As we walked towards the temple complex the trees' leaves and branches slowly revealed the temple in its entirety, as if it were an establishing shot for a movie. The view from the Eastern side is certainly different from the Western side, as the jolting contrast of a man-made structure quietly overtaken by the natural world was indeed different from the overcrowded, planned and manicured facade that greet tourists at the Western entrance.
The magnificence of Angkor Wat is not only in its architecture, whose magnitude and size are feats all their own given the available resources during its construction. Like most other temples in Siem Reap, the beauty of the temple is in its astounding attention to impeccable detail, with each wall bearing carvings of either intricate delicacy or depicting epic stories. Recalling Mr. Sam's lessons earlier on its construction, we could not imagine just how much work actually went into building this monument of the ancient world.
Still following the same temple pattern/layout as Banteay Srey and Samre, Angkor Wat's outer walls were adorned with bas reliefs depicting the Khmer's legends, epics, and histories. The first story Mr. Sam shared with us was the "Legend of the Churning of the Sea of Milk," which narrates the battle between the gods and demons for immortality. The story sees both gods and demons pulling on both ends of a gigantic snake curled around a mountain, which they did for about a hundred years, to churn the sea of the milk. The first one to taste the milk that came out the sea from this churning would be immortal, and for a time it seemed like the demons would win. Fortunately for the gods' camp they had Vishnu, who had the cunning idea to distract the demons from their impending victory by sending forth beautiful women to dance and entertain them (who we now know as the apsaras). Thus, the demons missed the first extraction of the milk, which the gods quickly took away from them and drank. (The legend is important because we soon realized that it is a very common theme found in all of the temples, as you will also soon see.)
The demons' side
The apsaras sent to distract the demons from their victory
God Vishnu in the middle
Other stories told on the walls of the Angkor Wat include the epic stories of "The Ramayana" and "The Mahabharata", as well as historical accounts of a war that featured real kings and generals (albeit with a little glorification, of course). There was also a wall that spoke of the Khmer's and Hindu's beliefs regarding the after life, of heaven and hell, with much detail devoted to the different types of punishments given in hell, according of course to the kinds of sins. This particular wall actually reminded us of Dante's "Inferno" with its seven levels of Hell.
Bas relief depicting typical temple duties. The shine on the sandstone carvings is from years of rubbing by the faithful.
So the cavemen had their pictographs, the Egyptians had their hieroglyphics, and the Khmers had their bas reliefs. You'd think that somehow, with all the work they put into this, you'd think they could have at least left little stick figures telling us about Angkor Wat's construction and history.
