Angkor Bayon is most famous for it's 1.2 kilometers of bas-reliefs. Our favorite was where there was a naval battle on the top two-thirds of the wall, and on the bottom third there were scenes from daily life at the lake where the battle was fought. There were pictures of people picking lice from each other's hair, and even some women giving birth. How cool is that?
Angkor Bayon is actually one of the many temples inside the once-capitol city of Angkor Thom. It has 54 towers, all having stone faces on them. At first glance, the faces look like the Buddha, but they are really the king Jayavarman VII. The resemblance of his face to the Buddha is because he thought of himself as a god-king, or almost equivalent to the Buddha. The faces have been built facing the four cardinal directions.
The temple has three levels. The first and second have the bas-reliefs on them, and the third is a central sanctuary. I know this makes the temple sound simply layed out, but it is in fact a maze of winding corridors that make it hard to recognize the three levels. Did you know that once upon a time the towers were sheathed in gold? That must have been beautiful, but the gold has been stripped by other rulers and robbers. Too bad.
Next we went to Angkor Thom. You get a surprise even just by walking through the gateway! There is a scene from "The Churning Of The Sea Of Milk" The Churning Of The Sea Of Milk is where the gods held on to a Naga (snake), who thrashed around stirring up the sea of milk from which came to elixir of immortality. So there was a statue of a Naga and gods were holding on to it. (If you look at the picture you can see a gray, lumpy line leading out from the right side of the gate- that's it.)Unfortunately, most of the heads and some other parts of the statue were stolen by bandits.
Angkor Thom is surrounded by a large moat 300 feet wide. Parts of it don't have water in it anymore, but it's still pretty. There is a stone wall surrounding it, with five gates leading into the city that even elephants can walk under! It's amazing.
So this completes the first day of our sight-seeing. The next post will be about our day in town and then about our other day of sightseeing. See you soon!
P.S. If you go back a post to the one called Cambodia, you'll see that I put a picture in of the house Mom and Dad lived in while they were in Ta Phrya. Be sure to check it out!
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