Temples of Angkor

Angkor Wat in Cambodia is widely believed to be the largest religious structure in the world. We awoke at 4:15 this morning to catch the sun rising over it.

Just to give you a sense of scale, that central tower is 165 feet tall. The outer wall that surrounds the temple is hard to see in silhouette, but it is a little longer than a football field.




These monkeys may look cute now, but they were doing the nasty moments before I was able to get the camera out. The building they're looking back on was one of the ancient libraries on the outskirts of the temple grounds.


When describing Angkor Wat, all the guide books say something like "lose yourself in the majesty of this Everest of Temples." Rather than losing ourselves, Peter and I ended up losing each other, and spent the next two hours trying to find one another so that we could continue on with our journey.






From Angkor Wat we went to Ta Prohm just a few kilometers away. In stark contrast to Angkor Wat, which has withstood eight centuries, Ta Prohm has become so taken over by the jungle that the massive tree roots support the temple as much as the temple supports the trees.



It's another great example to mankind that no matter how clever we think we are, nature is going to ultimately win out.




We finished off the afternoon at Angkor Thom, which might look familiar to those of you who saw Tomb Raider. It boasts 216 faces carved into the towers, all of which bare an uncanny resemblance to then-King Jayavarman VII. This was before the days of Big Brother, so in lieu of security cameras at every vantage point, the good king modestly posted busts of himself looking down at every corner of the temple, just to remind everyone who was boss.



He is smiling though, so he couldn't have been all that bad of a guy, right?



Two-dimensional pictures just don't do these temples justice, so I decided to walk around one section of Ankgor Thom and shoot a little point-of-view (POV) video. And don't get snotty with me about the shaky video either. The ground was very uneven and more importantly, I'm on vacation. If you want to see smooth Steadicam shots around the temple that badly, I'll be happy to send you my rate card.