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Prasat Phanom Rung (2007)
When we travel to Thailand, we spend roughly half our time visiting Lucia’s family and friends. The rest of the time we travel around Thailand. Some of this travel is to touristy type destinations, but part of it is specifically so I can take photographs. For each trip to Thailand, I have purchased the latest version of the Lonely Planet guide to Thailand and gone to the sawadee.com website to find new places to visit in Thailand. Yes we will revisit places we really like, such as Ayutthaya, but I really strive to visit some place that we haven’t visited before. For the 2007 trip to Thailand, I found a historical site in northeastern Thailand called Prasat Phanom Rung. It is a Khmer temple complex that was built between the 11th and 13th centuries.
Getting there required a bit of planning since there are no major cities near Phanom Rung. We decided to hire a car and driver that we had used previously to take us around Bangkok. Since this was a multiday trip, we had to pay for his hotel fare. He had a spacious van and it proved to be a comfortable trip, even with our luggage in the back. The nearest town of even modest size was Buriram and because it appears that it get few foreign tourists the hotel selection is rather meager. The Lonely Planet indicated that the majority of the hotels in Buriram were of the very ‘short stay’ variety. Fortunately, the sawadee.com website pointed us to the Vongthong Buriram hotel. It was not a luxury hotel by any means but it was more than adequate. Based on several reviews, we popped for the VIP room. The room was huge. You could have probably played a game of half-court basketball in it. The décor was decidedly dated but the furniture was sturdy and well built. It had a king size bed. However, the room felt a bit weird in that it had a dining area and a large living room area with no separation between any of the areas. The only area with a door was the bathroom. To best describe it, think of sleeping in a bed that was set in the middle of a basketball court.
The hotel had a dining room that was in a separate building. We had dinner there and elected to eat in the terrace. There was absolutely no ambiance to the dining area but the food was outstanding. We ate a fish dish that used fish that came locally. The really exciting thing about Thailand is that each area has its own unique fish dishes that use local fish and it provides such an incredible variety as you travel around the country. This is probably why no Thai restaurant in the US can even come close to offering the variety of food in Thailand. The food we ate at the hotel restaurant was extremely spicy as I recall, but we were really wowed by it.
Phanom Rung was about an hour’s drive from Buriram. The entrance to the temple is awesome. There is a wide and long stone promenade that is over 1000 feet long that leads to the main temple. At the end of the promenade, there is a steep set of steps that leads to the temple. It is a spectacular path that is worthy of Richard Wagner’s Entry into the halls of Valhalla sort of music.
I had an absolutely great day taking pictures at the site. There were light clouds that produced a wonderful cloudy bright lighting that allowed me to capture the beauty of the temple and its surroundings. Sometimes I had to wait several minutes until the clouds would pass overhead to get the desired lighting. In particular, the rock used for the temple is generally salmon colored and the lighting allowed me to capture the subtle coloring of the rock. I spent the entire day taking pictures. In the early afternoon, Lucia went off to find some lunch. With the near perfect conditions for taking photographs there in what will probably be a once in a lifetime opportunity, the only thing I got for lunch was a major sunburn. I was starving but nothing was going to stop me at this point. You can view some of my photographs of Phanom Rung in the photography section of this website.
The Thai government did a beautiful job of restoring the site. I read that the restoration took 17 years and the effort was clearly worth the effort. What distinguishes Phanom Rung from the historical sites in Ayutthaya or Sukhothai is that Phanom Rung is made of stone, whereas Ayutthaya and Sukhothai were constructed of brick. I believe that Ayutthaya might have had the grandeur of Phanom Rung at one time because of the greater scale of Ayutthaya, but the Burmese completely dismantled the city so one can only imagine its grandeur when it was actually populated. Fortunately there are a few Khmer sites in Ayutthaya that were not completely destroyed. Nevertheless the architectural styles are completely different, even though they are both described as being Khmer.
One of the oddities of Phanom Rung is that most of the stones use to construct the temple and surrounding walls contain nice round holes in them. Lucia asked someone about them and they told her that it is believed that the holes were drilled into the stones so that long poles could be run through the rock and the poles were used to lift the stones so they could be carried to the site and put in place.
In taking photographs at Phanom Rung, I found myself riveted to taking pictures of the doorways and windows in the temple. Looking through the opening, there was always something unique to contrast the stone around the doorway or window. It could be a tree or other vegetation, or it could be part of the temple that was made of a different colored stone. I call this set of photographs my ‘Windows to the World’ series. At the time, I was very cognizant of the theme. This is something that I never really gave much thought about before in my photography, the following year we went to Yellowstone National Park and I have a theme based series of photographs that capture the vibrant colors of the springs in Yellowstone. In addition, I realized that I had a number of themes that pervade my photographs taken over the years. These themes include skies and a structure in Zion National Park that I call ‘The Rock’ that I have taken pictures of each time I have visited Zion. ‘The Rock’ series captures the structure with different lighting and weather conditions. Ansel Adams did the same thing. He has a large number of photographs taken from the Yosemite Valley overlook as you come out of the tunnel you drive through to enter the Valley. He has photographs taken in the summer, in the winter when there is snow, and when it has been raining. Each won captures a new facet of the scene. None is better than the other, but each one enhances the appreciation of the beauty of the scene.
This
is my wife Lucia overwhelmed by the experience of Phanom Rung (at least I think she
was).
After visiting Phanom Rung, the plan was to return to Bangkok. But after discussing it, we realized that there was nothing we really wanted to do in Bangkok in our last few days in Thailand. So we asked our driver to drop us off in Ayutthaya and then he could return to his home in Bangkok. On the way to Ayutthaya, our driver suggested eating at a restaurant on the highway that was famous for its steaks. This is the first time I had heard of steak in Thailand. Thais generally do not eat beef. They largely eat seafood, chicken, and pork. But the idea was appealing so we agreed to stop for lunch there. Unfortunately the restaurant was absolutely packed and there was no place to park. Our driver found another restaurant that also served steak. The place was humongous. It was largely open air but with a high wooden roof. The seating consisted of row after row after row of heavy duty picnic tables lined up end to end with each table abutting with the next table to make it like rows of 50’ tables. The restaurant featured community style dining, which means that you don’t get a separate table; you wait until someone gets up to leave and then sit in their just vacated seat and eat elbow to elbow with whoever happens to be sitting next to you at the table.
I really wasn’t hungry for steak or beef, but decided to go for it since this was what the place was famous for and it was what everyone else was pretty much eating. I went for a T-bone. It took forever to find someone to take our order and it took even longer for them to serve the food. But the wait was definitely worth it. I won’t say that the steak was the best that I have ever eaten, but it was very good. But what made it really exceptional was the barbecue sauce. It was not an American style barbecue sauce. The color was somewhat pinkish and the flavor was hard to describe. It was slightly sweet and slightly hot with Thai spices and, when combined with the flavor of the meat, the meal was a joyous and memorable experience. As much as I rave about the seafood dishes in Thailand and as memorable as the meals were, I will always remember the one and only steak dinner that I had in Thailand.