Angkor by tuk-tuk

Above: Bayon, Angkor Thom

Above: Carved stone relief, Banteay Srei

Above: Carved stone relief, Banteay Srei, showing the Ramayana legend at Preah Ko

Above: Carved stone relief, Banteay Srei

Above: Bayon, Angkor Thom

Above: Bayon, Angkor Thom

Above: Bayon relief

Above: Bayon, Angkor Thom

Above: Angkor Wat

Above: Angkor Wat

Above: Angkor Wat

Above: Angkor Wat relief

Above: Angkor Wat stone window (how was this made? turned on a lathe?)

Above: Angkor Wat

We travelled by coach from Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) to Phnom Pen which took about seven hours - quite a lot of slightly seedy looking single western male tourists, an overnight stay and then another six hours bus ride to Siem Riep - a town built and paid for by tourism at Angkor - where we stayed at the excellent and very cheap by western standards, Golden Mango Hotel - a 5 minutes Tuk Tuk drive to town and 10 minutes to the Angkor complex.

Angkor is situated in the middle of the vast fertile, central flood plain near the huge lake of Tonle Sap and on the Tonle Sap river, a tributary of the huge Mekong river and close to modern Siem Riep.

Tonle Sap lake rises and falls 8 metres between the wet and dry seasons and supplies much fish and, with the rice harvest, has fed much of central Cambodia for centuries. The lake is 2,700 square miles in dry season expanding to 16,000 in the rainy season

The central plain is only relieved by small hills called phnoms - thus Phnom Pen.

The city of Angkor was built between the tenth and thirteenth centuries and was the capital of the most powerful and opulent empire of south east Asia. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site. The main Angkor Wat temple complex covers 800 hectares (3 sq miles), but there still remain in Cambodia other temple complexes to be excavated from beneath the jungle. There are nine main temple complexes within the main city and many smaller temples. All nine should be visited if one has the time but, if not, then just Angkor Wat - where the sculpture is currently being conserved by a German team - and Angkor Thom and the Bayon - being conserved by the Japanese.

Banteay Srai (Lady Temple) should not be missed. This is a small temple some 12 kilometeres from the main complex at Ankor.  Built on a much more human scale, and reasonably well preserved, the carvings are exquisite and the finest of the temples we visited.

The architecture at Angkor is closely related to southern Indian Hindu temple architecture - the Khmers became Buddhist in the 11th century

Angkor Wat is the best preserved temple but it is only a small part of what was once a vast city.

The temples are constructed with a core of laterite - a hard dark red clay coloured by iron oxide - which is easy to cut when quarried and is relatively light. Laterite hardens when it is dried and forms the inner core of most of the buildings. The outer surfaces are of sandstone or a mixture of sandstone and brick. The sandstone was brought 80 kilometers from quarries in Mt Kulen to the North and ferried to the site by a network of canals only recently rediscovered by satellite survey.

What we see now are only the massive stone remains, the only sign of timber screens, doors, shutters and the timber living accommodation are plug holes drilled into the stone, the wood has long since disappeared, either vandalised or eaten by termites.

One temple alone, Ta Prohm - the inspiration for scenes in Tomb Raider - needed a population of 90,000 people to maintain it. Ta Prohm is probably the most romantic of the ruined temples but although some of it has been left to nature, much is undergoing to stop it falling into complete ruin. The site was initially cleared of undergrowth between 1908-11 but many of the larger trees were left with their roots strangling the buildings.

Restoration, conservation and consolidation continues at Angkor using the anastylosis reconstruction technique - rebuilding on firm foundations and replacing missing elements with unfinished stones, but due of its sheer scale this work will never be completed.

Baphuon Temple within Angkor Thom was completely reconstructed after the French took it apart, numbered over 300,000 pieces, and while preparing for rebuilding it was overrun by the Khmer Rouge who destroyed all the drawings. Fortunately it was able to be reconstructed from memory, this must count as the world largest jigsaw puzzle.

In 1922 the minor scandal of L'affaire André Malraux, the French author who thought stealing sculptures from Banteay Srai and sending them for sale in the west was an excellent way of making a quick franc highlighted the problem of looting of the temple sculptures. On his return to France he was arrested and held briefly in prison, which is considered ironic given that the French authorities had themselves removed large numbers of statues and bas-reliefs. Malraux believed he had acted within the law as it then stood, and unsuccessfully contested the charges.

In the 1980s the Khmer Rouge did not help matters, but thankfully the large scale theft of sculpture from Angkor is not so easy any more. The Cambodians are very proud of their heritage.

The Angkor National Museums at Siem Riep (currently privately funded by a Thai company) and the National Museum in Phnom Pen both have very good study collections of the sculpture from Angkor. Closer to home there is a large collection of Cambodian artefacts at the Musee Guimet in Paris

A million tourists visit Siem Riep and Angkor each year, and this figure is rising. The town is modern, but as in the rest of Cambodia, although very poor, the people are delightfully friendly and helpful, and keen to practise their English on you by trying to sell you something, but are not in the least offended if you do not buy. We avoided Pub Street but the more youthful might enjoy it.

Food is good, though not as good as Vietnam, beer is cheap and the ruins at Angkor are probably the eighth wonder of the world - if one is interested in architecture they are not to be missed.

There have been plenty of books published but for a good general overview Angkor, Heart of an Empire published by Thames and Hudson is a good start.

[The architectural heritage story and the beautiful photos were kindly submitted by a SalvoNEWS trade reader who preferred to remain anonymous