This is my journey to Vietnam and Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat has been on my Must See list ever since I watched a Graham Hancock programme about the long lost knowledge of the Ancients.

Just how did our ancestors manage to build such impressive structures, accurate to the Nth degree, whilst living , as our schools taught us, as cavemen, wearing animal skins and only able to grunt, due to a lack of language skills?

For example, there is a small group of buildings way up in the Scottish Isles at Skara Brae which have been dated back thousands of years to approximately 3200BC. They had even managed to include 'built in' furniture in the construction, such as a dresser with shelving, beds and a rudimentary sewer system by diverting streams underneath their en-suites!

The truth is that nobody really knows but some of the current thinking is that somewhere around 4500BC the Earth was struck by a comet, resulting in what most people know as Noah's Flood, which also appears in other religions. Before that time, it is argued that civilisation was fairly advanced but the resulting flood wiped out the majority of the Earth's population. The few survivors managed to travel across the globe and impart their knowledge to other, less educated survivors of the impact. This included an in depth knowledge of astronomy, with a particular fascination with the stars of Orion.

For example, the three pyramids at Giza are constructed in proportion and orientation to match the three main stars of Orion, as are the pyramids in Teotihuacan in Mexico. Also some of the narrow sighting tunnels appear to have been designed to line up with these stars at a particular time of year, such as the solstices, during the stars' procession across the sky. The constellations work their way across our night skies and are not always in the same place due to precession.
 
Graham Hancock, the author of Heaven's Mirror, suggests a date of 10500BC as the start date of these constructions. At this time, the towers of Angkor Wat align almost perfectly with the Draco constellation, the Dragon, what could be more SE Asian than that??

He argues in his book that although the actual construction of Angkor Wat postdates the date of this alignment, there must have been previous structures that were replaced by the building of this new temple in the 11 and 12th centuries.

There are two great complexes of ancient temples in Southeast Asia, one at Bagan in Burma, the other at Angkor in Cambodia. The temples of Angkor, built by the Khmer civilization between 802 and 1220 AD, represent one of humankind's most astonishing and enduring architectural achievements. From Angkor the Khmer kings ruled over a vast domain that reached from Vietnam to China to the Bay of Bengal. The structures one sees at Angkor today, more than 100 stone temples in all, are the surviving remains of a grand religious, social and administrative metropolis whose other buildings - palaces, public buildings, and houses - were built of wood and have long since decayed and disappeared.

Conventional theories presume the land where Angkor stands was chosen as a settlement site because of the strategic military position and agricultural potential. Alternative scholars, however, believe the geographical location of the Angkor complex and the arrangement of its temples was based on a planet-spanning sacred geography from archaic times.

 Using computer simulations, it has been shown that the ground plan of the Angkor complex – the terrestrial placement of its principal temples - mirrors the stars in the constellation of Draco at the time of spring equinox in 10,500 BC.

 While the date of this astronomical alignment is far earlier than any known construction at Angkor, it appears that its purpose was to architecturally mirror the heavens in order to assist in the harmonization of the earth and the stars. Both the layout of the Angkor temples and the iconographic nature of much of its sculpture, particularly the asuras ('demons') and devas ('deities') are also intended to indicate the celestial phenomenon of the precession of the equinoxes and the slow transition from one astrological age to another.

At the temple of Phnom Bakheng there are 108 surrounding towers. The number 108, considered sacred in both Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies, is the sum of 72 plus 36 (36 being ½ of 72). The number 72 is a primary number in the sequence of numbers linked to the earth's axial precession, which causes the apparent alteration in the position of the constellations over the period of 25,920 years, or one degree every 72 years.

 Another mysterious fact about the Angkor complex is its location 72 degrees of longitude east of the Pyramids of Giza. The temples of Bakong, Prah Ko and Prei Monli at Roluos, south of the main Angkor complex, are situated in relation to each other in such a way that they mirror the three stars in the Corona Borealis as they appeared at dawn on the spring equinox in 10,500 BC. It is interesting to note that the Corona Borealis would not have been visible from these temples during the 10th and 11th centuries when they were constructed.

Angkor Wat, built during the early years of the 12th century by Suryavaram II, honors the Hindu god Vishnu and is a symbolic representation of Hindu cosmology. Consisting of an enormous temple symbolizing the mythic Mt. Meru, its five inter-nested rectangular walls and moats represent chains of mountains and the cosmic ocean. The short dimensions of the vast compound are precisely aligned along a north-south axis, while the east-west axis has been deliberately diverted 0.75 degrees south of east and north of west, seemingly in order to give observers a three day anticipation of the spring equinox.

Unlike other temples at Angkor, Ta Prohm has been left as it was found, preserved as an example of what a tropical forest will do to an architectural monument when the protective hands of humans are withdrawn. Ta Prohm's walls, roofs, chambers and courtyards have been sufficiently repaired to stop further deterioration, and the inner sanctuary has been cleared of bushes and thick undergrowth, but the temple has been left in the stranglehold of trees. Having planted themselves centuries ago, the tree's serpentine roots pry apart the ancient stones and their immense trunks straddle the once bustling Buddhist temple. Built in the later part of the 12th century by Jayavarman VII, Ta Prohm is the terrestrial counterpart of the star Eta Draconis the Draco constellation.

During a half-millennia of Khmer occupation, the city of Angkor became a pilgrimage destination of importance throughout Southeastern Asia. Sacked by the Thais in 1431 and abandoned in 1432, Angkor was forgotten for a few centuries.

 Wandering Buddhist monks, passing through the dense jungles, occasionally came upon the awesome ruins. Recognizing the sacred nature of the temples but ignorant of their origins, they invented fables about the mysterious sanctuaries, saying they had been built by the gods in a far ancient time.

Centuries passed, these fables became legends, and pilgrims from the distant reaches of Asia sought out the mystic city of the gods. A few adventurous European travelers knew of the ruins and stories circulated in antiquarian circles of a strange city lost in the jungles.

 Most people believed the stories to be nothing more than legend, however, until the French explorer Henri Mouhot brought Angkor to the world's attention in 1860. The French people were enchanted with the ancient city and beginning in 1908 funded and superbly managed an extensive restoration project. The restoration has continued to the present day, excepting periods in the 70's and 80's when military fighting prevented archaeologists from living near the ruins.

Orthodox archaeologists sometimes interpret the temples of the Angkor complex as tombs of megalomaniacal kings yet in reality those kings designed and constructed the temples as a form of service to both god and their own subjects. The temples were places not for the worship of the kings but rather for the worship of god. Precisely aligned with the stars, constructed as vast three dimensional yantras and adorned with stunningly beautiful religious art, the Angkor temples were instruments for assisting humans in their realization of the divine.

Jayavaram VII, spoke of his intentions in erecting temples as being:

"full of deep sympathy for the good of the world, so as to bestow on men the ambrosia of remedies to win them immortality….By virtue of these good works would that I might rescue all those who are struggling in the ocean of existence." 


So here I am in Bangkok. I am always amused by the name of this huge city, bearing in mind its association with the sex trade!

I found myself perusing my fellow travellers for anyone who seemed to be of the Gary Glitter persuasion! There did appear to be a few candidates, especially one who had red rimmed specs with a red neck cord! I can't say why I thought so, but he just looked a bit creepy.

It seems the dreaded Delhi Belly has arrived early, or maybe that should be the Saigon s***s. However after 7 visits to the loo in the airport lounge and a couple of Imodium, I think I now have regained control of my digestive system.

The flight from Bangkok (cue, small smirk, I can't help it) was wonderful. Qatar Airlines are so comfortable. There were only about a dozen people on the flight in a huge Airbus. I think there were more crew than customers. I was picked up in the Arrivals hall and driven to my hotel. I think I was the last to arrive and just had time to dive in the shower and change before we all met up and were given the itinerary for the next few days.

Our guide is called Nam, as in Vietnam, so bad as I am at names, even I can't forget that one! His English is good but the accent is tricky. He is always smiling and very knowledgeable.

We all went out for dinner together to sample some Vietnamese dishes, walking to the restaurant from the hotel. The traffic is crazy! Mopeds everywhere and you're not even safe on the pavement. There are traffic lights but most drivers just ignore them if they don't like the colour! Crossing the road is a life changing experience!

We ended up at a restaurant, highly recommended on Tripadvisor, called Yin and Yang. We all decided to go for the set menu as that gave us a good range of food. They were able to substitute  fish dishes with meat and anything else you didn't like could be swapped too. I was decidedly unimpressed with the food, especially the rice pancakes which look like a sheet of plastic and are cold and tasteless. Luckily I had eaten enough over the previous 24 hours to tide me over

I was shattered by the time we got back as I hadn't slept at all on the plane, so with a 9am departure next morning I crawled gratefully into bed.