Angkor Wat – Monument of Superlatives

Doubtlessly the grand temple monument of Angkor Wat is the best known building and tourist attraction in Southeast Asia. For many Angkor Wat is synonym with Angkor; though, Angkor was a whole city and even more an empire and as such much, much bigger than Angkor Wat, what merely means ‘city temple’, ‘state temple’ or ‘temple of Angkor’.

There are about a hundred more major temples in the wider area around Angkor Wat. One of them is the Bayon, another and significant different temple which is situated in Angkor Thom.

Angkor Wat is a sight of superlatives. It’s the biggest religious monument in the world, the most visited sight in Southeast Asia, the best-preserved of the whole Angkor site, the most impressive monument for most of the visitors, the only religious site of whole Angkor which remained a significant religious center since it’s foundation until today, it represents the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture, it’s the symbol for Cambodia since 1863 and decorates the national flag of Cambodia, and maybe there is more to add…

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Angkor Thom and Bayon by Asienreisender

The first half of the 13th century might mark the zenith of the Angkorean empire. The capital of Angkor with the new centerpiece Angkor Thom reached a size bigger than all the European cities of the time, including London, Paris and even Rome. One has to mention here (again) that Angkor was still much bigger than the inner core, Angkor Thom, which was reserved for the king, the high priests, the new state temple (the Bayon) and for great representative events on the ‘Victory Road’ near the Terrace of the Elephants. Around this centerpiece the mass of Angkor’s population lived, the peasants, the craftsmen, more priests and the majority of the men who formed the army. Most of these people lived in the typical Southeast Asian shacks and stilt huts of the simple people, built of wood and bamboo, with grass or leaves forming the roofs. These buildings weren’t sustainable and therefore disappeared traceless over the time, eaten up by the tropical nature.

Representative Angkor Thom therefore was (and is) an area of three kilometers in both length and width. It’s four sides are aligned to the points of the compass. It was surrounded by an eight meters high wall made of laterite stone, of which was outside a 100 meters wide water trench digged out. At the inner side of the wall soil was accumulated to enforce the walls and enable soldiers from inside to reach the top of the walls. It’s still possible to climb up to the top of the wall and walk along on it.

Inside there is a road net, which is connected to the outer area by five city gates. Basically there are two roads crossing the area and meeting in the center point, at the Bayon’s position. From the Bayon these roads lead into the four compass directions to four of the gates. A fifth gate is placed north of the east gate. It’s called the ‘Victory Gate’ and it’s road, the ‘Victory Road’, is leading straight to the royal palace. Best known is Angkor Thom’s south gate, the one which leads to the road to nearby Angkor Wat (just 1,700m away).

The gates of the city wall are all very representative and show a giant head with four faces showing in all directions on the top of a towerlike construction (called ‘gopuram’). Their height is 22m, the gate opening is 7m high and 3.50m wide, and therefore high enough to move through it on the back of an elephant. The city gates are made of sandstone and can cope in their quality with the ancient buildings of the old greek. In their original state they have been probably equipped with two heavy wooden doors and a massive bar to close the doors from inside.

When approaching one of the gates from outside, one has to cross a wide naga bridge, which leads over the outer moat. On the right and left sides of the bridges are 54 gods and daemons placed, who carry two nagas.

The most important state buildings were concentrated inside the city walls of Angkor Thom. In the northwestern part was the king’s palace, together with a temple pyramide called Phimeanakas. This construction was then extended by the Terrace of the Elephants, the Terrace of the Leprosy King and the great (victory) square, alltogether a great areal for military parades or presenting great representative games and shows.

Also remarkable are the mountainlike temple Baphuon and the two buildigs called northern and southern Khleang, who were kind of halls. Opposite to the Terrace of the Elephants are two ponds and twelve towers called Prasat Suor Prat. In the geometical center of the whole square-shaped arrangement of Angkor Thom is the famous and most outstanding Bayon placed.

Besides, ancient Angkor was famous for it’s sophisticated canal system. A number of canals led through Angkor Thom. They partially served as a transport system, partially they were used as a freshwater source, as well as a bathroom and, not to forget, for wastewater disposal. The water flowed from the northeast to the southwest, drained eventually to the western baray (a rectangle-shaped, artificial lake) outside Angkor Thom. Probably the water was taken out of the Siem Reap River, using the natural gradient of the land towards the Tonle Sap Lake.

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This is only a part of the richly illustrated article ‘Angkor Thom’. Read here the whole article on Angkor Thom.

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A Sketch of Kampot’s History

Records of Cambodian History after the decline of the Angkorian empire from the 14th century on are rare. From the late 18th century there is a royal dynastic record, but it’s more about family history and Cambodian politics in general. Rural Cambodia and the coastal regions are barely mentioned. Kampot was always far from the capital as the center of the state. Kampot region was known as a salt supplier for ancient Angkor. As a town it has no long record. The coastal region was not under much control of the central government, for most of the time there was no land traffic connection to the capital and it was the territory of pirates and bandits. While Cambodia was declining and loosing territories to Siam and Vietnam, Kampot came under Vietnamese control in the first half of the 18th century. Vietnamese presence was weak, they even had to employ Cambodian mercenaries for their support. On what is now the fishing island there was the house of the Vietnamese governor placed. A Vietnamese fortification was built in Kampong Bay (Kompong Bay). The place was mostly inhabited by Khmer, but also by a number of Vietnamese, a Chinese community and a thousand Malays. The Vietnamese presence led to two insurrections, of whom the second one in 1741 was supported by the Siamese and proved successful. The Vietnamese were driven out and after that Kampot remained in the hands of the Cambodians. In the following time the Cambodian king Ang Duong let construct a road between the capital Udong (Oudong) and Kampot. A journey on this road lasted eight days on an oxcart and four days on an elephant. At around 1800 some 3,000 people lived in Kampot, and the first Westerners settled down here, namely a French priest who built a small church at the right bank of the Theuk Chhou River. He managed a parish of 30 Vietnamese families who were Catholics. On the other side of the river was a royal garden which sent durians, pineapples, mangos and other fruits to the palace every year. Trade flourished, and in the following decades it came very much in the hands of Anglo-Chinese merchants from Singapore who were welcomed by the Cambodian king. Kampot was in that time the only connection of inner Cambodia with the seabased trade. British merchants paid a visit to Kampot in 1854 and met the notables of the place. In 1863 Cambodia became a French protectorate. Since France had occupied both, Vietnam and east Cambodia, the former border between the two countries didn’t exist anymore. The Mekong River was now promoted by the colonial regime as the favourite trading route in the region. This lead to a decline of Kampots trading position, and of the meanwhile 5,000 inhabitants 3,500 left the place. In 1885-1887 there was a great insurgence in Cambodia against the French rule. The French military tried but couldn’t reestablish control over the country; after two years of guerilla war they had to agree to compromises with the insurgents. In Kampot were only three Frenchmen stationed and they were easily driven out by a hundred isurgents. When the French navy and later marines came back there were struggles who last for two years. At the end the French army succeeded in a small battle in 1886 and reestablished French rule over Kampot. Kampot’s population in the second half of the 19th century was very much dominated by Chinese. Henri Mouhot wrote already that 90% of the inhabitants of Kampot were Chinese, and that was in accordance with other reports. It seems the Kampot Chinese were somewhat different from the Chinese elswhere in the Cambodia of the time. They were seen as a potential threat for the French rule, and, in fact, the uprise of 1885/87 in and around Kampot was triggered and forced mainly by Chinese. The Kampot Chinese were very aware of what was going on in other parts of the world, particularly the Japanese-Russian war (1904-05), the Chinese revolution of 1911 and the events of the First World War. The French administration tried to restrict information access from outside, but failed, for the Chinese business networks to other countries and China were also a mean of communication and weren’t to control. There was also an empoverished lower Chinese class of coolies and plantation workers in and around Kampot, who were seen by the French administration as vagabonds and (potential) criminals. Sanctions were set on them, arrests happened not seldom. Besides there were also conflicts among different Chinese groups, as well as activities of Chinese secret societies. Generally the Chinese societies were very closed for the French administration and they got little information about what the Chinese discussed and planned. The coastal line between Kampot and Kompong Som (now: Sihanoukville) was notoriously a refuge for pirates and their activities. Henri Mouhot mentioned that for the time around 1860, and although it ceased until the First World War, piracy was then still existent. The Elephant Mountains along the coastline provided many hideouts for the pirates, and they used peaks to watch the sea on the search for commercial ships as a prey. Also banditry on the coastal land route happened. Gangs of bandits also robbed whole villages and plantations. Later, in the 1970s to the late 1990s the Khmer Rouge used the same area as a base for their activities against the Cambodian government and the local population. In 1872 Kampot got a telegraph connection to Phnom Penh; additionally a new road was built. The travel time decreased to three-and-a-half days. Later the road was paved to introduce automobiles. The road was named Route Coloniale No. 17; after the Cambodian independence it became renamed into National Route No. 3, as it is still today. What is now the old market in Kampot is a construction first established in 1905, together with the boulevard and the basic shape of contemporary Kampot. In the next years a waterworks (1907-1910) and electricity (1925) were installed. Kampot town in the first half of the 20th century was a colonial administrative center with a Khmer quarter, a Chinese quarter and a Malay quarter. There were very few Europeans, namely French, living in Kampot. It had a vivid, lively center around the market place, but just a few meters apart the liveliness paled out. When Cambodia gained independence in 1953, Kampot town had merely 5,000 inhabitants. Nowadays Kampot is clearly a French colonial heritage. It dates back to the 1880s and became it’s shape in the years before the First World War. The former Kampot of the time of king Ang Duong, which served as Cambodia’s seaport in the 18th and the first half of the 19th century, extinct after the French colonial administration used the Mekong River as the main waterway, connecting Saigon and Phnom Penh with the oversea water routes.

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This is only a part of the richly illustrated article ‘Kampot’. Read here the whole article on Kampot.

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Monitor Lizard – Addendum

I added a sketch of a water monitor for an improved depiction. Enjoy!

Have also a look for the article on ‘Monitor Lizards‘ on my website with comprehensive information and more images of the animals.

Irrawaddy Dolphin

It’s pretty difficult to make a good photo of an Irrawaddy Dolphin. After failing to do so, I sketched one as a substitute.

For the whole article on the ‘Irrawaddy Dolphin‘ with more illustrations have a look at the page.

Monitor Lizard

There are 73 different kinds of monitors respectively varans existing on earth. Originally monitors live in in a wide range of habitats, from deserts and savannas to the rain forests and mangrove forests of tropical countries. In Southeast Asia the most widespread kind is the water monitor (varanus salvator). This lizards can be seen quite often, particularly in urban sites in Malaysia, where they are pretty well adapted to canalization systems, living from human food remains (rubbish), other animals and scavenging. They also appear in great numbers in Bangkok’s Lumpini park with it’s bigger ponds and artificial waterways there. The big reptiles make a remarkable contrast to the surrounding recreation facilities there. A water monitor, caught by local people around Krabi, south Thailand. Either they sell him to a dealer, or they will eat him and sell the skin only. The valuable skin alone makes the lizards pursued by animal hunters for reasons of trade, but being hunted for food is another main reason. Image by Asienreisender, 2010. Since the water monitor is the second biggest kind of lizard on earth, sometimes they are confound with aligators. On the first glance, from a distance or when swimming, they indeed look similar. An average water monitor gains a size of 150cm. The biggest lizard on earh, the Komodo dragon, who lives on a group of islands in Indonesia, reaches a size of up to three meters. But there are also recorded cases of the very common water monitor reaching a size of three meters and more, though that’s very exceptional. Then they gain a weight of up to 50kg, while the more massive Komodo dragon makes it up to 70kg. Remarkable is their long tongue which looks like a snake’s one. The tongues are of the double length of their head and split up at the end. It’s their most important sense organ; they mostly orientate in their surroundings by smelling. East of the Wallace Line in the Malay Archipelago exist most of the smaller species of the generic group of monitors. That’s because in Wallacea are few carnivore living, who would be a natural enemy for the lizards. The monitors there occupy themselves the niche the absense of smaller mammal carnivores left. West of the Wallace Line are living most of the bigger monitors, particularly the water monitor, who is to find in most of Southeast Asia. A varans orientation depends very much on his tongue, with which he is collecting information about it’s surrounding. Therefore they are almost deaf. Image by Asienreisender, Penang, Malaysia, 2010 Their circulation area is around the equator, in the tropes and subtropes of Asia, Africa and Australia, but not the Americas. Being day-active, they spend nighttime in self built holes, hollow trees or similar places. Their activities are seasonal – rainy season is their “good time”, because they find plenty of food. While dry season they spend most of their time in hidden places, waiting for wet weather conditions. Monitor lizards are solitairs and usually avoid meeting each other. If it comes to the presence of two or more individuals at a place, for example due to a food resource there, it might cause a comment fighting, a ritualized fight. They don’t bite each other and usually none of the rivals will be harmed.

Know…

This is only a part of the richly illustrated article ‘Monitor Lizard’. Read here the whole article on Monitor Lizard.

Keep yourself up-to-date

Check the list of recently published articles on a great variety of Southeast Asian themes. All of them are richly illustrated: Asienreisender