Beauty Spots
Ta Prohm BUDDHIST TEMPLE
The eventual Indiana Jones fantasy, Ta Prohm
is cloaked in stippled gloominess , its decomposing towers and walls locked in
the sluggish , muscular embrace of large main systems. If Angkor Wat, the Bayon
and other temples are witness to the brilliance of the ancient Khmers, Ta Prohm
reminds people equally of the excellent fertility and influence of the forest .
There is a romantic cycle to this admired , with humanity earliest conquering
natural world to speedily create, and Mother Nature once again discovering
humanity to unhurriedly demolish .
Built from 1186 and initially known as
Rajavihara (Monastery of the King), Ta Prohm was a Buddhist temple devoted to
the mother of Jayavarman VII. Ta Prohm is a temple of towers, close courtyards
and narrow corridors. Very old trees tower overhead, their leaves filtering the
sunlight and casting a greenish pall over the whole scene. It is the closest
most of us can get to feeling the charm of the explorers of old.
Phnom Bakheng HINDU TEMPLE
Around 400m south of Angkor Thom, that hill’s
primary draw is the sunset view of Angkor Wat, though this has turned into
something of a festival , with hundreds of travellers jockeying for space. The
temple, built by Yasovarman I (r 889–910), has five tiers with seven levels.
Preah Khan BUDDHIST TEMPLE
(Sacred Sword) The temple of Preah Khan
(Sacred Sword) is one of the biggest constructions at Angkor, a maze of vaulted
corridors, fine carvings and lichen-clad stonework. Constructed by Jayavarman
VII, it covers a very large area, but the temple itself is within a rectangular
wall of about 700m by 800m. Preah Khan is a genuine fusion temple, the eastern
entrance devoted to Mahayana Buddhism, with equal-sized doors, and the other
cardinal directions devoted to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, with successively
smaller doors, emphasising the unequal nature of Hinduism.
Preah Neak Poan BUDDHIST TEMPLE
Another late-12th-century work of – no
surprises here – Jayavarman VII, this little temple just east of Preah Khan has
a large square pool surrounded by four smaller square pools, with a circular
‘island’ in the middle. Water once flowed from the central pond into the four
peripheral pools via four ornamental spouts, in the shape of an elephant’s
head, a horse’s head, a lion’s head and a human head.
Roluos Group HINDU TEMPLE
The monuments of Roluos, which served as the
capital for Indravarman I (r 877–89), are among the earliest big eternal
temples constructed by the Khmers and mark the dawn of Khmer classical art.
Preah Ko, dedicated to Shiva, has elaborate inscriptions in Sanskrit on the
doorposts of each tower and some of the best surviving examples of Angkorian
plasterwork. The city’s central temple, Bakong, with its five-tier central
pyramid of sandstone, is a representation of Mt Meru. Roluos is 13km southeast
of Siem Reap along NH6.
