We saw this temple on our last day, when Halle was running a fever and so she didn't go through all of it and we carried her up the path from the bus to the temple. Ta Prohm has been so overgrown by the roots of large kapok, fig and banyon trees that it would be even more structurally unstable if the trees were removed. So for now the trees remain, looking like hardened taffy poured over the walls and vaulted roofs.
Ta Prohm was a Buddhist monastery during King Jayavarman the 7th's reign in the late 12th century. It's one of Angkor's largest sites - in its heyday, claim inscriptions, it included 3140 villages and took close to 80,000 people to maintain the temple. It's a series of interlocking and connected, one-story buildings and passages surrounded by a large laterite rectangular wall. Later Hindu rulers defaced or removed the Buddha images, but there are still many remarkable sculptures here. The main feature is the delicious confusion and disarray of the site. Many of the buildings have collapsed in on themselves or been set upon by what look like carnivorous trees.
The hum of insects and the exotic-sounding birds provide a jungle-film soundtrack in the background. Wanna says that he doesn't like to take visitors here on rainy days, because the stones get slippery and once he saw a large roof piece come down right in front of someone taking a picture. We had nothing so eventful, just the arrival as we were leaving of three buses of Korean tourists.
