Cambodia, Day 2: Angkor Thom

Thursday (12/4/08) we went to Angkor Thom, and this gets more and more astonishing. Angkor Thom is more than 4 times larger than Angkor Wat. The exterior wall is more than 12 kilometers (7 miles) long. There are dozens of temples inside Angkor Thom – it seems every king built a new one. It’s incomprehensible – millions of man-years of labor to build every temple, and then they barely used them. Where did they get all the people (and the elephants to move all the rock)? How did the society grow while they did nothing but build temples??

The inscription on one said it took 79,000 people just to do the maintenance on the temple every year while the king was alive! All to consolidate and demonstrate his continuing power and domination. And not one of those kings was smart enough to say, “That temple over there is beautiful. I’ll pray there. Let’s take a million man-years of labor and build schools.”

There are both similarities and differences with other churches. Take Europe, for example. Thousands of Catholic churches. Many are elaborately painted – every wall and ceiling, and some contain priceless originals by the greatest masters. But the temples at Siem Reap are carved in stone. Today we saw more murals depicting entire episodes of society and history. Many of these murals are 3 meters (9+ feet) high, and some go for 600 meters (more than a third of a mile) or more. How many thousands of stone carvers? The Buddhist temples have carvings on every wall and every pillar – in solid rock. And what is it about Buddha statues?? They are (only) stone icons, but some temples had more than 1,000 Buddhas. Why?? Why not one big one? Or why not a dozen? Why did they need thousands in the same temple!?? If I understand it correctly, Hindus worship many many gods, but Buddhists, only one.
[ Note: later we went to an artisan center, where they teach young (frequently disabled) people various traditional craft skills. To carve stone today, they use steel rods with diamond tips. What did they use to carve stone 1,000 years ago?? ]





























































Not too subtle, eh?



















Fran practices serenity. Hopefully, it will last long after the vacation is over.












This stone carving depicts a woman in childbirth being helped by a midwife.













I was told that if I stood patiently at this doorway a beautiful princess would appear.






















Does a Puerto Rican Princess count?
In the words of Sarah Palin, "You Betcha!"