Page 37
Angkor
Thom and the Bayon Temple
and
Ta Prohm Temple
at Siam Reap, Cambodia
Part
2
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The busses preparing to leave after
breakfast.
The hotel gardens were beautiful
and well cared for.
The Taxi Que.
Ta Prohn Temple
Except for the tourists and the
vendors there is not much going on in this area.
Some other ruins are in a precarious
state.
Many of the original stones have
been moved from where they were originally set.
The local children were
working the crowd relentlessly for dollars.
There were many smaller buildings
not directly attached to the temple.
The exotic beauty was
unbelievable.
Some of these scenes
were just hard to accept as real.
The place was so large that it was
hard to find Donna once and a while.
Our friend Dale and Manuela
who works at the ship's tour office enjoying the sites.
Some of the stones used were fairly
large.
Everywhere you looked there were
unusual trees.
My "Raider's of the Lost Ark"
impression.
These are truly large tree trunks.
More novice monks.
Large trees grew everywhere.
Donna finally found a doorway her
size.
Dale giving us her expedition look.
The scale of these ruins is amazing.
There were many young
novice monks in attendance.
This little tree was
a great backdrop for our "people in the jungle" portraits.
Harrison Ford eat your heart out.
Each gate is topped by a tower with
4 faces of Buddha.
The face of Buddha is everywhere.
Here Donna is undecided about what
to buy.
Here Donna is running from the vendors.
Sadly the pictures with
Donna next to me look better. Why is that?
Another one of the four
gates of the Temple. Again topped by four faces of Buddha.
If they plan on resetting every stone
to its original location they have a lot of work ahead of them.
The bas reliefs are this time of
Buddhist stories.
The entire temple is set upon a stone
base.
To give you an idea of how much reconstruction
work is ahead, This is a pile of loose stones each of which needs to find
its home. A monster of a 3D jigsaw puzzle.
Each of these towers has the 4 faces
of Buddha.
Here are some clearer
pictures of the faces of Buddha.
I gave one of the faces of Buddha
a little peck on the nose. Actually it was about 150 feet to my left.
Who's that good looking
couple?
Donna and Dale doing
their Lara Croft impressions.
The views from a little distance
away were just as exotic.
There is an ongoing attempt to categorize
and inventory some of the loose stones to facilitate restoration.
There were elephant rides available
if you needed additional olfactory sensory input.
There were several large Buddha throughout
the area. They were active shrines.
A shot of part of our room. Verrry
nice.
The hotels dining room. It was a
wonderful exotic place in its own right.
The hotel displayed ads
for visiting the ruins.
The hotel's cote of arms.
There are maybe 50 hotels under construction.
It will more crowded next time we come. We heard Disney was looking into
property.
At the airport on the way back to
the ship.