Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 01:07:48 -0800 (PST) From: colin roaldSubject: angkor
I'm in Phnom Penh now, and since my last message was from Bangkok I have a lot to cram into this one.
I'm really enjoying Cambodia. The place is poor and has had a terrible recent history, but the Khmers are wonderful -- friendly and welcoming and -- I'm not sure how else to say this -- really quite cute. Broad smiles. squashed noses, and the most perpendicular jug ears you've ever seen.
It's been amazingly easy to get around, as well. I wondered, before entering a country with a reputation like Cambodia's, but the guest house business here is astoundingly well-organized. I was met on the train from Bangkok to Arunya Prathet (on the Thai side of the border) by a guy from a guest house there, who handed out photocopied sheets with information about current border operating hours and visa prices (which was hard to find in Bangkok). I had been talking with an Australian guy on the train, and we agreed to take a look at the guest house, so when we pulled in to the station, he had us shepherded into a waiting tuk-tuk and away within two minutes of disembarking, for free. It was so smooth I hardly had time to see where I was.
The guest house sold us tickets to Siem Reap (the town nearest Angkor), and gave us Cambodian visa forms so we could fill them out ahead of time. In the morning, there were tuk-tuks waiting that took about a dozen of us from the guest house a few kilometers to the border, and pointed our way into the mindboggling chaos of the crossing point. (A huge dirt square full of children, beggars, pickpockets, an endless stream of giant handcarts and trucks, an enormous marketplace on the Thai side and a cluster of casinos on the Cambodian side.) A Khmer travel agent met us on the other side and led us to the lounge of a guest house where we waited for an hour or so, until the truck was ready. The truck drove us to Siem Reap, and dropped us off in the courtyard of another guest house (the Sunway), where we all stayed. Every morning, they solicitously ask where you want to go that day, and instantly set you up with a driver, unless you go to some effort to refuse the assistance.
When you want to leave, the Sunway sells tickets by bus, truck and boat to any place a tourist is likely to want to go; I bought one for the express boat to Phnom Penh, and so at 6 am this morning a van came by to pick half a dozen of us up, and drove us an hour or so down to the pier on the Tonle Sap, where the boat was waiting. As we were leaving the guest house, the manager came by and distributed a bottle of water and a baguette to each of us, by way of breakfast. He also phoned ahead to a guesthouse in Phnom Penh, and so when the boat arrived, there was a car waiting and a guy with one of those signs with my name on it. And this for a place where I am paying $5 a night!
A complete idiot could travel this country. All you have to do is have a small wad of American dollars, and agree whenever a Khmer offers to take you somewhere.
Road
The drive from the border to Siem Reap was rough, all right, but not nearly as bad as I'd been warned about. Effectively, it was a 150-km construction zone, two lanes for all of its length and dirt for most of it. But there were enough construction crews out that the dirt was actually in respectable shape -- there were a couple of craters that were probably mudpits a month ago, but everything is pretty dry by now. The real problem was dust -- we rode in the back of an open pickup, and regularly found ourselves in choking clouds of red dust from vehicles ahead of us. We passengers wound up wearing everything from sunglasses and bandannas to sarongs, towels and spare shirts wrapped around the head Bedouin fashion. I scrounged a pair of Speedo swimming goggles in Arunya Prathet before starting out, so I think I wound up cutting a rather undignified Road Warrior kind of figure. (But I could see.)
The scenery was pretty in a pastoral kind of way. Dead flat the whole way, rice fields glowing green, water buffaloes and ox carts, Khmers fishing in sloughs with nets, and an awful lot of naked swimming children.
Angkor
I didn't know how long I was really going to want to stay at Angkor. I'd heard a lot about how incredible it is, but I couldn't quite imagine wanting to spend more than a whole day *anywhere*. The thing I didn't really grasp until I got there is that Angkor isn't one site -- it's more like twenty, and they're all huge. The main cluster occupies an area the size of the city of San Francisco -- it's like what you would have if the city of Rome had been entirely abandoned to the jungle for six hundred years. Three days is barely an introduction to the place.
This was the first place I've come to since Singapore where the idea of entering traffic on a bicycle didn't seem suicidal, so I rented one to get around for the first two days. The land is very flat, so it was a great way to get around, even on a creaky one-speed. (Oh, hell, not just a creaky one-speed, but a bright red creaky girl's one-speed with a big white basket on the front and a drawing of Snow White on the chain guard. Enjoy the image.)
Angkor Wat is the headline attraction -- it's more than a kilometer square, is as tall as Notre Dame in Paris, and has something like a mile of astounding bas-relief murals. According to the guides here, it's the largest religious monument in stone in the world. And at that, it's only the first among equals.
Phnom Bakheng is perched on a hill, from which you can see the distant lonely towers of Angkor Wat rising from the forest.
The Bayon has another half mile of bas-reliefs, and a plaza where eighty six-foot stone faces smile eerily down at you from all sides.
Ta Prohm is an enormous ruined monastery complex that has been left overgrown by great trees rooted in the walls and towers.
The temple-mountain of the Baphuon was collapsing, so the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme Orient decided to attempt major surgery to save it -- taking the thing apart stone by stone, laying a new foundation, and then putting it back together. They got as far as the taking-it-apart part when Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge. When they were finally able to return, all the notebooks recording how the stones fit together had been lost, 98 of 100 of the trained locals who had worked on the disassembly were dead, and the site was strewn with landmines. But after a huge re-analysis effort, they're putting it back together anyway, like the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle.
The Terrace of the Elephants has 300 meters of lifesize bas-relief elephants.
Ta Keo is a steep temple-mountain with a quiet cave-like sanctuary chamber at the top, from which you can look down at the trees.
Ta Nei is lost in the jungle -- the only approach is a kilometer walk down a sandy track. I didn't see a single other tourist while I was there.
Every square inch of Banteay Srei is carved with intricate relief-work.
The Eastern Mebon has eight life-size elephant statues, each sculpted from single blocks of stone.
Ta Som is like an archaelogical site left half-cleared -- some courtyards are full of rubble from collapsed walls, and others contain neat stacks of labelled stones -- EDCt23, EDCt31, and so on.
Neak Pean is not so much a temple as an ancient spa -- an arrangement of square pools with sculpted fountains, and a shrine on an island in the middle of the largest one.
Preah Khan is a vast, half-ruined maze of mossy passageways, the remains of another monastic complex.
And at that, there were half a dozen big sites I didn't see at all.
I've had a tiring few days -- I've done a lot of walking and climbing of steep stairs, and ridden 50 kilometers by bicycle, so I don't think I'm going to do very much in Phnom Penh besides visit the Killing Fields (which I think is obligatory) and maybe buy a t-shirt. Will fly to Hanoi on Sunday or Monday.
c. -- colin | opportunity calls from a payphone, bruno. you never roald | get a chance to call it back. (christopher baldwin)