Friday Fotos – Beng Mealea, Cambodia

A pair of Naga protecting the entrance to Beng Mealea

I spent almost the full month of February (2011) travelling around Cambodia, and it was one of the highlights of my extended eight month round the world trip. I had plenty of time to check out all the major temples and sites, including Beng Mealea, the subject of this post.

Beng Mealea (meaning "lotus pond" in Khmer), is a temple in the Angkor Wat style located 40 km east of the main group of temples at Angkor, Cambodia. Although the temple was built as a Hinduist temple to honour Vishnu, the supreme god in Hindu belief, there are also carvings depicting Buddhist motifs.

Primary built of sandstone, Beng Mealea is largely unrestored. Massive trees and thick brush thriving amidst its towers and courtyards and many of its stones lay in great heaps. For years it was difficult to reach, but a road recently built to the temple complex of Koh Ker passes Beng Mealea and more visitors are coming to the site, which is 77 km from Siem Reap.

An elaborately carved lintel from one of the collapsed buildings

While the history of the temple is pretty much unknown, it has been dated by its architectural style to the reign of king Suryavarman II who ruled during the early 12th century. Smaller in size than the king's main monument, Angkor Wat, Beng Mealea nonetheless ranks among the Khmer empire's larger temples.

Beng Mealea is oriented toward the east, but has entranceways from the other three cardinal directions. The basic layout is three enclosing galleries around a central sanctuary, which has long been collapsed. Structures known as libraries lie to the right and left of the avenue that leads in from the east.
There is extensive carving of scenes from Hindu mythology, including the Churning of the Sea of Milk and Vishnu being borne by the bird god Garuda. Causeways have long balustrades formed by bodies of the seven-headed Naga serpent.


Danger – Mines!

 Recognise the warning signs. Your life depends on it.

Tens of thousands of tons of unexploded bombs of all sizes, and an unknown number of mines (many thousands more), lie buried or scattered over the Cambodian countryside. During my stay in Cambodia I read several reports about villagers – children as well as adults – who had been injured or killed as a result of inadvertently stepping on or ploughing over mines lying in their fields.

Even in the vicinity of the major temples, mines lay buried just below the surface waiting to complete their deadly missions. The above sign at Beng Mealea has been placed there by the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), and serves as a warning that mines still exist near the temple. While the immediate area around Beng Mealea and other temples has been cleared of mines, visitors should resist the temptation to head off into the surrounding country to explore on their own.

The Viewing List 3

Another in our weekly selection of slide shows and video’s that have caught our attention and interest while trawling across the far reaches of the Internet. Enjoy…

The 20 best NYC movies of all time
Starting with Spike Lee's 1989 offering, Do The Right Thing, and ending with Super Fly (1972), Melissa Anderson, David Fear and Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out online take on the all but impossible task of selecting the 20 Best NYC Movies of All Time.

Of course you will find Martin Scorsese's searing Taxi Driver, and Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon here, as well as the original Taking of Pelham 123 and Woody Allen's Manhattan. Both Scorsese and Woody Allen score two films in Time Out's top 20 with the inclusion of Scorsese's 1985 flick, After Hours, and Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986).

You will also find some less known films on the list, including the 1953 film Little Fugitive (see image above), John Cassavetes’s debut 1959 film, Shadows (1959), and 1957s Sweet Smell Of Success. See the full slide show here…
Unfortunately, my favourite New York film, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America is not listed among the top 20, which only goes to show that even Time Out can’t always get it right ;- ).

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Dennis Hopper Reads Rudyard Kipling on Johnny Cash Show
The poem is “If” by Rudyard Kipling (1899). The scene is The Johnny Cash Show, 1970. The reader is the great Dennis Hopper. Hard to beat this…

Thanks to Open Culture for the heads up on this. Follow them on Twitter at @openculture

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The Reading List 3

Welcome to my weekly roundup of the some of the more interesting discoveries I’ve made as I wander the digital highways and byways of the Internet. This week we’re examining great train journeys.

The longest rail journey I’ve ever made took place back in the early 1970s when I travelled from Greece to London. To be quite honest, I don’t remember much of the journey now, but when I read Top 10 European Train Trips by Randall H. Duckett on the National Geographic Traveler website, it did trigger some long lost memories of that ride

National Geographic don’t mention rail travel from Athens to London in this feature (I don’t know if it is even possible to take a train from Athens to London anymore), but among their ten suggestions they list Switzerland’s Chocolate Train, the Trans-Siberian Railway (Moscow to Vladivostok), the Orient Express (London to Venice), and the Danube Express (London to Istanbul).

Much of European train travel is about efficiency and comfort—punctually leaving and arriving and having a cozy seat or sleeper compartment in which to devour the latest issue of the Economist. But rail travel in the United Kingdom and on the Continent is also about experience: gaping out the window at Alpine glaciers, savoring gourmet cuisine in a restored last-century dining car. Accordingly, our ten favorite European trains don’t necessarily offer the fastest journeys—just the most memorable. All aboard!

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12 of the Most Scenic Train Rides in the World

Not to be out done by National Geographic Traveler, the Boots n All website have coincidentally compiled their own list of the 12 of the Most Scenic Train Rides in the World.

In her article, Zoë Smith mentions Norway’s Flåm Railway, whose “…20km descent is amongst the steepest in the world, twisting through yawning ravines, cascading waterfalls, remote Nordic farmhouses and snow-dusted mountain peaks.”

While this 20km trip last barely an hour, Russia’s Trans-Siberian, journey takes a good week to traverse the 9,000km (6,000 miles) of track that snakes its way from Moscow to Vladivostok. And that’s without getting out along the route to explore some of the cities the Trans-Siberian passes through.

Like the Trans-Siberian, Norway’s Flåm Railway also gets a gong in the National Geographic roundup of great journeys.

Other rail journeys that rate a mention in Zoë Smith’s piece include the Canadian Rockies Railway, the Cusco to Machu Picchu (Peru), The Palace on Wheels (India), and The Ghan (Australia), which departs from my home town, Adelaide. If you are considering a train journey, both these articles are a great place to begin your researches.

More Information

National Geographic Traveler: Top 10 European Train Trips…

Boots n All: 12 of the Most Scenic Train Rides in the World...

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Maeklong Market, Bangkok

Here’s one train journey that has to be seen to be believed, as a train passes through Bangkok’s Maeklong Market. On the surface this seems like a rather unremarkable event until you actually see how the stall holders and the train have found a way to coexist together.