After two days exploring Angkor Wat, Bayon and the surrounding temples, I turned down an invitation to an Apsara Dance dinner show in Siem Reap. We’d already seen hundreds of celestial dancers carved into temple walls, and another cultural activity after two exhausting days didn’t sound particularly appealing. Only later did I discover what I’d…
At Angkor, the difficult part is not finding spectacular temples. It is understanding what you are looking at. After a few hours, names such as Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII can start blending together. Shiva, Vishnu and Buddha appear across different monuments, sometimes within the same temple. Nagas, Garudas, Buddha images, royal figures and carved…
When you stand in front of Angkor Wat, the obvious question is not only who built it, but how anyone managed to build something this large in the 12th century and keep it standing for nearly 900 years. The five towers get most of the attention, but some of the temple’s most impressive engineering is…
Angkor had been on my travel list long before I ever reached Cambodia. I studied French for about fifteen years through school and university, and the former French Indochina was constantly somewhere in the background: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Saigon, Annam and, of course, Angkor. By the time I finally reached Siem Reap, I had already…