Angkor Wat , Cambodia

14th-18th February, 2010

Angkor Wat (the city pagoda), was not only the grandest of all the Khmer temples, it was also a city in its own right, built during the reign of Suryavarman II, in the fist half of the 12th century. The outer limits of Angkor Wat are set by its broad moat, faced in laterite and sandstone, including this, the total area is almost 200 hectares – a rectangle of 1.5km E-W by 1.3km N-S, the largest temple at Angkor.

Within the 82 hectares of the outer enclosure, the temple itself stands in the middle on a terrace measuring 332x258m, nearly 9 hectares. The remaining 9/10ths of the area was taken up with the city, including the royal palace, although no trace remains (thought to have been built in light materials).

Siem Reap is the perfect base to explore Angkor Wat and the other 32 temples of Angkor. For just $15 (for the three of us), we hired a tuk-tuk driver for the day. On top of this cost we also bought a pass at the official Angkor Wat ticket office. The choices were either a one day, 3 day or one week ticket, we decided to go for the 3 day pass which cost $40 each.
The old abandoned city of Angkor is absolutely huge. The Angkor region, bordering ‘The Great Lake’, had a valuable supply of water, fish and fertile soil, which is thought to have been settled since Neolithic times, as stone tools and ceramics have been found in this location (Freeman & Jacques, 2009).

The size of the city is vast and hiring a tuk-tuk driver to explore was a good move! The two tours sign posted within the city are for the traditional ‘petit circuit’ and the ‘grand circuit’. So with the help of our tuk-tuk driver we planned out a pretty good itinerary starting with Angkor Wat. Other than the obvious my favourite temple within the city was the Temple of Bayon, which has a mass of faces that are actually towers, that create a stone mountain of ascending peaks. Originally there were 49 towers but today only 37 are standing. Most are carved with four faces on each cardinal point but sometimes there are only two or three. The temple is not only complex in structure but it’s meaning too, having passed through different religious phases from Pantheon of Gods, Hindu worship and Buddhism.