Nov 2 - Angkor Wat

Nothing had prepared us for Angkor Wat. It is the largest religious complex in the world and a world heritage site and it is overrun by tourists - even Hilary Clinton had been here the day before. We had seen a lot of temples and had decided to give this one a miss - then changed our mind, luckily. An enormous moat surrounds the complex...

...it is only possible to capture portions of it. In it swim waterlilies, blue and pink When I was a child, I learned that babies were brought by storks, who found the babies in waterlilies....if they do, this is the place.

Angkor Wat was built in the 12 century as a Hindu temple which later became Buddhist, and was much later used as military headquarters by the Khmer Rouge. Unlike some of the other temples, Angkor Wat is intact, so a great example of ancient Khmer architecture. In the first building (we chose not to go with a guide, so my description will be historically sketchy at best), we were seduced by the symmetrical lines, corridors, vistas which connected every part of the complex...

The first building housed a number of Hindu deities. The triumvirate is Brahma as the creator of the universe while Vishnu is the preserver of it. Shiva's role is to destroy the universe in order to re-create it. Angkor Wat was built as a temple to Vishnu.

 Worship and offerings are ongoing....

 From Angkor the Khmer kings ruled over a lands reaching from Vietnam to China to the Bay of Bengal. What we see in Angkor today, 100 or more temples of stone, are the remnants of a grand religious, social and administrative metropolis whose other buildings - palaces, public buildings, and houses - were built of wood and are long since decayed and gone.

One of the rulers spoke of his intentions in erecting temples as being:
“full of deep sympathy for the good of the world, so as to bestow on men the ambrosia of remedies to win them immortality….By virtue of these good works would that I might rescue all those who are struggling in the ocean of existence.”
And did I mention that the drive to Angkor Wat  is through a magic forest?