Angkor - the ancient temples of Cambodia

I thought, I'd start this blog entry with a quick summary line:

Wow !!!

That's probably a good summation of our impressions of the fascinating temple ruins around Siem Reap.

A bit of history first (and I'll promise to keep it brief):

Between the 9th and 15th century the Khmer people built a series of temples around their ancient capital city of Angkor. (NB: Angkor literally means "capital city".) It's hard to believe that Cambodia, which today is one of the poorest countries in the world, had such an advanced culture approx. a thousand years ago.

There are around 100 temple monuments in this area - some Buddhist temples, others Hindu temples. At its high point in the 12th century more than 1 million people lived in this area (in comparison there were only 40,000 people living in London at the same time).

Today one can still see many of these amazing temples and costructions - or rather what's left of them. Some of the temples had been overgrown by the jungle and have only recently been recovered. And others have suffered from war, destruction or plundering. These days many countries from around the world are sponsoring the renovation of these temples (including Germany, whose tax dollars seem to got towards the reconstruction of the Angkor Wat temple).

Apart from the sheer magnitude of the ruins around Angkor, many of the detailed stone carvings and ornaments are very beautiful, too.

Arguably the greatest temple within the complex is Angkor Wat - which is also the biggest religious monument in the world. We visited it during the day, and I also went back one morning at 5.00 am to experience it at sunrise.

The other temples which really stood out were the Bayon temple, which has more than 200 large stone faces. Plus the Ta Prohm temple for the perfect lost-in-the-jungle experience (NB: The movie "Tomb Raider" with Angelina Jolie was partly filmed there.)

Below is a slide show from our visits of the temple ruins (NB: including some shots which show us nose-to-nose with the giant faces of the Bayon temple):

Angkor

The days that we spent at Angkor were very hot (especially during the middle of the day it was almost too much), but we were rewarded with some incredible impressions from one of the world's greatest archaeological treasures.