The Adventures of Kerri & Matt

This is a smaller pyramid temple.

It was guarded by animals on the corners. Possibly sheep?

It was also guarded by lions at the stairs. But not much remains of this one. Like most of their lions the number of toes on each foot seems to vary randomly from 4 to 6.

I’m running out of things to say about temples, and there are at least 20 more to go in Cambodia. And many more in Myanmar. And probably at least a few in Thailand. I think the people who claim they read every post twice are going to fall asleep this week.

The Baphuon is an 11th century temple which was on a big site with a long stone walkway up to it.

The temple is big with a steep staircase.

Many of the side buildings are ruined except for their doorways.

The temple is mostly reconstructed but there are a lot of bits laid out around it that they haven’t fit back together yet.

The walls are very steep so looks more like a big stone building than a pyramid.

The hallways are very long and narrow.

Many of the intricate carvings are still visible. This one has a lion, a bunny, a catwoman and a pig.

Most of the carvings tell stories from Hindu mythology.

Which we don’t know well enough to identify any of these.

Or these.

A lot of the patterns are repeated over and over again. Except that with different people carving the same thing over and over again they change over time. So these ones kind of look like butterflies.

But the same pattern on the other side looks like this.

From up top there is a good view back over the jungle.

This is another side building that is mostly collapsed.

Going around the corner the wall looks oddly bulgy.

I still didn’t get it from this angle.

From the middle you can finally see it’s a giant Buddha sleeping on the side of the temple. This was carved much later in the 15th century when the temple was repurposed as a Buddhist temple.

This is the main room at the top.

There are several Buddha statues which are guarded by monks.

This is the gate to Angkor Thom, the last capital of the Khmer empire.

Both sides of the bridge are lined with people holding a nagi, which is a giant multiheaded snake.

They are not very happy people.

With big, rather square feet.

There are faces on the top of the gate that are similar to the ones in the Bayon (which is inside Angkor Thom).

It is a very impressive entrance.

Bayon is a 12th century temple which is covered in faces.

This is one of the side buildings.

The giant stone faces stare out at you in all directions and can be seen for quite a ways.

These are the lions that guarded the stairs to the temple and a small Buddha statue.

This is an apsara, the dancing nymphs that are shown on all of the temples. Because this one is carved really deep into the stone, her feet look fairly normal. Most of the time they stick out sideways and look ridiculous.

This is a better preserved lions. There were no lions in Cambodia, they had only heard about them from other countries they traded with. So none of the lions look very lionlike.

The faces everywhere were kind of creepy.

Every surface that was not a face was elaborately carved. Some with birds.

And some with dancers.

And some with complicated scenes.

Everywhere you peaked out there was another face.

The faces all look pretty much the same.

So archaeologists think they were probably of a specific person.

Most likely the king.

Of course the apsara faces pretty much all look the same too, and no one thinks they were of anybody.

All big eared stone people pretty much look the same.

This is a crocodile eating fish.

This is Matt near the top of the temple.

Here he is taking a rest in the hallway.

And in the library window.

Some walls are covered with inscriptions.

It is a very big temple.

With lots of faces.