Temples Day 2

On day 2 of our temples tour we did what they call the small circuit which includes all the most famous ones, Angkor Wat, Ta Promh (or jungle temple/tomb raider temple) and Bayon (or the face temple)

Lee showed us a couple of places to do the best pictures and also some fun ones!
Usually they recommend to do this tour starting at sunrise at Angkor Wat, but waking up at 4am wasn't for us so we went during the day. It was hot but luckily some temples had shade! Similar to Ayutthaya the temples were not very busy with tourists so we enjoyed them at our own pace.

Even if all these temples were built at different times, each of them followed roughly the same design:
- a mote. This was created around the temple to represent the ocean, some of the motes are quite impressive as they're very wide and deep.
- four main entrances.These entrances are situated exactly representing the east, north,south west all join up at the middle of the central tower. Difficult to put that in picture sometimes but there were some amazing perspectives
- a central tower with three or five others. The central tower was the most decorated with a lot of precious stones and a statue.
- a gallery all around the tower complex, with some wall carvings or statues.
-most temples have the East gate as their main entrance as east represents new life with the rising sun, Ankor Wats main entrance is in the west as the king that built it wanted it to be his tomb

Each temple was built for a purpose, dedicated to a god or someone. At that time the kings oscillated between Hinduism and Buddhism. This is a big difference with the temples we saw in Thailand as they were all Buddhist. In Hinduism there are a lot of gods and stories, Lee could tell us a story for each of the carvings which was super interesting! Although difficult to remember 😅Lue lisää