APAD 124: Buddhist temple entrance

Sorry if I sound a bit like Indiana Jones or Lara Croft here but here’s a few more temple photos that I took in one of our road trips earlier this year. Remember Prasat Vihear Suor which I visited last February? If you had forgotten, here it is (please click the highlighted text).

We entered through a cement archway that is decorated with elephants and faces similar to that found at Bayon Temple. We could not stop the car by the entrance so I had to walk inside (looking out) to take a photo. Here is the result:

Archways like this are very typical of an entrance to Cambodian temples. They give you a sense that you are entering Buddha’s domain.

These statues of temple guards, called dvarapalas, and the creature they are holding is called a naga, the mythical seven-headed, miles-long serpent that is said to  inhabit the waters of the great Mekong River.

Looking in the same direction, I went closer to the statues to my right and managed to get a close up shot of a dvarapala.

This should give you an idea how it looks like:

Looks grouchy; scary even, isn’t it? There must be a hundred of them on either sides of the road. I found out not all of these dvarapalas look the same. I kid you not. Here is another dvarapala, on the other side of the road.

Those soldiers are called dvarapalas and the creature they are holding is called a naga, the mythical seven-headed serpent that is said to  inhabit the waters of the great Mekong River.

After our visit and on our way out, while my husband was waiting for a gap in the traffic, I hurriedly took this photo.

You can see the two seven-headed nagas being carried by the dvarapalas on both sides.