Angkor and on the trail of the Khmer Rouge

We seem to have covered a lot since we arrived in Siem Reap. First a boat trip to Tonle Sap Lake which is the home of 2,000 people living in floating homes. It is very important for them to be able to go with the flow as there is plenty of it! The lake is connected to the Siem Reap River which is connected to the mighty Mekong. In the dry season the rivers pull water away from the lake and the level drops. In the wet season water flows into the lake and it floods with water shifting their homes as it does. It doesn't bode well for a successful postal service. They make their living from fishing (no surprise there) and they also have rice farms on the shore. As part of the community there are a number of markets, schools, a church or two and 4 Karoake bars.

Thursday was the big day as we saw both Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat. Luckily for us the day was mainly cloudy. If it had been sunny we would have retired to the hotel for a midday break. However we ploughed on through both complexes. They really are complexes. Whilst they were built around temples they were also homes for the king and the court plus centres of learning including military training centres. If you have been keeping up with the other blog episodes you will remember the Chams. Well they had a few run ins with the Khmer empire so the empire needed a mean fighting machine to respond. They are on a fantastic scale. Angor Thom's scale is breadth while Wat's is height. Wat (the earlier of the 2)  began as a Hindu construction and Thom as Buddhist but they changed in their lifetime so they religious symbolism fluctuates. Thom was built as a fortress to beat off the pesky Chams so the carving is not as intricate as Wat - they might have been in a bit of a hurry to get the structure assembled in the first place then to carve out the symbols of victory once it happened. It is characterised by structures with four heads at their peak facing NSE&W. The guides say it relates to the king who is akin to the Buddha in various states of meditation and enlightenment. For me there is also a kind of crossover to the Hindu god Brahma who is captured in stone with 4 faces facing NSE&W. 

Today, our final day, we visited some other temple structures that are quite different to the gigantic scale of the temples of Wat and Thom. They are both much smaller in area covered and in height. They both pre-date the two giants. Banteay Srei which 10th century, built in pink sandstone, has the same quality of delicate carving as Wat. It too started life as a Hindu inspired creation and the carvings depict scenes in the lives of the big names of the Hindu deities. As well as the pink stone, it has a green hue which comes from the lichen growing on the stone. Preach Khan is very angular in its structure and it's purpose was a monastery and religious college. 

As a bit of a break from visiting temples we took a climb up a mountain (or so it seemed) to visit a river, the water of which flows over some interesting stone carvings of Hindu gods. It is situated within the hills that head up towards the Thai border. It was also the haunt of soldiers of the Khmer Rouge when they were ousted from government in 1979 but continuing the civil war.

Finally we went to a land mine museum which is the centre of a charity which funds both the clearance of mines and also the education and care of children maimed as a result of land mines and polio. They reckon there are still 5 million land mines in Cambodia. The world and his wife have all been responsible for planting these things across vast acres of Cambodian soil.