Day 34 - Monday, Nov. 18 - Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat

After almost three weeks - since Las Marquesas - of not understanding a single sign, it was nice in Vietnam to be able to recognize the letters, even if I didn’t understand the words.  Now I’m in a new country - Cambodia - where they don’t use the Roman alphabet.  Their language is written in flowing lines with lots of curlicues, rather than the squarish ideograms of Japanese and Chinese.
  Luckily for me, I won’t have to find my way among those curlicues because I have a guide for Angkor Wat:  Channy, who otherwise could have been a teacher like his father or a farmer like the rest of his family.  But he studied and now works with tourists and speaks great English with not much of an accent.  We take off in a tuk-tuk with a driver who will be at our disposal all day.  (Addendum: an English-speaking guide is the cheapest at $45, then Japanese at $55, French at $60, Chinese at $65, Spanish at $70 and Italian at $80... for all day, 8:30 a.m. to sunset.

Angkor Wat, looking back to entrance

Apsara with bullet mark

We start with Angkor Wat.  Legend says it was created in a single night by a divine architect, but in fact it was built in the early 12th century.  Originally a Hindu temple, it was dedicated to three gods, the Hindu Trinity:  Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver, and Shiva the Remover of Obstacles, aka the Creator-and-Destroyer (destroying what’s bad).  The temple is an embodiment of Mount Merou, the Heaven of the Gods.  Later, Hinduism was replaced by Buddhism and the name became Angkor Wat, the City of the Temple.  In the 16th century it became neglected but not abandoned, and both nature and man caused damage.  Trees and other plants grew up in and between its buildings and Pol Pot’s army did its share of wreckage as well.
        The foundations are made of lava, the walls of laterite and the sculptures of sandstone brought from 65 miles (100+ km) away at Waterfall Mountain.  Oriented east/west, with a moat surrounding it to symbolize the ocean, there are three different levels to the 65-meter (213 ft) tall temple:  the first for the people, the second for the king, the third for the gods.  Channy convinces me to climb to the king’s level.  And I say “convince” because the steps are very steep and by the time we get to them it’s very hot (max today 30°C/86°F), and humid.  I’m reminded of Noël Coward’s song lyrics “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon-day sun”.
       Channy explains the artwork on the bas-reliefs to me that are found throughout the temple, on all the walls.  As with Abu Simbel in Egypt, there are war scenes, including the king leading the army to Vietnam to fight the Champa.  There are also details of the Monkey King, and apsaras everywhere, especially around the doorways.  During the Pol Pot years, bored soldiers used the lovely apsara dancers for target practice.  (Channy shows me some of the bullet holes.)  I can’t help but wonder what kind of person could do that.  But then again, in the three years of Pol Pot’s reign, they killed 1 million of their own people, 13% of the entire population.
       In one courtyard, a saffron-robed monk sits cross-legged.  He ties a red and orange braided thread around my left wrist (left for the gods, right for the demons), then proceeds to splash me with holy water, smiling and chuckling as he goes.  And he takes longer with me than he has with the others before me, maybe because I smile and laugh also.  It’s fun.  And the water on my boiling head cools me down.
       We walk out after two hours of these wonders, past two of the site’s libraries, where the stone stela books were kept; there were three other libraries in the king’s quarters for his use only.  As in the Forbidden City of Beijing, there was a central gate for the king, two gates on either side for nobles and monks, and two even farther along for the people.  For 300 years, this temple stood empty when the Thai took over the country and evicted the king.  This period gave the nearby town its name:  Siem (for Siam, the old name of Thailand) and Reap, “defeat”.

As seen from the King's Level

Ferried by our loyal driver, our next stop if the even bigger Angkor Thom:  3 km long (almost 2 miles) on each side.  Like Angkor Wat, it’s encircled by a moat and a wall.  This was the country’s capital city from the 10th to the 15th century.  As we tuk-tuk through now-green areas, I try to imagine all this with houses and people other than tourists. 

Bayon Temple

       On the bridge into the city proper is the Hindu story of the churning of the ocean, with the demons pulling on the right side and the gods on the left.  But in spite of this Hindu myth, and unlike Angkor Wat, the Bayon Temple at the center here was always Buddhist.  Angkor Thom has 48 towers in all and, before being abandoned around 1600, it once had a population of 1 million!  As in Angkor Wat, the walls tell stories, all of which Channy knows in depth.  He points out fish and crocodiles and turtles (the symbol of long life in Cambodia) and monkey kings.  So much history, legend and art!
       After our visit, a pause at a stand under the trees for a cold coconut.  The vendor woman machetes it open and we drink the milk inside with a straw.  Channy asks for a spoon to eat the soft coconut inside; I ask the woman to give mine to the boy who has followed us, trying to sell me ten postcards for $1.  (That’s the currency they want here:  U.S. dollars.)  The boy says he wants to be a doctor some day.  “What kind?”, I ask.  “For children.”  Smart boy.  All good comments, all in English.  He adds he has eight brothers and sisters.  Says a few words in French as well, when I say I live in Paris.  I don’t know that he’ll ever become a doctor, but I hope he doesn’t spend his whole life doing this.

Ta Prohm

On to Ta Prohm east of Angkor Thom.  This is the most wild of the three ruins we see, built in the late 12th century.  And ruin is the operative word here.  Trees grow all over the site, with the roots of these silk cotton trees running down, on both sides, from the tops of the walls they ride.  They remind me of the trees I saw in the ruins of the hacienda in Uxmal, Yucatan in Mexico.  If you’ve seen the Angelina Jolie movie Tomb Raider, you’ll know what I mean because she filmed it here.
       There’s a sunset on our dance card, but I’m too tired to walk up the hill to view it.  No road for even jeeps to climb up there.  That seems to chagrin Channy, but I tell him that, with or without me, the sun will still set.
       On the way back to the hotel, we stop at a shop to buy me a Cambodian flag for my future prayer flag line.  I bid Channy and the tuk-tuk driver goodbye and slip into a shower.  My clothes are soaked with sweat; the jeans will have to be laundered but I wash my blouse in the shower, with me.  Refreshed, my body temperature lowered by about ten degrees, I go for a drink downstairs and discover it’s rained.  My decision not to slog up that hill was the right one; the rain is a sign that the gods approve.
       Pad thai for dinner on the small veranda, with two tabby kittens playing under foot.  And then bed, as much to rest my throbbing feet as to sleep.

Angkor Thom