Beauty, Multiplied

Imagine you are a renowned sculptor, famous for carving elaborate and beautiful scenes into solid stone. You are so well known, in fact, that the king himself wishes you to carve something for him. So, you do; you carve an intricate scene depicting an ancient Indian epic on a block of stone. You are pleased with it, and so is the king.

"Excellent," he says. "Now I'd like you to do about 5 million more of those. Oh, and make them all different from each other. I'm planning on putting up some buildings. Peace... I'm out."

That's what I imagined might have happened with the temples of Angkor. I've spent the last couple of days exploring some of the ruins here, and the thing that strikes me is that it seems that every stone in these buildings is a work of art. All of them. And they are all so detailed.... in Angkor Wat, there are galleries of these carvings that are probably 75 yards long, and you can see clear differences in the expressions of each person depicted. I was amazed. They are unbelievably well preserved, too, considering that they are between eight and twelve hundred years old.

After seeing many different temples over two days, though, I'm all templed out, and ready to move on. Next stop: Hanoi, Vietnam.