Buddha rebuilt

I don't have any photos of the event as I wasn't invited - organizers of these events please take note - but yesterday the King of Cambodia blessed the completion of the rebuilding of the giant reclining Buddha, part of the world's largest jigsaw puzzle at the Baphuon temple at Angkor. Much of the 11th century temple has been strewn around the grounds of the site for many years whilst the folks from EFEO scratched their heads to try and piece together a restoration that first began in the 1960s. After the notebooks with the jigsaw puzzle answers were lost during the Khmer Rouge period, its been a case of 'painting by numbers' but they are getting there. Yesterday's ceremony was to celebrate the reconstruction of one of the world's largest stone Buddhas, 75 metres in length and 12 metres wide, located on the west facade of the second tier of the three-tier temple. Initially the Buddha was constructed 500 years ago when builders were trying to halt the pyramid temple's collapse by re-using some of the stones.

The giant reclining Buddha as photographed by Michael Freeman in his Ancient Angkor book