Of Nagas & Luncheon Meat

On my daily travels, I pass alot of interesting buildings such as pagodas, temples, monuments & colonial buildings. But there's always a certain type of stone carving that catches my eye: the Naga. It's a strange reptilian creature. It has a snake's body, and like a cobra, it has a inflatable flatten hood. Most of you would be thinking, "ehh, wats the diff, it's cobra wat..." Nope, thats not a cobra cos the Naga has freaking 7 heads!!! Checkout the pics for some in-the-car photos of Cambodia & the very kickass Naga statue I found on my way to the airport.

Apparently according to my googling research of Nagas, there are different versions of Nagas but I think the Cobra Nagas look the best. Checkout this site for some prime Naga info. Also tapping into brudder Loe's wealth of buddhist knowledge, I learnt that the most definitive story of the Naga protecting the Buddha from torrential downpour, as depicted in BODHGAYA (exact location of enlightment and event took place), was depicted as the Cobra-like Naga. Click here for pic of Naga King protecting Buddha, courtesy of brudder Loe.

Places to go for Naga enthuasiasts:
1) It is normal to find a pair of Nagas guarding the entrance of temples & pagodas in Cambodia.
2) Entrance to the Silver Pagoda in Phnom Penh is guarded by 2 huge & very menacing Nagas
3) Peace Monument in Phnom Penh, this monuments boasts of 100 Naga statues carved on it's roof....awesome sight...
4) at mouth of old bridges in Siem Reap, supposed to guard the bridges and the ppl crossing the river
5) lastly, according to one of my staff, in some unknown unspecified province, where some fren of a fren of a distant relative of blah blah blah, saw with his/her own eyes, a family of Nagas playing in a small lake, under the full moon...

If I were to see Naga, I would crap in my pants and most prob get eaten up by it...cool shit (pun intended, no apologies).

For more photos of Nagas & Indo China (much, much professionally taken), head on over to brudder Loe's site.

Bigups to brudder Loe for pointing out that the previous Luncheon Meat posting - Wu Chan Rou does not mean Five Meal Meat but "Lunchtime Meat" cos Wu-Chan = Lunchtime & Rou = Meat. Damn, to think there was some mystery or conspiracy theory behind Five Meal Meat...haha, so much for my hanyu pinyin & translation skillz :)