Angkor Day 3: Pre Rup, East Mebon, Ta Som, Neak Pean & Preah Khan

Today was a late start (9:30), I must say that I'm getting a little addicted to dragon fruit here with breakfasts; that and I found out where they keep the Vegemite. We headed out again to the west baray area for our first stop, passing the Srah Srang lake on our way. 

Pre Rup was lovely and had very few people. It's listed as a mountain temple and is supposedly dedicated to four different deities. It's a mix of brick and sandstone with many steep stairs leading to the upper levels. There were plenty of lion statues as well, some even with the heads attached (its a rare sight). There were even some nice carvings of Devata, Lakshmi, Vishnu and Shiva on each if the smaller towers on the top level.

From there we headed up the road to East Mebon, this is built in a huge (now) dry reservoir of up to 55million cubic meters of water. Because of the water the temple doesn't require any moats or enclosures and doesn't qualify as a mountain temple as there is no real 'height'. There are elephant statues on each corner of the main levels, some are in better condition than others (not helped by people climbing on them). There are goddess' and gods carved above doorways and finer work that had lost its stucco plaster work.

We continued up to Ta Som, a smaller forest temple that potentially held 22 divinities. It is in a fairly bad state and a lot is overgrown but the carvings are amazingly detailed. It has a simple layout but it can be difficult to navigate the fallen rubble. An entire doorway on the east (?) entrance is covered by strangler fig roots, it doesn't obscure the face tower but adds to it. 

From there we headed to Neak Pean, which is more monument than temple to be fair, it's based on a lake system although you can only walk around the front of the complex as the central path is blocked the stop people getting near the water. 

From there we drove to Preah Khan, this is a huge complex full of twisting passageways and rubble. Strangler figs and silk cotton trees have reclaimed some areas. Both entrance ways are lined firstly with boundary stones with Garuda's engraved then naga's over a false moat. There was a small building before the main complex called the 'house of fire' a small temple for starting rituals before heading into the main complex.

Inside there were large sections of damaged pillars and roofs with rubble all around, most fairly safe to clamber over to tech a new area. The carving detail is wonderful and quite well preserved. 

Detailing in the hall of dancers, potentially defaced Buddha's

At about this point my camera died so any photos posted here were taken on my iPod. The passage through to the central sanctuary was a little crowded but the sanctuary itself was quite simple.

Pillar in central sanctuary, Preah Khan. Not original sculpture, original may have been removed by a subsequent king. 

I had only explored about half of the complex and I had been there for about an hour. I headed out the west gate and got a snack of a whole pineapple (they have small sweet ones here) and waited for Nicola to come through. We then headed towards Angkor Thom for lunch then drove by Angkor Wat and headed back to the hostel. We relaxed an I had a swim. Then headed out to dinner and got an early night as tomorrow is going to be a day full of long drives