Wats

We visited two wats in Champassak: one was notable for being at the top of a flight of very steep steps (we definitely worked off lunch on that climb!), and giving spectacular views over the Mekong and the start of 4,000 Islands.

Up, up, up!!!

The second wat, Wat Phu, was originally (it is now a Buddhist shrine) a Khmer Hindu temple which is slightly (give or take a century or two) older than Angkor Wat. Wat Phu was built in the C5th and, while much has crumbled away, I found it awe inspiring that I could walk round it 16 centuries later!!  I have visited a few things older than Wat Phu, but probably none of them have had as little intervention, preservation or management as this wat complex.

View from the top of Wat Phu, looking down over the complex to the bathing pools in the background

 At the bottom section of the complex are a series of pools for men, women and the royal family.  Coming through the pools devotees would walk, still segregated, through some ante chambers, where they would prepare offerings. 

Window decorations

Remains of one of the areas where devotees would prepare offerings

Inside one of the corridors for different groups of devotees

Most people would worship at a relatively low level, while the king would climb a frangipani-lined (I assume the originals have been replaced J) staircase to a shrine near the top of the hill.  Apparently the actual shrine was to have been placed considerably higher but it was thought too difficult to get the stone blocks any higher, so they stopped and put the shrine near a watercourse which springs out of the rock face and which never runs dry (I can see the attraction in this course of action!).

Up, up, up again!  This time with added paving stone challenges

The kings' shrine at the top of Wat Phu

Channelling the water from the rock face

As well as the official shrine - now devoted to Buddha - there are a few additional 'found' shrines imagined or cut into rocks.  People also build small cairns to house their prayers near the summit.

Wat Phu is a very beautiful, ancient and awe inspiring monument