One of the many groups of Apsaras dancing on a Lotus that adorn the pillars that form the gateways to the temple.  This is an oft-repeated pattern at the Bayon and is thought to be especially beautiful in its complexity.

Also note the shallower surrounding carving lending texture and bringing out the clean execution of the central theme to these decorations.

An editorial note…A warning in all of the guidebooks is “don’t wander off the paths, there are still a lot of land mines in this area”.  We saw warning posts in some places which indicated that a particular patch had recently been cleared of land mines.  Many of the beggars are horribly disfigured from encounters with these mines.  Mainly they are left over from the genocidal revolution of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and then again from the counter-revolution led, or at least augmented, by the Vietnamese displacing Pol Pot and establishing the current regime which is probably nearly as corrupt as the Khmer Rouge’s “Killing Fields”.