Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Temple Bear - On the Move

Hullo bears & not-a-bears! I have been having a tonne of adventures in Siem Reap but haven't been able to weasel any wifi-time out of Mama! Hmmph... the humans work on their own blog and mine has to wait and wait and wait!

Anyhow... This was our tuk-tuk driver - and we were off to Angkor Thom on this day, which is just north of Angkor Wat.

Angkor Thom is renowned for a temple called Bayon, which has 216 faces carved into it. Can you see one in the picture below?

There are 54 pillars and each has 4 faces on it...

Some of them are a bit broken...

But others are pretty good. I look pretty tiny compared to these monoliths!

There were all sorts of cool windows and doors and you could see faces through them. It looks like the face in the background is whispering something into my ear.... but it's all Cambodian to me!

You really end up feeling like someone's always watching you... Hmmm... I think there's a song that goes like that... is it Sting??

And another one!

This place also had some cool colonnades (cool as in interesting and cool is an out of the sun!).

Oh look... it's an elephant!!!! Oooohhh... those animals are massive! I clammered and yammered but we didn't get to ride any elephants here... phooie!

Then it was off to another temple called Banteay Srei which was a beary long tuk-tuk ride away. But once we got there we saw something interesting... this grass sort of looks like wheat but it's really rice! We are just getting into the tail-end of the dry season here, so the wet season will start soon - and that will mean more rie fields.

Banteay Srei is known as the Citadel of Women because the stone carvings are so detailed and intricate that only women could have carved them... or so the legend goes.

There were strange monkey/human figures here... most missing their right arms.

See the detailed carving?? Amazing!!

It was super hot here too... but so interesting that I didn't mind the heat so much.

Although... the water buffalo were hot too and waded into a pond to cool off.

And then... another little temple called Ta Som. It ended up being one of my favourites. It as small and not overrun by tourists and had some cool trees climbing over the walls.

And doors within doors within doors within doors.

See!!! Isn't that amazing??? I love those trees...

Parts of the temple are a little decrepit.

But that just means I can play at Indiana Bear!

Ta-dah... I wonder if they stashed honey in their temples like the Egyptians did???

Bye-bye temples... next stop Phnom Penh!

1 comment:

  1. Great photos Sandy. That sure looks like a great place to explore, or to play hide and seek with some friends.

    ReplyDelete