Angkor What?

A couple of days have gone by since I was able to work on this chronicle. One reason is that we have had no time for such frivolity, and the other reason is that although the hotel touts its WiFi connectability, we have yet to connect. Thus, I’m writing this in Word and hoping to post it at some future time.

Two short flights from Hong Kong and here we were in Siem Reap, Cambodia, home of the Angkor Wat. Do look it up on the internet if you are not familiar with it as it is truly one of the wonders of the world. Covering the size of TWO Manhattans (I believe I originally said one), it is a sprawling complex of early Hindu and Buddhist temples built from the ninth to the twelfth centuries by kings of the Khmer Empire who at the time controlled not only Cambodia, but most of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam as well.

Our guide to this spectacular site is Mr. Tek, a funny little man who is a bottomless well of knowledge about the temples including the history of Cambodia from the days of the Empire to the present. After we got settled into the hotel (with its lovely Zen minimalist décor), he picked us up and asked us if we wanted to see the site of one of the killing fields of Cambodia. Clearly Tek felt very passionate about what had happened between 1975 and 1979 when Pol Pot slaughtered two million of his own people, fully one third of the population of Cambodia. We found out later that he was twenty at the time and personally experienced the disappearance (read: murder) of some of his relatives. At the place where he took us there is a school which was turned into a prison at the time and people were summarily shot and thrown into a ditch. The ditch was later excavated and the skulls and bones of the people put into a monument which stands on the site as a visible reminder of the horrors that the Cambodian people went through during that terrible time.

Then we continued on to the first area of the temple complex which is called Ta Phrom. Over the centuries the roots of the trees have grown under the buildings and literally displaced the stones of the temples pushing them out of place. The roots look like giant snakes creeping under, around, and on top of the buildings and are so integrated they almost look like they belong that way. Evidently when Frenchman Henri Mouhot discovered the temples lost in the jungle in the 1860s, they were all like this, slowly being devoured by the surrounding vegetation. I’m not sure if this particular complex is being deliberately left this way or whether the reconstruction efforts have not reached it yet—I hope the former because it is so beautiful just as it is. We were stunned by the sheer enormity of it and all the while we received a running commentary by the historian Mr. Tek.

Yesterday morning we were met at the hotel by Tek and our driver and taken to Angkor Thom (it sounds like Uncle Tom when he says it), another major site of the temple complex. There is a huge corridor of bas reliefs that depict ordinary life as it was in the 12^th century, complete with scenes illustrating fairly continuous wars with the Chinese, market life, childbirth, hunting, the life of the kings vs. that of the peasants, dancing girls and fish being eaten by crocodiles. The reliefs are all original and in wonderful condition, but you have to have the actions pointed out before it is clear what you are viewing. At least I did. The scenes showing market life show people cooking in huge pots, selling vegetables and other wares and busy daily commerce. He told us how to distinguish between the Cambodian army (long earlobes and flat faces) and the Chinese army (no earlobes and topknots and beards) and once you know that you can more or less figure out who is winning and who is losing any particular battle. Of course marauding armies were a fact of life and the fact that the temples survived the centuries of attacks, as well as a series of civil wars, harsh weather and looters is a testament to their durability.

After lunch at an authentic Cambodian restaurant (authentic means no Americans) we went to the crown jewel of the temple complex, the Angkor Wat itself. Five beehived shaped towers dominate this part of the temple and Mr. Tek was able to recite the height and width of every one of them, none of which I can remember but suffice to say they are very large.

By the end of the second day, we had seen most of the temple complex, me screaming for mercy and Mr. Tek showing little. It was good though because although I balked at climbing yet another pile of rocks, the view when there was always worth it and I'm grateful that he didn't let us off so easily. Our final destination was to the Conservancy where hundreds of pieces are being stored for eventual transference back to the site or to the national museum in Phnom Penh. These pieces were recovered from looters who have brazenly stolen or spirited them away from wherever they were found over many years previously. Tek told us that there is a museum in Paris where many of the artifacts lie--the Cambodian government unable to get them back despite all manner of begging and pleading. This is much like the Elgin Marbles which are in London but should be in Greece where they belong.

As I finish this entry, we are settled into our hotel in Hoi An where we will soon meet our latest guide Tin who picked us up at the airport last night. Thus begins our adventure in Viet Nam, the country that so captivated Mary and I and our traveling companions three years ago.