Cambodia Part 3

10/12/2008

The first ruin that we came to was the South Gate .....




They were all once majestic and fabulous arts. Its kind of sad how come they can become like this. Of course we all know through history and geography lessons these are caused by the weathers and also by thefts......



Big lake... we heard from our driver that this "lake" is actually the swimming pool of the past kings..... duhz~~ wonder how true that was.... just how many laps they can swim in there??



Make a guess... what is this long "thingy" that was always seen around ... come on! Nothing on the yellow side....



The first building or temple that we went to was The Bayon which was one of my favourites. More due to the specialty in its construction and the size of it... in fact when we went to visit, half the towers had already fallen and waiting for restoration. In fact it started out from 54 towers to the 30+ left when we went there....




Most of the faces carved have the very significant features like thick lips, big nose and squary face shapes which according to the book that I bought, they were carved according to the facial
features of the king in reigned... Jayavarman VII



We had to climb this very very very steep steps to get to the top towers though I don't think they were that steep during the 12th century...



Super long walkway with lots of archs along it.... later on we will see that this feature was very popular in temples and buildings...




The Bayon to us is like maze though looking at the map, they were actually arranged in squares and crosses. The many galleries shows carvings of the every day life though most of them were weathered and doesn't really look very clear.




I also saw some features that made me regret not getting a tour guide though they were very very expensive to hire....

One of the features was the following photo. Can anyone tell me what were the 2 holes for?? Further more the 2 holes were not drilled through the door way .. they were only half way through.... as in you can't see through the holes....




And this which we made a lot of assumptions like its used for moulding of weapons or containers... or for cooking use (?) or to store things .... or for grinding of food stuffs...

Ans: Don't tell you!!! I only got to know of the answer through a variety show and will show to you in later posts. Though I can't be sure whether its the fact...




Erm ... Pacman with body and legs? Nah~~ they were stone lions.... weathered and theft....



The Bayon took us nearly 1 half hour? I guess so since its the first temple we went to and things were still interesting keke....




Then its the Terrace of Elephants and Terrace of the Leper King the style were again the Bayon and under the reign on King Jayavarman VII.

History of the Leper King was alot and confusing as there were many sayings so I will not state any one .. do read up then.... in anyways .. it was stated in the book that I bought that the statue of the Leper King was not the original. The original was at the Phnom Penh Museum... I didn't take any photo of the king though as I saw there was this yellow cloth draped over it ... seemingly for religious reason? Though I do not have any religion its best not to do anything disrespectful to it....




We were wondering where this was naturally made of some mischievous carvings by people.

The long stretch of wall contained carvings of a big fight between elephants and its worth taking a look (I heard) if you don't mind walking through the grass patch ...



Look~! Its the loooooong "thingy" again~~ Any answer?


I wanted to go on but its 12++ am and I got a headache ... just came back from KTV too ...

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Took this on the way this afternoon ... its at the grass patch just below the train tracks at Jurong East... guess what those white specks are? (What a lot of questions today!)

Storks?? Nah~~~~ none too romantic or beautiful .. those are .... white ...... plastic bags that our kind foreign talents left there to create jobs for the foreign talents who were in charged of the cleanliness....

nitez all~~