Cambodia Chronicles: The Temples

My tuk-tuk driver meets me at 4:30 am the following morning. We drive into the park in complete darkness. A large moat surrounds the area Angkor Wat is planted on. Thick trees obscure my view but in the dark you can easily feel like these trees are hiding a secret from you. We follow the moat, rounding a corner and then you see a great stone bridge that leads into the Angkor Wat temple. I can’t see the temple spires yet but I know they’re there. My driver dropped me off at the moat just when a little light was coming through the sky. I stood on the bridge eating my muffin and watching tour bus after tour bus drop off the scourge of all parks: Asian Tour Groups, also known as ATG. When it gets just a little lighter I walk across the moat and through the gates of the Wat, an interesting few steps in the pitch black of the gate. When I come out the other end there is a stone pathway leading the way to the great three spires of Angkor Wat. 

Instead of following the tourists down the pathway and to the little lake where chairs have been set up for them, I move to the left of the gate and sit with an un-obscured view of the sunrise. The sky turned the faintest color red for maybe ten minutes right over the spires. The real delight was watching them lighten in tone, black to grey, along with the sky. When the day really begin I walked down the left pathway and onto the lawn to snap photos of the Wat and the gateway. I walked in the grass to the small lake where all the tourists had indeed been congregating. I take this opportunity to start my tour of the Wat itself. How peaceful to walk amongst the place almost completely deserted. Walking into it the first sensation was the smell. Wet, musty, old. With your nose, eyes and fingers you can feel the age of the place. I walk further into the temple and find two large stone pits on either side of my walkway. Walk past them and through another door with tunnels leading to both sides and I enter the courtyard where the Angkor temples lie, a national symbol for Cambodia and stunning in their expanse. They tower high up, with ledges and what looks to be balconies between them. One of the pagodas is still an active site of worship, though today happens to be the one day it is closed for cleaning. I watch a monkey climb its way up the steps. Perhaps he was going to tease the monks as they clean. I sit on one of the steps across from the pagodas, listening and watching and trying to take it all in. It feels too much for my eyes and mind to take in. For a few minutes I don’t feel like I’m really there. I walk around for a bit, in a circle to ground myself and make sure I didn’t miss anything. Then I make my exit as the temple becomes inundated with ATG.

When I get out to the street my driver is waiting for me. He offers to take me somewhere to eat breakfast but I decline, directing him to the other side of the Angkor park to Ta Prohm. 

The steps where I watched the sunrise

Entering Angkor Wat

 

 

 

The Western Gate

Ta Prohm

Here I have my first run in with the almost rabid children that prowl the temples of Angkor (more on them later.) This little guy wanted $1 for 10 postcards. Not a bad deal. He lays them out for me and started counting them. I take pictures of the ruined stoned gate of Ta Prohm and help him out when he got stuck at 6. He escorts me down the path, looking more and more miserable with every step I take, till I reach Prohm. The first thing I notice is a small camera crew filming in the early morning. Other than them I have the place to myself. The front of the temple has an old, raised brick pathway leading to the door of the temple, which is sectioned off. In fact, nearly every temple I visit is partly under restoration. I have to try my best to ignore the bright, ugly green tarps covering portions of the temples. Yet, Ta Prohm is still powerful. It hasn’t had nearly as much work done to it as others. They have left it in a slightly collapsed sort of state, which is why it’s so popular. Since the camera crew was filming on the large stone path leading to the front door I walk around to the right side of the temple. As I come around the corner I see the view everyone photographs and comes to see: The tree sitting atop the crumbled green conglomerate of stones. The image is vivid and majestic. It seems as if the temple wasa made to be abandoned, ruined and swallowed by the jungle. It’s so unbelievable that it becomes so fitting. It is a perfect sight in every way; I am alone, the light is still soft and what little jungle there is around the temple is humming. After I take a billion photos I stand and stare at the tree. I touch it’s smooth knobs and roots. When a family of four come on the scene I continue walking left around more of the temple. Every part of the ruins are still wet with dew and the jungle sounds starteto take on the formula of real music, with a chorus line and aria. I make a loop outside the temple before going in, though a significant portion of the temple is still unreinforced. I stand in a hallway for a few minutes, watching the sunlight come through the windows and holes in the ceiling. I can almost feel timelessness.

Walking back to the gate I smile as an ATG 60+ tramples towards Ta Prohm.

 

Hard days work

Banteay Kdei

Banteay Kdei is next door to Ta Prohm but doesn’t attract the same crowds. There isn’t too much of Kdei left standing but open hallways and open rooms. My driver drops me off at the West gate where I’m greeted by a 9 year old boy who really wants to sell me a flute. Like all the others he’s dirty and looks miserable. I had made a promise to myself before coming to Cambodia that I would, under no circumstances, give any money to the children. This is an almost impossible task. My first night in Siem Reap I was walking home from dinner when I little boy ran out from behind a car right as I was passing by and grabbed my arm (really grabbing it), moaning something incoherently. He scared the shit out of me and as I took my arm out of his grasp he ran away before I could offer to buy him food. My second day in Siem Reap I was walking to the market when a boy who couldn’t have been older than 6, wearing tattered dirty clothes and holding an infant, just pointed at my water bottle.

My current escort is practically begging me as though it was a life or death deal we were making. But I was convinced that encouraging the children to be peddling foreigners instead of going to school was not good. In the absences of being able to shower them with money I tried to talk to them. My 9 year old friend walks me to about half way to Kdei then passs me off to a girl who really wants to sell me some bracelets.

“No, thank you. But they’re beautiful.”

“Please, 10 for 2 dollar.”

“You’re buddy was going to sell me 10 for 1 dollar!” I tell her.

“Okay, okay,” she says.

I laugh. “No, thank you.”

“Please. You buy them for friends.”

“I don’t have any friends,” I tell her.

She is silent for a moment as we walk towards Kdei. Then she looks at me, with the most miserable face she can muster and says, “you buy for you mother?”

I laugh and she joins me. She has a beautiful smile.

“You’re clever,” I tell her.

“Thank you.”

“How old are you?”

“13.”

“Are you from Siem Reap?”

“No, Phenom Pehn,” she says. Instantly she gasps, stops and covers her mouth with her hands and looks startled, like she has said something wrong.

She looks at me but I’m smiling back at her, as I can’t think why being from Phenom Pehn is a bad thing. I ask her what her name is.

“Nome.”

She tells me she likes Siem Reap and that she doesn’t have a boyfriend. She asks me questions about America and my family. I tell her that her English is great and she says she likes to talk to people. When we reach Kdei she leaves me without a fuss and I watch her put a sad face back into place for the couple coming up the path behind me.

I walk around the open rooms and hallways of Kdei but admire the view more from the lawn in the back of the temple. To get there, I walk through the main hallway. As I reach the end there is a Buddhist shrine set up, and a bald, white robed nun with a mischievous look tells me to take off my shoes and pray with her. As I kneel before the shrine she hands me a lit incense stick. I’m not sure what to do really so I close my eyes, say ‘what up’ to Buddha and place the incense in the sand laid out before him with all the others. The nun takes me left hand and rubs my wrist twice with a piece of red string before tying it in a knot.

“Long life and good luck,” she tells me.

As I walk back to my tuk-tuk I stop and wave at Nome, wishing her good luck. She smiles and waves back. I’ve picked up my 9-year-old again and when I get back to the tuk-tuk I give him all the food I brought with me, which he accepted instead of money.