Tomb Raiders

When we arrived at Angkor Wat temple last month after traveling halfway around (and a good bit down) the Earth to Siem Reap, Cambodia, I expected I would find a magnificent ruin just barely hanging on and standing upright. I figured some ancient structure surrounded and subsumed by the jungle of Southeast Asia. I expected tight quarters, constricted views, plenty of exotic carvings and lots and lots of vines and tropical plants. I was thinking a plundered maze-like shrine that looked like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Tomb Raider or something like that. 

Why did I expect this? Well honestly, because I remembered seeing photos in books and on line that looked like I described above. I couldn't wait to get there myself. Maybe if we were really lucky (and I know this is placing a western bias into the fantasy that I've set up for myself), we'd see an orange-clad Buddhist monk walking through those old halls reminding us of the tradition and purpose for the place. Angkor Wat was number one on my travel list for years for all those reasons. I wanted to breathe and take and drink it all in. Is that all too much to ask?

Apparently it was. Waaaaay too much.

Jungle? Vines? Barely hanging on? Struggling to stand upright? Umm...no. Angkor Wat looks nothing like I imagined or wasted a few minutes putting keyboard to screen to place into the first two paragraphs of this post. Was it incredible? Oh, yeah! Was it what I expected? Not really, no. It lacked the romanticism. It lacked the mystery. It lacked the danger. It lacked the uncertain structural stability. It lacked the monks (at least when we were there). Indiana Jones? Lara Croft? Nope. Not at Angkor Wat. Not there. Totally NOT that place.

But Ankgor Wat is not the only temple near Siem Reap. The Khmers built around 1,000 or so in their ancient capital of Angkor. They are literally everywhere you look when you are driving or riding around in the right spots in the outskirts of Siem Reap. After all, the Khmers spent about 600 years building these things one after the other. Why they needed all these temples is beyond me but I know enough to know that pretty much every new ruler in a certain period of time built himself at least one new temple. These things add up.

Then in the year 1431, the Khmers picked up and moved town to a spot to the south and east which is about where the current Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh stands. Why the move? Better crop growing conditions. Better access to the Mekong River. Further from the Thais, who decidedly did not get along with the Khmers. It was a win-win-win. Seems like a no brainer to me.

When Angkor was abandoned, much of what the Khmers had built fell into disrepair. Over time, their houses and temples and everything else they constructed became forgotten by the rest of the world. And yes, a lot of it got overgrown and overtaken by Mother Nature. Not Ankgor Wat, which continued to operate as a Buddhist Temple even though the Empire that built it had left it behind. But yes to some of the others. So that image of a centuries-old temple buried deep in the jungle of Southeast Asia filled with treasure and danger? It existed. And exists. Today.

We signed up for a tour of Angkor Wat that started at 4:30 in the morning. When were done exploring that temple, our guide took us to lunch (or maybe it was a late breakfast; tough to tell when you start your tour at 4:30). Then we walked across the road, climbed up a temporary wooden staircase spanning a stone wall and down the other side and entered a place called Ta Prohm. This is what I was looking for.

Ta Prohm was built by the Khmer King Jayavarman VII. Construction started in the year 1186. Jayavarman was the nephew of Suryavarman II who 65 years or so earlier started building Angkor Wat. From the conditions of the two sites today, it is incredible that Ta Prohm is younger than Angkor Wat. And, I know, there's not really much of a difference between 835 years old and 900 years old when it comes right down to it but Ta Prohm just feels so much older. And old isn't really the right word, it feels more ancient. It's the jungle, I am sure, that does this. It feels like Ta Prohm has emerged out of time. Ankgor Wat doesn't quite feel that way.

Ta Prohm is really big. Not quite as big as its more famous cousin over at Angkor Wat (which is about 150% bigger) but it's still big. The outside wall that we climbed over is rectangular in plan and measures 650 meters on the short side by 1,000 meters on the long side. That's about 5-1/2 football fields (with end zones) by 9 football fields (again, with end zones) for those of you that do your measuring in football fields. 160 acres. Big. So big that there used to be 12,500 people living inside its walls. That's big, right?

Within Ta Prohm's outer walls there is a lot of space. Today it is filled with jungle. No formal paths or wide open spaces here. Just jungle. There is clearly a lot of forested area that used to be open back in the day which is now just filled with whatever has grown naturally over the last almost six centuries. 

Towards the back of the property there were four additional concentric walls, all square in plan, that enclosed the heart of the temple. We entered at the opposite side of the temple property from the temple proper so I'm considering the side we entered to be the front. I could be wrong on this one and I'm not sure it matters other than to say that we got to the deepest part of the temple last in our tour. We started in the jungle.

Just a note on the first paragraph of this section. I am pretty confident that Jayavarman VII did nothing personally to "build" Ta Prohm. I am sure (like his uncle before him) that all the work on this place was done by local labor that either donated, were convinced to donate, or were forced to donate their time to moving and placing giant pieces of stone to glorify their ruler. That and a few thousand elephants, no doubt.

The very interior of Ta Prohm. Headless Buddha. Lots of these in Cambodia.

I have a little bit of a confession to make about our time at Ta Prohm.

One of the ways I remember facts and feelings and anything sensory from our travels is by taking notes. I'm serious. I take a lot of notes on vacation. When we are being led around somewhere like Ta Prohm (or just walking around on our own), I'm usually typing furiously in the Notes app on my iPhone 8 (go ahead and laugh!) so I can remember everything I'm experiencing. Or some of it anyway. It really does help.

I didn't do that so much at Ta Prohm. It happens sometimes when something gets in the way that either distracts me or takes my attention away from my iPhone (written ironically, I hope, this way deliberately; we DO spend too much time on our phones). At Ta Prohm, it was two things that did this for or to me.

First, there is so much to see. The scale and the scope of ruin and wonder at this place is just incredible. Everywhere you turn or look in every viewshed or around every corner is out of some amazing fantasy. It's sensory overload. It's all I could do to keep up with everything my mind was taking in.

Second, it was hot. Like hotter than I've ever really experienced hot. Like distractingly, I-have-to-focus-on-putting-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-and-take-it-all-in-and-there's-no-time-for-note-taking hot. Not so much with the sun as with the air temperature and the humidity. I'm not saying it was this way just at Ta Prohm. We found this to be the case everywhere in Cambodia. It's just a hot, hot place. I wore long pants because we were visiting an active temple (for respect) and we were in the jungle (to protect the legs). It was so hot that the knees of my pants were sweated through. I'm a sweaty guy in general but my knees??? It was hot. Notes took a back seat. 

The reason why I write that is really as a disclaimer for the lack of facts and details in this post. It's more feelings. I don't necessarily feel that is a problem. For me, Ta Prohm was very visceral. It was all about feelings and emotions and discoveries. Ta Prohm has character and untold secrets oozing from it. It has soul. But for this post, we'll have to live with lots of pictures and lots of feelings and maybe a story or two sprinkled in.

There is one fact about Ta Prohm that is worth noting because it totally reinforces its situation. And once again, we have to bring Angkor Wat into the narrative. 

Angkor Wat was built as a physical metaphor for Mount Meru, where the Hindu gods were said to dwell. Because it was designed that way, when you visit that temple you are constantly walking up until you reach the summit way above the ground plane where you started. Ta Prohm isn't designed and built with that same intent. It's flat. When you are standing in the middle of the temple you are no higher on the face of the Earth than when you entered the property. 

For the knees and the sweating (sorry...had to get that in there again), this is a huge advantage. I can walk a lot longer a lot cooler around some place that's flat than I can when I'm constantly climbing stairs. For Ta Prohm itself, its elevation (or lack thereof) has allowed it to be absorbed and conquered by the jungle much more easily than it would have if it had resembled Angkor Wat. The trees are clearly taller than the structure that the Khmers left behind. There's no competition. It's like it was made to be overgrown by the jungle. It wanted to be consumed.

So about those feelings...

It took us about 10 or 15 minutes of walking Ta Prohm's property to get to something man-made beyond the first wall we climbed over. It's the building shown two photographs up in this post. I honestly have no idea what the building was used for but it fit into what I was looking for: a clearly abandoned, really old building that had been grown on and around to almost become part of the jungle. The stone is weathered; the place looks a little unsafe; and there's enough living stuff on its walls and roofs to fit the picture in my mind's eye. To top it all off, right in front there's a tree that looks like it was thrown down from above and its roots are just the lower half of the tree just smushed on top of the Earth.

It got a bit crazy from there. We entered the main portion of the temple after that.

Have you ever seen a tree growing on top of a building? I don't mean like in a planter or on a landscaped roof terrace or something like that put in place specifically for that purpose. I mean a tree growing on top of a building. No soil, no pots, no real way for a tree to survive. On top of a stone building. You can see that at Ta Prohm. And not just once. This happens all over the place. And they are the most unusual trees. More vine or even creature than tree. Thick naked, no bark limbs and roots everywhere. Growing, grabbing, cascading down the very structures they are sitting upon. 

Part of what makes Ta Prohm so enchanting is this juxtaposition between manmade and nature while also understanding that it is nature which is really in command here. Every turn you take, everywhere you look, every step you take and every arch you walk through and ruin you pass it's nature slowly taking apart what man put in place.

There are piles of rock everywhere, presumably demolished by the slow advance of plants that swell and move and push aside stone as they grow. But there are also joints filled with roots and limbs that are destined for future destruction just as soon as the vines and trees that are slowly consuming the place decide that it's time to take down another portion. There is scene after scene after scene of this stuff as you move through the place. Each view you get is more improbable than the last. Look at this! Can you believe what's happening here? What is with this giant tree? It's the stuff of fantasy. It's just incredible to see. And everything I hoped we would see before we set off halfway around the globe to get here.

And those walls that enclosed the inner portions of the temple? I am sure we walked past or through or over those things but there were no discernible barriers as far as I was concerned. The jungle took them all.

There are two specific story memories I have from Ta Prohm. One is about the entrances to Ta Prohm. The other is about the stegosaurus. 

What's that, you say? Stegosaurus? Yep. Stegosaurus. Let's start with that.

Take a look at the picture below. In a corner of Ta Prohm at about chest height or maybe a little lower if I'm remembering right (and there's no way I could really tell you exactly where this thing is), you will find a carving of a stegosaurus. On many levels, this is really pretty cool. There are other creatures carved into the walls of the ruined temple but this one has to be the most amazing one. I mean, who doesn't love dinosaurs.

It was only until a couple of days later that I really started to be astonished by what I'd seen. Were people in 12th century Cambodia digging up fossils of dinosaurs or is something weirder going on? So I looked it up. Sure enough, the first stegosaurus discovery (at least in the western world) was documented in 1877. What on Earth did this carved dinosaur in the jungle of Southeast Asia mean? 

Were there stegosauruses (or is it stegosauri?) roaming the planet in some spots when man was around? There are apparently some conspiracy theorists who believe that's exactly what it means. The truth of the matter is that while scholars cannot agree on what kind of animal is represented here, it's not a stegosaurus. The "back plates" of the animal are likely just abstract representations of leaves. 

It did keep me guessing for a few days, though. Or maybe a couple of weeks.

Lastly there are the entrances. If it seems strange to write about the entrance last, that's because there are four of them and they serve as both the entrances and the exits to the property.

When we climbed over the outside wall of Ta Prohm at the beginning of our visit, we did it not because there was no entrance on that side of the temple, but because the entrance pavilion was under reconstruction and was closed. The wooden staircase replaced the entrance. There was no other way to get in. I also (and I'm blaming the heat here) didn't pay attention to what was below the scaffolding that the workers were standing on. Didn't even notice the gate.

But I did notice it on the way out. It's the cover picture of this post. You can see how big it is by the person standing just in the shadows of the doorway on the facing opening. You can also see two of the four faces on the pavilion. 

This is a motif we'd see again on our day roaming around some of the temples of Angkor, notably at Bayon Temple, which has a total of 216 faces. Depending on your beliefs, the faces either represent the four faces of the Hindu god Brahma or the four Buddhist virtues of equanimity, loving kindness, compassion and sympathetic joy. Pick one. Or pick both. I kind of prefer both here. Of all the structures we saw at Ta Prohm, this last piece, despite its slightly battered condition, is probably by far the most intact and serves for me as the most vivid memory of the workmanship that made up this magnificent temple.

Finally (which I suppose comes after lastly)...if you are a huge tomb raider fan, the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider movie was actually filmed in part at Ta Prohm. We didn't know that when we visited but it totally fits. This place is enchanting. It gave me everything I hoped I would find in Siem Reap, just in a different location than I thought I would actually find it. It's all good. I got what I came for. I'm happy. 

The craziest tree at Ta Prohm. How is this thing even surviving?