EnPerspectives: Travelogue: Angkor Wat @ Siem Reap, Cambodia (Part 1)

After 6 long hours of bus travel from Phnom Penh, we finally arrive at Siem Reap, Cambodia. It is the capital city of Siem Reap Province, and is the gateway to Angkor Region.

Siem Reap really feels like a tourist city. Our guide says everything they do is for tourism, from the roads, hotels, infrastructure, etc. Its their main source of livelihood. Much like our Bohol, but the main attraction of Siem Reap are the temples. They say that there are almost a thousand temples scattered within the city. Glad we had our 3-day pass to see some of them.

Our guide showing us the map of some of the temples.

We started our temple hopping with Angkor Wat. This is the magnificent view outside the temple as we approached it.

According to our Lonely Planet companion, it is the largest and undoubtedly the most breathtaking of the monuments in Angkor. Indeed! It is also widely believed to be the largest religious structure in the world. Some interesting facts about it:

It is oriented towards the west, symbolically, the direction of death, which scholars says that it must have existed primarily as a tomb;
It is surrounded by a 190m-wide moat, which forms a giant rectangle measuring 1.5km by 1.3km. This is huge compared to the moats surrounding European castles!

The sandstone blocks from which Angkor was built were quarried more than 50km away and floated down the Stung Siem Reap on rafts.

There are more than 3000 apsaras carved into the walls of Angkor Wat, each of them unique;

The spatial dimensions of Angkor Wat parallel the lengths of the four ages of classical Hindo thought. Thus the visitor who walks the causeway to the main entrance and through the courtyards to the final tower, is metaphorically travelling back to the first age of the creation of the universe.