Water Gods Smiled

August 28, 2001-Looking Up

(photos:
Leper King,
Sponge Trees)

I got a hot shower last night. The air conditioning ultimately cooled the room enough for sleeping. We got used to Savon’s accent. I re-read the guidebook to be more familiar with names and places. It’s legal to use marijuana here. Things are looking up.

We asked Savon about the high prices and she said that room rates are $200-$300/night. In the U.S. it would be about $65-75 for equal quality. Luxury hotels go for $300-$1000/night. I thought that maybe the reason phone calls were so expensive was the phones are a color I’ve never seen before. It might be costly to manufacture sickly mint hued plastic. Maybe the phone manufacturers were smoking legal pot when they chose the color.

Khmer Rogue

Savon spoke of the Killing Fields, which were not only in Phnom Pen but all across Cambodia. Siem Reap has a population of 50,00 today and, although this was not an area of great Khmer Rouge activity, she lost an aunt and uncle. Last night, the people we met at dinner said their guide lost nine out of eleven in his family.

The Khmer Rouge killed the educated, those who spoke a foreign language, and anyone else they wanted to. Over three million people died out of a population of eight million. Many died of disease or starvation while hiding in the forests. Even the wild animals fled to Laos and elsewhere. A herd of three hundred elephants recently returned. Savon said the land mines have been cleared around the cities, but there are still many about forty miles away. People work every day locating and disarming them. One person can clear only an area of three square feet a day. David asked if there were any Khmer Rouge left in Cambodia and if the people were afraid they’d rise up again. Savon said that many of them are in the government and live a very good life. She doesn’t think there will be a problem.

Housing is about the worst we’ve seen on this trip. Shacks are built with thatched roofs and are on stilts. The walls, if any, are thatch or tin. Some homes are just a tarp with hammocks strung in the corners. High metal walls run for blocks as you drive down the road. At openings in the fence we can see hovels behind the wall. I think the walls were erected to hide the poverty from tourists. Only soldiers are given the money to build decent houses. Savon lives with her mother, husband, sister, brother-in-law, her two year old and her sister’s two children. Unemployment is high and being multi-lingual is and asset. It was unclear how long the government paid for schooling, but it seems it’s only for pre-school. After that the people pay for books, pencils, and uniforms. Savon said it’s very cheap, but even those essentials must be a stretch for most.

We passed a football (soccer) stadium on the way back to the hotel. Savon said that boys and men don’t play football much anymore. They prefer snooker (billiards). I guess they’re getting lazy.

Other Angkors

We headed for Angkor Thom (Big City). It was built in the 13^th century of the same sandstone as Angkor Wat. The Bayon Temple in Angkor Thom, unlike Angkor Wat, was originally covered with gold. It was the royal city for the king who built it. I thought it was more imposing than Angkor Wat. It was built as a Hindu Temple but later became Buddhist. It has fifty-four towers with four faces of the king on each tower. A lotus flower tops each tower. A huge central tower overlooks it all. It must have been a glorious sight. Now it’s crumbling. International efforts are being made to restore it. The bas-relief carvings were more defined and detailed than at Angkor Wat. They depict soldiers of the Khmer (the original name of Cambodians) and Chinese fighting together as allies. It was easy to tell the difference between the two. The details were intricate down to scales on fish and woven sides of wagons. Later in the bas-relief the story of the Khmer defeat by the Champa people is told. If you recall, the Champa were from central Viet Nam later conquered by the Vietnamese. We crawled all over the ruins climbing steps, scampering along ledges, and wiggling in and out of windows to see it all.

The next temple in this city was Bapuon. It was built in the 11^th century as a Hindu temple to the god Shiva. Angkor Wat was built to Vishnu. The king kept the lingaa on the third level. The lingaa is a phallus and thought to be the source of his power. Has nothing changed? It’s usually a huge stone shaft set atop a pedestal symbolizing a female organ.

We saw a terrace dedicated to a leper king who was believed to have that disease. It was a judgment terrace. If you were worthy you were disease free, if not you got leprosy. I guess he wasn’t so lucky. There were many more temples that we saw but limited our climbing to a select few.

R and R

We went back to the hotel for a rest at 11 AM and our driver picked us up for lunch. When you start at 8:30 AM, a rest is nice. David slept and I wrote to you all. Lunch was at an attractive tourist restaurant in an outdoor pavilion. We’ve only been given Western utensils (forks, etc) when we ate at the hotel. We asked Savon about chopsticks. She said Cambodians use forks, etc and some still use fingers as the Indians do. Cambodians don’t use chopsticks. Neither do Thai. Their roots are more Indian than anything else. Cambodian cuisine isn’t original and borrows from everyone else, so we had Thai soup, beef curry, cashew veggies, and a fried noodle dish. That was about all we’d consider on the menu. We had to choose from frog, rabbit, serpent fish, eel, and the ever-irresistible pork liver. A nice touch was that each table came with its own plastic latticework trash basket. It was handy for disposing of the “napkins.” They were single ply tissue resembling toilet paper (of which there is none except at hotels) but were dispensed individually out of a box like Kleenex. They were good for one wipe hence the trash container. They brought chopsticks with our meal. Go figure.

We were taken back to the hotel to rest until 3 P.M. They have siesta here after which it rains. The rain is hard and over quickly. Everything is washed clean but it creates mud that’s then carried onto the clean areas. It’s a tossup between being dusty or muddy. We ran into a traffic (bicycle) jam and Savon said the people prefer certain roads when it rains because other roads have too many snakes. I’ll continue stay with the crowds.

Temples Galore

After our rest we headed for, you guessed it, more temples. It’s such fun to climb in and out and discover that each one is really unique. We’re getting these gods down. I can even identify Apsara in her many guises. She’s the celestial dancer whose name appears on government trash containers at temple sites.

The concept of the temple complex is a little like Disney World. Tourists can get a 1, 3, or 7 day photo ID pass for a fee. We had a three day unlimited access pass costing $40/person. A difference between here and Disney is that here, as you walk along the forest paths to get to the temples, young children pop out to sell their wares. It’s like being in a video game. They’re adorable and try hard to bargain sometimes working against themselves. One little girl offered to sell me a flute for $1 but before I could answer she came down to 2 for $1. Of course, the children compete for our attention with the cows that are ever present at the temples (Cambodian Hindus and Buddhists do eat meat), the monkeys, and the cacophony of invisible green parrots. I never did spot one.

Why didn’t I guess these temples were built by slaves? Thai slaves were commonly used and our guide indignantly told us that now the Thai people teach that they created the temples. They did, after all, build them. Ta Prohm temple has thirty-six towers and is fighting a losing battle with nature. The forest has taken root in the buildings and trees growing hundreds of feet high wind in and around the structures literally embracing them. Damage is severe but the visual is incredible. The sponge tree is one of the worst offenders. It has a shallow root system and insinuates itself into any crack in the stones. In the battle with nature, man doesn’t prevail. Termites have also moved into the rooms and formed mounds. Where there were once jewel encrusted walls are now warrens of these insects. The jewels and many statues have been looted. The echo room was particularly fascinating. If you stand along the walls and beat your chest it reverberates in your body so you can hear and feel the impact. People who were sick used to go there to beat their chests until they felt better. I imagine if you did it long enough it could produce a trance.

We’ll rest before going to dinner and the folkloric show. David has some kind of stomach revenge. Don’t know if it’s from the malaria medication we’re taking or the beef he ate and I did not in Viet Nam. He’s had it for a while. If the lomotil doesn’t work soon, we’ll change to Imodium and he’ll start antibiotics. He’s very careful to drink a lot. Australia here we come just in time.

Toby