Our next stop, the Bayon temple, known for its many faces depicted all over the temple, with its rather imposing architecture. In fact 54 towers decorated with more than 200 faces with a kind of enigmatic smile (4 on each face of each tower).
It is a temple-mountain composed of 3 floors reaching 43m in height, built in the 12th century by Jayavarman VII, the lower floors of the Bayon are a pantheon dedicated to the Khmer gods from the beginning of its construction at a time of transition between Hinduism and Buddhism, and the upper floor is dedicated to Buddha. The Bayon stands at the center of Jayavarman's capital, Angkor Thom.
This totals 1200m of bas-relief relating daily life or the fighting between the Khmers and the Chams.
I'll let you admire it.
Are the days long?
Dance scene.
Dance scene… alive!
Face looking at Buddha.
It is not necessarily very visible in the photos, but there has been a lot of work done on the restoration in recent years, a plaque explained how they did it, they deserve credit, because it is not easy to restore the appearance of an 800 year old monument as best as possible.
This smile, enigmatic and serene.
I try the enigmatic smile... yeah well failed...
Buddha is always present inside.
It's hard to imagine the splendor of yesteryear.
A library, located at the foot of the temple, recently restored.
For sale: beautiful red bicycle! Um no, just bananas…
Despite the "slowness" of our driver I missed a giant Buddha statue.
We set off again towards Angkor Wat after passing through this gate.
Not many customers around…
