Champasek and Wat Phou

3:00pm: After checking in to our beautiful hotel in Champasek, we took a tuk tuk to the ancient Khmer temple of Wat Phou (which translates to Mountain Monastery).

Wat Phou is a series of ruined temples and shrines dating from the sixth to the twelfth centuries. It was originally a Hindu place of worship, and the site was likely chosen because of a phallic stone outcropping on the top of the mountain, which easily would have made the site auspicious to worshippers of Shiva, a Hindu god often symbolized by a phallus. The earliest structures at the site were most likely built by the ancient Khmer, although some experts claim they were built by the Champa. Vat Phou was a part of the Khmer Empire centered at Angkor in Cambodia, at least as early as the 10th century. The ruins consist of a series of temples connected by a series of causeways and staircases working their way up the side of the mountain.Read more