Angkorama

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I woke up relatively early in the morning of my second day in Cambodia, a nice partly cirrus-cloudy morning with no trace of the rain that came pouring down in the Siem Reap flatlands the night before, just after ten in the evening. Kampuchea is the Khmer translation of the westernized Cambodia. In French they say Kim - Budge but it is spelled Cambodge. I would’ve thought that the French pronunciation is Cam-bow-jay, but then again, my French is very poor, so that’s why I think that way. My personal way of pronouncing it though is Cam - Bodge, like abode, except with a trailing ‘ge’ sound at the end, like hodge-podge.

High School French

Writing about how the French say Cambodge or Cambodia is a little tricky for me because the pronunciation and the accent are just too difficult for me to imitate. French is a hell of a language to learn and I had the toughest time trying to learn it in high school. Every high school kid in America was, or still is, required to take at least two years of foreign language. Our high school offered Spanish and French. I thought Spanish was boring so I took French, and failed miserably. I still managed to get an A in the class but that was because the teacher was so incompetent that if she really gave everyone an honest grade, a grade that they really deserved, the entire class would have failed. Instead of failing everyone and accepting the fact that she was indeed a terrible and incompetent teacher she tried to mask the truth and gave everyone an A. That was lucky for me because it looked good on my college application even though I couldn’t speak a word of French to save my life.

Cambodia was once a French colony, and you know how the French love monuments, structures of eloquence, architecture, things of that nature. They worship all that refined and civilized living, and would rather preserve those things than fight a war.

Please, kill our children and rape our women, but leave our Champs-Elysees alone

. The Nazis practically walked all over them during WWII, the big one, as Archie Bunker would say. The Americans had to go in there and save their snotty little asses, and the French resent that to this day. They resent having been saved by the Americans. The would have proudly died a “heroic” death to keep their Champs-Elysees intact than be saved by those brash, loud, obnoxious, unrefined, and uncultivated barbaric Americans.

The French think Americans are “exotic”. That’s a euphemism for brash, loud, obnoxious, unrefined, and uncultivated. Nowadays, whenever a Frenchman starts acting snotty and holier than thou towards an American the American simply responds with

Pardon me sir, do you speak German?

The Frenchman, unaware of the trap, responds with

No, of course not

.

You’re welcome

, the American would reply firmly and absolutely, with nose up in the air, and proudly walk away while whistling God Bless America.

French Reconstruction

But the French did save their Champs-Elysees though. The French also did a terrific job of preserving and restoring the ruins of Angkor. These are the kind of things that the French are good at, and thank god for that, because it allowed the inhabitants in the surrounding area of Siem Reap to profit from the tourist boom that the Temples of Angkor are now experiencing, and had experienced in the past when the French started the reconstruction. They practically created a whole new branch of scholarship based on Khmer civilization. Then Cambodia got caught in the trap of the Vietnam War and suffered for it through four years of the Khmer Rouge nightmare and the subsequent civil war that went on for several years that finally ended in 1997. So now things are stabilized and Cambodia is a safe place to visit. So is Vietnam and Laos, and they surely will benefit from the tourist boom because of its easy access from Thailand, the Europeans’ gateway to Southeast Asia.

I had breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant, the FCC, on the second floor of the French-Colonial mansion, which is the main building of the FCC’s compound. The time on my watch said 7:30 AM or something close to that but the whole town was already up and bustling since at least 6:30 AM. The skies are partly cirrus-cloudy and the temperature is already up in the mid-70s Fahrenheit. On Pokambor Street down below motorists in their cars, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and bicycles pass by as I ate my breakfast of Khmer style rice porridge, tropical fruits, and a cup of tea. I sipped my tea slowly and gently while watching the early morning traffic, enjoying the laid back atmosphere and absorbing the hot and humid air.

At 8:30 AM I headed out to the temple area with my own privately hired tuk-tuk for the day. The hotel had arranged it for me, which cost US$10. The morning street vendors are already bustling with customers on Angkor Wat Road, the road that leads to most of the temples of Angkor. Kids in blue and white school uniforms are either walking to school or pedaling an old rusty bicycle that look like they had been manufactured in the 70s. We pass by a few tuk-tuks carrying loads of tourists to the temple area. Other tuk-tuks, cars, vans, and buses pass us by, carrying many, many more loads of tourists for temple sightseeing. We pass by a group of European tourists pedaling the same old 70s rusty bikes that the school kids were riding to school, except these Euro-fags weren’t going to school. They rented those bikes for “one doughla onlee” a day to ride to and around the temple area. I must admit, I love taking pot shots at Europeans because, well, they’re Europeans. They listen to Euro-fag techno music, they're Anti-American, and their old way of thinking is becoming extinct; the era of socialism is over because it was an utter experimental failure in governance. America rules, and will rule some more in the near and far future, for years to come, until the next millennium comes around, when the Chinese will dominate and destroy the world as we know it today.

When the midday sun rises high up in the sky and takes its full scorching effect, I will be very glad that I hired a tuk-tuk shaded with a roof, and not pedaling an old rusty bike. The whole temple compound isn’t really gated, other than the original walls and gates that was built with the structures themselves, but halfway up the Angkor Wat road is a toll plaza with booths where you pay the entrance fee to the temples. Most of the big and popular temples will have guards to check for entrance passes, otherwise you can’t get in from the main entrance, but you can probably enter through the shrubs and bushes out on the wayside if you’re a cheapskate. For chrissakes, don’t be an idiot, you might just hurt yourself for a few pennies saved, so pay the fee. That’s being pennywise and pound foolish, as they say. It’s US$20 for one day and US$40 for a three day pass, which isn’t that bad. Three days is probably not enough to really see and study the temples and appreciate its magnificence appropriately. Some people spend a lifetime studying and culling the place, and even that’s not enough. Unfortunately, for many tourists, they only have three days at most, although I get to spend a little more time than that. I paid US$60 for a one-week pass. I did not have a photo with me but the toll plaza now have digital cameras and will take your photo for free and electronically embed the image onto your pass, so that’s no longer an issue, whereas in the past, in order to speed up the process, especially with a gazillion tourists lining up to buy a pass, bringing a passport sized photo was advised by all the major tourist guides; Lonely Planet, Rough Guides, Insight Guides, Fodor’s, and all that heap of garbage, which were rarely accurate. After I paid my pass at the toll plaza we made our way to the first stop, the grandest of them all, Angkor Wat.

Relentless Khmer Kids

As my tuk-tuk chugs along from the north side we approach the large moat, which at this time of the year is filled up high to the brim with water. In the dry season the water is shallow, almost down to the very bottom that you can actually see the shrubbery underneath at the bottom of the moat. We turn left on the paved road going west along the waters edge. To our left are the Khmer vendors in huts of makeshift stores and restaurants with bamboo tables and plastic chairs, waiting for the next wave of tourists to drop by for a drink, a few snacks, a full meal, or simply to buy some knick-knacks. After a few hundred yards or so we turn right and head north to the main entrance of Angkor Wat.

The main entrance of Angkor Wat is full of vendors, hawkers, and touts. The touts are mostly children no older than the age of twelve. Tuk-tuks are lined up everywhere, either waiting for their passengers who’ve hired them for the day, like me, or simply waiting for uncommitted passengers who need a ride back to town, or anywhere else for that matter. They will take you to the moon if you pay them enough. The vendors are selling the usual knick-knacks, scarves, Khmer handicrafts, miniature statues and the like. As soon as I got off the tuk-tuk about twenty kids rushed up to me and ferociously hawked their stuff at me.

Sir, wattah, one doughlah onlee.

Sir, guide book, twentee doughlah.

Sir, postcard, one doughlah okee.

I am sure that my writing isn’t accurately capturing the spirit and the raucousness of the atmosphere that these kids create, not to mention the pattern of their speech and their accents, but you get the idea. A throng of kids yakking away broken English phrases and shouting dollar values of the stuff they’re hawking at me is quite a challenge to the senses. I was overwhelmed. I couldn’t resist. They surrounded me like buzzards on a dead body, and would not let me go until I bought something, anything, from them. The other tourists were looking at me and laughing, as if to say they’ve been there and thank god that it’s you now and not me. This is my first day at the temples and it probably showed because I have not mastered the art of deflecting and avoiding.

My first mistake was to greet the throng of kids politely. As soon as you show even a tiny bit of interest in them they've got you, they’ll surround you, they will hawk their wares relentlessly at you, and they will never let you go as long as you are still holding on to that “doughlah” that they see bulging out of your tourist pocket. If you’ve never been to the Temples of Angkor, you don’t know what relentless is.

Sir, postcard, one doughlah okee.

Every step I took, every breath I took, they were right in front of me, watching me, spying me, ready to pounce on my vulnerable side, which is saying no to kids. My tuk-tuk driver was smiling, understanding my naiveté. This was my initiation to the Temples of Angkor.

Sir, a drink for you driver.

Another clever tactic. Here’s my driver in front of me, sweating like a dog, me looking like a sap and a prey. I relented. I couldn’t escape from the grasp of these kids. They had used every trick at their disposal to make me give up some of my cash. They weren’t rotten kids, really. They were probably made to hawk these things by their parents. They were polite and courteous and acted like they were happy to have met me, and will be even happier to have met me if I bought an item from each one of them.

Sir, fruit juice, one doughlah, two doughlah okee too.

There it is again, “two doughlah okee too”. How can that be? One dollar would be okay, two dollars would be expensive, not okay. One little girl gave me that sad look on her face as if the fate of her existence depends on a single transaction with me, like her family will starve if I didn’t buy anything from her, and said

Sir, wattah, one bottle, one doughlah

, and followed me around, whichever direction I walked.

Sir, very hot, need wattah, one doughlah

she said, and raised an index finger on one hand and a bottle of water on the other, and still posing that my family will starve if you don’t buy anything from me sad look on her face. Now, you would have got to be one heartless sumbitch if you were confronted with such guilt inducing encounter and not have any blood come pouring out from the very bottom of your heart. So I bought the bottle of water from the little girl. That was only the beginning though because once I gave her the dollar she hawked even more stuff at me, and it encouraged the other kids from pushing their wares at me even more.

Sir, guide book, very good, only twentee doughlah

.

I took a look at the book, another mistake, because as far at that kid was concerned that book was mine, and all he had to do was collect the money, and all I had to do was bring the price down to less than twenty dollars. The book looked informative, a bit glossy, priced at US$27, and written by some French expert on the subject from the Ecole Francaise d’Extreme Orient, which sounds like some hoity-toity place in French academe’, and an American photographer, although it’s hard to know if the guy really is American, but the background information says he’s from Michigan, and he’s name sounds American, so I think that assumption can be justified. The reason the kid hawked it at me for only twenty dollars is because it is most certainly used and have been resold to the locals by some tourist at barrel bottom price, and now being hawked back at me for probably three times what they paid for it, so twenty was a good price to start for the kid, and I was up against paying more than at least twice of what they paid for it after the tourist had resold it to them.

Twenty? That’s too much. I’ll give your ten

, I said.

No, cannot, no profit

, the kid replied. That’s horse manure of course, and the kid knew. I could see it in his smile.

I will pay nor more than ten dollars for this book

I said, and handed the book back to the kid. He wasn’t taking it back, so we haggled some more.

Sir, cannot, no profit. Eighteen doughlah.

Alright, twelve

I said. This haggling went on for about five more minutes until we finally negotiated it down to US$16. The kid won that battle because I’m no good at haggling. I give in too easy. I paid my money and started walking towards the main entrance to Angkor Wat. The kids were still following me even though I had already spent close to twenty dollars on bottles of water, a postcard, and the guidebook. Even the kids in Tijuana hawking Chiclets at me did not come close to the ferocity of these kids.

Alright, I’m all out of money

I finally said to the kids. They all replied with

I don’t believe you.

The other tourist looked back at me and laughed, but I was finally able to free myself up from these enterprising little squirts and head up towards the west entrance of the temple, Angkor Wat.

West Entrance

The main entrance to the shrine of Angkor Wat is from the west side. This has some meaning, and whether it’s astrological or mystical is still not clear to the experts, although there’s no shortage of hypotheses. I don’t really care much for astrology or mysticism, I only care about a good time, and a good time to me is looking at strange and wonderful things, like people, especially Europeans, and also temples in the middle of a jungle, like the temples of Angkor. It starts out by crossing a very long causeway across a body of water that surrounds the compound, a moat. The causeway is a rectangular stone made path about ten yards wide although only three quarters of it have been reconstructed. Half way across the causeway are terraces with staircases down to the water, the purpose of it being accessibility to the water down to the moat, I think, although I’m not sure. The cool thing, or strange thing, about the whole compound is that every entrance will always have a statue of strange looking figures, like a multi-headed serpent they call a naga, man-bird garuda, or a Khmer statue with mean faces. Parts of the causeway have balustrades. I suppose the whole causeway was once bordered on its sides by balustrades to prevent people in ancient Khmer civilization from falling into the water while walking along the causeway, perhaps highly inebriated, having great difficulty walking a straight line.

After crossing the long causeway, a five-minute walk because I like to walk slow and absorb everything in, feel the vibe, and be one with my own environment. If you think that sounds highly pretentious, then you are one hundred percent correct, and to be honest with you, that’s not really the reason why I walk slow. The simple reason of why I walk slow is because I’m lazy. I entered through the kingdom of Heaven that is also known as Angkor Wat. The entrance itself is fantastically grand. This is the central pavilion with a cruciform terrace, which give access inside the fourth enclosure. There are three entrances; one central and two annexes. The central entrance is large enough supposedly so that elephants, which were used to haul in all the raw materials to build this temple, can pass through. The central pavilion is elaborately carved out to a very fine detail. During this time however, some reconstruction or preservation work is being done to the central entrance and thus, I wasn’t able to actually go in there and take pictures, so all the tourists had to enter through the annexes. This is only the beginning though because there is more, and much of it is repetitive, just like my writings. Now, that made me feel a little bit better, having been validated of the virtues of repetitiveness. The farther you go in and penetrate the compound the more it shrinks into smaller and smaller squares of similarly designed structures. It’s quite fascinating, really.

So off I go inside the fourth enclosure. There are throngs of tourists everywhere from every part of the world; Europeans, the hated Americans, some South Americans, Indians from India, and lots of Asians. There are no Indians from North America though, not as far as I can see, and I’m talking about Cherokee or Navajo type Indians, not the Indians from India who immigrated to North America. I’m a bit miffed at the usage of the term the Indian in the American parlance. Back in the days of my youth, when you say Indian or someone was an Indian, people clearly understood what that meant; Native American, not peoples from the East who enjoy spicy food and Vishnu worshipping. Nowadays when you say Indian there’s an Ambiguity. Do you mean Indian from India with red dots on their forehead or the Wigwammers? My fondness for Indians of the Tonto variety goes way back to my childhood days when playing Cowboys and Indians. I always played the Indian, and I painted my face with red and white Cherokee colors and a red and white band on my forehead with a feather in the back. I whup the kids who played Cowboy mercilessly with my toy bow and arrow, really fun stuff, pure and unadulterated. But when it came to football however, and I’m talking about the NFL, the National Football League of the good-ole US of A, none of that ball kicking stuff that Europeans and the rest of the world love so much, I rooted for the DALLAS COWBOYS. In that sense, my heroes have always been cowboys.

Once past the fourth enclosure the grandeur of the temple is even clearer and much more evident. Like the causeway outside that led to the central entrance, there is another smaller causeway inside that leads to the temple a quarter of a mile ahead. This inner causeway has a similar design as the outer causeway but is in a much better condition. The round columned balustrades are still left intact while the outer causeway has very little of it left. I walk along the causeway with twenty other tourists, and like me, their cameras are already whipped out and clicking away like you’ve never seen people click before in your life. The marvel of digital cameras. Point and click, point and click! School girls from Australia, housewives from Georgia, and working stiffs from everywhere with their handy-dandy cameras point and click away like there’s no tomorrow. And I do the same doggone thing of course, because I’m an idiot just like the rest of these sonsabitches.

After taking a couple more snapshots of the façade ahead I walk again, slowly and leisurely, and whip out my camera to point and click every now and then whenever I see something interesting or slightly entertaining, like tourists posing with broad wide grins in front of a statue or the main façade of Angkor Wat. The sun begins to rise higher up in the sky. It’s approximately ten in the morning now and the searing heat is beginning to take its effect. Beads of sweat are starting to seep out of the pores of my skin. It’s a good thing I bought a couple of bottles of water from the kids outside, otherwise I would soon be suffering from dehydration. Like the outer causeway outside there is also a terrace and a staircase with naga balustrades halfway across the inner causeway, except that instead of the staircase leading down to the water, they lead down to a small identically designed cruciform structures on either side. These structures look like mirror images of each other. They are called Libraries but not of the type used for scholarly research as we know a library to be. It’s too small for storing books. It was probably used more for meditation back in the old days. Twenty yards ahead of the libraries are two huge pools on either side of the causeway, and like everything else around this compound, are like mirror images of each other. It is a popular spot for tourists to point and click away because of its vantage point to the Angkor Wat structure, the five corncob towers fully visible above the immaculately carved out façade. The symmetry of the structures is amazing.

Bas-Relief inside Angkor Wat

I know nothing about Hindu mysticism and all the symbolism represented inside this temple. I am just amazed at the extraordinary symmetry and repetitiveness of the whole structure and the very fine details of the stonewall carvings that the French call bas-relief. Now, as most of you may know, you highly knowledgeable and astute followers of my critically acclaimed and award winning travelogue, like all French words, it’s not actually pronounced the way it’s spelled. I overheard a couple speaking French, so I casually approached them and made small talk; where you from, this and that, boring stuff. That wasn’t the reason why I tried to be friendly with them of course. I was curious as to what this bas-relief business was all about and most important of all, how to pronounce the doggone word. So I asked them.

Baah-Ri-Leef

What? They said it in such a French manner, with nasally accents and all. Are you kidding me? I said this to myself, I didn’t say that to the frogs. They tend to get snotty if you mispronounce words in French. The way I say Chopin (like shoppin’) probably sounds like fingernails scratching a chalkboard to these people. So I just nodded and pretended that I understood. One thing about the French though. They can be really cool people if they want to be, and these two were really nice people, at least they were to me. They talked about restoration and preservation techniques, things I knew nothing about, and explained patiently how some original materials are superimposed with new materials to preserve the structures and provide stability so that the whole compound would not crumble, burying all the sappy tourists underneath while pointing and clicking away obliviously. It turned out that the French couple have an active interest in archeology and things of that nature, especially Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia. These too could’ve talked for hours if I let them but I was clever. I made an excuse of having to go to the bathroom. Can’t hold a man from going to the John. It works every time.

Even though the whole Angkor Wat temple looks complex in design there are two themes that seems to stand out for me; symmetry and repetition. The layout of Angkor Wat is framed as follows. First you have a quarter mile wide moat as your first level of protection, I think, although I’m not sure. I’m just guessing because usually that’s the purpose of having a moat, to serve as a barrier against the barbarians and to deter people from even thinking about trespassing. Then you have a wall as an added barrier against these attackers from the outside world in case the trespassers happen to overcome the wide moat as the first level of protection. The fourth enclosure wall is abut fifty feet high, at least, so if the barbarians happen to be good swimmers and can cross the moat with no problem, then they surely will have difficulty climbing over a fifty-foot wall. The causeway is for regular traffic, not for intruders, and I’m sure it was guarded back in the day. The second level of protection is another wall about a quarter mile away from the first level of protection, with a causeway of a similar type and design from the first one. Now, do you see a pattern of symmetry and repetition? I do, and I have no doubt that the rulers of Angkor back in the day, like the famed Jayavarman II & VII, appreciated repetition and symmetry. This symmetry and repetition theme continues up the central structure.

Inside the third enclosure, or the second level of protection in my interpretation, is another cruciform structure, this time a cloister, with four empty pools or basins, around it. Far off in the distance on either side are identically designed mirror image libraries. Symmetry and repetition. There must be something spiritual about this theme and I’m glad that I have an affinity for them. The compound begins to shrink as you go up the higher level, into the second enclosure, then the first enclosure and finally, the central structure. The stone steps are steep and climbing it is not recommended for grandmothers and housewives from Georgia. The tourism board in Cambodia know this, so to accommodate the common tourist they’ve installed wooded steps to make it easy for the rest of us.

I could go on and on about this whole place, and I haven’t even started yet. There are the galleries with thousands of bas-reliefs, symbolisms, astrological meanings, mysticisms, and the like. Unfortunately there isn’t enough space in the whole wide world to express all of it if I really wanted to write to no end about Angkor Wat, so this entry will have to be shortened, and end right here.

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Photos

West Entrance to Angkor Wat
Here we go now. See the corncob towers behind me.

Towards the 3rd enclosure
Early in the morning on the west side of Angkor Wat.

Inside by the cruciform cloister
I am standing next to one of the four empty pools/basins off to the side of the cruciform cloister inside the third enclosure.

Cloister Pool
At the bottom of the empty pool by the cruciform cloister with some unknown tourist looking on and amused of my pretentious pose in the pool.

Inside the 2nd enclosure
This is one of the many galleries of bas-reliefs all over the temple-city-state-universe of Angkor Wat.

Mugging for the Cameras
One of my fellow tourists brethren took this picture of me inside the second enclosure.

More of Me
In front of the steps of one of the corner towers that surrounds the central structure of Angkor Wat.

Intricate Detail
This did not happen by accident. The whole complex was carved out intricately to its finest nanoscale detail.

Apsara Dancing Queen
This Apsara Dancer graciously posed for photos whenever a tourist pointed a camera towards her.

Steep Climb
The stone steps that leads to the first enclosure and the central tower is steep and dangerous. Thus the wooden steps, so tourist wouldn't fall and hurt themselves.

Corner Tower
Notice how the clouds look like smoke coming out of the tower.

Corner Concob Tower
Notice the immaculate carvings of the structure

Inside the Second Enclosure
Tourists taking pictures

Tourist Photo
There were plenty of Japanese tourists on a package tour. You seldom see Asian tourists alone. They always travel in big groups on a packaged deal and stay in places like the Le' Meridian Spa and Resort.

By the Pool
A view of the temple from the left side pool, a popular spot for photo ops, especially in the afternoon during the magic hour.

Twistin by the pool
That's me, looking exhausted after walking around the compound for three straight hours. That's not enough by the way, there's more to see.