Cambodia: Trees Overpower Ta Prohm Temple

One of the highlights of our Vietnam-Cambodia trip was the Ta Prohm temple. To sum it up in one word, it is breathtaking. The sight of trees overpowering this ancient temple really takes you back in time. (Just remember to ignore all the other tourists doing tourist-y things.)

Our guide Mr. Swan (We never really did get his first name, I hope it isn't Silver? haha.) did a good job of explaining how all the other temples discovered originally in Siem Riep in the same state as Ta Prohm which is overrun by huge trees. But only the Ta Prohm temple was retained in it's original state, the other temples had the trees cleared to make way for the temple structures.



We got lucky the day that we went to Ta Prohm and Angkor Wat as there was a Buddhist event which led to there being monks everywhere. One interesting fact about the monks is that to touch them is considered to be both bad luck for the monk and for the person who touched him. This leads the monks to shy away from tourists wanting to get their pictures taken with the monks.





As with Angkor Wat, the Ta Prohm temple walls were heavily and intricately carved. Amazingly almost all the walls had beautiful carvings of Buddha.





Perhaps Ta Prohm's ticket to fame is being used as the set of the Tomb Raider movie and unlike the other temples minimal visual effects were used for scenes filmed here. Just goes to show that it doesn't need to be enhanced visually, on it's own it is already beautiful.