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A little north of Angkor Wat sits the equally fabulous Angkor Thom built by King Jayavarman VII in the late 1100s as his royal palace. Behind its 8 metre high walls lie some of Angkor’s most important monuments. The staggering Bayon, the King's State Temple, features 216 carved faces on its 54 soaring towers and a large amount of other statuary and fine stone carving. The Terrace of Elephants stretches for 350 metres and beyond that the Terrace of the Leper King carries on.
We spent an hour or so climbing the towers and walking the tunnels of the Bayon before strolling along the Terraces. Out in the nearby field were 12 tall, narrow fairy-tale like houses built by the King; one for each of his 12 wives.
In the afternoon we moved on to Ta Prohm, one of the temples left in its wild state with enormous strangler figs growing up and along the walls and roofs. It was here that Tomb Raider starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft was filmed. But neither Angelina nor Lara was here today, and never mind. Whoa!! What an impressive sight those strangler figs and other trees were, clambering up and across and through the stone walls. They put everyone on their back foot as they entered and surveyed the amazing scene for the first time.
We finished today’s touring with a sunset walk to the summit of Phnom Bakheng overlooking Angkor Wat. Susan and Chris ascended more regally, by Royal Elephant, on a different forest track. On the way up, Lee Tuan and I stopped briefly to listen to a small group of musicians playing Cambodian folk music. Around Siem Reap we saw quite a few groups like this whose members were either blind or amputees, from landmine explosions. In the early 70s the Khmer Rouge regime planted landmines in the countryside like they were going out of fashion and the Cambodian people are still paying the terrible price today. I momentarily shivered at the prospect of Susan and Chris' elephant being spooked and straying off the track, then made for the top where we joined a thousand or so other visitors already gathered at the summit waiting for the sun to set. After a hard day’s exercise we returned to Siem Reap with good appetites that we sated well at Le Tigre de Papier.
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