Siem Reap - Wat Preah Prom Rath

 

While walking from our hotel to the restaurant for lunch, we came across a local temple and decided to go in and take a look. At this point in time, I have no idea what was the name of the temple I went into as it wasn't part of my plan for the day. I only had Wat Bo on my to-do list for the day, and I was pretty sure this wasn't it. So I assumed that it was just a simple Wat. Well, now I know it is called Wat Preah Prom Rath, and boy was it huge! So huge that we actually had to visit it twice cause we had to take a break to go for lunch since we had a reservation at 1130am. 

The entrance to the temple looked like any Thai temple, so I felt quite at home here. There was a tuk tuk driver who strike up a conversation with us as we were walking in, offering to tell us about the temple, and also any day trip that we might have in mind. I told him it was necessary, that I was only here to pray. To be honest, I wanted to see the temple before going for lunch, but I didn't want to appear rude either. He finally gave up as I started walking straight into the prayer hall. The hall was huge. 

Around the temple were elaborated drawings of life of Buddha. This is typical of most Thai temple too.  

Would you just take a second to look at that perfect blue sky behind! It was a good day for exploring, although a tad too hot and humid in the afternoon.

The entrance to the hall, was filled with gold leaf monks. Again, this was pretty typical of a Thai temple. My paternal grandmother, along with with many uncles all had their urns placed in Thai temples even though we are not Thais. 

The main hall of the temple. Feel free to sit down and say your prayer here, or meditate, or just looked up into the giant face of Buddha. For some odd reason, I find sitting in front of a giant Buddha extremely comforting. I've done it many times. It's just a very serene feeling. It could be the high ceiling and the wide empty space that made me feel just very calm. 

Behind the giant Buddha, there was a sleeping Buddha covered in gold blanket. The funny thing was, there was a stairs going down to it, and you could actually walk down all the way next to the Buddha. I was quite tempted to lie down next to Buddha, really. But.... sigh. I didn't. 

We got some time to walk around the garden outside for a while before we had to rush for lunch. There were so many weird statues around. Like the ones above that looked very colourful and huge. 

There was a rather comical depiction of death? A dead bloated body with it's stomach open and intestines spilling out, eaten by gigantic crows while very thin human looked on? And a monk meditating nearby? I mean, I know that Buddhist meditate about death, but this is kinda to graphic for a temple? But I understand, Buddhist see the truth without illusion, so death it is! Nothing wrong with it! Ha!

From this picture onwards, was from our visit after our lunch. Since it was on the way to Wat Bo anyway, we decided to complete the temple before proceeding to the other side of the rive. How appropriate, a statue of a monk on a boat crossing a river.....

There was also a statue of two man. Apparently they are brothers, and they are the ones that donated the land for the building of this grant temple. 

And while we were exiting the temple, I saw that the gate of the temple looked similar to those from Angkor Wat, with the four heads of Brahma on them. I guess Buddhist and Hindu is just a thin line here. After all, both religion originates from India. 

Oh, I also saw some chairs with legs! They reminded me or the luggage with a hundred legs from Discworld. Cute right? I wonder if they wander off at night when nobody is around :P