CAMBODIA

Angkor Wat & Siem Reap 

What is it to go from the heart of Tokyo, through Singapore, and land at an airport the size of a postcard, then travel 4km by tuk tuk to the hotel in Siem Reap? It’s a shift of scale and speed, and of the immediacy of life: Thin cows tethered with thin ropes graze at the roadside, close enough to touch. The air is a consuming 90F with 70% humidity. Tuk tuks and scooters carry people, often 3 or 4 at a time with a kid who looks to just old enough to walk standing at handlebars, a brother or sister, age maybe 8 or 9 driving from behind. No one stops at intersections, rather, the slow, steady flow of traffic pours along the streets weaving around itself in pools and eddies. I discovered after a day of walking through town that it’s easier to cross the street by making sure I’m not about to collide with anyone in that first step off the curb, and then figuring out the rest on the fly. Step into the river and be taken by the current. 

Siem Reap is about two things:Temples and tourism. Which may really be just one thing but for the sake of categorizing the temples as sacred and the tourism that drives the downtown service economy as secular, I’ll make the distinction. To arrive is to participate. Though USD is widely accepted and most prices are quoted in dollars one of the fist things I did was find an ATM and acquire Cambodian riel. I don’t know if I can drink the water. I don’t know if I can plug my laptop into the wall. I don't know if I can eat the plate of dazzling hot pink dragon fruit I'm offered when checking in to my hotel, but it's gorgeous and I want to, so potential GI distress be damned, I do.

I know zero words in Khmer, which is a beautiful but inscrutable ribbon-candy language that loops and scrolls across the signage here. I have no plans other than to visit Angkor Wat, and 4 days to figure the rest out. I talked to some Australians who assured me I could plug my laptop into the wall, and who suggested a few places to visit and eat. I did some research, booked a few tours, bought some lighter clothes, and ventured out to the temples. 

The way to see the temples is to hire a tuk tuk driver for the day, stopping at 5 or 6 different temples including the main complex at Angkor Wat. That's where I started. It was a swelteringly hot day and I carried my umbrella for shade but started sweating the minute Mr. Kheng stopped the tuk tuk where the road ends 500 yards before the temple entrance. Crossing the bridge over the temple moat I understood why so many people visited the temple at sunrise rather than mid-morning. Carvings decorate almost all of the visible surfaces of the stone temples. They're ordate depictions of various scenes from Hindu (and later Buddhist) religious texts, carved by hand, and have withstood endless weathering since being new-struck sometime during the 12th century. My favorite temple is Ta Keo, which is a 5-tiered step-pyramid designed to resemble Mt. Meru, the intersecting center of physical, metaphysical, and spiritual universes in Hindu and Buddhist traditions. I climbed huge stone steps to the top where sticks of incense are burning at the foot of a Buddha and I can finally feel a breeze. In some temples the stone is falling where ficus roots grow like thick snakes grow between the cracks and canopies unfurl overhead. Some temples are dank and quiet and water sits in pools here and there. The chocolate-milk moat water could be full of gaiters, or vipers, or pythons, but those appear only in my imagination. 

After a long day of wandering amid ancient, sacred stone I came across the metallic, melodic but slightly out of tune music from an active temple. Half a dozen musicians sat at collections of bells and xylophone-like chimes that weren't quite a gamelan but were close. Candles and incense burned under the roof of the temple and visitors sang and shared blessings. Someone played the drums. I sat down on the stones supporting one of the columns of the open structure and took it in for a while. Monkeys and some kids played in the grass while the beautiful but slightly hypnotic and strange music clamoured on. 

I visited a medicine man and a Shaman in a local village. My guide for the trip was a man my age named Sothy who grew up in a village about an hour outside of Siem Reap. He left home at the age of 12 or so to make money in Thailand. He was a boxer among other things despite being my same height and having maybe 30 lbs on me. He came home years later with the equivalent of $6,000 USD, which he used to build his parents a house on stilts, preventing it from flooding when the rains came. He told me that if you ever have to cross water and can't swim, hang on to the tail of a water buffalo because they keep them up while swimming; cows let them sink. I can only imagine how he learned.

Cambodia is a place of sound, vibrance, and water. There's music everywhere, from chanting and bells at the temples to the all-night open-air club scene on Pub Street. The two cycle hop of tuk tuk engines and the insect-like drone of scooters is the soundscape of Siem Reap. There are very few cars. The food is lush and fragrant with ginger, garlic, and citrus and presented with a veritable garden of fresh aromatic leaves to wrap with egg pancake, ground pork, and shrimp. Night is the best time to walk by the river because it's so still the lights are reflected in a perfect mirror image from the opposite bank. Getting caught in the rain is like standing under a fire hose. Water floods the streets in a matter of minutes. Tuk tuk and scooter drivers wrap themselves in plastic rain gear and just keep going. People really do wear colorful silk pajamas as regular dress--not everyone, but you can see it as soon as you know to look. 

The legacy of the Khmer Rouge is palpable among the Cambodian people. Until just one year before I was born the regime held power in Cambodia, and roughly 25% of the nation's population parrished though isolationist policies that prevented the treatment of diseases like malaria or was outright exterminated through genocide. People just a few years older than I am are missing limbs due to unwittingly detonating landmines that were scattered plentifully across the country. Survivors sit outside the temples of Angkor Wat and play music, some with instruments tied to truncated limbs. They ask me to buy a CD, which I don't have a way to play anymore. Siem Reap is a town of people making a life for themselves without much formal education. Some of the hotel staff learned English from the Buddhist monks at the temple in town, others practice with tourists like me. Everywhere I walk people call to me "you need tuk tuk?" "hello lady you need something?" "you get massage lady?". At first I don't like the attention. It really is constant. But then I smile, put two hands together at my chest, make a small bow and walk on. No one is offended; it's just the way of things. Smile and a small bow and walk on. Everyone bows here. You thought they had the market on bowing cornered in Japan--and maybe they do in terms of formality--but everyone does it here too. So much bowing. So much thank you (akun), thank you very much (akun charan). I like everyone I meet. They seem kind and honest. The hotel staff know me by name and wave when I walk by. They tell me their names are Bunny, Butterfly, Po, Lily, and Tiri, which are simplified versions of what they're really called. Mr. Kheng takes me to the airport when I leave. It's sad to go. They're moving the airport 50km outside of Siem Reap at the end of the month because this small airport close to town can't land larger aircraft without potentially damaging Angkor Wat. No more 15 minute tuk tuk rides between downtown and the airport with Mr. Kheng driving. No more light rain in the air helping to clear the jet lag  while watching a new world, so immediate from the road, unfolding one turn at a time. I am lucky to have arrived when I did.