for our sojourn to Southeast Asia, and yet, while we
are here, it seems we have really no concept of what
we are witnessing. The staying power of these
monuments, over 1,000 years old, is absolutely mind
boggling. Our first day or so, we spent investigating
how to "beat the crowds" and trying to find places
off the beaten track in order to avoid the hordes of
Japanese tourists, who quite honestly are possibly
the only other group more obnoxious than Americans
when traveling abroad. While our favorites include
some of the more popular sights,as is to be expected,
generally we were most able to come to terms with
what we were experiencing in the areas where we were
able to lose ourselves in the solitude, in the
isolation and power of this place.
built to withstand the test of time. The crowning example of
this is Angkor Wat: we visited several times, but found the
most rewarding times to be sunrise and sunset...It was almost
chilly at 4:30 in the morning, and as we rode our bikes some
friendly teens yelled drunken words of encouragement from
their motorbikes, clearly amused having not yet gone to bed...
In the shadows of greatness and the fading moonlight, we
watched as the sun rose into a bank of clouds, into the heat
and brightness of daylight without much fanfare. We were
sobered by this, one of the greatest religious monuments in
the modern world, a marvel in our own time, and rewarded with
silence, inspired and awed. We tried our best to tune into our
time here, to "relish the ruins and not ruin the relish"...A
constant distraction however, a symphony of dissonance:
cicadas were everywhere, whining and wailing, piercing your
brain like some psychotic and malfunctioning machine, you just
wanted to hunt them down and squish...
wholeheartedly consume the temples in a slow muscular embrace of lichens, creeping
plants, and 300 year old carnivorous trees. The best examples of this are in Ta Prohm,
Preah Palilay (where we encountered a painter trying to find a way to capture the
immensity and grandeur of all that was in front of him, subtle and powerful), Ta Nei
(where both times we visited we were the sole inhabitants), and Beng Mealea. This
outlying temple and its ever-hungry jungle required a bit of a journey along "dancing
roads"(potholes the size of houses that brought new meaning to the term "mudding" and
new respect for the Toyota Camry) and it was here that our duo experienced its first
enjoying the neon yellow "birds" frolicking above his head,
I had to pull him to his feet and lead him throughthe maze
of bat-infested corridors, listening to him try and make
coherent sentences, we opted for a visit to the clinic and
were rewarded with a diagnosis of a bacterial infection.
Some antibiotics and charcoal tablets (yum) later, we were
on the road and spent our last day at Angkor on rented
bicycles, touring the park at our own pace, revisiting our
favorite sights. Monkeys traveling the roofs of the temples,
silk worms descending to the earthen jungle floor, flocks of
neon yellow butterflies, carvings too delicate for the touch
of a man (the citadel of women), and all the places that
defy description: this is Angkor, wonder of the world. Our
last night in Siem Reap, I met a child by the name of
Sakhim, a beggar with one leg and eyes of fire. We shared a
meal at a street stall and as Sakhim quietly enjoyed his
fruit shake, I spoke with the man seated beside us. We spoke
of the cambodian people, traumatized but survivors: reborn.
When I asked the man if he knew Sakhim, he was quite
affectionate toward him, he said "no" and simply stated "I
am Cambodian, all my people are my friends". We spoke of
their sense of collective memory and the realities of
Cambodian life: despite my good deed, as I walked home, I
was constantly reminded that in this place, as in so many
others, there is always another mouth to feed. So, here I
remain, touched by this place and by these people; sobered
by the ruins and the ruined...
katrina and eric
