Angkor Day 4: Pre Rup, East Mebon, Ta Som, & Preah Khan

(Nana and I are traveling until July 7, but we've put a couple posts in the pipeline to tide you over until then.)


Also known as: the anti-climax.

On the advice of Lonely Planet, Nana and I saved Angkor Wat for our last day of touring . . . but on the advice of our flagging legs and wobbly stomachs, we did Angkor Wat in the morning and left some less important temples for the afternoon.

And a good thing, too: while we had planned about six small temples for our last hurrah, we only made it through three before giving up and heading back to the hotel. Taken together, they were a good farewell to the temples of Angkor, covering all the major temple styles: the temple mountain of Pre Rup, the (former) island temple of East Mebon, and the forest ruins of Ta Som & Preah Khan.

Pre Rup


Pre Rup was dedicated to Shiva in the 960s as the state temple of Rajendravarman II. It is a classic temple mountain, with the addition of a few galleries more typical of later temple pyramids like Angkor Wat.

It's every bit as steep as it looks.

Just ask Nana!

Pre Rup has been the site of much conservation, but little restoration. That's another way of saying there aren't any trees, but a lot of the towers are still in bad shape.

A carved false door atop Pre Rup.

An apsara who has seen better days.

You can see East Mebon from the top of Pre Rup - it's only a few hundred yards due north.

You can also faintly make out the central tower of Angkor Wat on a clear day. Unfortunately, in the tropics, "clear" also means "blisteringly hot."

Getting down without falling is almost as tough as getting up without passing out.

East Mebon

East Mebon was dedicated to Shiva in the 950s by Rajendravarman II. It used to be an island temple in the center of the East Baray reservoir, but the reservoir has since been drained.

If it looks a lot like Pre Rup, that should be no surprise: built by the same guy, only a decade apart. But the shorter East Mebon, being less exposed, is in significantly better shape.

Each corner is guarded by a friendly lichen-encrusted elephant.

These apsara were carved directly into the brick, then overlaid with stucco. Of course, the stucco has long since fallen off.

A well-preserved lintel depicting Indra.

A restored lintel of Garuda atop a decorative false door.

Ta Som & Preah Khan


Ta Som & Preah Khan are two of the smaller Angkor Thom temples commissioned by Jayavarman VII, who is most famous for the face-towers of the Bayon.

This guy. You remember him.

Both temples date to the 12th century, and both are largely deserted, as the nearby Bayon itself draws off most of the crowds. In addition, both exhibit Jayavarman II's chaotic blend of Buddhism and Hinduism: while the central sanctuaries of each temple were Buddhist, each includes satellite shrines and temples to various Hindu deities.

I won't really bother to differentiate here, partly because I wasn't careful about keeping track of the photographs. In any case, the overall impression is the same: woods and ruins, a lot like the larger and more famous Ta Prohm.

The balustrade along the causeway into Preah Khan. AKA, more Churning of the Sea of Milk!

More Garuda + Naga = Buddhist Hindu Happy Friendly Fun Time!

More huge trees growing out of walls!

More!

MORE!

More Nana looking through ruined doorways!

More atmospheric close ups!

More detail on obscure bas relief carvings than you ever thought you would read in your life!

Little update

Justin and I are finishing our time here in Oz and are off to New Zealand tonight. Some Australia highlights:

- snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, at which I totally saw a shark
- holding a koala and feeding a wallaby at the zoo in Kuranda, at which we also learned that wombats have square poop,
- visiting two bat sanctuaries, taking time at the second to play fetch and pet the owner's adorable dogs,
- befriending the German proprietess of an Aboriginal art store, from which we purchased a drawing of Jesus Birds,
- watching two Ayers Rock sunrises, two Ayers Rock sunsets, and one Ayers Rock stargazing session, at which we asked so many dorky questions that we were invited to be test guests on a new star tour the next night,
- taking a bushtucker tour, at which we consumed a plant which tastes like salted kale chips,
- viewing the Sydney Harbor Bridge, which we did not climb, and the Sydney Opera House, which we did not enter
- seeing the Pixar movie Brave after purchasing tickets online and presenting a bar code on my phone (never thought that would work)
- visiting too many museums, including the National Maritime Museum, Museum of Sydney, Cairns Historical Society museum, Rocks Museum, and airport historical galleries,
- discovering that crocodile is kind of chewy, emu is like chicken crossed with venison, and kangaroo is freaking delicious,
- drinking excessive amounts of Flat Whites, Austalian coffee with hot milk but not foamy like a latte, sticking to decaf
- coming in third at the hostel's trivia night, behind teams of at least 5 people (what country did the black swan come from? What building grows six inches in summer? WHAT COLOR IS A GRASSHOPPER'S BLOOD??)
- visiting my sister's baby blog 46 times

And a lot more! Wish us safe travels and great skiing in New Zealand, and we will see a lot of you soon!

Wednesday Weirdness: The World's Largest Spatula on Miyajima, Hiroshima

(Nana and I are traveling until July 7, but we've put some Wednesday Weirdness in the pipeline to tide you over until then.)

Miyajima, a cool little island south of Hiroshima, is in fact home to the world's largest spatula.

It's pretty big.

Wednesday Weirdness: Beni-imo Man!

(Nana and I are traveling until July 7, but we've put a couple posts in the pipeline to tide you over until then.)

Beni-imo (紅芋) is an Okinawan variety of sweet potato. It's actually deep purple inside, and very sweet. What you see above is an advertisement for the classic Okinawan souvenir: half-shell cookies filled with a sweet paste made from beni-imo. You can also find beni-imo ice cream and these beni-imo fritters.

We also found some beni-imo sticks fried in black sesame batter.

Apparently, beni-imo is a fairly sensitive variety: there are strict bans on importing satsuma-imo strains of sweet potato from Kyushu, with signs posted throughout the airport warning against the dire consequences of any illicit inter-sub-species interaction. (These are not to be confused with the signs warning kids against picking up old WWII grenades, which kind of look like potatoes. More on that later.)

Where in the world?

As posted to my Facebook wall, and successfully guessed by college friend Diana: where are we? A city in Japan with deer on its sewer grates. The famous deer if this city were stolen in an episode of Carmen Sandiego. Where are we?

Bonus: the second grate is from a trip earlier this spring. The text reads "Zamami," the name of a small island in that prefecture. Where were we?

Angkor Day 4: Angkor Wat

(Nana and I are traveling until July 7, but we've put a couple posts in the pipeline to tide you over until then.)

I've wanted to see Angkor Wat since I was a kid. I remember sitting in the old family room in Pittsburgh watching a TV show about the Khmer temples, recently re-opened to the world after decades of civil war. Like most in the West, I had known nothing about this sprawling Southeast Asian empire, a state which I found completely unacceptable. I resolved to visit these temples, a resolution which eventually crystallized into a desire to "see Angkor Wat."

No, not on the shirt - behind you! (And all around you.)

Of course, I wasn't the only one - Angkor Wat is now one of Asia's biggest tourist sites, bustling with sightseers even on a scorching day at the height of the Cambodian summer. Like many of those tourists, I was surprised to find that Angkor Wat, despite its size, is only a fraction of the Khmer Empire's architectural legacy. (And not even my favorite fraction - that would have to be the Bayon.)

But I was also surprised to find that Angkor Wat, unlike so many tourist attractions around the world, actually looks much bigger in person. None of the photos below comes close to capturing the size of the place: Angkor Wat is less a temple than it is a city, built on a scale that dwarfs any individual piece of the whole. In many ways, it is literally too big to comprehend.

The view across the moat. Those tiny-looking towers in the distance? Remember them.

For instance: the western gate of Angkor Wat, shown below. It's larger than the central tower of most surviving Angkor temples, even after its uppermost levels have collapsed.

Just one fairly forgettable piece of the Angkor Wat complex.

Behind that huge wall - itself behind a huge moat - is a giant plaza, with five tiny-looking towers at the far end of a huge stone causeway.

In the old days, this space would have housed a bustling holy city - built largely of low wooden structures that have not survived.

Note how you can barely spot this building in the previous photo. The little wooden sign in front is taller than a grown man.

Inside the western entrance to the main structure, which itself occupies less than 20% of the total footprint of the temple, are three large ritual pools.

Here's one. They're drained these days, for conservation.

Here's another.

Oh, and did I mention that nearly every square inch of each gallery is covered in decorative carvings?

Angkor Wat is home to bas-relief carvings at least as spectacular as those of the Bayon - though in this case they're entirely mythological or historical, whereas the Bayon reliefs include scenes from everyday life.

Of course, all of this is just the ground level of the main structure: behind and above these galleries are five high towers atop a stone terrace, representing the holy Mt. Meru of Hindu mythology.

Starting the climb.

This picture begins to give some sense of scale: you can see the western gate below and to the left of the yellow balloon, plus the library mentioned earlier just right of center. Note that this is the view from one of the intermediate terraces - not quite the top of the temple mountain.

Looking down on an intermediate courtyard.

One of the four "smaller" towers atop the central structure. 

The central tower itself - tall in its own right, even if it weren't atop a  high terrace. All together, the tower is 65 meters (about 215 feet) off the ground.

So how does one even begin to understand such an enormous structure? One common way is to contrast Angkor Wat with the Bayon (reminder: the one with all the face towers): Angkor Wat is huge, classical, symmetrical, impressive; the Bayon is small, ornate, asymmetrical, intimate.

Another is the tried-and-true archaeological method of extrapolating (sometimes wildly) from tiny details. For instance: Angkor Wat is oriented to the west rather than the east and its mythological bas reliefs are read in reverse of the usual order, just like the rituals in a Hindu funerary rite. Thus some claim that Angkor Wat must be the world's largest mausoleum, giving Suryavarman II the standing record for world's biggest grave. Then again, there are a half-dozen competing theories to account for all of Angkor Wat's numerous quirks.

On a personal level, even a couple months later, we're both still processing this experience. As a building, Angkor Wat it simply larger than a single mind. Which makes sense, as its design and construction involved countless thousands of laborers and artisans, each of whom shaped the final product over the decades of its construction. Even today, the people who use the site continue to shape it: there are active Buddhist shrines scattered throughout the structure . . .

. . . coupled with ongoing efforts to restore and conserve Angkor Wat for future generations.

A badly weathered face of the central tower.

Restoration work on one side of the central tower.