Angkor Wat

I have said over and over and over again both in real life to real people and on this blog that I don't have a bucket list and never ever will. I firmly believe those statements but it's not exactly 100% true. I don't think I'm lying. I just don't want a list out there that when I'm done seeing everything on the list, I can "kick the bucket". I want to live, not to finish a list and then check out. OF COURSE I have a list of places I want to visit, see, experience, breathe in, live, dive into, have wash over me or whatever. 

Angkor Wat has been at the very top of that list for a while. A good while.

I've wanted to visit Angkor Wat for forever. OK maybe not FOREVER, but a for long, long time. I've wanted to visit Angkor Wat before I ever understood what it was called or where in the world it was or what its significance was or who built it. It's been about 37 or 38 years or so since I think I remember first seeing images of this place in an architecture history class in the attic of the West Engineering Building at the University of Michigan. Some temple in the jungle overgrown with elaborate carvings. It stuck with me. Like really stuck. I honestly never forgot that one class and its impact on me was immediate.

Eventually, somehow, whether all at once or bit by bit of information, I started to equate what I'd seen in that hot attic (that probably put me to sleep all too often; although not that day) to Angkor Wat, a Hindu-turned-Buddhist temple in the jungle of Cambodia. Angkor Wat. That's where I needed to go. That's where I needed to be. One day. It would take me decades to even understand what it was I had likely seen and for me to be able to tell anyone or myself even where I needed to go. But that was how Angkor Wat started to be number one on a list. One day in 1987 or 1988.

It's a good thing I could afford to wait to figure all this out, by the way, because the notion of me as a 19 year old kid getting on a plane and flying to Cambodia was ridiculous. Kid is the right word, by the way. I mean I had no idea how I would even conceive of taking or paying for such a trip, not to mention the fact that the very concept of going to Cambodia would likely have terrified the living daylights out of me. I couldn't even imagine going into the city of Detroit back then, let alone some place with a non-English alphabet pretty much all the way around the globe. Out of the question. And also sort of the point of this blog.

February 5, 2024. That was my Angkor Wat day.

To get to Ankgor Wat today, you'll probably need to get to Siem Reap, the second largest city in Cambodia with a population of all of about 250,000 people. It's not difficult to get to. They have a brand new, Chinese-built airport that the citizens of Cambodia will be paying for riel by riel for pretty much the rest of time that accepts flights from all over Southeast Asia. Ours landed from Singapore after we spent a day in that city after 22 hours or so of flights to transport us to the other side of the planet.

Siem Reap is a modern city. By that, I don't mean that they have cars and planes and plumbing and internet and cell phones and stuff. I say that it's modern to distinguish it from what was there before. Siem Reap was founded almost 500 years ago when Thai forces were driven out of the area by the Cambodians. According to all the stories we were told while we were there, the name Siem Reap pretty much literally means "Thais get out". Now, there may be some information on the internet that disputes the accuracy of this origin story but that's what we were told and I'm sticking with it. Sometimes local legends are worth sticking with.

What I mean by modern is that before there was Siem Reap, there was Angkor. And before Cambodians were called Cambodians, there were the Khmer people, who established and held a regional empire covering all or parts of present day Cambodia, Thailand and Laos from about the year 800 to the year 1400. Angkor, which was located just a few kilometers north of Siem Reap, was the capital of the Khmer Empire.

Before we go on, let me just say that it's a bit astonishing to me that there was an empire that held a significant territory and did things that the Khmers did for 600 years and I wasn't taught anything about this in school. I get that our educational system can't possibly teach us everything about the history of mankind all over the world and that there is great value in focusing on our own history to the exclusion of the history of others in lands far away. But nothing. Not a peep. I never really understood about the Khmer Empire until I booked a trip to Cambodia. I get this is part of the reason why we (or maybe I) travel but it still amazes me. Rant over.

Vishnu dressed as Buddha. Angkor Wat.

I don't know about everything the Khmers did while they were establishing, operating and running their empire but I do know that they built. A lot. And a lot of temples. The area that used to be Angkor is about 430 square kilometers and there are about 1,000 temples located there. Got that number? 1,000!!!!! Want to see some ancient temples in the jungle? Cambodia's the place you need to go. And more specifically, Siem Reap. And Angkor Wat (Angkor means "city" and Wat means "pagoda") is the most famous and probably most intact of all of those 1,000 or so temples.

On our Angkor Wat day, we got there at 4:55 a.m. That's in the morning. It's dark at 4:55 a.m. Like really dark. Maybe just a bit less dark than when we were picked up at 4:30 by our guide, Rey, but still pretty dark. Sunrise is not anywhere close to 4:55 a.m. but apparently the thing to do at Angkor Wat is to watch the sun rise. It makes some sense. The view on the right day at sunrise and sunset is supposed to be spectacular and it's really, really, pretty darned hot in Cambodia later in the day at sunset. Sunrise makes a lot more sense. So there we were before 5 in the morning sitting on a stone step across the moat from Angkor Wat. Waiting.

We were not the first ones there.

Over the next hour and a half, we waited for the light to come. The crescent moon was crystal clear in the sky but not so much clear down on the surface of the Earth. In those 90 minutes. Angkor Wat never really became clear to us, although as the light grew we could see what initially seemed to be three towers become five and the trees that originally seemed to be at the same distance as the temple eventually popped into the foreground. To our right, we could see what seemed like hordes of tourists walked into the temple complex across the bridge over the moat. Major FOMO going on watching that happen but I'm sure Rey knew what he was doing, right?

Beyond watching, we listened and felt. We heard a frog, maybe. A rooster, definitely. Monks chanting nearby before 6 and at the top of that hour, the birds really picked up. And I could feel the paper ticket I was holding sucking in the moisture from the atmosphere and becoming damper and damper. Like literally soaking up the humidity before it was even 7 in the morning. Eventually we realized the sunset was not going to be as spectacular as it could be and we picked up and started walking over the bridge, past the naga and the lions guarding the temple from evil and into Angkor Wat proper.

Waiting for the sun. The bottom pic is as clear as it got before we decided to move into the temple.

Angkor Wat was built from 1122 to 1150 (or so) at the direction of Khmer King Suryavarman II as his own personal state temple. Apparently this was a thing with Khmer rulers. New king, new temple. Clearly if there are 1,000 (or so) temples in ancient Ankgor there were more temples built during the Khmer dynasty than there were kings but still...new king, new temple was clearly a concept. And Suryavarman II wasn't one to break with tradition. At least not in the building of the temple concept.

The "or so" (the first one) is in there the last paragraph, by the way, because I guess the precise death date of Suryavarman II is a bit in doubt by about five years (or so). Maybe it's as early as 1145; maybe it's as late as 1150. I'm not sure it matters for the purpose of this post but for consistency's sake with what you will read later in this post (assuming you read to the end), I'm going with 1150.  

When Angkor Wat was completed it was built to resemble Mount Meru, the traditional home of the Hindu gods and it was dedicated as a Hindu temple to the deity Vishnu. In this regard, Suryavarman DID break with tradition. Recent temples in the 1100s and just a bit before had been dedicated to Shiva. And completed is a bit of a fluid concept. The place was built to be functional, but the carvings that pretty much cover the entire temple were still being added after the place was opened and operational. It never really got finished. Suryavarman died before the carving could be completely done and I guess his successor was probably more focused on building his own temple rather than finishing the ornament at his predecessor's one.

About three decades after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor Wat was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer. When it was reclaimed (by King Jayavarman VII), it was converted to a Buddhist temple to match the official religion of the Empire at that point. It's been that way ever since.

The statue of Vishnu is still there, by the way, although he's now dressed as Buddha. Hey...why make a new statue. Let's just dress the old one up a bit. Nobody will notice.

In the jungle, but separate from the jungle.

So after a couple of hours of waiting for the dark to change to the light, it was time to enter Angkor Wat. Whether I knew I would ever get here or not, it was time to do something I'd waited a long time to do. Over the bridge, through the entry portico, past Vishnu dressed as Buddha and enter the temple proper. This was truly one of the most exciting moments of travel in the last 11 or so years I've been roaming the Earth and writing about what I found.

It wasn't what I expected.

So here's the thing...I am not going to ever say I was disappointed in Angkor Wat. But I will say at the point we passed through the entrance pavilion that Angkor Wat was significantly different than I thought it would be. I expected some place intimate, tight, a little claustrophobic maybe, with atmosphere and possibly a little jungle mixed in. I expected obscured views, wilderness and wild-ness with probably some monkeys running and hiding from approaching humans and maybe a monk or two in bright orange robes. What we saw was a wide open space with the temple of Angkor Wat still a good distance away.

This place is massive. It's formal, it's organized, it's processional and it's clear of any sort of jungle that I imagined. There IS jungle just outside of the wall of Angkor Wat but that's where it stops. No jungle inside. Not so much as a stray sapling. Just how big is Angkor Wat? The property covers acres and acres and the perimeter wall is 5.5 kilometers long. That's 3.4 miles long. This place is not small. Not at all.

Let me dwell on this disappointment part for just a paragraph or so. Inherently, any place that doesn't meet expectations is a disappointment. I expected Angkor Wat to be a 100 on a scale of 1 to 100. It wasn't. Let's say it was an 85. 85 is not 100. But it's clear of most other places I've been on this planet. Angkor Wat was spectacular and impressive and I'll talk about that below. But I expected something different. It wasn't disappointing. It was just different.

Looking back towards the entrance of Angkor Wat from the platform where the King would address the masses.

So basically Angkor Wat is a giant walled enclosure surrounded by a moat with the temple towards the back. The temple is the iconic silhouette you see in sunrise shots like the two I've posted above. That's the Mount Meru replica thing with a high central tower and four slightly lower towers arranged around it in a square in plan. 

Between the entrance and the temple itself, there is a large open lawn with few stone libraries scattered about and a building that acts as a buffer between the lawn and the temple. In its heyday, there would have been other buildings within the wall (as well as just outside) but time, and the jungle, I guess, has a way of destroying buildings made of wood and straw and palm leaves and even brick. Stone stays; the other stuff doesn't so much.

The lawn, by the way, is a lawn only in the dry season. In the wet season (or monsoon season), it's a giant pool that fills all the way up to the floor level of the libraries. Apparently it rains a lot in Cambodia. It's difficult to fathom that much water pouring down and being retained in the temple grounds but I believe it. I have no basis for questioning what Rey told us and we did go in the dry season for a reason. Somewhere deep down inside we understood it rained a lot.

The building before the temple (what I referred to as the "buffer" above) is a structure with arched corridors and a series of interior pools which then leads to the temple proper. In front of it on the lawn side, there is a large terrace for the King to receive visitors and address crowds. Between the entrance pavilion and the King's reception terrace there is a very long and wide stone walkway with walls and railings and statues (although not so many statues as there used to be) on either side. Nagas (sea serpents) and lions figure prominently in the statuary.

Images of apsara dancers cover Angkor Wat. Note the bullet hole in the bottom picture, a memory of the country's civil war.

There are so many things to be impressed with here.

First, the scale and the speed of what was built is just amazing. I know I already gave some stats on the size of the place but here's one more: there are an estimated 10 million pieces of stone which make up the property and some weigh as much as 3,300 pounds. They were transported down rivers on rafts made of bamboo and then moved into place from there, mostly by elephant labor. And they did the whole thing in about 37 years. 

Now I'm sure that the subject of Suryavarman II were sufficiently motivated to pitch in and build this thing in those 37 years. Maybe they were forced or coerced or promised special dispensation in the afterlife or something. And yes, I'm sure the elephants helped a lot. Rey bandied about a number of 5,000 elephants being involved in putting the temple property together. But consider this: it took the residents of Cologne 632 years to build their cathedral. I know Gothic cathedrals were notoriously slow to come together but look, 37 years is quick for something this size back then.

Second, the skill involved in the craft is obvious. It is difficult to see the mortar joints used between the pieces of stone. Like almost Inca difficult. And the carving is so intricate and it covers like every square inch of all the stone over the entire property. I can't remember really ever seeing bas relief carvings this shallow but they depict what are mostly apsara dancers pretty perfectly. To their credit, Khmer kings didn't entomb themselves with actual live people or deliberately kill servants to be with them prior to closing up their resting places like some other cultures. The dancers depicted on the temple are supposed to represent the King's company in the afterlife.

Finally (at least for now)...arches. We think the Romans are so great for "inventing" the arch (and legitimately they were very good at building arches that lasted millennia) but clearly people figured the same thing out on other continents that we don't learn about in history classes too. It was refreshing to see the same sort of structural logic being applied completely independent of Roman (or dare I say...Western) influence. It was cool to see the groin vaults at the perpendicular intersections of arched vaults. 

Angkor Wat was painted gold on the outside and red on the inside. Some of the red remains from centuries ago.

Whether I knew it or not (and there was clearly lots of not knowing for me here) before I set foot in Angkor Wat, what I would have identified as the form or shape of the entire built work of Angkor Wat was the King's temple, the four peaked structure at the highest point of the whole place. This was the inner sanctum, reserved for those who had achieved enlightenment (like the priests) or who were granted it at birth (like the King). 

When the temple was being used by its patron back in the 1100s, the notion of someone like me or any of the other throngs of tourists that pour through the place uninhibited today actually being allowed inside the most holy parts of the temple must have been unthinkable. There is a show of inclusivity around the temple in the form of some extremely steep staircases which are more crosses between a stair and a ladder that in theory allow any man who can climb them to attain the enlightenment felt by the King. Call me skeptical that anyone would actually be able to climb them unhindered. 

Our way up to the top of the temple was via one of these staircases, although not really; they actually have built a wooden stair on top of the stone stair. Don't get me wrong, this thing took some concentration to get up and particularly down. If you slip coming down this contraption, it's a quick fall down fast. I held on tight and passed plenty of people with less confidence than me on the way down.

The way up. Hold on tight on the way down.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that my 19 year old self would not have believed it if he had known that I was climbing up to the very top of Angkor Wat in 2024. As much as this place was not how I imagined it would be, the fact that I was in Cambodia making the ascent to the very top of an ancient stone temple built by a civilization that I really had no idea existed until I made the reservation to come here just shows the power of what we can achieve when we want something enough. 

There is nothing necessarily that different at the summit of Angkor Wat than there is on the rest of the property. In fact, there are fewer carvings than there are on most of the property. But it's the top. It's the holiest place on the whole campus. It used to be so sacred that very few could even set foot there. And it represented a long journey for me personally over the years and actually on that day, even though we made it to the peak at the relatively early hour of about 8 a.m. It does have better views, though. That's for sure.

Our trip to the top ended our time at Angkor Wat. We saw pretty much every spot in the whole place worth visiting. Yes, the sunset was not the spectacular experience it could have been but it was worth getting up early to take a chance. I mean, what else am I going to do in Cambodia at 4:30 in the morning? Sleep? We were 12 time zones behind just a couple of days before. I was never likely going to be here again. I had to do the sunrise.

And sure, it didn't meet my expectations (but I would find what I thought I was getting just a bit later). That didn't dampen this experience really at all. I am so glad we traveled halfway around the world for this.

Views from the top of Angkor Wat.

There are a couple of treats on the way out. We had no idea at the time but the temple sits at the back of the property. It's far quicker to get out the back than it would be to re-trace our steps and leave the way we came in. And our car was waiting for us in the back. That wasn't one of the treats.

Angkor Wat today looks very austere. The plain stone is carved for sure, but it's either monochrome or stained a black color. Of course, that's not the way it was planned. We saw glimpses of paint on some of the stone earlier in our tour but back when the place was really occupied as a working temple, there wouldn't just be stone. Those impressive vaulted ceilings we saw before we arrived at the temple proper wouldn't have been exposed earlier in the life of Angkor Wat. Instead, they would be infilled with elaborately carved wooden ceiling tiles. There's a mockup of what this might have looked like on the way out the back. And it's pretty impressive.

The black color on the stone, by the way, very much resembles what is happening to the cathedral in Cologne. That building is also sandstone and it's been turned black in reaction to the acid rain that pours down on the city of Cologne. Maybe the same thing is going on at Angkor? Total speculation there. 

Finally, the back side of Angkor Wat faces east, which is the same direction we were looking waiting for the sun to rise some 4 or so hours earlier. Looking into the rising sun and taking pictures of that view is never going to be satisfying except at the moment when the sunrise is spectacular, which it wasn't that morning. Backlit photographs don't work so well, or at least I don't know how to take them properly.

But wait a few hours for the sun to get high enough and turn yourself around the other way to see the light hitting the face of the temple part of Angkor Wat and the view is just spectacular. We never would have found this if we had gone out the way we came in. We got the best pictures at the end of our time here. No haze, gorgeous light and most importantly, a lot fewer people. The end of our time at Angkor Wat got us the best pictures. Definitely a sweet ending to our time in this amazing place.

Now if I could just get those pesky people out of that last shot. On to breakfast and the jungle.