Cambodia Travelogue

Table of Contents

Part 1 - "Temples & Trees"
Part 2 - "Tourists & Touts"
Part 3 - "Genocide & Graffiti"
Part 4 - "Rivers & Rites"

Temples & Trees

The full moon hangs low.  Voluminous clouds shroud us in darkness as we ride toward Cambodia’s ancient Angkor temples, and the world’s largest religious monument.  The open sides of the tuk-tuk (essentially a motorcycle pulling a covered cart, in which my girlfriend and I sit) allow us to breathe in the cool, tropical air, a far cry from the stifling midday heat.  

“It’s chilly!”  Jen snuggles against me, not dressed for the predawn weather.  January in Cambodia is exceptionally hot by Canadian standards. 

She teaches English in South Korea, I’m visiting her from Vancouver, and we’re both on vacation during school break.  Today, our nine-temple itinerary convinced us to wake at a bleary-eyed 4:30 am. 

We catch a glimpse of moonlight shimmering on Angkor Wat’s monstrous moat, which holds enough water to fill a thousand swimming pools.  The tuk-tuk rumbles past—Jen and I want to avoid the hordes, all armed with cameras in pursuit of a perfect temple sunrise—and head toward a less travelled destination:  Srah Srang.  Dug out nearly a thousand years ago, the 700 by 350 meter “pool of ablutions” once served as bathing grounds for Angkorian royalty. 

Our tuk-tuk grinds to a halt.  Between the masked moon and the now dimmed tuk-tuk headlight, we find ourselves staring into pitch black.  A girl’s voice suddenly breaks the sacred quiet of the sanctuary.

“You want coffee?”

Touts are commonplace outside every temple, born out of third world tourism, and always with something in hand to flog.

“No thank you.  I don't drink coffee,” I say, attempting respectful tolerance.

“Then you want tea?  Or maybe a shirt?  Trousers?  Books?”

We negotiate our way through darkness and touts to the water’s edge, where Jen finally agrees to tea.  A dozen other tourists are scattered around the sandstone terrace.  Elephantine steps lead down to the tranquil lake, while life-size lion statues sit regally beside us, their stoic stares awaiting the first reflections of dawn.  Pale light fills the overcast sky.  The sun never breaks through, but later I am thankful for a pleasantly cloudy afternoon.

We turn, and suddenly face our first truly spectacular sight of the day:  on the opposite horizon, the full moon is setting above the elaborate stone-carved gateway to Banteay Kdei.  Absorbed by the veiled sunrise, I didn’t notice the archway with its huge face in the rock gazing back at me.  Passing beneath the entrance—large enough to accommodate an elephant—feels like passing through a time portal.  Built around 1300 during the reign of King Jayavarman VII, the crumbling Buddhist monastery still retains its original masonry—countless corridors and bas-relief carvings.

I imagine following the solemn existence of a monk.  For centuries Buddhists roamed these halls; some still do, as evidenced by the sugary incense shedding smoke over cross-legged Buddhas.  Most walls hold carved Bodhi leaves and ornamental flowers, outlining sculptures of sensual apsara dancers and peculiar creatures from Hindu mythology:  Garuda, a man with the head of a bird, and his mortal enemy Naga, the giant, multi-headed serpent with a cobra hood.  In Cambodia’s past, Hinduism supplanted Buddhism, at least for a time, so their respective sculptures merge and overlap in most Angkor temples.  The exotic, entrancing stonework never seems to end, and the sun creeps well toward noon before we depart.

“Ta Prohm,” we tell our tuk-tuk driver.

He nods, and we shield our faces from the dust as we speed toward the next temple on our agenda, and the highlight of our two weeks in Cambodia.
On foot again, Jen and I cross the threshold of another imposing entry tower (called a gopura, meaning “gate with a face”) and flash our pass at the guard.  We make our way to the root-ridden central sanctuary.  A dozen stone towers materialize amongst the tapestry of green and yellow foliage.

“Oh my god,” Jen remarks, a common refrain at Ta Prohm.  “Oh my god.”

Most of the Angkor temples have been cleared of curious vines and invasive trees.  But here, tropical jungle has run amok, transforming Ta Prohm into a living exhibition of man versus nature.  The temple’s four concentric walls are riddled with visible roots belonging to century-old silk-cotton and strangler figs.  Their spiderweb branches stretch well above the tallest towers.  From a seed that found a patch of viable soil atop the laterite walls, tentacle-like roots—some of which are thicker than me—reach down through the crevices of masonry, dislodging huge cubic stones.

I have to find a secluded spot to sit and absorb the magnificent display.  The eroded wall next to me leans precariously to one side, like oversized lego blocks placed by a toddler’s hand.  Part of the upper half has already toppled, so I can see the detached, individual stones used in Ta Prohm’s construction.  Each of these huge grey bricks is far too large for even four men to carry.  I am lost in wonderment.  I am inspired and humbled by humankind’s remarkable and resolute mind.  Only the ants marching over the slabs of rock, an endless highway of workers, show a comparable determination to create such vast empires.  I think of the thousands of Khmers who laid down this temple’s foundation in 1186, all as a tribute to Jayavarman's mother, the former Queen.

Our busy schedule keeps us moving.  From there, we hit the three-tiered pyramid of Pre Rup, and then the vast complex of Preah Kahn, wandering the vaulted corridors of the antiquated Buddhist university.  But it is the ancient city of Angkor Thom that demands a more thorough exploration.

Here, the monuments and shrines are ubiquitous.  It takes a hundred steps to follow the continuous hunting scene sculpted in stone along the elephant terrace.  Phimeanakas, the royal palace, resides high above a daunting set of steep, shallow steps that only accommodate feet placed sideways.

Jen squints to see the top.  “I am not climbing that.” 

“We’ll find a way,” I say.  And we do.  I feel like Indiana Jones on the most elaborate set ever constructed.

The shaded and peaceful Preah Palilay, a solitary tower with huge trees growing like stubborn pillars right out of the crumbling foundation, is the perfect place to awaken everyone’s inner Buddha.  And then I spot the countless face-towers of the Bayon. 

From afar, the Bayon resembles a pile of unexciting, lichen-clad ruins.  Upon closer inspection, I realize the temple is watching me from all sides.  The thirty-seven preserved towers rise up above a labyrinth of dark chambers, arched corridors and treacherous stairways; colossal stone faces stare impassively from each, usually in all four cardinal directions, their original emotions long since eroded.  The stoic gaze of King Jayavarman follows my every step.  Is he welcoming me?  Or cursing me for trespassing?

“Angkor Wat?” our tuk-tuk driver inquires when we return.

I nod.  Jen and I have saved the biggest and boldest for last.

Angkor Wat was originally a Hindu temple, lost for centuries and rediscovered in 1860 by French adventurers.  Of course, the Cambodians knew it was there all along.  The temple has infiltrated almost every aspect of their culture, from the flag and currency to t-shirts and the national beer.

Leaving Angkor Thom, our driver yields to a train of oncoming elephants.  Soon Angkor Wat’s five summit towers become visible over the high tree line.  The main causeway of this grandiose 12th century temple holds hundreds of people, stretching across a moat with a six-kilometre perimeter.  Inside the main complex, endless arrays of bas-relief narratives showcase creation myths, historic processions, and godly battles.  Everywhere I look, another marvel:  nearly 2,000 carefully carved apsaras.  I want to touch one of those smooth, weathered bodies of stone, but stay my hand in order to preserve the feminine curves for future generations.  Where countless others have touched them for good luck, statue faces, bellies and breasts are blackened by skin oils.

Macaque monkeys scurry up the central temple-mountain, their lithe, tailed bodies silhouetted by the darkening sky.  The gathered crowd roars at their amorous antics.  Overwhelmed by the sheer immensity of the place, I crane my neck and gaze upward in awe at towers that have stood in solitude for almost a millennium.  Within the gargantuan walls of this grandest of creations, I feel like an ant from a visiting colony, very small and very out of place.  Yet I don’t want to leave. 

My soul quivers, shaken by the audacity of humankind to conceive and construct such a monument.  To haul huge masses of sandstone from the distant Kulen Mountains, stack them into structures both imposing and reverential, and meticulously carve every available surface is a testament to our species’ tenacious drive to create.

On our way out, the sun hugs the horizon.  Jen requests a final photo of us.  The closest available person is a white-haired French tourist.

“Je m’excuse… notre photo…s’il vous plaît?” Jen asks in halting French.

He laughs.  “I would be honoured.  With you, the temple, and the reflection, it will be perfect,” he responds in accented English, having not yet spotted me. 

Jen and I stand in front of the south pool.  The flirtatious but willing man snaps a shot of Angkor Wat reflected above us in the calm waters.  We thank him and venture back to our hotel in Siem Reap, utterly spent.

“Same time tomorrow?”

Jen flops on the bed but agrees, ready for another day of exploring Angkor from moonset to sundown.  In my exhausted state, I still manage to smile.  As I drift off to sleep, I see a vision of the day’s first temple—Banteay Kdei—as I walk through its grand gopura under the light of the full moon.  Truly one of the wonders of the world, the Cambodian temple ruins are a rare opportunity for an up-close, hands-on travel through time.

Tourists & Touts

The mob formed long before the bus stopped.  A tumult of hands shook above unruly faces.

“Sir!”

“Madam!” 

“You want tuk-tuk?”

I closed the curtain as the air-conditioned Mekong Express lurched to a halt in downtown Phnom Penh.  After six hours of relative comfort, we were confronted with a city of endless motos, muggy temperatures thirty-five degrees higher than home, and a sea of hungry touts.  They swarmed outside the bus door like caged wolves about to be fed. 

“If I go out there, I’m going to be molested!” Jen exclaimed.

So I went first.  A week in Cambodia had prepared me for such encounters.  As I stepped off the bus and waded through brown-skinned bodies, I avoided eye contact and asserted my favourite Khmer phrase:

“Ot tey awkun.”

Sadly, this is the most common phrase I uttered in Cambodia.  Ironically, whether in bus stations or outside temples, it was always in response to English.

“Where you go?”

“I have moto!”

“You want to buy?”

“Come, look inside my shop!”

“You want book?  Shirt?  Tablecloth?  Flute?  Water?  Coconut?”

No thank you. 

“If you ask me one more time I’m going to cry,” shouted one frustrated tourist, while waiting for the sunrise over the royal bathing waters of Srah Srang.

Jen and I were fortunate not to be offered sun-roasted cockroach, fried snake, or shrivelled bat, all readily available at scheduled bus stops.  Although after dusk, in the tourist-ridden beach town of Sihanoukville, perhaps lured by my long hair and beard, I was presented with more illicit items.

“You want smokes?  Weed?”

It was hard for me not to laugh in response.  Marijuana is traditionally used in some Khmer food—they call it ganga—although another option was Happy Herb Pizza just down the road.  Unfortunately for these dealers, this scruffy hippie throwback neither smokes nor drinks, let alone does any drug beyond the cocoa found in the most delicious narcotic:  chocolate.  I gave my standard response.

“Ot tey awkun.”

By answering in their language, the idea was they would recognize me as a more seasoned traveller, and less likely to concede to persistent pestering.  Cambodian vendors, touts, and tuk-tuk drivers have ready-made retorts to any negative response given by a tourist.

“I already have that.”  This one is different.  You can have two.  Buy one for your friend.

“I don’t have any money left.”  You say you have no money but you do.  I give you discount.  How much you pay?

“I don’t need trousers.”  Then you want shirt?  I have all sizes and colours.  Come look at my shop.

But when faced with their own language, they treat me more like a fellow Cambodian than a walking bag of money.  Their most common response?  “Ot tey awkun,” repeated back in a baffled voice.  And they turn away.

Except for the children. 

It is the children that break down one’s thick-skinned apathy.  When a seven-year-old in rags, holding a trinket in a listless hand, asked us to buy something we didn’t want for a meagre sum, it wasn’t easy to turn away.  She had a monotonous refrain, her tired tone painful, practiced and pitiable all at once. 

“You want to buy?  I have bracelets.”  That was all she carried.  “Three for a dollar.” 

As we walked away she followed, her offer escalating to fifteen bracelets for the same price.  “Ot tey awkun” didn’t faze her.  She had learned her selling phrases by rote, which she repeated over and over.  A grave sadness fell over me.  How many years would she do this for?  Would she ever go to school?  Perhaps selling to tourists was the most fruitful way to make a living.  How could I argue against her wanting to have money for food and other basic necessities?

I didn’t know what to say to the girl.  Jen saved me by accepting the offer; the girl scurried away clutching her dollar in hand. 

We saw her again a few minutes later.  She had another set of bracelets.  She saw us and smiled, her piteous facade gone as it was no longer required.  An older woman directed her toward another target.  The girl went forward, her face again transformed into that of a forlorn and forsaken homeless child.  I realized the she was following a very refined routine, her technique honed into an elaborate charade.  Looking and sounding destitute was a ploy designed to break through the toughest apathy and steeliest reserve. 

This is not to say they are not in need; but rather, their apparent need is embellished in order to prey on the heart of the good-natured.  Sometimes, you couldn’t tell the difference between a practiced act and genuine desperation.  Other times it was unmistakably evident.  Down in the coastal town of Sihanoukville, bronze-skinned amputees provided a stark contrast to the golden sand and crystal waters. 

Jen and I sat in papasan chairs at a beachside restaurant.  A delectable-sounding banana chocolate milkshake was on its way.  We looked out on paradise, the sun beating down on the warm waves of the Gulf of Thailand. 

From up the shore, a Cambodian woman trudged lethargically toward us under the beach umbrellas and chaise lounges.  Most tourists turned from her, pretending they couldn’t see or hear her plea for money or food.  Someone offered her water.  She filled up a metal bowl she was carrying.  Then I saw what was slowing her down.  Draped in her arms was her husband—or perhaps brother.  His body was unnaturally twisted, legs bent sideways.  Little more than a skeleton, he couldn’t bear his own weight.  She put her feet under his, and that was how they moved.  She got him to drink from the bowl.

When she past by our restaurant, I did as the other tourists did and avoided eye contact.  But I couldn’t stop the guilt.

What do you do in the face of such misery and misfortune?  One option is to go beyond the expected call of duty, become a monk or nun and devout your life to others.  Yet most, myself included, are not prepared to make such a sacrifice.  A more pragmatic way of coping is to close a part of yourself down, and ignore the existence of the destitute and poor.  If they aren’t there—at least in your chosen perception of things—then you won’t be bothered by them.  I have to admit to being selective in who I saw and who appeared invisible.  Unfortunately, shutting off my emotions was only a stopgap measure.  I feared doing so too often would smother a very human quality, one disregarded by men in our society far too often:  to feel.  To be entirely rational and logical is to be a machine.  To feel is human. 

When you visit a country such as Cambodia, you obviously have to be prepared for the products of poverty.  Yet you also have to recognize that beggars and touts are not only annoyances—they are people.  Reconciling these two is a difficult prospect; either your heart is so often torn that you have to stay holed up in your hotel, or you shut off your compassion and consideration, and hope you don’t fall too far into callous indifference.  In order to keep my sanity, I oscillated between the two.

Of course, there were times when you do want a tuk-tuk, or actually had genuine interest in a choice souvenir.  In those instances, the difficulty became deciding whom to buy from, and how much to pay.  When a tuk-tuk driver asked for ten times the standard fare, I had no qualms about refusing his services.  But I made a habit of paying an extra dollar or two to fair-minded drivers or waiters—half a day’s wages for them, and virtually a pittance for me. 

But the Cambodian who perhaps affected me most was someone I never spoke to.  At the bus stop selling snake and bat, an old man sat in the shade of a small tree.  Weak and emaciated, he looked aged more by experience than years.  A vacant expression marked his face, and his movements were slow.  With yellow eyes and dishevelled hair, he wore only one shoe and carried a gnarled walking stick.  The man spotted me from a distance; his eyes bulged, perhaps because of my long hair and beard, neither common for men in Cambodia.  Or perhaps he was seeing something else entirely, a dreadful vision brought on by mental illness or disease.

I gave him a couple thousand Riel.  Out of charity, or to appease my conscience?  Regardless, I can still see his yellow eyes, staring into the oblivion he’s trying to keep at bay.  I wonder how it feels to have a single concern:  how to stay alive for one more day.

Continue to "Genocide & Graffiti"