Of course the first choice is Angkor!!!! Must go!
Main Attractions
Angkor
The monuments of Angkor, of which there are more than 600 surviving, are spread over an area of 45 square kilometers of forest. Big Angkor and Little Angkor are its main components, which are spectacular with many fine stupas as well as numerous stone reliefs. The stupas are made of huge stones, some weighing more than 8 tons. The stupas are carved with various forms of statues, some of which are several meters high and vividly lifelike. The five lotus bud-like stupas in the Angkor temples tower above the clouds, a superb piece of architecture that the Khmer nation is proud of.
In addition to Greater Angkor, Lesser Angkor and the three royal centers, the Queen's Palace and the Palace in the Sky are also famous attractions among the Angkor monuments. The Palace in the Sky is an all-stone structure said to have been built in the 11th century. The palace was built on a 12-meter-high platform in the shape of a pyramid with three levels. The center of the platform was built a tower, the tower painted gold, shining. The platform is surrounded by stone corridors. Due to the height of the platform, it gives people a feeling of hanging in the air, hence the name.
The Queen's Palace, known as the "Pearl of Angkor", is located about 25 kilometers northeast of Angkor, formerly known as the Palace of Shiva, and was built in the first year of the 5th year of the Angkor Dynasty (Mennegat), Yayavarmo (968 A.D.). It sits in the west and faces east, is 200 meters long and about 100 meters wide, and has three juxtaposed pagoda shrines in the center and symmetrical halls on the left and right. The vermillion-red tower shrines are built on a one-meter-high pedestal, with the tallest one in the center at about 10 meters. The center shrine is for Lord Brahma, the south shrine for Lord Brahma and the north shrine for Lord Vishnu.
Each pagoda shrine of the east, south and north of a door, the door is only 1.2 meters high, worshippers have to bend down and bend their knees to enter. In front of each door there is a pair of stone sculptures of guardian deities, and on both sides of the wall there are warriors holding spears and reliefs of nymphs. The pagoda is surrounded by 3 enclosing towers, and between the inner and outer enclosing walls, there are arches, openwork stone pillars and stone monuments, etc. The entire pagoda is surrounded by 3 enclosing towers.
The whole group of pagodas is magnificent, the architecture is strange and chic, and the carvings are delicate and beautiful. Each pagoda is carved with statues of various gods, ghosts and rakshasas. The base of the pagoda and its two sides of the shrine and the doorway is also a variety of reliefs, the content is mostly recorded in the ancient Khmer people's life and fight against foreign invasion scenes. 1431 Angkor was captured by Siam, the Queen's Palace was also damaged.
Most of Angkor's buildings have collapsed into ruins, but the grandeur of the scale of Angkor's monuments and the splendor of its architectural art are still amazing. Archaeologists call it one of the Four Wonders of the East, along with the Great Wall of China, the pyramids of Egypt and Borobudur in Indonesia. As a representative of the early Cambodian architectural style, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee placed the entire Angkor monument on the World Heritage List in 1992.
Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat (also known as Little Angkor) is the best-preserved temple building of the entire site. The fact that Cambodians today place it on their national flag is a testament to the sacred status of Angkor Wat in the minds of Cambodians. Angkor Wat was originally built to honor Hindu deities, but today has evolved into a Buddhist temple. There is a stone pagoda at each of the four corners of the square plaza, and an even taller pagoda in the center of the square, symbolizing the mythical sacred mountain. Both Hindu and Buddhist believers believe that this sacred place in the middle is the center of the universe. Angkor Wat is built on a foundation of three tiers of steps, each surrounded by stone cloisters, with most of the relief carvings taken from the mythological stories of the famous Indian epics of the Moksha Brahmaputra and the Ramayana. The central avenue of the temple is lined with nine-headed serpentine railings, which, according to Cambodian legend, bring good weather. Surrounding the temple are moats and pools, not to protect the temple, but to make it appear more sacred and majestic through reflections in the water. Angkor Wat is a masterpiece of man, but every design is meant to reflect divinity. Being among the Buddha statues at Angkor Wat, one can no longer tell whether one is standing in the territory of the gods or in the space of man. Divinity and space meet in this ancient city in the middle of a dense forest.
When mentioning Angkor Wat, people will naturally think of the last scene of "Fancy Life": a man tells an emotional secret that he can't tell to anyone, and can't even face himself, to a stone cave in Angkor Wat, and then covers it up, so that the story that took place in Fancy Life will stay in Angkor from now on, and everything here, including his secret, will be taken away by nature to become an eternal memory. The central building cross the end of the King's Terrace is the central complex of the Angkor Temple. It is basically by the large, medium and small three rectangular corridor as the perimeter of the Sumeru, in accordance with the order of the outer large and small, the lower large and small stacked three enclosures, the center stands five lotus stupa as the apex, symbolizing the Sumeru Mountain. American scholar Alina Manica explains that each of the three levels of the cloisters represents the king, Brahman, and the moon, Vishnu. The corridor gates are established at each base of each cloister, and the upper and middle levels of the cloisters, with tower gates at the four corners, four pagodas at each level of the gate, and a central pagoda forming a five-pointed plum blossom motif. Because of the temple's westward orientation, the location of the upper level of the Sukhumvitra is not in the center of the next level of the Sukhumvitra, but is slightly backward and to the east, leaving more space for the west gallery; for the same reason, the west steps are not as steep as the east steps.
The first floor of the Sukhumvitra is made of sandstone, about 3 meters above the ground; above the Sukhumvitra, there is a corridor about 3 meters high, around the Angkor temple as the word mouth. Corridor rectangular, north-south direction is 190 meters long, east-west direction is 220 meters long. Cloister around, *** there are four tower door and eight corridor door, four corners of a tower door, due west, due east of three corridor door, due north, due south of a corridor door. The tower door and corridor door have two stone steps inside and outside, which can lead to the first level of the inner courtyard and the outer courtyard of the temple. The inner wall of the corridor is both the outer wall of the temple and a giant gallery. Outside the cloister, there are two rows of side-by-side square stone pillars, one of which supports the gallery vault, the other row supports the half-vaulted side gallery. The two-gabled vault of the gallery is covered with ceramic tiles to protect the stone carvings on the wall of the gallery from the sun and rain.
Gallery stone wall, arranged in a fine carving of eight giant reliefs. Each relief is more than two meters high, nearly 100 meters long, the total length of more than 700 meters, around the temple week. The bas-reliefs depict stories from two famous Indian Sanskrit epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and some history of the Angkor Dynasty. From the northwest corner, in reverse clockwise direction, the west gallery shows Rama, the son of the king of Ashoka, defeating Ravana, the king of the Rakshasas, in the Ramayana, and the story of the war between the Kailapas and the Pandavas in the Mahabharata. In the South Gallery there are several bas-reliefs related to the history of the Angkor Dynasty, one of which depicts Suryavarman II wearing a crown, sitting barefoot and cross-legged on a throne, his left hand pointing to the left and his back hand leaning against the armrest of the throne, with two attendants on his left and two on his right, each holding a long fan and fanning the king, and behind him a courtesan with a gigantic candle, which is lit in the daytime. Next are the 32 levels of hell and 37 levels of heaven in Indian mythology. The East Gallery depicts a famous story from the ancient Hindu myth of Pranas: Vishnu churning the sea of milk: Vishnu made 92 asuras and 88 gods and goddesses rope Vasuki, the king of snakes, to churn the sea of milk. The ensuing scene of Vishnu defeating the asuras was added later in the 16th century. The north gallery shows Vishnu's eighth incarnation, Kurotien, defeating Asura Banner. The north-west and south-west corner galleries have smaller scenes, mostly depicting the Ramayana or the Black Sky. Entering the west door of the first gallery, one steps into a field pavilion called the 'Pavilion of a Thousand Buddhas', surrounded by galleries. Tianzigaku is spaced out into four courtyards by the central cross corridor, and its ground level is about one meter lower than that of the cross corridor and the cloisters, which was originally a pond, but is now not storing water. Tianzige's north and south corridor, about 3 meters wide, closed on the outside, the inner side of a double row of square pillars. Cross corridor by two corridors cross into a cross, each corridor by the center corridor, the left side of the corridor, the right side of the corridor consists of three parts, supported by four rows of square columns. Two rows of inner square pillars support the center corridor, and two rows of outer square pillars support their respective side corridors. The middle corridor is about 3 meters wide and 4.5 meters high, with the upper half of the wall and the lower half of the square pillars. The bottom of the stone columns have flying women in relief, some of the columns and column walls are still residual crimson paint, which can be seen more than 800 years ago, Angkor Wat's heyday of the splendor of the scene. The roof of the main corridor is in the shape of an egg-shaped arch, covered with ceramic tiles. The left and right side corridors are about 2.5 meters wide and 3 meters high. The total width of the corridor is about 8 meters. Over the centuries, pilgrims have left many statues of Buddha inside the pavilion, although most of them have been removed. There are also a number of inscriptions celebrating the good deeds of the pilgrims, mostly in Khmer and some in Burmese. The courtyard beyond the pavilion is the inner courtyard of the first enclosure of the temple, which is in the shape of a zigzag. In the northwest and southwest corners of the first level of the enclosure, there is a pavilion for the collection of scriptures. TianZiGe's north corridor, center corridor and west corridor have stone steps corridor west through the temple's second layer of enclosure.
The second level of the foundation and five and a half meters above the first level of the foundation, surrounded by a rectangular corridor, east-west direction about 115 meters long, north-south direction about 100 meters wide. Corridor no stone columns, there is no partial corridor, the two walls distributed vertical gourd lattice windows, between the sky god relief. Corridor **** there are ten porch door, one in each corner, one in the east and south, three in the west. Each porch door has two stone steps inside and outside, down to the first enclosure of the inner courtyard, inside the second enclosure of the inner courtyard. The three porches on the west side lead to the first enclosure's Tianzhi Pavilion. The tower gates at the corners of the second corridor each have a pagoda at the top; due to the lack of maintenance, most of the tops of the four pagodas are missing, and only two or three layers of the nine-story pagoda remain. The second enclosure caught in the inner courtyard of the southwest and northwest corner of each a small Tibetan scripture pavilion. The two pavilions are connected by a cross-shaped balcony in the north-south direction, and the east-west direction of the balcony connects the west door of the second floor corridor and the west door of the third floor corridor. This cross balcony was also added by later generations. Temple of the third level of the foundation, that is, the inner and highest level of the foundation, known as Bagan, square, shaped like a pyramid, but stacked by two sections, towering 12 meters above the ground, than the first and second level of the foundation is twice as high. Twelve steps around the base of the platform, three each side of the southeast, northwest, twelve steps are very steep, you must use your hands and feet, creeping up, symbolizing the hardships of the sky. Steps above the field-shaped heavy eaves gallery, 60 meters square, on the five Lotus Sacred Tower, four corners of a tower door, in the middle of a 42-meter-high tower, the top of the tower 65 meters from the ground, the main tower than the four corner tower is taller; five pagodas, lined up in five-pointed plum blossom style. Each tower within the shrine. The main tower of the shrine, initially four passes, the center for Vishnu a, in the change to Theravada Buddhism, the center for the statue of Buddha, three sides with the statue of Buddha wall enclosure. Between the gates of the pagodas, and between the gates of the pagodas and the main pagoda, the pagodas are connected by Tianzhi galleries. The Taza Gallery consists of the Cloister and the Cross Corridor, which is divided into the Main Corridor and the Partial Corridor, with vertical gourd lattice windows on the outer walls of the Main Corridor, and rectangular, barless windows on the four bases of the East, West, South, and North. The inner side of the main corridor is a row of columns, and there is a five-meter-high vault on the main corridor, while the inner side of the side corridor is arranged with columns and a three-meter-high half-vault. The cross corridor has a corridor, two partial corridors, a vault, two half-vaulted, left and right each two rows of square stone columns. The vaults and half-vaults of the Tianzhi Gallery are covered with ceramic tiles. The ceiling at the top of the gallery is carved with a lion's head and a serpent's image, and the entrances of the gallery and the shrine have friezes and triangular walls covered with carvings. The four sides of the corridor southeast, northwest and northwest of the center of each gallery door, each gallery door has a step down to the second floor; corridor four corners of the tower door, each has two steps down to the second floor.
Angkor City
Another well-preserved Angkor site is the city of Angkor (also known as Angkor), which was the palace city of the Khmer Empire. It is the "heart" of Angkor. In the center of the city of Angkor, Yan Na Tremor VII built Bayon Temple (Bayon). Bayon has 54 large and small pagodas, the top of each pagoda is carved with a huge four-faced Buddha symbolizing the king, who looks down from the tip of the pagoda with a smile, symbolizing the supremacy of the king and the sanctity of Buddhism. This is the most characteristic Khmer stone sculpture shape. No matter where you stand, you can see the towering Buddha statues and feel their potential intimidating power, which makes one stand in awe.
Angkor is a city surrounded by a 12-kilometer-long citadel. The moat outside Angkor's SouthGate is surmounted by a stone bridge, and the railings on each side of the bridge are lined with a row of 54 stone busts, one side representing the gods and the other the demons, who are pulling a giant king snake in the guise of a cobra in their hands. The moat, which is about 100 meters wide, is said to have been stocked with crocodiles in ancient times to ward off enemy attacks. Drill into the small south gate doorway, pulling the ancient trees reclining on both sides of the road neatly lined up, the trees through the cracks of the gentle morning light, a light wind blew, dry leaves tada fell to the front window of the car, and then slid to the ground, indescribable cozy. In the center of the city of Angkor, in accordance with the concept of Buddhism Sumeru sacred mountain built up a spectacular Bayon temple (Bayon), around the central minaret is 49 four sides are carved with a huge Buddha's face of the pagoda, these enigmatic Buddha's face smiles, different expressions, serene with a bit of mystery. The four faces of the Four-Faced Buddha represent compassion, sorrow, happiness and surrender, and neither sorrow nor happiness is shown in color. Bay Cloud Temple corridor mural is also very rich, from the royal palace war to the life of the people have everything, but to the tourists left the deepest impression of the four-face Buddha that mysterious "Khmer smile".
There are also famous buildings such as Baphoun, Phimeanakas, Leper King and Terrace of Elephants in the whole area of Angkor.
In the center of the capital city, palaces, libraries, baths, cloisters, etc. were built.
In the center of the city, there is also the famous building, the Terrace of Elephants, which is about 300 meters long and is said to be the parade ground where the king reviewed his troops at that time. There is a big platform and two small platforms. There are stone elephants on the left and right sides of the big platform, and those riding on the elephants are the ministers of the dynasty. This is the same as the stone phases set up in front of the royal tombs in China, but there are more types of them in China. The square in front of the parade platform is built with 12 small red towers, what function is not clear, Cambodians also can not answer, but about how Angkor City was abandoned they have several stories. Legend has it that in 1171 A.D., after Angkor was sacked by its neighbors, King Yayavarman VII lost faith in the protective power of the main Hindu god, so all the people of Kiwan gave up Hinduism and turned to Buddhism, adopting a lifestyle of renouncing violence and practicing peace. The result of this change of religion was that the Thai army captured and sacked Angkor in 1431 A.D. without meeting any resistance.
Another Buddhist legend has it that King Kiwan was offended by the son of a priest, so he drowned him in Tonle Sap Lake. The gods were angry and decided to avenge the priest's son, causing the lake to flood and thus precipitating the destruction of Angkor.
Built more than 800 years ago during the heyday of the Angkor Dynasty, this building tells the story of its splendor with its exquisite stone carvings, long corridors, and magnificent stone pagodas. Angkor is known as the "photographer's paradise", because there are endless pictures of the flavor, the beauty of the broken, and even more mysterious stories to tell.