On the second day of Angkor Wat, we attempted the small tour with a guide which includes Angkor Wat, the legendary Ta Phrom temple, where the famous Tombraider movie was filmed, and the Bayon temple (temple of the smiley faces).
First, we crossed the floating bridge and caught a great view of the temples. When inside, we crossed wall after wall of beautiful carvings in the rock walls. My favorite was the Ravallana, in which the beautiful Sita is captured by the evil Ravana and her husband Rama rescues her.
The Ramayana
Once upon a time, there lived a beloved king and queen called Rama and Sita. Sita was the most beautiful woman in the whole kingdom. One day, Rama, Sita, and Rama’s brother Laksmana went on a vacation in the forest, where the evil monster with 10 heads and 20 arms named Ravana caught a glimpse of the beautiful Sita. He at once made up his mind to kidnap her. He transformed himself into a beautiful spotted brown deer and galloped right next to our little group of royalty. Sita thought the deer was so beautiful and begged her husband to capture it for her. Now, Rama was smart, Rama was clever, and immediately saw that this deer was not a real one but a transformed one. So he said to his brother to guard Sita and stay with her while he went to capture the deer. He left, leaving Laksmana behind with his precious beloved wife. But Ravana was not going to be outsmarted so easily. He transformed himself back again and went outside the house where Sita and Laksmana were sitting playing a game, and emitted a cry of Rama’s voice wailing for help. Sita heard it immediately and, very startled, asked Laksmana to go out and look for Rama and help him. So Laksamana went out in the forest to look for his brother. Ravana meanwhile kidnapped Sita peacefully and flew away to his lair. Sita was like Rama, smart and clever, so she took off her belongings and let them fall to the ground one by one to leave a trail behind for her husband to find her and rescue her. Ravana did not see her do this, but instead wondered why she wasn’t calling for help!
And then, what had happened to Rama and Laksmana? Well, Rama was walking back on the path, hands empty of course, when Laksmana, running down the same path, found him. Rama anxiously asked his little brother why he wasn’t with Sita. “Well,”said Laksmana,”we heard you wailing outside for help, and Sita asked me to go find you and help you! So she is still in the house by herself.” He waited for an answer from his older and wiser brother, who, very puzzled, thought hard. Then, suddenly, he took off running at top speed down the path to the house. Laksmana followed him, without asking for an explanation for his behavior. He really trusted his older brother! Sure enough, when Rama pushed open the door, Sita was not there! He looked out of the window and saw Sita’s bangle on the soft grass there. “Well,” he said to his brother, surprisingly calmly but also somewhat angrily, “Sita got kidnapped! Look, there is her most beautiful bangle on the grass. Maybe she’s left a trail! Let’s go check it out! The kidnapper will pay, mark my words!”
They followed Sita’s belongings one by one before arriving on the beach. Rama picked up Sita’s beautiful scarf and shook the sand off it before telling Laksmana, “Well, this is the end of the trail. I suppose she has been taken by someone who flew to an island. The closest island to here is Sri Lanka, and that is more than 1000 km away! We cannot swim that far, Laksmana! We need someone to help us out!” They both thought and thought, before Laksmana came up with an idea.”We could go ask the monkeys and their king to help us!”
Rama thought this was a good idea and they left the beach to find the monkeys, Laksmana glowing and beaming. It wasn’t often that he thought of a good idea before his brother! When they found the monkeys their king Bali refused to help them. But his brother Sugriva, the rightful king, accepted. So Rama helped Sugriva to take back his throne by killing Bali. Sugriva then leads his troops back to the beach where he and the monkeys build a very long bridge, and at last Rama sees Sri Lanka on the horizon. “Sita!”, he called,”here we come!”
Meanwhile, Sita was not having an interesting time in Ravana’s castle. Ravana’s guards would take her down to the beautiful living room, well furnished to impress her. Ravana would try himself to impress her without success. Then after his failure, his guards would take her back to her cell. The next hour the process would begin again, and again, and again. “Oh Rama!”, she said one day looking out of her window, “when will you come to rescue me?”
Meanwhile, Rama and his team had just landed on the island. They raced on, armed, against Ravana’s army. The war had begun.
They were losing! Rama realized that killing Ravana would defeat him and his army. He looked for Ravana and found him. One by one, he chopped off his heads with his sword. But, to his despair, they grew back! Suddenly, he stopped and took out his bow, inserted a poisoned arrow, and, with the help of the strength god of the wind, shot it into Ravana’s heart. At once, the fighting stopped as the guards looked at their dead leader and ran away.
They had won. Sita was rescued.
“We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ unless we ask the same question for every joy that comes our way.”
-Lord Rama to Laksmana
The other beautiful carving we saw was in the Tombraider temple, Ta Phrom, with the collapsing tree root. It was about the myth of the evil hungry Naga monster and Hindu king of the gods Shiva.
The Story of Naga
Once upon a time, there lived a monster called Naga. He lived in the hell with all the other evil gods and was always very hungry. He always had something to eat, until one day, the food supply for Naga run out. So he went out of the hell to look for some food. So he went to Shiva.
The powerful Hindu god told him that if he promised to not work for evil and instead work for him, and always listen to him, he would get all the food he wished. Naga really wanted food, so he accepted at once. Shiva then asked his cooks to prepare a huge feast. They laid a banquet fit for 100 gods out! When Naga finished all the food, he was still hungry! So he went to find Shiva in his room. He knocked on the door, and after a few moments it was opened, for the god had been sleeping. Shiva was standing there.”What do you want? Did you have a nice meal?”, he asked lazily. He wanted to go back to bed. “Oh yes!”, answered Naga, “It was delicious! But I am still very hungry!”
All of a sudden, Shiva was not lazy anymore, but very angry! He blazed in front of Naga, wondering what to do with him. “Well,” he cried out at last angrily,”that was a meal fit for 100 gods! You are very greedy! There shall be no more food this lunchtime, you hear me?” Naga flinched. “But then,” he dared to ask to the angry god in front of him,”what do I eat?”
Shiva was angry and in a fit of temper, and he shouted,”If you are so hungry, then eat yourself!!” He banged the door behind him, not realizing in his fit of temper that this was huge mistake. Because what Shiva said, you did immediately! So poor Naga sat there and began to eat himself, his tail, his feet, his stomach, and was about to eat his chest when Shiva burst out of the room to go have lunch. At once, realizing what he had said and done, he ordered Naga to stop immediately. He was very sorry. So for the next few centuries, he gave Naga as much food as he desired (don’t ask how he managed to eat it without a stomach, this is, after all, mythology. The Hindu clearly are as imaginative as the Greek….), which he got by ordering everyone on Earth to make a sacrifice for Naga at every meal and sometimes even invite him to join for dinner. Legend goes that some people even offered more to Naga than they would eat themselves.
Walking among the legends
Passionate as I am about mythology, I gazed at the murals with admiration. Our guide today is much more talkative than yesterday’s and knows the stories well. Glued to his words, we walk in the corridors on the smoothest of stones. I am surprised – I was expecting rough surfaces like in Tikal, but here everything is smooth. In every temple, the royal family got the top level and sometimes the generals and the commander got the second level and the people the lowest level. Other times every community got their own separate temple. I loved the positive message of Bayon, famous for its smiling buddhas, where King Jayavarman VII, whose mother was Hindu and his father Buddhist, tried to unite the two faiths by building a temple that represents both. You can see Naga which represents Hinduism and Garuda (bird man) from Buddhism at the entrance and all throughout the temple.
Ta Prohm
Mama tells me that this temple is particularly famous because of a movie (Tombraider) with an actress called Angelina Jolie, so of course, I find that funny. With its big tree roots growing over the temple, it is quite impressive and it features in all the guide books. Our guide shows us the branch that was only tiny when the movie was shot and which now has grown all across the midsection of the temple. We feel like Indiana Jones which we just watched in Hobart (the chilled monkey brains were positively disgusting), only missing the hat and the whip!
