Bayon

There are many smaller temples scattered around the area of Angkor Wat. You could easily spend a week visiting them all – if you could stand the heat – but we only had three days, so we tried to choose carefully.

One popular favorite which we were sure not to miss is Bayon, the “faces” temple. More than one hundred giant faces have been counted carved into the stone around this temple, with a variety of different emotional expressions.

You enter Bayon by crossing a bridge lined with demons on one side and “good” gods on the other. They are having a tug-of-war.













Then you have to pass through a huge gate. Can you see the faces?


















Much of the temple is filled with extensive, detailed carvings, showing scenes ranging from fantastic battles to ordinary, daily life.













You can see some places where the temple has definitely turned to ruins.













Happy? Or something else?

One piece of info: at Bayon, and at a few other temples, we found that if we wandered away from the large groups of tourists to less crowded areas, often at the back of the temple, we would encounter local youth who spoke very good English and tried to get us to give them money. They would usually say they were raising it for their English school. Sometimes they would start giving us a “tour” of the temple, and then would expect us to give them money in return. We had no idea if they were legit or not, and didn’t want to be pulling out our wallets in the woods with no one else around, so we didn’t give any money, but it was often difficult to walk away, as they would continue to follow us, talking. I doubt we were actually in any danger, but it did make us uncomfortable, and after the first couple of times we opted to just stay near other tourists.