The Visit - Day 3

Day 3:
After two tiring days, we started little late on the third day. First we drove to Pre Rup. This has been the crematorium for the common people. (The Leper King Terrace has been the royal crematorium) Strangely, this complex, apart from towers for washing the body and burning it, has a shiva temple in the second tier. Again steep steps. They too have had the tradition of taking the ashes of the cremated body in small urns and keeping at home for ancestral worship. This complex seems to have been badly destroyed by the treasure hunters. The heads of the lion statues and beautifully decorated pillars are all stolen.
From there, we headed to Beantey Srei. A temple which highly resembles the Hindu temple architecture. Mainly because this temple was not built by kings but by a brahman. Right from the entrance, every doorframe depicts a scene from hindu mythologies like Bhagavatham, Ramayana, Krishna Leela, Shiva Purana etc. One could also see the ‘Nrisimha vadam’ in one of the door frames. The complex has 2 big lilly ponds on either side of the temple. Most of the temples have either 2 or 4 ponds surrounding the temple. Also the stem of the lilly plant is used as an important vegetable in cambodian delicacy. This temple has more been used as a library rather than a temple.
Then we proceeded to visit Beantey Samre. This is a temple “for warriors”. (samurai ??) This has been a ‘hari-hara’ temple - union of saivam and vaishnavam. A doorframe depicts lord Vishnu relaxing on the snake adisesha in the sea of milk. The temple has 3 praharas. The first prahara has 4 small sanctorums for Shiva. The second prahara has 4 sanctorums for Vishnu. The third and the inner most prahara has one sanctorum, which is bigger than others and has housed the statue of Hari Hara. But no statues are seen now. All are replaced by Buddha statues.
After this, we had plans to drive to the the Mebons and Thommanon. But my wife was feeling sick and we decided to go back to the hotel. In the evening we went to the see the “floating village” on the lake Tonle Sap. This lake is very interesting. It is a ‘big’ lake. It is formed by the river Mekong which starts from Tibet and flows thru China, Myanmar, Thailand, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam. It runs for about 4100 kms before joining the south china sea. Inside cambodia, the river forms a lake. This lake is about 160 kms long and 40 kms wide. One end of the river lies Siem Reap and in the other end lies Phnom Penh. There are ferry services between these two cities. It is a 4 hrs journey by lake. By road it takes about 7 hrs to travel between these cities. The floating village has been formed by the illegal immigrants from Vietnam, who fled Vietnam during the war and those who lost their limbs by landmine blasts. There are about 20000 people living in this floating village. They’ve got floating houses, shops, garages, a diesel station, a hospital, a school, restaurants and even a crocodile farm. The boat ride to the village is for about an hour. The boat takes us thru the village waterways. When the boat is halted at the middle of the lake for the tourists to take a good view of the surroundings, we could see small boys (mostly maimed) sitting on a small aluminium vessel, rowing with hands or a ladle, come near the boats and beg. It is really sad. I was talking to the boat driver and he said that many people born here have never seen the land before they died. Their life runs more on diesel than on blood. I was wondering if their life will ever change. We are calling ourselves a ‘civilised’ society. [This is indeed a complex situation. Cambodia is facing the same situation what Tamil Nadu is facing now with refugees from Sri Lanka. I dont know what we can do for these people and how we can overcome this situation.]
The day ended with such a poignant note. The sun had already set and we didnt feel like visiting any other place after this depressing boat ride and went back to the hotel. There are still many more temples to visit in the Angkor region. It seems atleast a week’s stay is needed to visit each of them and enjoy the richness of the heritage and culture. But even this short visit has made a permanent mark in my memories. I can never forget those 3 days. The hospitality of the cambodians is just too good. They have a brotherly affection towards the Indians. As an Indian, I was feeling proud that our ancestors had reached such distant lands from Myanmar to Vietnam. Later, after Gautama Buddha, people have shifted to buddhism. Lets talk about this in our coming blogs.
The next morning, we packed our bags and started our journey back to Singapore. The return flight was little longer as the flight had a transit at Da Nang, a coastal city of Vietnam, for an hour. Going back home by taxi, Singapore, though an ultra modern city, seemd to have lost the ‘human’ touch.

The Visit - Day 2

Day 2:
We started in the morning at around 8:30. Our itinerary for day 2 was Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. On our way to the south gate of Angkor Thom, we saw a huge baloon. The guide told the baloon ride is available as there are no strong winds. So we decided to go for the ride and drove to the baloon station. The platform in the baloon can accomodate about 30 people. We waited for sometime for more visitors but nobody came. The operator decided to fly the baloon for just 3 of us. The baloon goes upto 150 metres above the ground. It is just about 1 km from the west gate of Angkor Wat and about 2 kms east of the airport. Took some aerial shots of the Angkor Complex. The ride was just for 15 minutes. But it was a fantastic experience. It costs 12USD per head.
We then decended and drove straight to the South Gate of Angkor Thom. One could see the scenes of ‘churning the sea of milk’ sculpted on either side of the pathway to the gate. To your left you see “devas” and to your right are “asuras” - tugging “vasuki”. Inside the Angkor Thom complex, there are numerous small and big temples & structures. The complex spreads over 500 hectares. May be bigger. The prime attractions inside the complex are The Bayons, Bhapuon, Terrace of the Elephants, Terrace of the Leper King, Tep Pranom, Preah Palilay, North & South Kleang etc. There are many small structures too. But it is difficult to visit every single thing.
There are different modes of transport available. Taxis (mostly Toyota cars), Tuk-tuks (a funny vehicle - like our cycle rickshaw but attached to a 100cc motorcycle) and elephants. We chose to ride an elephant to go upto The Bayons. My daughter enjoyed it a lot. It is about a kilometer and a half from the gate. The Bayons is medium sized complex with 54 towers. Every tower looks the same as I had described in the earlier post. (see pic) The bas reiefs of various battles are sculpted on the “prahara” walls. Similar to the ones we see at Mahabalipuram. Inside, we climbed and climbed and climbed (sigh!!) and reached the bottom of central tower. The central tower is totally in bad shape and is not climbable. We went around the third tier and took some good snaps. It was bright and sunny. So I could get some clear and decent pics.
There is something worth mentioning here. To beat the heat, plenty of tender coconuts are available. The coconuts are so big, one is enough to quench the thirst of three people.
Then we visited the Terrace of Elephant and the Terrace of Leper King. These are located side by side. The Elephant Terrace is for the kings to view the performances. There are sculptures of Irawat (hree headed elephant) and Garuda. (Garuda & Hanuman are important icons in Cambodian culture. They beleive that when Garuda spreads his wings, it symbolises great power.) The Leper King terrace should have been the royal crematorium. We can see the statue of the leper king on top of the terrace. This statue is a duplicate and the original is kept in the national museum for security. There are two different versions about this Leper King. One is that he is Yasovarman II who suffered from leprosy was cremated there. Another version is Leper King actually symbolises “Yama Dharmaraja”, the god of death. The side walls are decorated with sculptures of “adi sesha”, asuras, devas, apsaras etc. They indicate their belief in heaven and hell.
Then we walked down to Tep Pranom. This is a shiva temple with a huge “swayambu” lingam. But the temple is totally in rumbles and the entrance is closed with stones fallen from the tower. We can just see the temple from outside. While we went around the temple and when I was busy trying an angle to take a snap of the tower, the guide noticed a small snake very near to my leg and shouted. Before stepping back, I took a snap of the snake too. Anyway, it was just lying there and didn’t bite me, luckily.
It was already 2pm and we went back to the city for lunch. At about 4 pm, we drove back to the east gate of Angkor Wat. The place I was dying to see for last many years. There were nobody else except the 4 of us. We walked down to the angkor complex. It was rather long walk. The temple just too big. It has 2 “praharas”, 2 tiers and 9 towers. The walls of outer “prahara” is divided into 8 “galleries” and each gallery (must be about 400 metres long and 5 metres high) has bas reliefs of many scenes. We started with the south side of eastern gallery. This gallery depicts the churning the sea of milk. The hill “mandara” is used as the shaft and the naga “vasuki” is used as the rope. Vishnu transforms himself into “koorma” (tortoise) and support “mandara” from the bottom of the sea. Shiva oversees the “project”. To the right side is devas and to the left is asuras.
We turn right (east of southern gallery) and this gallery depicts the existence of heaven and hell. The gallery is divided in to 3 horizontally. The upper part depicts the heaven with devas and apsaras dancing and gods. The lower part depicts the “punishments” in the hell (like frying in the oil pan, whipping, piercing with lances etc - this reminded me of the garuda puranam in the film Anniyan). Garuda stands between the heaven and hell in the middle part with his wings widespread as if he is “lifting” the heaven. They believe that there are 32 heavens and 32 hells !!
The west of the southern gallery depicts the life of Gautama Buddha. The south and north of the west galleries depict our great epic Ramayana. It took almost an hour to go round these corridors. Then we went into the complex. Again the steps to the second tier, where the sanctum sanctorum lies, are too steep. By now I had learnt the knack of climbing the steps and I climbed to the second tier. It is little tricky indeed. A huge Buddha statue in standing posture and another statue in sleeping posture (like Ranganatha) is found. There was big crowd of tourists marvelling at the architecture.
Then we climbed down and walked to the west gate. There is a small temple near the west gate where we can see the statue of Vishnu. This is the only temple, where the original statue is not replaced by buddha statue yet. And Angkor Wat is the only temple where people come for worship regularly.
By now we were tired. But we already had plans to watch the sun set from the top of the hillock Phnom Bekeng. This hillock is adjuscent to the south gate of Angkor Thom. It was already 5pm and our guide told us to climb up the hillock fast as the sun sets at around 5:45pm. With my daughter on my shoulders (already slept) we climbed up the hillock. It is not too steep but the pathway is narrow. It takes about 30 minutes to reach the top. There is a small temple complex on top of the hill. It is about 25 metres high. No need to mention that the steps are steep. There was a big crowd and I managed to climb up without stamping on the hands of people climbing up and down. (Yes…you need to use both your hands and legs to climb like rock climbing !!) On the top, to my astonishment, I saw a big crowd waiting to capture that moment the sun sets. There must have been atleast 3000 people. The view upto the horizon was clear with no hurdles. I think people must have been waiting there from 4pm itself. Many professional photographers had set their tripods and shooting. (I tripped on somebody’s tripod and he gave a dirty look.) I took some snaps while the sun was little high up but I was afraid that there could be a stampede if everybody starts climbing down immediately after the sun sets. So I came down immediately after taking a few snaps. We got down the hill and drove back to the central market to buy some souveniers.
Day 2 ended thus with some fantastic experiences and tired legs.

The Visit - Day 1

The visit
It just happened. There was a holiday fair going at Singapore Expo, which is near our workplace and on my way to home. I just stepped in and was looking around for the holiday options. I had a few spots in my mind to look for. Bali (Indonesia), Angkor (Cambodia) and Myanmar. On the first stall itself I found Angkor package (3D/2N return airfare + hotel) and seemed to be much cheaper than what the travel agencies were quoting. Booked it immediately. I was afraid I might decide otherwise if I think about anymore Then I searched the net and booked a taxi driver-cum-guide in Siem Reap thru mails. (http://www.talesofasia.com/cambodia.htm is an intersting site) Visas can be obtained on arrival at the Siem Reap international airport. But the Cambodian government has recently started issuing e-visas thru the net. It takes just 2 days to get approval. It costs 25USD per head and it can be paid thru credit card over the net. I booked it on a friday night and I got it approved the next morning. I just had to carry the printouts. [An important note to visitors. While there is a local currency Riel (1 USD = 4000 Riel), most of the transactions are in USD only. Including petty shops. Everything is quoted in USD. We can either pay in USD or Riels.]
And the day came. The Silk Air from Singapore flew us (myself, my wife and my daughter who is an year and a half old) to Siem Reap, the second major city in Cambodia. The flying time is just 2 hours. (The other major city is Phnom Penh, the capital city) We reached there at around 10 AM local time. Nov - Feb is the peak tourist season in Cambodia. So, there was a long queue at the visa-on-arrival desk but the e-visa counter was free and we were out in 5 minutes with our baggage. The taxi driver I’d booked thru mail was there to pick us up to the hotel. Our tour guide had already prepared a comprehensive itinerary to cover the near temples and the far away temples. The temples date between 2nd and 12th centuries and have been built by various Hindu kings. Most of the temples, mainly the Angkor Wat complex, have been built by Jayavarman VII. While previous kings have just built temples, Jayavarman VII has built tanks, hospitals, educational institutions also. Even now the general hospital is named after him.
Day 1:We checked in and we started right away. On day one we visited Prasat Kravan, Sras Sreng, Beantey Kdei, Ta Keo and Ta Prohm. Most of the temples are in dilapidated condition. The very architecture is to be blamed. The structures are large blocks of redstones stacked one over the other and built. Some birds carry and leave the seeds of (mostly banyan) trees in the gaps between the stones. These have now grown in to GIANT trees and the HUGE roots have ripped apart the structures. In most places, the entire structure has fallen down and one could see only the rumbles. It is pathetic. Every pillar in every temple is decorated with bas relief sculptures of dancing apsaras, scenes depicting the “great departure of Buddha”. One could also see the sculptures of “dwarapalaks” (the doorkeepers or guards) on either side of the entrance of sanctum-sanctorum. There are images of “yali” (a mythical animal) and Indra riding the Irawat (the triple headed elephant) sculpted on the door frames. The naga “Vasuki” (who was used as rope to churn the “sea of milk” to extract the elixir of immortality) is an important aspect in every temple. All balustrades (railings) in the pathways, stairs in the temples have their ends in the shape of the naga. This can be seen even at the homes, the railings on the bridges on the rivers etc. Another common aspect is the steps that lead to the temples. The steps are too narrow and too steep. The gradience is almost 80 degrees. The height to width ratio is like 3:1. So it is quite difficult to climb up the stairs. The ruins add to the difficulty. Climbing is at our own risk. I did some dangerous climbings at Ta Keo with my camera and camcorder around my neck.
Prasat Kravan : Once a temple for Vishnu and Lakshmi. No statue are found now.
Sras Sreng : A large square water tank with terraces and steps around the tank. Just like our Mylapore tank.
Beantey Kdei : ‘Beantey’ in Pali language means “a worshipping place”. This seems to be Shiva temple centuries back beacause I saw lots of sandstone platforms with “dhara” (beak) but no “lingam”. The towers (gopurams) are in the shape of “brahma” with 4 faces facing 4 sides and with a lotus (padmam) platform on top. This type of towers are found in almost every temple.
Ta Keo : This is actually struture built for the worship of ancestors. This proves that the people were following “animism”, a primitive form of religion before religions came to existence.
Ta Prohm : A temple for Brahma. I think this should have been the most photographed place after Angkor Wat. The giant roots have ruined the temple.
See the pics attached.
Many countries like Germany, France and India have taken up the restoration of some structures. Some historians from France and Germany have restored some temples in their personal interest. Almost every temple was built for either Shiva or Vishnu (localites call it as Vishnou). But all the statues have been replaced by Buddha. Even these statues dont have heads. It seems during the civila unrest (1975-79) miscreants and treasure hunters have taken away the heads of the statues and are now available in the museums in Europe, UK and the US.
In the evening, the guide took us to a restaurent, where every night a cultural dance show performed by local dancers. The show consists of traditional Apsaras dance, monkey dance, coconut shell dance and blessing dance. It was really nice. There are quite a few Indian restaurents (actually owned by Pakistanis !!) like New Delhi, Taj Mahal, Maharajah etc. The food was excellent (authentic punjabi dishes).
Day 2 in next blog.

The Buddha

Recently I visited Cambodia. Which used to be a Hindu country centuries back, is now a Buddhist country. For me, visiting Angkor Wat was dream long held. Honestly, only after visiting Cambodia, did I realise the ‘actual’ meaning of Buddha. May be many of you are already aware of what is Buddhism and who is Buddha. But for me, it was a real enlightenment. Will write in the coming blogs.