Standing atop the upper level in the Bayon, you are surrounded by scores of giant stone heads carved into the temple itself. Today I begin the last of two posts about my trip to Cambodia and the Angkor ruins.
This bridge (with multi-headed nagas on each end) crosses the moat surrounding Angkor Thom, one of the largest of the Khmer cities and by far the biggest of the temple complexes in Siem Reap. My last post was about Angkor Wat, the most well known and biggest single temple in the area, but it is dwarfed again by Angkor Thom, which covers an area over 2,200 acres in size.
A line of statues guards the entrance. One of the face towers guards the main gate itself.
Angkor Thom is, as I said, a huge temple complex. The main construction sites date to the 12th century, although some of the major temples inside were made much earlier. Keep checking my Flickr page from time to time and I'll post more pictures I took in the area. It's an incredible place with so much to see that you can easily spend an entire day or more (as I did) and still not even see half of what's there.
More nagas and other beasts guard one entrance to the Bayon, the main temple of Angkor Thom.
The Bayon is famous mainly for the enigmatic face towers jutting up throughout the temple. Wherever you go you find yourself under the watchful eye of one or more of them, each with a different design and expressions on the multiple faces.
Some have faces carved on all four directions (N-S-E-W), but others do not and while the overall plan of the temple seems very random and chaotic at first, there is a kind of beautiful symmetry to it. The picture above shows one of the face towers standing above a covered gallery, and behind there is a stairway leading to the upper levels.
Not all of the temple is intact, of course. Here massive piles of stones lay scattered all about. Amazingly enough, however, many structures here and in other sites have been reconstructed from rubble as bad as what you see here. It's like a massive 3D jigsaw puzzle waiting for someone to decode it.
Unlike many temples in Angkor Thom, you can go inside the Bayon. On the upper levels you find towers like this that open up to the sky above. In the lower levels are a maze of corridors. I did a bit of exploring and was surprised again and again every time I went down deeper, but to be honest I have no idea just how much of the lower part I saw.
This is one of my favorite spots in the Bayon, up on the top level. If you look left and right, and through open passages, every direction you have a different set of faces looking back at you.
Down in the main courtyard you have this partially reconstructed sub-temple (one of the so-called libraries). The Bayon has amazing architecture and the face towers are of course its main feature, but there are also engravings as at Angkor Wat on many of the faces. You could easily spend a day just observing them, which here seem to tell tales of wars and daily life and in fact much of what we know about the way of life of the Khmer comes from deciphering the engravings at Angkor Thom.
More of the face towers watch over here as well.
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The Bayon and Angkor Thom left the biggest impression on me of any of the places I visited in Cambodia, and to be honest, I would say possibly anywhere I've been in my life. A lot is known about Angkor Wat and many of the other temples, but the complete purpose here is a mystery, though you can almost feel the voices of the past trying to call out to you. Being amidst the towers and corridors here, the 200 or so giant faces looking at you from every angle, inside this massive pyramid temple, is one of the most awe-inspiring things I've ever experienced. And I can say that without any exaggeration.
Which is why I went back again the next day. Come back again to see my next post, where I'll put up a collection of pictures I took just as the sun was setting on the Bayon.
I really recommend reading the Wikipedia pages for the Bayon and Angkor Thom. For an idea of the size, check out a map of the area. Zoom in a bit and the names you'll find on the map will make you want to take a trip there yourself. And if you'd like to see more images, please have a look at my Flickr Photostream.
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