After leaving Big Angkor, we took a bus to Little Angkor.
Little Angkor, also known as Angkor Temple or Angkor Wat, is the largest and best-preserved building among the Angkor monuments. Therefore, "Angkor Wat" is also used as the general name of the entire group of monuments. Angkor Wat is located about 6 kilometers north of Siem Reap, 1.5 kilometers long and 1.3 kilometers wide. Because it covers an area much smaller than Angkor Thom, it is commonly known as Little Angkor.
This is a representative building during the heyday of art in the Angkor era. It was built in the mid-12th century to worship the Hindu god Vishnu. In the late 13th century, it became a Buddhist temple.
Let’s start with a distant view of Angkor
It’s a good time to take pictures around four o’clock in the afternoon. The weather is exceptionally sunny. It’s the most beautiful day to take pictures, but under the sun, it’s so hot that it feels a bit breathless. Hot and sweaty.
The magnificent Angkor Wat temple is one of the best in the world today. It is more shocking than ancient Greece and Rome. Its splendid civilization and unique architecture are unparalleled.
There is a wide lawn in front of it, and there are rippling blue lakes on both sides. Duckweed and purple lotus are floating in the lake, which has fascinated people since ancient times. Under the reflection of the setting sun, the golden color of Angkor Wat is Reflected in the water
it looks like five plump giant corns, pointing straight to the sky, showing its uniqueness.
It is not just a glorious temple to a god, it is a carved complex that stands there like a castle.
This wide water surface is the moat around Little Angkor Wat, and the huge stone castle in the center of the lake is Angkor Wat.
People have to cross a bridge to enter Angkor. This stone bridge is about 400 meters long and is called "Heaven Bridge" by the locals. It is regarded as the rainbow between heaven and earth. It is said that people who pass this bridge can enter the kingdom of heaven.
A wide artificial bridge leads directly to the opposite side, and we follow the flow of people and walk forward. There are too many people, mostly Chinese tourists.
The entrance to Angkor is a spacious square with green grass and green grass, which looks even more intoxicating under the blue sky.
Some monkeys were strutting around on the lawn. Some tourists were very interested in them and took pictures of them. The tour guide
told us that these are wild monkeys. We should be careful when facing them and don't get too close. You can't open your bag or take out your pocket with them, so that they behave misunderstood, otherwise they will rush up and steal your bag. Or mobile phones, etc., there is also the possibility of being scratched and bitten by them.
Fortunately, I kept the camera in my hand and pressed the shutter directly against it.
Sutra Pavilion
On both sides of the road, there is the Sutra Pavilion of Angkor Wat. After years of polishing, it has been ruined, but it still looks solemn and solemn.
Zangjing Pavilion
Zangjing Pavilion
There is a dike road nearly 10 meters wide outside the temple. It leads directly to the gates of the huge library buildings on both sides of the temple. On both sides of the embankment, there are huge and majestic Naga snake statues, with its head stretched out far like the palm of a Buddha.
The Angkor ruins are a group of huge stone buildings, consisting of a large number of magnificent stone towers, stone houses and many exquisite stone reliefs. The tallest stone tower standing in the center of
symbolizes the mythical holy mountain. Both Hindu and Buddhist believers believe that this sacred place in the middle is the center of the universe.
The perfection of Angkor Wat's architectural structure and sculpture art has made it a symbol of Angkor's monuments and even the entire country. So much so that the pattern on the current Cambodian flag is also designed based on the Angkor Wat tower. There are five towers in Angkor Wat, but only three can be seen from the front.
Leave photos of your visit
Angkor Wat is the most glorious, largest and best-preserved building among the Angkor monuments. Looking from a distance, you can see five pagodas standing on the top of the pyramid-style temple. layer.
When I saw this magnificent temple and historic site from a distance, I was deeply shocked. I was shocked and filled with emotion. Such a building is difficult to build even today with advanced technology. What tools did the ancients use to build such a magnificent temple? From here you can get a glimpse of the glory of Angkor Wat in its heyday.
thought to himself, and felt a solemn atmosphere, the kind of caution that does not dare to speak loudly for fear of frightening the heavenly beings.
At that time, Cambodia's national power was at its peak, which is why such a grand building complex was built.
After the decline of the Angkor Dynasty in the 15th century, the monuments were submerged in the vast jungle without knowing it. It was not until more than 400 years later, in 1860, that they were discovered by French naturalists and widely publicized to Europe and the world before they reappeared. Brilliance.
Little Angkor Wat is large in scale, perfectly symmetrical in shape, and the reliefs are even more exquisite, reflecting the peak of Khmer classical architectural art.
In the middle is the tallest of the five pagodas in Little Angkor Wat, which some people jokingly call the "Corn Head" . Simulating a peak of Mount Sumeru, the temple peak is high above, looking down upon all the living beings below.
Angkor Wat has three levels of platform. Each level is higher and steeper than the other. The first level is the lowest and gentlest. The shadow of the temple coolly spreads over your body, and the mysterious atmosphere suddenly wraps you up tightly. Reality.
On the third floor of the platform is where the five lotus bud-shaped sacred towers on the Cambodian flag are built, one at each corner, and the one in the center is the highest, 65 meters above the ground of the square. It is the most sacred sacrificial temple, regarded as the center of the world and a symbol of heaven. It is also the tomb of the Khmer King Suryavarman II who initiated the Angkor Wat project. Therefore, the Khmer people also call Angkor Wat the "burial temple."
However, the Angkor Wat project was huge and took eighty or ninety years to be completed. The world was vicissitudes of life and the years were ruthless. The Khmer Kingdom, which originally converted to Hinduism, became popular with Hinayana Buddhism.
Suryavarman II was buried here 50 years after his death.
No one can live forever, but if you are buried in such a sacred place, you will probably enter heaven and become a god in the eyes of the world, right?
The stone stairs leading to it are also called the "Ladder to Heaven".
Walk slowly along the north corridor. Bright light shines into the cloister through the top-shaped window grilles and square columns, forming a long staircase of time, leading you to the distant Angkor era.
Go ahead and stop and look carefully. Inside the cloister, on the 800-meter-long relief mural that surrounds the entire Angkor Wat, the war between gods and demons is going on silently. Some of them ride elephants, some drive peacocks, and wave various Strange weapons, killing with overwhelming force. We don't know those gods and demons, but their exaggerated shapes and exquisite carvings are breathtaking.
The wall is made of large square stones, which fit together perfectly. The patterns carved on the different stones match each other and are natural. If you don't look carefully, you won't notice any gaps at all. Were these exquisite reliefs carved on stone and then built on them, or were they built on stone and then carved? unknown.
After passing through the arched corridor like a time and space tunnel, you come to the east gate. Angkor Wat faces east and west. The east gate is also called the Elephant Gate. It is a place specifically for the king and his ministers to enter and exit. They come on elephants and go directly from the elephant's back to the platform.
Several fashionable girls wearing long skirts and top hats took photos with this ancient building. Seeing this, we seemed to have just traveled back in time. The combination of ancient and modern fashion is a bit out of place, but it is still pleasing to the eye. .
The beauty of Angkor is intoxicating. Most tourists who arrive in Siem Reap for the first time are surprised or shocked.
Where does this feeling come from? I speculate that it may be due to the clean and unique landscape in the field of vision: on the vast fertile fields, groups of brown ruins stand in an orderly manner. The environment between the ruins is single, with flat grasslands and dense grasslands. The forest, with its alternating colors of brown and green, is as beautiful as a work in the Constructivist style.
In fact, if you think about it for a moment, you will understand that in the ancient Khmer society with strict social hierarchy, civilian residences were all made of grass and trees. Only the construction of temples and palaces could use expensive stones.
The tour guide said that these sandstone materials were mined from distant mountains hundreds of miles away and transported long distances by teams of elephants.
Five hundred years have passed, and the wind and rain have ruined the vegetation. Large areas of simple dwellings have long since turned into soil and disappeared without a trace. Not even a trace is left on the surface, only these masonry barriers. The residences of gods and palaces of the royal family built there still stand in the vast wilderness, having withstood the erosion of time.
Walking through Angkor Wat, our hearts are always entangled between majesty and simplicity, immortality and decay, beauty and cruelty, splendor and hardship. The beauty of Angkor is both shocking and sad.
It is obviously the dominant overlord in Southeast Asia, but its history has been cut into "ruins" by the collapsed city walls; it is obviously a city that has created unparalleled splendor in the history of architecture, but it is covered up in a vast rain forest by barren ruins and unscrupulous tree roots. Among them; there is obviously a wonderful Angkor civilization for more than 500 years, but what is displayed in front of the world is a scarred body...
The Kingdom of Cambodia has experienced too much suffering since the glorious Angkor era, and it has only achieved peace in the true sense in the past decade.
Cambodia is poor, but when you see people all over the streets living a hard life, they are still full of "Khmer smiles", you will feel that a vibrant and happy Cambodia is right in front of you!
Let us sincerely bless this suffering country!
After visiting Angkor Wat, the tour guide gave us a group photo for free. Everyone turned their backs to the world monument - Angkor Wat, leaving this precious historical moment on the bank of the moat!
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