The main street, if it can even be called that, is a long, orange brown dirt road running the entire length of village and lies just a foot or two above the water level. In the wet season I am sure it becomes flooded, turning from street to canal. The sides are lined with simple wooden houses on stilts several meters high. Along the side of road and in the spaces between the stilts are all manner of things in a huge jumble, round bottom boats with cracked sides, motorbikes, tuk tuks, piles of fish traps, nets hung out to … Read the rest
The reddish brown dirt road is on an embankment, the sides sloping steeply down to the river a few meters below. Both sides of the road are lined with houses sitting on tall stilts, their floor often a foot or two above the street, with wooden gangways up to the door. The houses are simple wooden things, often looking like they’ve been cobbled together randomly. Wooden, round bottom boats are drawn up on land or float lazily in the shallow waters at the banks. The space beneath the houses, in between the stilts, is cluttered with nets, fish traps and … Read the rest
This place is absolutely massive, in fact it’s the largest building in the world, so it should be able to swallow massive amounts of visitors. Yet here I am, in the longest queue I’ve seen in more than two months of traveling. From the stairs leading up to the main stupa, it goes around the corner all the way along the north wall, down to the opposite side of the stupa. I don’t like standing in line but I can’t come to the most famous temple ruin in south east Asia and skip the main shrine, so here I stand…… Read the rest
The entire wall, probably a hundred meters long or more, is covered in bas relief figures. It is something like the Bayeux tapestry, a depiction of a battle with multitudes of armed soldiers on foot, and commanders in their chariots. I’ve seen carvings before but the scale of this is something else. Looking down the corridor and just knowing that the carved scene continues all the way to corner is fascinating.… Read the rest
The sky is growing imperceptibly lighter, it’s just possible to make out the black silhouette of the temple against dark grey sky, and the perfect reflections in the still waters of the pool in front of it. Up above, myriad stars twinkle in the sky. The only thing to dampen the mood is the mass of people pressing in on me from behind and from the sides.… Read the rest
To the left and in front of me is an L-shaped wall about three meters high. It is built by large, square blocks of dark grey stone, the top and bottom decorated with geometric carvings. To the right it is connected to a stone tower with a sort of stepped dome and a passage right through it, the door posts decorated with bas relief figures of Hindu gods. After nearly a thousand years of neglect, the stones are covered in moss and lichen, giving it a copper green hue. A gigantic tree, its roots as large as the trunk of … Read the rest
There’s a large tree straddling the top of the ancient building. The roots, as big as a man’s leg or bigger, come spilling down the walls like a mass of grey tentacles over the dark, moss covered stone. From the top of the roof, the trunk shoots up towards the blue sky, to the green crown high above. In front of the building is a small wooden platform, on it, two Chinese women posing for a photo and in front of the platform, a long line of tourists, all waiting for their chance to take a picture. The place is … Read the rest
The central chamber of the main stupa: despite the size of the the surrounding structure, the room is small and cramped. Save for the sunlight that comes in through a small hole at the very top of the high, narrow, conical roof, the only light inside comes from a few candles. In the center of the room a seated Buddha statue wrapped in an orange cloth with a few decorations on either side. In front of the Buddha is a family, sitting on a thin mat, praying. The room smells of incense, sticks of it burning in a vase at … Read the rest
It’s well neigh impossible to capture this place on a photo. In the middle, the giant, mountainlike central stupa, the peak soaring above the rest of the temple. The sides of the stupa are crumbling, large blocks of stone missing and the reliefs that used to depict faces have withered away during hundreds of years of neglect. Around it there are four smaller towers, one in each direction of the compass, the tops of which consist of four faces, facing four different directions. Lower down, on the sides of both the main stupa and the surrounding towers are dark openings leading in … Read the rest
The soft whoosh of the breaking waves fills my ears. The sea in front to me is black save for the white foam that flows up the moist sand only to recede back into the darkness, a thin line that changes with each wave. To my is left a pier, lighted at intervals by street lamps like a chain of glowing, yellow orbs in the darkness, then further out the shape of an islet, jagged black against the almost imperceptibly lighter night sky. To my right, the beach, the normally pristine white sand turned a dirty yellowish grey under the … Read the rest
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