SERENE: Cambodian Buddhist monks are regularly seen praying at Angkor Wat.
POTENT SYMBOL: The massive Angkor Wat temple complex is a must-see for anyone visiting Cambodia.THURSDAY , 01 JUNE 2006
Kim Schwieters
Taranaki Daily News (New Zealand)
Angkor Wat is an astonishing monument to a civilisation. Former Taranaki Daily News reporter Kim Schwieters braved the heat and the hawkers to see it.
The first person to accost me as I stood gazing at Cambodia's jaw-dropping temples of Angkor was a policeman. The second, I am sure, was a banshee in the clutches of death.
The beige-uniformed police officer, on duty guarding the world famous temples, wanted to hock his badge. He needed money to feed his family: "You buy, I give you good price!"
The badge looked too shiny to be the real deal, and anyway I'm not in the market for South-East Asian law enforcement souvenirs.
Before I could escape the officer's diehard sales pitch, in flew the banshee impersonator, a Khmer woman with a high-pitched squeal who also happened to be in sales.
"Cocoooo-nuuut, pineeee-appleeee. Very sweet, you buy, you buy."
She followed me down a dirt path as half a dozen of her cohorts screamed their sales pitch.
I thought visiting thousand-year-old temples would be a tranquil experience but in Cambodia, where poverty is everywhere and five-year-old children selling bracelets are often the family breadwinner, everyone is trying to survive.
The official guidebook doesn't tell you that at Angkor, bypassing desperate policemen, tuk-tuk drivers, T-shirt sellers, postcard hawkers and pineapple saleswomen is just part of the experience.
But hey, it's worth it.
The more difficult task is figuring out which of the temples to visit first. The temples of the Angkorian era, as it's called, were built between the ninth and 13th centuries by a succession of kings. The buildings, which are spread over a vast plain, were abandoned to nature 200 years later, though no one agrees on exactly why that was.
At the heart is the most famous of all the temples, Angkor Wat, and within a 30-minute drive in every direction are dozens of lesser known but just as grandly elaborate temples, gates and terraces set in a park-like landscape of waving sugar palms and roving monkeys.
Every day there are enough tourists at Angkor to form an army, by dawn they are swarming in the gate in buses, tuk-tuks, motorcycles and electric-powered bicycles. I'm sure I am being stalked by a bus-load of snap-happy Koreans.
I decided to start at the temple of Ta Prohm, saving Angkor Wat for last. Ta Prohm looks like it has been slowly strangled by the jungle. Trees grow out of its walls and terraces.
Ta Prohm is littered with the rubble of its 39 towers, which collapsed long ago. The temple was re-discovered by French explorers more than a century ago. It was built as a Buddhist monastery in the 12th century and was once home to a population larger than Hawera's.
It's also where Brad Pitt's then wife-to-be, Angelina Jolie, filmed the movie Tomb Raider. Back in Siem Reap, the nearest town to the temples, you can buy a Tomb Raider cocktail. Evidently, in between chasing bad guys, Jolie had time to invent a fancy cointreau concoction.
You could shower a hundred superlatives on Ta Prohm; I'll do with one – it's stunning.
A few kilometres west, in the centre of the old walled city of Angkor Thom, is the Bayon temple. It's a little spooky. The last of the Angkorian era temples to be built, it has a face carved on each side of its 54 four-sided towers. That's 432 giant eyes staring down at you.
The iron-sand coloured temple is like a 12th century version of a haunted house. From a distance it's hard to make out the features, but up close you get an eerie feeling as you stand in 35
Close by are the parade grounds, the Terrace of the Elephants and the Leper King and the temple of Baphuon, which is roped off and undergoing restoration.
Some of the temples of Angkor have been defaced by graffiti and many of the relics inside have been stolen by looters. Most of the stone, bronze and wooden statues that survived the relic-hunters have been moved to museums in Siem Reap and Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge, whose leader Pol Pot ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, also left its mark at Angkor. Among the estimated one to two-million people killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide were the workers who were preserving and restoring Angkor. Apparently just two of the staff survived.
The regime, which executed citizens for wearing glasses and speaking foreign languages, also destroyed all the records and documents compiled by conservation experts over the previous century.
Today, countries such as Japan, France, Germany and India, along with charitable foundations and philanthropists, are sponsoring restoration work at the temples.
Three kilometres to the south of Bayon is Cambodia's piece-de-resistance, Angkor Wat. It is the world's largest religious monument – and I just saw the happy snapping Koreans heading that way.
Angkor Wat is everywhere you look in Cambodia, it's on the flag, there's Angkor branded beer, cigarettes and water. They even have an Angkor Chartered Accountants Association and an airline named after the spooky Bayon.
Angkor Wat, which means city of the king, was once the capital of the Khmer Empire. It's up there with Italy's Colosseum and Egypt's Pyramids of Giza. I felt like I was standing on the set of a History Channel documentary. Historians say it would have taken 30 years to build this sandstone and laterite structure. Quarried stone was brought in by river and then hauled by ox and elephant.
It was built by King Suryavaram II to worship the Hindu God Vismu. After the king's death it become a mausoleum.
Inside Angkor Wat is a Chamber of Echos, the Terrace of Honour, the Gallery of 1000 Buddhas and almost 1km of intricate bas-reliefs carved in stone. Topped by corncob-shaped towers, the temple is surrounded by a huge moat and has gates big enough for an elephant to fit through.
You could spent a entire day exploring and just staring; a visit here is for most people a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
An entry pass to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples costs $US20 for one day, $US40 for three days or $US60 for a week. For Cambodian citizens, it's free.
The ticket offices are run by a local gas and petrol company. Apparently the Government did a deal with the company to pay off a debt. Now, with the debt paid off, the Government and the company share the ticket revenue.
With the sun going down at the end of three days of heat and dust, I stopped at one final temple. As I climbed the steep stone stairs, an eager-looking police officer sidled over: "A souvenir for you..." and flashed his badge.
But I was still not in the market for police paraphernalia and, no thanks, I didn't want a pineee-appleeee, coconut, crossbow, bamboo flute, T-shirt or that gaudy giant Angkor painting on black velvet.
The first person to accost me as I stood gazing at Cambodia's jaw-dropping temples of Angkor was a policeman. The second, I am sure, was a banshee in the clutches of death.
The beige-uniformed police officer, on duty guarding the world famous temples, wanted to hock his badge. He needed money to feed his family: "You buy, I give you good price!"
The badge looked too shiny to be the real deal, and anyway I'm not in the market for South-East Asian law enforcement souvenirs.
Before I could escape the officer's diehard sales pitch, in flew the banshee impersonator, a Khmer woman with a high-pitched squeal who also happened to be in sales.
"Cocoooo-nuuut, pineeee-appleeee. Very sweet, you buy, you buy."
She followed me down a dirt path as half a dozen of her cohorts screamed their sales pitch.
I thought visiting thousand-year-old temples would be a tranquil experience but in Cambodia, where poverty is everywhere and five-year-old children selling bracelets are often the family breadwinner, everyone is trying to survive.
The official guidebook doesn't tell you that at Angkor, bypassing desperate policemen, tuk-tuk drivers, T-shirt sellers, postcard hawkers and pineapple saleswomen is just part of the experience.
But hey, it's worth it.
The more difficult task is figuring out which of the temples to visit first. The temples of the Angkorian era, as it's called, were built between the ninth and 13th centuries by a succession of kings. The buildings, which are spread over a vast plain, were abandoned to nature 200 years later, though no one agrees on exactly why that was.
At the heart is the most famous of all the temples, Angkor Wat, and within a 30-minute drive in every direction are dozens of lesser known but just as grandly elaborate temples, gates and terraces set in a park-like landscape of waving sugar palms and roving monkeys.
Every day there are enough tourists at Angkor to form an army, by dawn they are swarming in the gate in buses, tuk-tuks, motorcycles and electric-powered bicycles. I'm sure I am being stalked by a bus-load of snap-happy Koreans.
I decided to start at the temple of Ta Prohm, saving Angkor Wat for last. Ta Prohm looks like it has been slowly strangled by the jungle. Trees grow out of its walls and terraces.
Ta Prohm is littered with the rubble of its 39 towers, which collapsed long ago. The temple was re-discovered by French explorers more than a century ago. It was built as a Buddhist monastery in the 12th century and was once home to a population larger than Hawera's.
It's also where Brad Pitt's then wife-to-be, Angelina Jolie, filmed the movie Tomb Raider. Back in Siem Reap, the nearest town to the temples, you can buy a Tomb Raider cocktail. Evidently, in between chasing bad guys, Jolie had time to invent a fancy cointreau concoction.
You could shower a hundred superlatives on Ta Prohm; I'll do with one – it's stunning.
A few kilometres west, in the centre of the old walled city of Angkor Thom, is the Bayon temple. It's a little spooky. The last of the Angkorian era temples to be built, it has a face carved on each side of its 54 four-sided towers. That's 432 giant eyes staring down at you.
The iron-sand coloured temple is like a 12th century version of a haunted house. From a distance it's hard to make out the features, but up close you get an eerie feeling as you stand in 35
Close by are the parade grounds, the Terrace of the Elephants and the Leper King and the temple of Baphuon, which is roped off and undergoing restoration.
Some of the temples of Angkor have been defaced by graffiti and many of the relics inside have been stolen by looters. Most of the stone, bronze and wooden statues that survived the relic-hunters have been moved to museums in Siem Reap and Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge, whose leader Pol Pot ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, also left its mark at Angkor. Among the estimated one to two-million people killed in the Khmer Rouge genocide were the workers who were preserving and restoring Angkor. Apparently just two of the staff survived.
The regime, which executed citizens for wearing glasses and speaking foreign languages, also destroyed all the records and documents compiled by conservation experts over the previous century.
Today, countries such as Japan, France, Germany and India, along with charitable foundations and philanthropists, are sponsoring restoration work at the temples.
Three kilometres to the south of Bayon is Cambodia's piece-de-resistance, Angkor Wat. It is the world's largest religious monument – and I just saw the happy snapping Koreans heading that way.
Angkor Wat is everywhere you look in Cambodia, it's on the flag, there's Angkor branded beer, cigarettes and water. They even have an Angkor Chartered Accountants Association and an airline named after the spooky Bayon.
Angkor Wat, which means city of the king, was once the capital of the Khmer Empire. It's up there with Italy's Colosseum and Egypt's Pyramids of Giza. I felt like I was standing on the set of a History Channel documentary. Historians say it would have taken 30 years to build this sandstone and laterite structure. Quarried stone was brought in by river and then hauled by ox and elephant.
It was built by King Suryavaram II to worship the Hindu God Vismu. After the king's death it become a mausoleum.
Inside Angkor Wat is a Chamber of Echos, the Terrace of Honour, the Gallery of 1000 Buddhas and almost 1km of intricate bas-reliefs carved in stone. Topped by corncob-shaped towers, the temple is surrounded by a huge moat and has gates big enough for an elephant to fit through.
You could spent a entire day exploring and just staring; a visit here is for most people a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
An entry pass to Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples costs $US20 for one day, $US40 for three days or $US60 for a week. For Cambodian citizens, it's free.
The ticket offices are run by a local gas and petrol company. Apparently the Government did a deal with the company to pay off a debt. Now, with the debt paid off, the Government and the company share the ticket revenue.
With the sun going down at the end of three days of heat and dust, I stopped at one final temple. As I climbed the steep stone stairs, an eager-looking police officer sidled over: "A souvenir for you..." and flashed his badge.
But I was still not in the market for police paraphernalia and, no thanks, I didn't want a pineee-appleeee, coconut, crossbow, bamboo flute, T-shirt or that gaudy giant Angkor painting on black velvet.
2 comments:
The ticket is selling by Sokimex (a Viet Name Government Company) that mean the profit of Ankor are going to Hanoi to pay for helping Hun sen on power!
1000000000000000% true.. this called " indirect support "..or the puppets governments, CPP. eeyore!
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