In preparation for our impending two day tour of Angkor national park, we set off and spent most of the day at the Angkor national museum. A well-laid-out, artifact-full visit was worth the  sky high price (at least compared to other museums we had seen to date). Setting up our understanding of the vast temples we would come to see over the following days, the museum had dedicated a significant fraction of its floor plan covering the Vedic religions’ evolution into Hinduism and the transition into Buddhism as the religion of the kings of the Khmer empire at the beginning of the second millennium. The pieces of Hindu stories that were most visible in the architecture, sculptures, and reliefs the following days were: when Vishnu and Brahma meet Shiva, and the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. 

The recurring image (and variations) on a Shiva Lingam comes from the story of Vishnu and Brahma meeting Shiva. As the story goes, Vishnu and Brahma were walking along and came upon a pillar of fire. One transformed into a boar and dug into the earth while the other transformed into a goose: both searching for the end of this pillar of fire. After they had searched for the ends of the pillar for a thousand years, they gave up and recognized the power of this pillar, from which Shiva emerged (or maybe Shiva was the pillar?). The three gods are often combined: a square representing Brahman, an octagon representing Vishnu and a domed cylinder representing Shiva. These littered the park, ranging in sizes from a loaf of bread to a young child, and were often set in bowls or baths (representing Shiva's consort Shakti in some interpretations).

This post is long enough so I will provide the wikipedia page here for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samudra_Manthana. Essentially all the gods and demons and devils got together and used a giant snake (also a god) to make immortality juice for them all to share. It makes for some very large motifs with depictions of hundreds, if not thousands, of characters. There were also many sculptures of characters from the story pulling the large naga, lining bridges and walkways. 

We broke up our visit at their cafe with the booking of our transit throughout Cambodia over some coffee. Moving more into the realm of humanity, here are some fun facts we learned: the earliest “polity” in what is now Cambodia was around in the 1st to 6th centuries and is only known from writings of a Chinese trader as the “Funan”; while Khmer was the language of the people, Sanskrit was the language of the government and religion; and while many of the Khmer leaders were tyrannical, Jayavarman VII was beloved for his widespread investment in infrastructure and hospitals (we would also come to learn that he built our favorite temple in the park). 

For dinner, we walked the “river” (many rivers in SE Asia have been quite underwhelming in the dry season, but it is a small price to pay for dry days and fewer bugs), and stopped at what has become one of our favorite kinds of restaurants in SE Asia: South Indian. We couldn’t have picked a more apropos restaurant, as the two owners are famous for having circumnavigated the globe 8 times!  (once by bike and 7 times by car) Inspired by their decor of pictures of them around the world (as well as interacting with significant dignitaries and local political leaders) we contemplated our own future wall decorations on our walk back to an early night before our visit to Angkor National Park.

Channa masala, masala dosa, and pictures of the brothers who own the store from their trips around the world,