While Cambodia shares a border with Vietnam, in many ways it seems to exist in another world. In Vietnam, I sensed a super-charged energy and noticed a distinctly western veneer. Cambodia, on the other hand, had a more easy-going and traditional personality. Keep in mind, of course, that this impression is based solely on the 5 days I spent in the city of Siem Reap, a base for tourists exploring the ancient ruins in the surrounding area.
There’s a good reason why Cambodia didn’t seem as crowded as Vietnam. Compared to Vietnam’s 97 million people, the population of Cambodia is a mere 16.5 million. The same was true for the traffic. Siem Reap had its share of cars, motorbikes, and romorks (motorcycle-powered rickshaws), but the volume didn’t compare to what I’d experienced in Vietnamese cities. At last, crossing streets wasn’t a panic-inducing exercise.
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| Traveling by romork in Siem Reap |
One characteristic Cambodia and Vietnam have in common is the climate. In February, the temperatures are hot and it doesn’t rain. In fact, when our flight from Saigon landed in Siem Reap, the air practically shimmered with the heat as we walked across the tarmac from the aircraft to the terminal.
Thank goodness our hotel, the Treasure Oasis, offered a respite from the blazing mid-day sun. In addition to an excellent air-conditioning system, the Treasure Oasis offered traditional décor accented with Khmer art and handicrafts, inviting areas to lounge after exhausting hours of sightseeing, and a spacious poolside dining area where we enjoyed selections from the lavish daily breakfast buffet.
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| A place to relax in the Treasure Oasis Hotel |
Unlike Vietnamese, which uses the familiar Latin alphabet, Khmer (the language of Cambodia) is written in a distinctive script that developed in southern India and Southeast Asia in the 5th-6thcenturies CE. Fortunately, many signs and restaurant menus were also written in English because I couldn’t decipher any of the squiggly curlicues. And our Cambodian tour leader, Vuthy, was usually on hand to translate. More and more Cambodians, realizing the importance of tourism to the country’s economy, are starting to learn English.
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| Above photos taken in the area near our hotel (note the Khmer script) |
I was eager to come to Cambodia primarily because, over the years, I’d seen visually stunning photos of Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious monument. However, I had very little familiarity with Cambodian history when I first arrived in Siem Reap. Nearly 2000 years of history was too much to absorb during my five days in Cambodia. So once I returned home, I spent some time going back through travel guides and Vuthy’s handouts, and consulted online resources, in an attempt to make sense of what I’d seen.
All of the ruins we visited dated back to the era of the Khmer Empire, at one time the dominant kingdom in Southeast Asia. It was consolidated by King Jayavarman II in 802 CE. Jay2 (my nickname for this ruler) established a dynasty and built the city of Angkor as his capital. In fact, Angkor means “capital.” At one time, the city had a population of 1 million people, making it larger than many European cities of the same period. The Khmer rulers commissioned both Hindu and Buddhist temples between the years 800-1200 CE as both religions were practiced during this time. After several centuries of off-and-on warfare against the armies of neighboring Vietnam and Thailand, the Khmer Empire came to an end in 1431.
We spent much of our time exploring ancient Angkor, an enormous area located about 10-15 minutes north of the modern city of Siem Reap. Today, it is a UNESCO World Heritage site and a 155 square mile national heritage park. Archaeological work is still going on and access is tightly controlled by the Cambodian government. Within the park, we visited several sites, including Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm.
The earliest site we visited, however, was outside the boundaries of the park, about 20 kilometers north of Angkor Wat. Banteay Srei (aka Citadel of Women), which dates back to 967 CE, was not a royal temple; it was built by a counselor to the king. Unlike the temples within the park, this Hindu structure is relatively small in scale. Its towers are dedicated to Vishnu and to Shiva. The bas reliefs tell stories from the Hindu epic poem, the Ramayana. What makes Banteay Srei so remarkable is that nearly every square inch of its pink sandstone surface is covered with amazingly intricate carvings. Since the carving is quite deep, the delicate details retain their sharpness even after 1000 years of weathering.
The morning we set out for Angkor Wat was hot, as I expected. I was hoping for a blue sky, but a shroud of gray refused to lift. As the distinctive towers came into view through the trees, their edges blurred into the gritty atmosphere.
Angkor Wat (“wat” means temple complex) was commissioned by the Khmer ruler Suryavarman II in the early 12thc, at a time when the empire had expanded greatly. The massive sandstone blocks used to construct Angkor Wat were cut from quarries many miles away, and were floated by raft on the canals to the site. It took 30,000-40,000 workers about 37 years to complete the project. In fact, some historians believe that the cost of building the complex led to the decline of Khmer power.
At the time Angkor Wat was built, Hinduism was the state religion of the empire and Surya2 dedicated the temple to Vishnu. The temple, with its enclosures and towers, is surrounded by an extremely wide hand-dug moat. The design is thought to be a microcosm of the Hindu universe. The temple itself consists of a series of stepped terraces, which form a large pyramid of three levels, each enclosed by a gallery.
A lot of steep climbing was involved to reach the second and third levels. Carvings, including nearly 2000 apsaras(sculptures of heavenly dancers), decorate the galleries.
In addition, magnificent bas reliefs, running nearly 2000 feet long, decorate the temple’s exterior walls. They depict scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, two Hindu epic poems. At one time, the major reliefs were covered with gold.
Towards the end of the 12thcentury, during the reign of Jayavarman VII, Angkor Wat became a Buddhist temple. Hindu statues were relocated and statues of Buddha were erected. A long period of religious strife that began in the early 13thcentury may have contributed to the eventual downfall of the Khmer Empire.
Our group returned to the park one evening at sunset to look out across the moat for a final view of Angkor Wat. There were no spectacular colors in the sky, just a haze that got darker and darker. Dragon flies flitted among the water lilies as we sat sipping Cambodian rice wine (vile tasting stuff) and snacking on roasted peanuts and strips of dried meats (crocodile, water buffalo and snake).
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| Angkor Wat (viewed from across the moat at dusk) |
Jay7 is often considered the greatest of the Khmer rulers. Peace and prosperity prevailed during his 40-year reign. During that time, a large number of temples, both Hindu and Buddhist, were built throughout Cambodia. Jay7 commissioned the building of the new capital city of Angkor Thom (meaning “great city”), just north of Angkor Wat.
To enter the city of Angkor Thom, we walked across a causeway lined with 54 carved stone figures. The South Gate is flanked by towers with four faces pointing in each of the cardinal directions. The temple, usually called the Bayon, is located at the exact center within Angkor Thom.
The Bayon was originally a Buddhist temple, and its nearly fifty stone towers were carved with monumental faces of the Buddha. The gold-plating on the towers has worn off, but the faces are impressive nonetheless due to their immense scale.
Other decorations include several apsaras, i.e. dancing figures.
In addition, we admired the beautifully carved bas reliefs which depict historical battles as well as scenes of daily life.
About a hundred years after Angkor Thom was begun, a successor to Jay7 converted the Bayon from Buddhist to Hindu worship, a reflection to the ongoing religious discord in the kingdom. Elements of both faiths are visible today, notably several Hindu lingas (representations of Shiva) and a statue of the Buddha that measures 3.6 meters (nearly 12 feet) in height.
Ta Prohm is another temple complex completed during Jay7’s ambitious building spree. The king built this sandstone monument, located just east of Angkor Thom, to honor his mother. What makes Ta Prohm so interesting to visit nowadays is that it remains largely unrestored. In other words, it looks much as it did when it was discovered early in the 20thcentury when the jungle had overtaken the abandoned structures. Walking through the site, we had to climb over piles of rubble and massive tree roots that snake across the ground and up the ruined walls. I learned that some scenes from the 2001 film Tomb Raiders were shot in Ta Prohm.
From the 13thcentury onward, the Khmer empire continued to shrink and weaken. By the mid-1800s, the once-glorious empire was just a small Buddhist kingdom whose independence was threatened by neighboring Thailand and Vietnam. In 1863, France established a protectorate in Cambodia and the country essentially became a French colony. The French finally granted Cambodia its independence in 1954.
I’ll tell you about today's Cambodia as well as the country’s more recent history in my next post.
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