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Tom’s Travels: Last of the Cambodian Trains

The last running train in Cambodia, going each weekend from Phnom Penh to Battambang. It runs at under 20km an hour, can be easily out-run and remains one of the few places where you can ride the roof. Just watch out for the power lines. As of 2009 – it is no longer running.

Tags: battambang, Cambodia, cambodian, grundy, old, penh, phnom, slow, tom, train, Trains, transport
Posted in Trains · December 25th, 2009 · Comments (15)

Angkor Wat – A Legendary Elegance

Many inscriptions in Angkor reveal Khmer rulers from hundreds of years ago. It was as early as the AD 100s that Khmer people started forming villages, each with its own ruler, leading to many small kingdoms. But things changed when Jayavarman II took power in 802. He unified all the small kingdoms and formed a single Khmer empire.

The Khmer empire in those days covered much more than Cambodia of today, and included Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burma and other places. The region of the Empire later came to be known as Angkor, with hundreds of beautiful temples. These enchanting structures were once part of a larger social structure that consisted of wooden houses, palaces and other places.

The Angkor Wat temple was built by Suryavarman II, the Khmer Emperor, and it was initially a Hindu temple. When the Khmer empire was thriving, many temples and palaces were built. The temple architecture is such that it is talked about as the best and most impressive human creations even to this day.

Lord Vishnu is the main deity; however, the sculptures on the temple also pay homage to several Vedic gods and goddesses including Lord Siva. The Angkor Wat temple is said to have served as an observatory where the rising sun was aligned on the equinox and solstice days with the entrance to the West of the temple, and numerous sighting lines were identified to be able to observe the rising of the sun and moon seasonally.

Angkor Wat is an excellent example of the temple mountain design. An amazing work of the Khmer architecture, it showed how intrinsic symmetry and repetition are to the Khmer design. The temple has five huge towers, each one representing the peaks of Mount Meru. The unique and stunning architecture of Angkor Wat has to be seen with the naked eye to be able to experience the impact. The galleries inside the temple depict the history in a most beautiful manner.

There was a unique controversy surrounding the temple, which was soon put to an end. It questioned the history of when the temple was built. The Europeans came up with the notion that the temple was built after the–th century because the temple’s motifs look exactly like the motifs from the Italian Renaissance. However, this rumor and allegation was instantly proved wrong, with historians saying that the opposite was true – that it was the Europeans that took the oriental art from Angkor Wat to Europe.

The well-known Divakara Pandita, who lived during 1050-1135, was a priest and was also said to be the chief architect behind the temple. There are several inscriptions on the walls of the temples that sing his praises, as well as the existence of his image at Wat Phu. The temple was designed along the lines of astronomy, as revealed in the puranas. All these nuances make Angkor Wat what it is today – the greatest architectural genius of all times and continues to amaze people to this day.

Join KhmerPortal.com to learn more about the Khmer culture or just visit there to listen to Khmer music or Khmer song.

Tags: Angkor Wat, Cambodia, culture, History, Travel
Posted in Travel · November 17th, 2009 · Comments (0)