Consumed by the Jungle

On Saturday, we attempted to be at the temple for dawn.  People line the outer wall of the moat, dangling their legs over a mirror image of the sky that morphs from black to a gray-blue.  In our case, sadly, there were no other colors really involved, just a slow march through about 10 shades of gray.  As I mentioned, though, the dawn light is great for temple-viewing, so we scurried inside Angkor Wat for another self-guided tour.  Carvings that has seemed worn beyond recognition the day before picked up definition and were identifiable.  Other eager dawn tourists trickled in, savoring moments when they had a corner the temple to themselves.  We didn't spend long at Angkor Wat, though, since we were to meet for breakfast and join up with our guide at the restaurant.  Our guide was a mild-mannered man named Mr. Et Samet who grew up within the temple complex because, well, that's where his village was.  I had my reservations at first because of his rather basic explanations and difficulty finding the right words in English, but he proved to be a good companion for the temples and provided a really interesting, personal perspective.

We began with Angkor Thom, which basically means Big City (Thom, pronounced Tom, is also an endearing name for people here who are chubby).  Angkor Thom is a huge complex of buildings and used to have a huge city of wooden buildings (as well as a wooden palace) built outside of the temples.  Our first building was a pyramid temple, with steep steps (the steeper the holier - what a terrible idea) leading up a fairly narrow building to the top, where a Buddha sat within a walled enclosure.  This stop ended up being far longer than expected due to Chris's intense fear of heights, which only struck once he had reached the top, but we managed to coax him down.  In his defense, it was a REALLY steep climb and the steps were partially worn away.  From there we proceeded to the other buildings of the Angkor Thom complex, which ranged from a small shiva linga (which includes fairly suggestive male and female parts and represents fertility) to a huge temple with 49 enormous pillars rising up into the air.  Each pillar - as well as the five other pillars decorating the five gates - has four sides, each with a giant face.  The effect is incredibly powerful.  We later found out that each face is a combination of Jayavarman VII's face and that of Buddha, which seems a little narcissistic but seems truly self-indulgent when you realize this image was repeated 216 times.  I also can't help but think of those weird online baby face generators that couples can use to "see" what their children would look like.  Angkor Thom also had great bas-reliefs of everyday scenes, from men playing chess to midwives assisting at births to jungle dwellers being terrorized by or snaring wild beasts.

Midwifery

The consumption of vast quantities of alcohol

After Angkor Thom, we went to several other temples along the outer loop, including my personal favorite, the jungle temple.  As I mentioned in my last post, this is where part of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed ("the place in Cambodia where the rare type of jasmine grows").  It was incredible and I instantly fell in love with the place.  I loved the way that nature has reclaimed the place, becoming so integrated with the stones of the ruins that for them to fall or be torn up would destroy the temple and its foundation.  So they stay there, some even being supported by posts for fear that they will topple and bring everything else down with them.  It was so beautiful, this strange relationship.

Finally, our last stop was Angkor Wat.  We approached from the east (the back), passing the elephant-dismounting place of the king (hint: there are no steps there!) and entering one of the long corridors filled with bas-reliefs.  Unlike at Angkor Thom, where the bas-reliefs were of everyday life, the reliefs at Angkor Wat are of historical event and famous stories like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.  In the scenes of historical battle, people's importance is indicated by the number of parasols they have (note: the king was less important than the "guru", or religious leader).  In the scenes of famous stories, many of the gods and other main characters are identifiable by their steeds, since each god had its own identifiable species.  There was also a wall-long (read: very long) relief of the 37 heavens and 32 hello sandwiching depictions of everyday life.  These three levels ran parallel the length of the wall, and man was hell brutal.  The bas reliefs exhibited incredible detail, as well as shiny bits where people had clearly done temple rubbings.

And now, a bit more about Samet.  While he couldn't proffer incredibly deep revelations about the meanings of the carvings (beyond what was found in a cursory read through the Wikipedia article), Samet had grown up with these temples.  He had picked mangos in his uncle's mango grove inside the complex, swum across the moat to pick up his cows at the end of the day, slept with his brother atop a temple used as a military watch point when his brother was guarding against the Japanese, skinned bats (and stuffed then with salt and garlic and roasted them) at Angkor Wat, and all sorts of things.  At night, he still fishes with some friends - only to eat and not to sell, as that is all that is legal.  He knew the temples in a way that we would never know them, as a sort of home.  He knew them before regulations prevented cattle from grazing or mangos from being officially grown inside the temple walls.  And that's pretty cool.

After 14 hours at the temple (yep!) and our plans for a mid-afternoon nap dashed, we settled in for another attempt at a sunset.  And we were rewarded.  No, it was not out in its full glory, but it was a beautiful end to an incredible day.

 (We pulled over on our way home to capture this photo, because the depending sunset was so beautiful)

Dinner was at a hippie ex-pat haven called Peace Cafe that served delicious food.  Definitely go!

Spotted: Cambodian tour guide licenses.  They cost about $3,000 to get get and the person must have completed all 12 years of education and done the necessary lessons to learn the language of guiding.  Once they get to be a guide, though, the money is great (relatively, of course).  As with the other vendors and such, they are at the whim of the high and low seasons, though.  English, being commonly taught (they learn it in school, though most people have few opportunities to practice) is the cheapest tour ($25/hour) but tours in certain other languages like German or Chinese cost almost double ($45/hour).

In general, though, the language proficiency of people was incredible.  Some knew enough to haggle in 5 languages - between the four people in our group we could cover a lot of ground.