Angkor Wat

Timeless yet timeworn, grand but intimate, oblivious to the passing centuries even as the jungle devours its huge stone walls, Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and the scores of temples that surround it hint at eternity, only to remind us that nothing is eternal.

On the narrow bridge leading to it, the carved stone heads of 54 gods and 54 demons were lined up to greet all visitors. Before me was a narrow gateway, wide enough for one car to pass through. Looming over it was the beatific face of Jayavarman VII, the 12^th-century king who built this, the great Khmer Empire capital of Angkor Thom, and so much else. The face of “J7,” as my guide referred to him, hung over all four sides of the gateway, and, aside from the five lotus-shaped towers of Angkor Wat itself, is perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the splendors of this magical ancient city.

It was difficult to keep my emotions in check, for this was a sight I’d dreamed of glimpsing ever since, as a small boy, I’d seen photographs brought back by my friend’s father who had visited what was then, and is once again, known as the Kingdom of Cambodia.

In Cambodia, as on the bridge to Angkor Thom, there is a corresponding demon for every god, an evil that matches – and, too often in the past 30 years, overwhelms – the beauty of this small, interesting country. Travelers to the ruins of Angkor, as the more than 100 square miles of temples are known, have been few and far between since the Vietnam war spilled across the Cambodian border in the late 60’s. While the horrors of the Khmer Rouge period have begun to recede into history, this is still a haunted land.

That I was standing at the entrance to Angkor Thom was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, and seemed like no easy feat.  For the better part of 20 years (1970-90) Angkor was virtually impossible sight to behold. Yet since the mid-1990s it has become a tourist destination accessible to more than just adventurers. Today it is a surprisingly easy-to-reach place, for the tourist infrastructure in Cambodia has been dramatically upgraded.  In two spectacular instances, hotels that were built when Cambodia was a sleepy, peaceful outpost of the French colonial empire have now been lovingly restored and, even without the lure of Angkor, could qualify as destinations in themselves.

Beginning in 1998, direct flights from Bangkok to nearby Siem Reap have made Angkor at least as accessible as Peru’s Machu Picchu, and almost as easy to get to as the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza and Uxmal. Because of its continued negative image, Cambodia is still no one’s idea of an obvious vacation spot. Yet Angkor Wat is probably a safer destination today than the holy sites of Israel.

I arrived at Angkor Thom midway through a bright summer morning, having resisted the impulse to overrule Sam Ath – my guide – who, upon meeting me at Siem Reap’s airport, insisted upon our going first to Angkor Thom, and to Angkor Wat only later in the day. After waiting a lifetime to see the perfectly proportioned temple that has beguiled Westerners since the French naturalist Henri Mouhot “discovered” it in 1860, I was dubious about literally passing it by on the way to other nearby ruins. But Sam Ath knew what he was doing.

His plan was for us to go first to Angkor Thom’s temple of the Bayon, with its 54 towers on which are carved more than 200 identical faces of Jayavarman VII. We would return to Angkor Wat after lunch, he promised, when the sunlight would be better. I dutifully dropped my bags at the Grand Hotel d’Angkor, whose recent renovation by Singapore’s Raffles Group has restored a luster to what, until a few years back, was referred to as the “formerly Grand Hotel.” The Grand sits across a garden from King Sihanouk’s palace, only seven miles from Cambodia’s greatest treasure.

You must pass by Angkor Wat to get to the separate and more recently built Angkor Thom. The tips of Angkor Wat’s five towers tantalized me, glimpsed through trees as we came upon the broad green moat that surrounds it.  While Angkor Wat is one large temple – in fact, the largest religious structure in the world – Angkor Thom was at one time the largest city in Southeast Asia, and home to more than 1 million of J7’s subjects.  By the time I was walking across the bridge leading to it, the mystery and beauty of those faces calmed me down – fast. I had three entire days to see all of the splendors of Angkor, including the Bayon, the intricately carved walls and buildings of Banteay Srei some 15 miles away and the overgrown ruins of Ta Prohm, not to mention Angkor Wat itself.

As it was to turn out, three days is but a half-day shy of the optimal amount of time a visitor might take to see what should be viewed as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

In 1982, when I first visited Bangkok, the task of getting to Angkor was daunting – too daunting as it turned out. While in Bangkok, I spontaneously decided to see if I could get there, but learned I would have to fly first to Phnom Penh and, after spending the night, join an organized tour group for three days or more. I hadn’t the time, or, despite the desire, the inclination to see Angkor in this manner.

Just 10 years later, I discovered, the traveler has many palatable options. In addition to flying to Siem Reap directly on one of Thai International Airway’s twice-weekly flights from Bangkok, traveling through Phnom Penh is easier and more comfortable than at any time since before Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge.

Prior to the war, Phnom Penh was reputed to be one of the most beautiful cities in Southeast Asia, a status quickly lost and slowly being regained. Visitors will wonder what the descriptions of Phnom Penh’s former splendor could possibly be referring to. Certainly the Royal Palace and the National Gallery, with its displays of Khmer statuary, are two of few reminders left. The undeveloped waterfront along the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers gives the visitor a glimpse of Southeast Asia at a decidedly slower pace than that of Bangkok, Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur. Cambodia’s Holocaust Museum, housed in the former torture center of Tuol Sleng, inside of which more than 17,000 party cadres were taken on their way to execution, is as haunting as the realization that this thriving capital city was, within a day or two of the Khmer Rouge takeover, emptied of its population, which was force-marched into a countryside that became the killing fields.

The tour itinerary I worked out with my agent had me spend the first day at Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, finally heading to Phnom Bakheng, a nearby hillside from which Angkor Wat can best be viewed at sunset. On the second day, my guide and I drove 15 miles on beaten roads across a patchwork of fields devoted to both wet and dry cultivation to Banteay Srei, a small temple predating Angkor Wat. That afternoon, I returned to spend time at the Bayon and at Angkor Wat, less driven to inspect each square inch of the sandstone edifices and more determined simply to absorb their radiant splendors. On my final morning in Siem Reap, we went on what is known as the Grand Circuit, and after lunch returned to follow the Little Circuit, these tours comprising 12 temples on an approximately 20-mile loop around Angkor Wat. I left Siem Reap after three nights with the understanding that I had missed only the Roluos Group, with its famed Bakong temple, on an otherwise relatively exhaustive first view of the great temples that make up Angkor.

I was prepared for the precise and perfect proportions of Angkor Wat’s architecture; the way two of the five towers remain hidden to the eye if viewed straight on; the sheer scale and formality of a structure as intricate it its way as the Taj Mahal. Yet, rather than being in the midst of an urban environment, as the Taj is, Angkor Wat seems to have been placed magically in the midst of forest, jungle and field.

What I was not prepared for was the quality and extent of the bas-relief on all four exterior walls. The artistic quality of the etched narrative – much of it from the Hindu Ramayana, with its titanic wars fought by men and gods in the guise of animals – is breathtaking.

The mischief and precision of the carving at Banteay Srei is worth the arduous trip on battered roads. Built in the mid-10th century, as the Khmer Empire was gathering momentum, Banteay Srei is a comparatively tiny temple – its entire set of connected buildings could easily fit within an interior courtyard of Angkor Wat.

The Bayon at Angkor Thom, is as affecting in its own way as Angkor Wat. The artistry is less exact than that of Angkor Wat, which predated the Bayon by some 40 years, but the overall impression lasts every bit as long in the visitor’s memory.

The unreconstructed temple of Ta Prohm makes the visitor feel like Indiana Jones. For deep in the jungle a short distance beyond Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm lies more or less as the French naturalists found it 130 years ago. Trees, some of them more than 300 years old, grow right over the collapsing structure of the temples themselves. Archways are crested with perfect sculptures of ubiquitous female dancers who entertained the court here 700 years ago. When you walk along the narrow path that takes you to Ta Prohm, your heart jumps into your mouth just as it must have for those 19^th-century Frenchmen who, stumbling through the jungle, came upon it for the very first time.

This is an ideal time to see Angkor. Getting there has never been easier. The little airport at the town of Siem Reap, some four miles south of Angkor, which received only a handful of small aircraft each day just a few years ago, is now deluged with flights from almost a dozen airlines, including direct flights from at least five foreign countries.

As Angkor fades into the thin night mist, eyes swivel west towards the setting sun as it bobs gently down, casting a fiery red glow over the distant Tonle Sap Lake. Silence reigns, each tourist observer lost in thoughts about ancient Khmer empires and – in most cases – saying a mental prayer of gratitude for the privilege of being allowed to witness the magnificent remnants of their architectural masterpieces.

Vic Albormoz Lactaoen is a senior diplomat at the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) which allows him to travel to many of Southeast Asia's interesting cultural destinations.