Ancient Khmer Ruins Tour: Sisaket and Surin.

[Dane]

Thank you,for a lot of great pic's and inspiration. I'm in Si Sa Ket at the moment, and i will bring out the trusty Honda Wave and follow some of your steps.

[Satonic]

Have you got a shot of the route for the whole trip mate?

[Chairman Mao]

^^ cheers. I'd definitely recommend Pa Mo-I Daeng and the turn off to Prasat Don Tuan, that's about 1/2 a klick inside Cambodia.

Would be a nice place to bring some paper and pencils and spend an hour or two sketching.

^ Not at the moment, will do one up at one stage though.

I love google maps, and especially google Earth.

Just looking at Pr. Phu Fai now.

Isaan's own little Uluru.

[/IMG]

[Chairman Mao]

Back on the road to the more familiar style of Khmer Ruins.



Yai Ngao was in a lovely quaint little village, and was a lovely site and little complex.

Currently being renovated.













It'll be lovely when the bamboo has been taken away.

A great place to spend a few hours with some paper and pencils, and a few local girls bringing you iced drinks while fanning you.

This Khmer ruin consists of 3 towers, only 2 of which remain now, lying on laterite platforms in North - South direction. The Fine Arts Department has laid down recovered pieces in the compound’s front yard, including the tower vertex, balusters and portal frame, etc. Bas - relief found in this ruin depicts legendary animal called makon, an amalgam of lion, elephant and fish, with five - headed serpent in its mouth. The bas - relief depicting serpents resemble that of the Angkor Wat, contrived in the 12 th century.

Prasat Yai Ngao

[terry57]

Great thread mate. Cheers

[somtamslap]

Great thread mate.

Ditto. Enjoying it muchly.

[terry57]

Without a GPS it's not likely you'll find them, or even know about them.

Go anywhere in Isaan and hit the 'Historic Landmarks' button and it'll light up like an x-mas tree. Look at your paper map and... nothing.

Yep, A G.P.S is invaluable for touring and served me well when I toured the North the last time.

Will use one again in January.

[Chairman Mao]

^ Cheers.

Next up was a lovely ride through the endless green fields, palms, and waterways, and end up at at the obscure Prasat Ta Mon.



A well kept field with a nice old structure in it.






Nice to sit under a tree, relax for 10 minutes while drinking 6 gallons of water, and wonder how many people have walked along this road and gazed at this very structure over the past 1000 years, and what sort of lives they led. Must have been ancient khmer armies, villagers, some sort of ancient royalty and every other sort of folk up to the present day rice farmers and farangs on motorbikes. I find the idea fascinating. But perhaps that's just the legacy of far too much chemicals in my teens/early twenties.


I can't find anything about it on the net, so perhaps it doesn't exist. It isn't even on google-maps and I had to use the co-ordinates from my GPS history to find it on the map posted.

It's the Letter E, just down the road from Prasat Phumpon.

Map

If anyone finds any info about it it would be great if you can post it up, cheers.

[Bangyai]

Great thread CM. Will definately check some of these out next time I'm up that way.

As for the bloke in the picture, what was the moral ??

' Be careful what you wish for ' ??

[Chairman Mao]

^ Good question mate. Other statues were eating babies so not sure what any of it meant. But know it's a bit more interesting than most churches, synagogues and mosques back in the West.

Just down the road to the oldest Khmer structure in Surin, and one of the oldest in Thailand, built 1600 years ago, Prasat Phum Pon.

Some info if you're interested.

khmersurin: Salarien Pheasa Khmer at Prasat Phum Pon, Surin province

The complex occupies 4 ancient structures – 3 brick and 1 laterite, lying in North-South direction. The big brick structure and the northern one remain in rather good condition. These two structures are among the oldest Khmer ruins in Thailand, presumably erected in the 6th – 7th centuries. The brick one in the middle and the laterite in the South were seemingly built later.

This complex was meant to be a Hindu religious site like other contemporary ones. No lingum is discovered, but in the big edifice there remains Somasutra, a pipe to convey sacred water from the platform of the statue in the central room.

Prasat Phum Pon

Prasat Phum Pon « Satrey Khmer Online













Inside:







Would be a great place to spend a few hours chilling out, sketching, reading etc.

[Chairman Mao]

60km down the road and you come to something entirely different at Prang Ban Pluang.

The 11th-century Prasat Ban Pluang is 33km south of Surin. It’s just a solitary sandstone prang with most of its top gone, but some wonderful carvings (including a lintel above the entrance with the Hindu god Indra riding his elephant, Airavata) make it worth a stop. A U-shaped moat rings the prang.

Prasat Ban Pluang in Surin & Si Saket Provinces, Thailand - Lonely Planet

Prasat Ban Pluang

This is on the road to Chong Chom if you're heading for a border run. A very well maintained site with nice long U-shaped moat with a few nice birds (the winged type ) around the place.



















You know those 3D printers that have been out (or on TV anyway) for a while, there's a bit of a kurfuffle in the States I think as they can print out model, working guns.

Anyway, won't it be cool when they have the programs out that can scan a photographic, then work out the dimensions and print you a perfect 3D model of it.

I want two of these at my front door.

[shaggersback]

These are aparently afterworld tortures for your sins. This one is punishment for adulterous behavior.
I wonder what the woman gets ...... a boob job ?

[natalie8]

Great thread, CM. I've never been that way but I would really love to go. I just need to figure out when and how. This Christmas and New Years will be Phuket and the south around Trang and Hat Yai.

Interesting to see the Thais call Angkor Wat 'Nakorn Wat'.

I had to look this up and I found this.

Leeporter
Bangkok, Thailand
Reply »
|
Report Abuse |
Judge it! |
#1 Mar 14, 2011


Some stupid Khmer insisted that it's called "Angkor Wat", not "Nakorn Wat"

And I am here to challenge you Khmer members to explain what the word "Angkor" mean in Khmer language?

The real name of it was "Nakorn Wat"!!!!!

Nakorn is a Sanskrit word "Nakara" which mean "City"

Nakorn Wat = City of Temple.

And the stupid French called it wrong to "Angkor Wat"

I knew is because it belonged to Siam, we built it, we named it "Nakorn Wat", not stupid "Angkor Wat"

Disprove me if you don't agree.

and a good reply

Khmer Apsara Princess

Leeporter wrote:
Some stupid Khmer insisted that it's called "Angkor Wat", not "Nakorn Wat"
And I am here to challenge you Khmer members to explain what the word "Angkor" mean in Khmer language?
The real name of it was "Nakorn Wat"!!!!!
Nakorn is a Sanskrit word "Nakara" which mean "City"
Nakorn Wat = City of Temple.
And the stupid French called it wrong to "Angkor Wat"
I knew is because it belonged to Siam, we built it, we named it "Nakorn Wat", not stupid "Angkor Wat"
Disprove me if you don't agree.

The name Angkor Wat is engraved at the walls at Angkor Wat loser You wouldn't know because you dumb Thai's didn't have a language back then and you idiots can't read Khmer. Stop using retarded Thai's names for our Khmer temples it's disrespectful. You can keep dreaming because stupid Thailand can never have our Angkor Wat because you thieves didn't know how to build shit back then.

Source: What does the word "Angkor " mean in Khmer language? - Topix

[Chairman Mao]

^

Thai netizens (as I've seen them called) can really get quite rude about all things Khmer while online. I remember seeing a few discussions during the Phra Wihan dispute a couple of years ago and it was mainly 'You Dirt Khmer don't deserve to step foot on our land, stay in your shit Dirt country in your shit dirt house you Dirt Khmer, you will never be anything but dirt.' and the such.


How Thais actually view themselves as above anyone is really quite odd.

[Chairman Mao]

Last one in Surin was Prasat Ban Thanong, just outside the town of Prasat (perhaps named because there's hundreds of them in the vicinity?).



This was right in the middle of some tiny village, hidden away and just next to a school.

Oddly enough it smelled of cow poo.











Was a nice lil tour, just the tip of the iceberg really. Perhaps when I've the time I'll spend 6 months just touring the region, doing nothing all day but hitting up one or two ruins, reading up on them, drawing, meeting the locals. It's a pity that they can't be dated to a fairly specific time, I'm interested in such historical timelines and would have been good to add them in chronological order.

Think the next mini-tour will be around Khorat.

BTW was just reading a few days ago that the Khmer King who built Angkor was born in Lopburi, which was obviously deep in Khmer territory at the time and the Thais were still an ethnic minority in Yunnan (possibly )

[Koetjeka]

Looks like a really nice tour!

Has anyone ever been to the ruins in Chomphra? They are still excavating and I think that's a pretty rare sight. They progress very slowly though.

[WRB]

Some interesting stuff here. Thanks for sharing it.

[waradmiral]

good shots

[cambtek]

Great pics and thread.We have kathin in Cambodia as well.Reputed to be a million Khmer speakers on isaan.I have spoken khmer with bar girls and waitresses in Bangkok, they call their dialect Khmer leu, or high Khmer.
Because they live up on the plateau I would guess.They local kmen, as the Thai call them could understand modern Khmer but I couldn't understand them.
I must get up to that border region.