Cambodia: Wat's Happening?

After the relaxation of Laos, we headed to Cambodia, to see the ancient city of Angkor Wat. We weren’t too sure what to expect, but the descriptions we’d read sounded spectacular – a lost stone city in the jungle; a complex of giant monuments to the Hindu pantheon; the rumored site of a secret underground trove of scrolls containing the real lyrics to “Louie Louie.” Ok, the first two are true.

We decided to travel by tuk-tuk, which in this case meant a golf-cart-like trailer on back of a motorbike, and we got a three-day pass, figuring we’d probably want to take our time here. We hired a guide for the first day, and went straight for the meat of the complex, getting up early to catch the sunrise over the humongous main temple (Angkor Wat). With no discernible sunrise to speak of due to clouds, and with thus far no understanding of what we were looking at, it was still an impressive sight.



We headed back for breakfast and then came back for a proper introduction to the ancient city. It was built during the Angkorian-era Khmer empire during 900-1200 AD. Basically the region was once a massive city with a collection of gorgeous Hindu temples in the center. The temples are immense and ripe for wandering and exploration, with many doorways and walls still adorned with beautiful bas-reliefs and carvings.






In one temple in particular, there were many trees which interacted with the walls of the temple in some amazing ways.



We learned a bit about the history of the place. The Hindu religion made its way to the Khmer region before 800, and king Jayavarman II declared himself a “god-king” (a pretty snazzy title, you’ve gotta admit), marking the beginning of Hindu governance. Over the next few centuries, the Khmer built a series of increasingly sophisticated Hindu temples. (There were lots of homes outside of the temples, but they were built of wood, so they didn’t last.) The carvings at the temples represent various divinities, and some depict scenes from Hindu epics such as the Ramayana. For example, there’s that time Rama fought against the monkey army, which sounded pretty exciting as far as religious stories go:



Much of this was explained to us on the first day by our guide Wani, whose friendliness and eagerness to help us understand was not always matched by his English abilities (or aided by his hangover from partying the night before). For example, he pronounced “war”, “world”, and “wall” the same way to our ears. His heart was in the right place, however, and he struggled gamely through long, incredibly complicated explanations of stories featuring dwarves, giants, serpent gods, and various incarnations of different divinities. After each story, we would look at each other and try to merge the bits that we understood into something like a complete story. Fortunately he could spell well, because otherwise we would have never known what a ‘warf man’ was. We came out of the experience with a rich and creative understanding of Hindu mythology, certain parts of which might even be accurate.

Another thing that was interesting about this place was the interaction between Hinduism and Buddhism. After lots of Angkorian kings came and went, one of them decided that Buddhism was cool and that everyone should be a Buddhist. Under his rule the Khmer built some amazing temples depicting Bodhisattvas, which apparently are folks on the path to enlightenment, or displaying traits of the Buddha. One of the most amazing temples in the whole place is Bayon, which has hundreds of large Bodhisattva faces:



Unfortunately, after this king introduced Buddhism, a later king, who decided Hinduism was the way to go after all, ordered all of the Buddhist iconography destroyed. Many Buddha statues were broken, and bas-relief carvings of the Buddha were crudely chiseled beyond recognition or altered into representations of Hindu deities. Apparently the hundreds of Bodhisattva faces weren’t destroyed, which is good, because they are really remarkable to behold. However, in the end the Buddhists won out and the temples are now in regular use. Though, some of it seems to be only to make money through selling incense to tourists.

After 3 days of awesome exploration of temples and ancient Khmer history, we went to an evening performance of Khmer dancing. This was an interesting opportunity to learn about Khmer culture, traditional village life, and, um, the flexibility of the human arm. The female dancers make these fluid hand motions, apparently effortlessly, and it looks like the sort of thing that would be really painful if you tried it:





All told, Cambodia was an incredible experience, among the most spectacular of the whole trip. With our thirst for history and beautiful sights temporarily sated, we made our way to Hanoi, Vietnam, where more of both awaited us.