Amazing Angkor Wat and the Churning of the Sea of Milk

July 20-23, 2024

The morning after I arrive in Siem Reap, Cambodia, I wake at 3:55am. I am doing a touristy thing. I am going to see sunrise at Angkor Wat.

I don’t really care about the sunrise. In fact, I expect there to be no real sunrise. It’s rainy season and also, it seems like every time I get up early for a special occasion sunrise, it never works out. The best sunrises are exactly when you least expect them.

But at least if I’m there for sunrise, I’m not there for the hottest part of the day.

Actually, I’m trying to keep my expectations super low. Because, even though I’m here in the low season, I’ve heard from many people that there are still huge crowds at Angkor. So, I’m not likely to experience the peaceful reverence and mysticism of being in an ancient place. Precisely because I’m not expecting it, I don’t set myself up for it. Instead of a private guide, I elect to do the shared guided tour offered by my hostel.

Because I’ve inserted peace and acceptance about the whole thing into my mind, I’m not annoyed when the van waits ten minutes in front of another hotel for a guest that never shows. And I’m not annoyed when the van stops at the ticket booth for all the people who didn’t think to buy their ticket online the day before like I did.

And I’m not annoyed when the tour guide has us exit the bus on the side of the road and walk along the moat in the semi-darkness because the van can’t maneuver through all the other vehicles to get us closer to the entrance.

And then there it is. The entrance to Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat, a single temple in the massive Angkor Archeological Park, is 1.5 by 1.3 kilometers in size. This includes structures, grounds, and a massive moat. Angkor Wat is designed to represent the Hindu universe: the underworld, the earth, and the heavens. The moat is the ocean, and by crossing the causeway, which is lined by two naga, or multi-headed snakes, which are the guardians of the underworld, we cross the sea and enter the “earth.”

The earth, likewise, is guarded by two lion statues. Here, we meet Angkor Wat’s gates. There are five. The center one is for the king. On each side are gates for monks and regular people. And further spread on either side are the gates for horses and elephants.

The sky is a gemstone blue, the towers mostly shadows.

Once through the gate, we follow a stone walkway similar to the causeway over the moat, but this time the stone cuts through green grass. The five towers of Angkor Wat (looking like only three from straight on) rise before us.

The central tower, representing Vishnu, the central Hindu god, is 65 meters tall. Nothing in Siem Reap is allowed to be taller. The five towers together represent Mount Meru, the mythical Hindu center of the universe. The central tower is perfectly aligned with the equinoxes so that the sun rises directly behind it on two days of the year.

What this means is that Angkor Wat faces west while most Khmer temples face east. Because of this, some scholars think that Angkor Wat was intended to be a funerary temple (west is the direction of the dead).

The Khmer Empire (builders of Angkor Wat and surrounds) was Hindu, thus the carvings, the gods, the stories, and the statues are all to honor and represent Hindu mythology. The three main gods are Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, though the Khmer seem to favor Shiva and Vishnu. Temples either seem to be for all three gods, or exclusively for either Shiva or Vishnu, never for just Brahma. Poor guy.

After explaining some of this mythology, our guide frees us to try to get good photos, so we slowly approach the masses of people at the edge of the pond to the right of Angkor Wat. This is where the famous sunrise photos are taken with the 5 towers of Angkor Wat reflected in the lake. There are so many people, I couldn’t even see the lake at first!

I manage to get one good photo over people’s heads because there is no way anyone is going to let me through the teaming mass that is at least three people deep all along the edge of the lake. Instead, I find a spot along the far edge that has less perfect composition but blessedly few people. Cambodians wander around with laminated pages showing photos that you can pay them to take and people set up tripods trying to capture a perfect photo, but the sunrise never bursts across the sky. Instead, it is a slow, gradual lightening from blue to grey, dark clouds smothering the whole sky.

We meet back up with the tour guide and enter the temple. Carved galleries line the outer walls, showing intricately carved relief images from the Ramayana (a Hindu epic) (see this post about this great book I read about a retelling of part of the Ramayana). Every centimeter of the stone has something carved upon it.

Angkor Wat is made of sandstone quarried from 70 kilometers away and either drug to the site by elephants or floated down the river on bamboo rafts in the rainy season. No mortar holds the stone together. Instead, the stones were rubbed together to create friction, grinding down the edges until they fit together perfectly.

The temple is very much open to the elements. Arched corridors (which wouldn’t have been arched back then as a wood ceiling enclosed the eaves) are dark and dim and smell horribly of bat poop. But most of the space is open air with courtyards lined by covered galleries.

When Angkor Wat was “rediscovered” by Europeans, it was covered in bat poop, which eroded and destroyed the carvings at the base of most of the columns. So I guess today I should be glad that only the smell remains instead of actual poop a foot deep.

Going deeper still we find the massive towers. Seriously steep steps lead upward, though for tourist purposes wooden steps with a handrail have been built over them to help. We climb up and walk through the courtyards and through the towers. The large central tower is in the center with four smaller towers at each corner. The design is intended to mimic a lotus bud. The towers are all carved with reliefs of lotus buds too. In Hindu myth, the lotus represents eternity, spirituality, enlightenment, purity, and a whole host of very good things.

Finally, it’s time to go. But it takes ten minutes of waiting in line with all the other visitors just to go back down the steep stairs. Then we walk half a kilometer back to the bus, leaving behind the largest religious structure in the world.

But the day is only just beginning.

Angkor Wat is the most famous temple. But Angkor Thom is the name of the city that lies next to it. Angkor Thom is surrounded by a 7-kilometer stone wall which is also rimmed by a massive moat.

At all five three-towered gates lie causeways over the moat. Each of the causeways is adorned with statues representing an important Hindu story: the churning of the sea of milk.

The story goes like this: In order to create an elixir for immortality, the Hindu gods and demons were convinced by Vishnu to play basically play tug-of-war using the body of a massive naga (snake). At the center, they wrapped the body of the snake around a mountain. As the two groups pulled back and forth, back and forth, the mountain churned the sea. It threated to topple, but Vishnu steadied the mountain by holding it on his back in turtle form. The story continues with Shiva swallowing poison, the churning creating the apsaras or heavenly dancers, and the amrita, immortality elixir, finally being produced. This was an important creation story and ultimately a tale of good triumphing over evil.

So, 54 stone daevas (good spirits or gods) of a size larger than a human line the left side of the causeway at the gates of Angkor Thom, pulling at the thick body of a stone naga, and 54 stone demons mirror them on the right side. At all five gates.

Even crumbling, it’s magnificent.

Before we leave the gate, the guide lets us know that he’s not officially allowed to tell us about this temple or recommend it, but just outside the gates is a small pyramid-style temple that we can visit and even climb. It’s just that the steps are super steep and very eroded so guides are worried that people might fall and hurt themselves. But he gives us 10 unsupervised minutes to check out the “south gate” and he won’t look if we want to see that temple too. So I check it out and it is ridiculously steep with not well preserved steps, but it’s nice to be somewhere without the crowds for a bit. Interestingly, a info board tells me that it’s the only pyramid style temple in the Angkor Archeological Park and that scholars aren’t sure why. The style does remind me more of Mayan architecture than anything I’ve seen so far of the Khmer.

I climb the ridiculously steep steps, because why not. Though as I use my hands on the steps in front of me and carefully place them between the plants growing out of the porous stone, I can’t help but think of the bright green snake that appeared out of a temple wall in Sukhothai, Thailand. I climb faster.

Later, inside Angkor Thom, I see that most everything is gone. The homes, the shops, even the royal palace, were all built of wood and didn’t last. But the temple in the center, called Bayon, still stands in ruins. Bayon is impressive with its many towers each sporting four faces on each side (which represent charity, empathy, sympathy, and equanimity). The faces are of bodhisattva. In Buddhism, bodhisattva are people who have achieved enlightenment but don’t enter nirvana (and exit the cycle of reincarnation) in order to remain on earth and help other people achieve enlightenment. A certain bodhisattva is also apparently going to be the fifth buddha. (I didn’t realize this, but apparently Buddhists believe that there have been 4 buddhas so far. We have forgotten the three prior to the current one. In another 2,500ish years, they also believe we will have forgotten the current buddha, so the fifth and final buddha will emerge. This face recreated over and over again on Bayon temple is apparently the face of the fifth buddha).

While I love the giant faces, this is not my favorite temple. Compared to Angkor Wat, Bayon looks chaotic and messy because the towers aren’t in as good a shape and, because there are so many of them. In my opinion, it loses a lot of the perfect symmetry that Khmer architecture is known for.

However, Bayon is incredibly unique. If you’ve been paying close attention, maybe you’ve picked up on why. The Khmer Empire was Hindu. The temples were built for Vishnu and sported stunning carvings of Hindu mythology. But, Bayon temple is Buddhist.

It’s actually the only temple constructed by the Khmer to be primarily Buddhist. Of course, it also has Hindu influence and mythology in the mix. King Jaryavarman VII was the one who had Bayon temple built and he was very interested in Buddhism.

Perhaps it was the Buddhist influence or perhaps his charitable nature drew him to Buddhism; either way, he seemed like a pretty great king. He was concerned about the lives of his poorest people, even breaking tradition and religious code to have the lives and stories of his people engraved on the temple walls at Bayon. He also built rest stops along the roads of his empire and as many as 102 hospitals to serve his people. He has a strong legacy in Bayon Temple and Angkor Thom and several others I visit later, like Ta Prohm and Banteay Kdei.

Jaryavarman VII’s son, however, was very anti-Buddist and, upon taking power after his father’s death, had a lot of the buddha statues and bas-reliefs in those temples destroyed. He converted Bayon into a temple to the god Shiva.

The next stop on the tour is Ta Prohm temple, but it’s better known as the Tomb Raider Temple. Thanks Angelina Jolie. (I notice that she didn’t have to cover her shoulders when visiting!)

A quick aside: I don’t understand the temple regulations. Men and women are supposed to cover their shoulders and knees, but they don’t seem to enforce this for men (most of them wore shorts). As for women, it is strictly enforced that knees and shoulders be covered, but a lot of women wore crop tops, so apparently stomachs are fine?

Anyway, Ta Prohm temple might have been my favorite if it wasn’t for the crowds of people. I love that this temple holds onto its wild, just-discovered feel (except for the few sections where platforms have been built to aid in the photo taking opportunities, of course). Thanks again, Angelina.

Despite the platforms and the people, the trees growing out of the walls, the piles of rubble, the unorthodox path through the ruins… Ta Prohm feels completely different from the straight lines and unobstructed towers of Angkor Wat.

After a break for breakfast, or maybe lunch (it’s hard to be certain when you’ve been awake for so many hours and yet it’s only 10:30am), we end at Banteay Kdei.

This is my favorite temple of the day. Not too many people and it is less reconstructed than the others. Like Ta Prohm, it has a few trees growing willy nilly out of the structure, but it also has piles of mossy stones that clearly tumbled from the walls and were not replaced or restored. It feels wild and beautiful and I am glad it is the finale of the day. It also has many courtyards and galleries, seeming a little bit like a maze, which holds a certain magic to it.

Though, it’s impossible to truly get lost in a Khmer temple because they’re so perfectly laid out in a grid. It is a nice breath of fresh air to have a temple nearly to ourselves after so much hustle and bustle, and it is a perfect visit to end the day (at 1pm).

As we explore Banteay Kdei and look at the headless statues of buddhas, nagas, and lions, I think a lot about the story the guide told us right before. Even though Angkor’s roots are 800 years ago, there is nothing in Cambodia is not touched by the Khmer Rouge. (More on that here). After the genocide of the Khmer Rouge, the country of Cambodia was decimated and the people were so poor. Looting of Angkor Archeological Park was on the rise. At the time, a friend of my guide’s father had a daughter who was very sick and the family couldn’t afford medicine.

So the friend got his hands on the head of a buddha statue from Angkor and took it to the Thai border to trade it for medicine. So often, we think of amazing places like Egyptian ruins and Matchu Pichu and consider that bad people took those priceless treasures. Either locals spitting on their heritage or white people taking away valuables to display in museums far away. But, the reality of it is that when people are desperate to save the ones they care about, suddenly desecrating something sacred is the least evil option.

Unfortunately, the family friend stepped on a land mine and never made it to the Thai border.

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Two days later I return to Angkor Archeological Park for a solo adventure.

I book through my hostel again for a shared tour (though no guide), but no one else joins in, so I luck out on a private tour.

My driver speaks just enough English to communicate where to find him after each temple and then he sends me off. I wander through multiple temples, some older than Angkor Wat, some contemporaries.

This area of Angkor is less busy and the ability to go my own pace means that, this time, I am the Tomb Raider!

Not really, but I absolutely feel like Indiana Jones, especially when I stand at the top of the temples and look out over the tangled greenery to see the tops of other temples, yet still so much is hidden by the foliage.

The temples I visit are Pre Rup…

East Mebon…

Ta Som…

Neak Pean… on an island in a man-made lake.

Bakheng…

And, my favorite: Preah Khan.

As it is my favorite, I spend the most time at Preah Khan. Also, it is the biggest and made up of a maze-like grid that, of course, I feel the need to explore every inch of.

My love for this temple begins when I walk up and see the large statue flanking the front door. While the statue is headless and his partner on the left side is missing entirely, the grandeur of it, of what it once would have been, appealed to me.

Later, at a different entrance, one of the statues is missing entirely, only the pedestal that he stands up remaining in place. And, beside it on the ground, rests a stone foot atop a conical shaped rock. And, I realize, that the taller-than-human statues of the warriors were not carved directly onto the pedestal. Instead, they are inserted into the hole in the platform like you stick a peg into your battleship. I love things like this, love understanding the nuances of how something was created, how an ancient designer’s brain worked, how a project like this was made possible.

Preah Khan, like many Angor Temples, also has carvings representing the Churning of the Sea of Milk. While the scale isn’t quite as large as the Angkor Thom gates with its 54 daevas and 54 demons, I get such a thrill when I recognize elements of the architecture. It makes me feel like a real archeologist.

Inside, as I mentioned, is a maze. A lot of the corridors that I suspect would have been roofed are now open to the sky, but some of the vaulted ceilings (that probably would have been ceilinged with wood like in Angkor Wat) remain, darkening the space, but increasing the maze-like feel. The corridors stretch north and south and east and west, following the Khmer style of laying everything out on a grid and focusing on symmetry.

However, not everything is symmetrical. When a corridor spits me out to the left, I see, beside a small pond, a building that immediately intrigues me because it feels so out of place. The columns are tall and round and smooth, something I haven’t seen in the Khmer style before. Sometimes colonnettes (little columns that often frame doorways) are round, but they are also usually intricately carved rather than smooth. And they are short, like maybe half my height. These columns are tall.

Second, the building has two stories.

I hadn’t realized until this very moment that, while tall and often built on platforms and sporting lots of outdoor steps, Khmer buildings don’t have multiple internal stories.

The building looks Greek or Roman, and yet is perfectly positioned within the courtyard, clearly built to belong.

Later, when I googled it, I found out that archeologists are just as stumped by the unusual architecture of this building. And, they have no idea what it might have once been used for.

Intersections of corridors sport altars representing Vishnu, Brahma, and Shiva. In the center of the temple is stupa that was placed there later, perhaps in the 16^th century (as an article I read later proposed). Bas-relief carvings of apsaras (celestial dancers) and warriors and hermits under bodhi trees (the type of tree Buddha sat under) mingle on the walls.

I stumble across a few people with guides wandering through the maze, but for the most part I am alone in the vastness, occasionally hearing discombobulated voices from somewhere among the ruins.

A lot of the temple has fallen stone that appears in the middle of a corridor has been left to la, so I have to turn around and backtrack. Some passageways are marked off because the walls have collapsed inward. The whole place is spotted with velvety green moss and a few big trees grow out of walls, partially holding it all together even as they further destroy.

Preah Kahn is ancient and overgrown and mysterious, just as I had always secretly hoped (but not expected) Angkor Wat would feel like. I am thankful to have gotten my ancient mystical vibes in the Angkor Park, and also to have gotten so many answers to my burning questions and to have seen such majesty and scale from a unique and incredible people that are still around today. The Khmer were not lost. The Empire might have been conquered by the Thai and Cambodia may have spent generations with weak kings who served as alternating puppets for Thailand and Vietnam. But the people, the Khmer, are still here, still living and breathing their legacy.