. Now we’re back where we started.
Aren’t you sorry that you asked?”
“Huh?”
Believe it or not, this site has not yet recovered from the dearth of ‘visitors lacking’ during Covid. So, not that we had the place to ourselves, but there were far less folks than what we had anticipated, which made our visit all the better. Getting around is strictly by foot, there are no vehicles allowed inside which makes for a guarantee that you will get your “steps” in for the day. It also guarantees that you will need to take a shower and change your clothes when you get back to the hotel because it’s about a million degrees with the humidity hovering in the Niagara Falls region of wetness.
Note the gardeners taking a break in the shade of the palm trees
It was not there for defensive purposes, rather for hydrological uses as the sand is incredibly soft and when it dries out, it loses its ability to support any structures. Hence the moat!
It keeps the underlying area “wet”, thus “strong” and is able to support those massive blocks of stone.
But it was still a great experience. There are no words that can conjure up images in your mind that can do this place justice. From the bas relief carvings to their version of the Bayeux Tapestry carved along endless galleries, it is a place to be studied and taught about, hopefully by someone who not only knows what everyone else has memorized, but by someone who understands the intricate relationships and stories of what is depicted on the walls and in the temples of Angkor Wat.
We had that person in Ting. The proverbial fountain of knowledge when it comes to topics such as this, he peppered us with stories with the facts woven in so that we listened and didn’t even know that we were learning something!
These were at one time covered in gold leaf. This scene shows bad persons being dropped into the netherworld. Sound familiar?
We spent the better part of the day there, leaving to have another ‘home hosted lunch’, this time with a local family that lives in a village with the homes up on stilts. No, not for flooding, but for the aforementioned debilitating temperature range. The air is able to flow around, through, and underneath these homes and the underneath part is actually the coolest place during the day. These folks have lived in this region for a thous…. (nope! gotcha!) several hundred years but were uprooted along with the rest of the population, when the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot came into power. This is another one of those stories that defy description….. it falls under the title of “Man’s inhumanity to Man” category right along with the likes of Idi Amin, Hitler, Stalin, Sadam Hussien, and unfortunately, the list goes on, but I’m sure that you get the idea. Estimates of two million Cambodians were killed under his rule. It is fascinating to know that it was the Vietnamese Army that came into Cambodia in 1979 and in about ten days defeated the Khmer Rouge and ended Pol Pot’s reign of terror.
They set up those chairs and bamboo mats for us to sit on while we took our shoes off before entering the house.
The government is now nothing short of fascinating. It is a constitutional monarchy, with elected representatives in two houses, but get this…. it is a one-party system, kind of like a communist regime, but in fact, it is not! The government is often described as a ‘soft authoritarian’ regime, having transitioned away from communist roots in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
This is just me thinking here and don’t tell anyone in Vietnam, but I can sense a movement in this direction over there. Red Capitalism can pave the way for “freer” thinking……eventually.
These are something else flammable….. liters of gasoline for sale for use in your motorbike!
I’m glad we didn’t sample any of these!
Most of you know how much I LOVE to mow lawns…..
Can you imagine being the Lawn Mower at Angkor Wat???!!!
Now that’s a business card I’d be happy to have!