Angkor Thom is square in shape and protected by city walls and moats. The city walls are 8 meters high and the entire city has 5 gates. In addition to gates in the four cardinal directions of east, west, south and north, there is also a Victory Gate to the north of the east gate. The gates are all tower-shaped structures. Each tower has four-faced Buddha statues facing the four directions, reviewing everyone entering the city with compassionate eyes.

Outside the city wall is the moat, and outside each city gate is a bridge connecting the city and the outside. Each bridge is based on Hindu mythology. There are 27 2.5-meter-high kneeling stone busts lined up on each side, one side symbolizing gods and the other side symbolizing demons, and the two sides are engaged in fierce wrestling.

The Bayon Temple is divided into three floors. The lower two floors are square, with story reliefs carved on the outer corridor walls; the top floor is circular, with a pagoda. Starting from the east gate, the reliefs on the lower floor move clockwise, and you can see: Expedition to Champa - Linga worship - Water battle - Water life - Winning victory - Cockfighting and chess - Army - Civil war - Big fish swallowing sheep - Victory parade - Circus - Cham people looting Angkor.

From the outside, Bayon Temple is a pyramid-shaped building, with a gold-painted round pagoda at the top, which is built on two hollow platforms. According to religious consciousness, this means that the Buddha in heaven and the people on earth are closely connected. 48 pagodas of different sizes are built around it, like stars surrounding the moon, surrounding the central pagoda.

The prototype of the four-faced Buddha on each pagoda is Jayavarman VII himself. All the subjects who come here to worship the interior of the scenic spot are surprised to find that the Bodhisattva is actually their king, and such a king must of course be loyal to and respected.

The corridors of Bayon Temple are also rich in murals, covering everything from royal palaces and battles to the lives of citizens. The temple's architectural structure is quite complex. After many renovations, reconstructions and additions, the current building is actually a superposition of two temples of different times and styles. Some people have compared it to "a mountain shaped and carved by human hands."

The appearance of Bayon Temple seems to be very similar to Angkor Wat, but Bayon Temple is a Buddhist temple. Its overall structure is based on the legendary Mount Sumeru, the highest realm of Buddhism (Hinduism also has Mount Sumeru, and its details are different from those of Buddhism, but they can basically correspond to each other).

Similar to Angkor Wat, Bayon Temple is also built on a three-layer base. The bottom layer base measures 140mx160m (north-south x east-west), and the second layer base measures 72mx80m (north-south x east-west). The three-layer base is a cross-shaped plane with a circular-shaped carved tower in the center. There are corridors around each layer of the base. There are 49 towers in the middle of the base and on the corridors, forming a forest of towers.

The most famous thing about Bayon Temple is the huge four-faced Guanyin statue carved on the tower, which symbolizes the power of the Khmer Kingdom at that time. The air in the morning of Bayon Temple is fresh and the temperature is pleasant, but if you want to go inside, you must equip yourself with artificial lighting tools, because even at noon, it is pitch black inside.

There are many relief murals in this attraction, and they all have different meanings. Visitors must listen to the guide's detailed explanations to avoid returning empty-handed. Bayon Temple faces east, and most people visit it in the morning to watch the sunrise. Bayon Temple is also worth visiting in the evening, and it is also good to watch the sunset in the opposite direction. In the morning, Bayon Temple seems to be crowded.

In the afternoon, you can appreciate the quiet side of Bayon Temple. Avoid taking photos of Bayon Temple at noon. Because the mottled boulders have no layers, direct shooting under the sun is even less interesting. In the evening, there are few tourists and the light is soft, which is more suitable for taking photos. There are also wandering monks in Bayon Temple. Tourists will leave after sunset, which is a good opportunity to capture the wandering monks.

Bayon Temple is famous for its Buddha-faced towers and murals in the corridors. Because Jayavarmanvii was a devout Buddhist, the entire temple was built based on the concept of Mount Sumeru (the center of the world) in Buddhist doctrine. The tower in the center, which is pointed and piled up like corn, represents Mount Sumeru.

The four walls symbolize the Himalayas; the open space between the walls and the second-story building represents the sea. At that time, the Khmer people also believed in Hinduism. The religious images of Bayon Temple were mainly Buddhist, and the integration of Hinduism was a careful consideration by Jayavarmanvii to use a lenient religious policy to bring people back to the center of the king's power.

Four-Faced Buddha: All 49 pagodas are huge four-faced Buddha statues with typical Khmer faces, said to be the face of the god-king Jayavarman VII who built Bayon Temple. The Buddha has a peaceful smile on his face, which is the "Khmer smile" that made Angkor Wat famous all over the world.

Yunluo walks through many pagodas. In any corner, you will find reliefs with smiling eyes watching the tourists' every move. Reliefs: The corridor murals of Bayon Temple are also very rich. The 1,200-meter-long relief corridor depicts an amazing 11,000 characters.

The inner corridor is mainly about myths and religious stories, while the outer corridor is about real life, ranging from battlefield fighting to production labor and market trade. Such secular sculpture themes are very rare in the Angkor complex. If time is limited, you can only visit the reliefs on the bottom floor, as the scale and technique of the second floor are slightly inferior.

The reliefs of Bayon Temple consist of two galleries. The inner gallery is carved with Indian mythology, while the outer gallery is carved with daily life, such as street scenes, fishing, festival celebrations, cockfighting, magic tricks, etc. The remaining reliefs are very different from those of other Angkor monuments.

Yunluo knew that these outer galleries described the daily life of people at that time, such as gift-giving, production, juggling, construction, worshipping gods, cooking (there are also Chinese people), etc. There are also historical scenes, describing the course of various battles.

The written records left by the Angkor Dynasty are very scarce and difficult to identify and understand. The murals of the Bayon Temple provide a valuable historical clue for future scholars who study the Angkor Dynasty. The reliefs in the corridors of the Bayon Temple that describe the market and hunting scenes of the time are precious information for understanding the lives of ordinary people.

The complexity of the Bayon's architectural form and the strong symbolic meaning made it one of the most mysterious and fascinating religious sites in the world after the Hindu polytheism and Buddhism of Angkor. As the national temple, Bayon has undergone many architectural changes, resulting in the jungle tower form we see today.

The four-sided pagoda complex in the center originally had 49 pagodas, plus five more four-sided pagoda-style city gates, representing the 54 provinces governed by the then-prosperous Angkor Dynasty. The heart of Bayon Temple () is 1,500 meters away from the four city gates.

The front faces the east, which represents victory and prosperity. The outside is surrounded by a corridor with a length and width of 156 and 141 meters respectively. The walls of the corridor are decorated with reliefs, the most exquisite of which are the south section on the east side and the east section on the south side.

The Bayon Temple is made entirely of sandstone. It was originally a two-story building used to worship Shiva, but during construction it was converted into a Mahayana Buddhist temple. So the third floor seems to have been added to the second floor. The reliefs on the inner wall of the second floor are still about Hindu mythology.

The reliefs of Bayon Temple are magnificent masterpieces from every angle, and the balance and harmony in the magnificence are even more rare. The reliefs of Bayon Temple are based on history, especially focusing on the war scenes between Khmer and Champa. The carvings of Khmer craftsmen have several characteristics.

This includes the fact that in one picture, there are often several related story lines going on at the same time, so it is common to see the wrong story line. Baphuon Temple (also known as Baphuon Temple) was built by Udayadityavarmanii, the King of Chenla in the middle of the 11th century (reigned from 1050 to 1066 AD).

Built in 1060 as a state temple dedicated to Shiva, it was located in the center of the capital at that time, 200 meters northwest of the current Bayon Temple, close to the southern wall of the royal palace. The Bhavan Temple is known as the largest and most complex three-dimensional building in the world.

The Bafang Temple is a Mount Meru temple. It is pyramid-shaped. The entire temple has 5 levels of platforms, and there is a closed corridor on the 1st, 3rd and 5th levels. There are towers in the center and corners of the corridor.

On the fifth level, there is a huge copper-clad stone tower about 50 meters high, which is taller than the golden tower in the center of the Bayon Temple to the southeast. The highest point of the copper tower symbolizes the center of the universe. Don’t forget that the Bayon Temple was located in the center of the capital at that time. Every king hopes that his royal city is the center of the "world" and everyone will revolve around it.

Zhou Daguan's "Records of Cambodia": About a mile north of the Golden Pagoda, there is a bronze pagoda. It is taller than the Golden Pagoda. It looks gloomy, and there are also dozens of stone houses below it.

In the late 15th century, the Bafang Temple was converted into a Buddhist temple, and a 70-meter-long and 9-meter-high reclining Buddha was built on the west side of the second-level platform. The bronze pagoda may have been demolished because some archaeologists suspect that some of the materials on the reclining Buddha were taken from the bronze pagoda and the closed corridor.

As the Bafang Temple was originally built on sandy land with an unstable foundation, coupled with the poor engineering standards and the excessive weight of the corridors and towers, part of the temple collapsed when the reclining Buddha was being built.

France began to help Cambodia restore the Baphuon Temple in 1960. At that time, archaeologists numbered all the thousands of collapsed stones and placed them in the open space in front of the temple, hoping to piece them together bit by bit. After taking power, they drove out the French, massacred the Cambodians who helped the French restore the monuments, and destroyed all the archives.

There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!

Although the French resumed the restoration work in 1995, the lack of technical information meant that the stones could no longer be placed in their original locations. All restoration work had to be done with new stones. It turned out that these thousands of stones could only lie forever in the square in front of the temple as a testimony to its past glory and modern turmoil.

Phnom Bakheng is a small mountain 1.5 kilometers northwest of Angkor Wat, about 70 meters high, and is the only high point nearby. To the west of the mountain is the open West Lake (Westbaray), and to the southeast in the jungle is Angkor Wat. From the top of Phnom Bakheng, you can overlook Angkor Wat.

Bakheng is a small hill in the main ruins of Angkor, 1.5 kilometers northwest of Angkor Wat, 67 meters high, the only high point nearby, you can ride an elephant up the hill.

To the west of the mountain is the open Westbaray, and to the southeast in the jungle is Angkor Wat. From here, you can see the Thai-Cambodian border to the north. Outside Phnom Bakheng Temple, there is a 650-meter-long and 436-meter-wide rectangular trench, which may be the flood-proof engineering of the old capital of Roluos used in the new building.

Phnom Bakheng was built on a flat mountain top, symbolizing the salty sea surrounding Mount Sumeru, the center of the world in Indian mythology. Phnom Bakheng, built on the top of Phnom Bakheng, reflects the Khmer people's worship of mountains at that time. This building, which symbolizes the entire universe, is full of symbolic symbols in its design: 7-layer platform: representing the seven heavens, the top tower represents the center of the universe;

108 towers: In addition to the central tall tower, there are 108 small towers on the six floors below, representing the 108 days of the four lunar phases; 33 towers: Looking at the Bakheng Temple from the central axis of each side, only 33 towers can be seen, representing the 33 gods on Mount Sumeru.

There are three ways to climb Mount Bakheng: one is to walk along a slightly steep mountain road for about 10-15 minutes. Although the mountain road is not very difficult to walk, it is a bit challenging for people without mountaineering experience; the second is to walk along a good path with a gentler slope, but the journey is longer; in addition, you can also take the "elephant taxi" at the foot of the mountain. Whether the "fare" of US$15 is worth it depends on personal opinion.

No matter which way you choose, you have to climb up the narrow and steep steps to the top of the temple. After years of baptism, the temple has lost its former charm, but the platform on the top of the temple can overlook Angkor Wat from a high place.

Every sunny evening, many tourists come to the mountain to enjoy the sunset over Angkor and reminisce about this lost civilization. As this is one of the best places to watch the sunrise and sunset, it is crowded with tourists and vendors every evening, and is as lively as a park.

Tickets: You can enter with a valid ticket to Angkor Wat. Most people buy it after 4pm the day before, and can enter for free in the evening of the day and enjoy the sunset at Phnom Bakheng. <) is a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva in the Angkor monuments in Cambodia. It was built on Phnom Bakheng Mountain by King Yasovarman I of the Angkor Dynasty in the 9th century after he established Angkor as the capital. (To be continued...)