Holiday in Camboida Part 4

After lunch it was off to see...MORE RUINS!

First stop, the Elephant Terrace. Its about 100 yards of immaculate carvings on the side of a raised ritual platform. The predominant motif is elephants. Panna told us that once a year the population would gather at this structure and clean it from top to bottom. In the following picture you can see a bit less than half of the length.

Then we continued on to another of the more famous temples: Bayon.

Every tower of the Bayon temple has the kings face looking out in all 4 of the cardinal directions. Bayon definitely was able to create an otherworldly feel. The temple was made out of a very light colored stone, and the temple lacked any overgrowth. This gave it a very different feel than the previous temples we explored. Walking through the ruin everything is bright, and yet the colors are cool, in defiance of the actual temperature. The enigmatic smile of the Bayon towers is everywhere and at every turn, looking out in a fatherly way. Eventually every part of the temple blended into one and it was conceivable that as we walked through it we were only spinning in a circle taking the same view in again and again, but it was not monotonous, only majestic.

While we were leaving the town (Bayon, along with a few other minor temples is in an ancient city called Angkor Thom) we went through the south gate, which is done in the style of the Bayon temple with the road lined with demons on one side and gods on the other.

Next we went to an outlying temple called Banteay Srei. Banteay Srei is a temple dedicated to female deities of Hinduism.

The temple was made of a red clay colored brick. The carvings were very well preserved, and was a deeper engraving than most. The entire time we toured the temple we heard tradition Khemer music coming from somewhere. It really added to the atmosphere of the place. There were number on some of the blocks on the ground for the reconstruction process.

As we finished walking through the temple we found at the back a group of musicians playing the music that gave us such an authentic feeling atmosphere during our exploration. These bands are found around a few of the Angkor temples, and are comprised of landmine victims. We put some money in their bowl to end our templeing for the day with good merit.