The largest Hindu temple in the world

"Enchanting" said Buddy Lissy, then apologized for using the cliche. But really, enchanting was indeed true: there was no better way to describe the experience of walking around the complex of the 10th century temples at Angkor Wat. This place is a UNESCO site and draws 2 million tourists a year to Cambodia.

And I could see why.

Ancient temples, built a thousand years ago, out of stone. The carving was intricate and had me agape; the amount of work and talent needed to chip away such intricate designs was incredible. The temples were built not by slave labour, as I had dreaded, but by local people who wanted to improve their karma and would take a year to donate to work on the temples.

I was in awe of the stone, of the dedicated work to create this, of the elephants which would have transported the massive stone blocks; horrified by the bullet holes from the Khmer Rouge but given hope by how this country has begun mending itself after that tragedy.

There are one thousand temples in the expansive Angkor Wat area, the most famous being Angkor Wat itself, with the famous five peaks that are printed on Cambodia money. Now a Buddhist temple, it was built as a Hindu temple and is the largest Hindu temple in the world. 

Temples with moats, towers, endless levels and passageways; I was back in that fanciful world of childhood structures: sand castles and crayon castle drawings, but these were far more awe-inspiring and fantastic. And what was amazing; we climb over most of it. Had this been the states gates and ropes would have blocked off most of everything. But I picked my way up impossibly steep stone steps, jumped around fallen stone blocks, and could trace my fingers in the ancient stone carvings. I wonder how many years it will take them to close it up for preservation, if they ever do. This is Cambodia, not Yellowstone.


I couldn't even try capturing the magnificence of the Angkor Wat temple or any of the other grand temples in a photograph; instead these photographs grasp at a few of the details. 

Buddha smiles.

The girl on the far right is not actually a traditional Apsara dancing girl, if you couldn't tell. But at least she's not in stone.

A crumbling temple split apart by strangling figs. I found compelling the interweaving of ancient holy stone with the disregardingly powerful tree and steal human intervention.

Probably the oldest horse I've ever seen. All day I kept repeating to myself "a thousand years old" but I still struggled to wrap my mind around this.

Tourists, pooled from all over the world, gather in this one unbelievable place in.....Cambodia.