Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Eleanor Mannikka explains in her book Angkor Wat: Time, Space and Kingship that the
spatial dimensions of Angkor Wat parallel the lengths of the four ages (Yuga) of classical
Hindu thought. Thus the visitor who walks the causeway to the main entrance and through
the courtyards to the final main tower, which once contained a statue of Vishnu, is meta-
phorically travelling back to the first age of the creation of the universe.
Like the other temple-mountains of Angkor, Angkor Wat also replicates the spatial uni-
verse in miniature. The central tower is Mt Meru, with its surrounding smaller peaks,
bounded in turn by continents (the lower courtyards) and the oceans (the moat). The
seven-headed naga becomes a symbolic rainbow bridge for man to reach the abode of the
gods.
While Suryavarman II may have planned Angkor Wat as his funerary temple or mauso-
leum, he was never buried there as he died in battle during a failed expedition to subdue
the Dai Viet (Vietnamese).
ON LOCATION WITH
TOMB RAIDER
Several sequences for Tomb Raider, starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft, were shot around the
temples of Angkor. The Cambodia shoot opened at Phnom Bakheng, with Lara looking through bin-
oculars for the mysterious temple. The baddies were already trying to break in through the east gate of
Angkor Thom by pulling down a giant polystyrene apsara . Reunited with her custom Land Rover,
Lara made a few laps around Bayon before discovering a back way into the temple from Ta Prohm.
After battling a living statue and dodging Daniel Craig (aka 007) by diving off the waterfall at Phnom
Kulen, she emerged in a floating market in front of Angkor Wat, as you do. She came ashore here be-
fore borrowing a mobile phone from a local monk and venturing into the Gallery of a Thousand
Buddhas, where she was healed by the abbot.
Architectural Layout
Angkor Wat is surrounded by a 190m-wide moat, which forms a giant rectangle measur-
ing 1.5km by 1.3km. From the west, a sandstone causeway crosses the moat. The sand-
stone blocks from which Angkor Wat was built were quarried more than 50km away
(from the holy mountain of Phnom Kulen) and floated down the Siem Reap River on
rafts. The logistics of such an operation are mind-blowing, consuming the labour of thou-
sands - an unbelievable feat given the lack of cranes and trucks that we take for granted in
contemporary construction projects. According to inscriptions, the construction of Angkor
Wat involved 300,000 workers and 6000 elephants, yet it was still not fully completed.
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