Cambodia

Ancient City of Angkor, Siem Reap 01.03.10 - 05.03.10

Our two day bus journey to Siem Reap from Chiang Mai, including our tiring border crossing into Cambodia, leaves us pretty exhausted so we book into one of the many choices of hotels in Siem Reap and sleep it off. The next day we're ready to hit the main attraction the ancient Khmer city of Angkor, only a few kms north of town. There's a lot of land to cover as the monuments and temples are spread out over a vast area of 100km so we hire ourselves a tuk tuk driver to take us round for three consecutive days. He knows the place pretty well and takes us on two tours, the inner and outer loop and, on the last day out to the furthermost sites. Our first stop on the first day has to be Angkor Wat (after we buy our three day tickets at $40 USD each). Angkor Wat represents the pinnacle of the ancient Khmer building movement. It's five towers, called prasats, dominate the skyline and are an iconic image as you walk over the stone ramparts through the main entrance. Carved stone friezes around the inner walls illustrate Hindu stories of war and legend. This was a Hindu based society long before it became Buddhist. Prior to the Angkorean era, before 700AD, Cambodia was a kingdom of unified states called Funan and was heavily influenced by Indian religion and culture. The people traded with China and India and Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism were introduced but with some Cambodian adaptations. Jayavarman II was the first Angkorean king and overtook the kingdom at the end of the 8th century, moving it's capital to the province north of the Tonle Sap Lake, it's current location at Angkor. Little is known why he chose to do this because this area is renowned for its droughts in the dry season but many think that it may be because he wanted to emulate the legend of Hinduism of Mount Meru being the source of life (the Dangkrek Mountains are not far to the north) surrounded by oceans (the great lake of the Tonle Sap is only a few kms to the south) and the positioning may have had political merit in subduing the threat from Siam to the west. Whatever the reason Jayavarman II set in motion a building era that was to last for 600 years and produce some of the most intriguing architecture in the world. Angkor Wat was, in fact, constructed some centuries later in the 1200s by Jayavarman VII and throughout the entire complex there are examples of building from every Angkorean kings' reign. The giant projects required masses of human power to construct which came in the form of slaves from surrounding communities who were used to extract the limestone boulders from the nearby quarries of Phnom Kulen by means of fire and roll them on huge wooden wheels across the countryside to their destinations. A second wave of more skilled workers then formed the boulders into workable bricks and fit them to position. There were seldom any straight edged pieces that formed the main walls and floors as each piece had to fit exactly to the last, much like the Inca walls in South America. Bamboo scaffolding with rudimentary cranes were used to hoist the stones into place but the very nature of this type of work must've caused countless injuries and deaths to those that worked there. Finally the master carvers completed the project by creating intricate detailing and sculptural work on virtually every surface of stone which was rendered in a lime and palm sugar plaster mix. Most of this final layer has eroded and chipped away to reveal the variety of brick types and building formations underneath. Although giant bricks of carefully cut limestone were mostly used for main construction areas, laterite bricks which look really porous like some kind of volcanic stone and small, equal sized bricks are also used. Unfortunately the Angkorean engineers were not savvy as to the long term effects of not building on a good foundation and the impact of a sandy base on the movement of buildings. They were instead obsessed by the overall appearance and now it's very obvious that there were many flaws in the building techniques. For example the lack of any keystones to secure the shape of arches means that the heavy stone corbelled roofs are now caving in on themselves because the balance of weight is all wrong. And the impact of poor foundations is wreacking havoc as a majority of the buildings are crumbling into the earth. It's a sad sight to see, what looks like just a pile of boulders strewn on the ground is in actual fact, an ancient temple building and the only giveaway is the corner of original carving which has mostly been eroded. There are a lot of individual restoration projects going on around the ancient city with major backing from foreign countries. The buildings are being re-mortared, stones replaced which have crumbled and carvings cleaned up or even replaced with new ones if it's fitting. Our favourite temples are the ones with many interior corridors and strange little buildings with hidden walls and spaces to hide. It's like being a kid again, running through the tunnels and looking amazedly down each angle, sometimes faced with a pile of rubble, sometimes a stunning view down through decorated doors and on to a hidden courtyard. It's a bit eerie at times, if you happen to be left on your own and can't see where you are in the maze of pillars and windows! There's a multitude of designs of temple, the most iconic being the prasats, or Khmer towers in which images of the king and his family are housed. Many of the towers were designed as tombs and it is common thought that the whole city is a giant mausoleum. The entire population lived in and around the city however which is recorded to have topped one million residents at times. Huge barays, reservoirs, were built to provide irrigation for the surrounding farmlands in order to boost food production for the growing population.

The demise of the Angkorean civilisation is a bit of a mystery but there are several plausible arguments as to why the city was left to ruin. The over foresting in the surrounding areas led to leaching of the soils causing the land to lose it's fertility and become useless, unable to sustain the people living on it. The rise of Theravada Buddhism in Cambodia saw a slowing up in the desire for building such monumental structures as the religion focusses more on good deeds rather than the accumulation of wealth. And in the 15th century the Siamese invaded the city, ransacking it. It continued to be used by Theravada monks and many Buddha shrines were set up in the temples but by then a lot of the buildings had already been lost to the voracious jungle vegetation and it was not until the new age European explorers began to show interest in this lost city that it's popularity grew once more.