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Published: November 3rd 2008
Well, it is Monday and there are only three more days of classes here in Cambodia before everyone departs for further training in their respective countries. While part of me feels that I should describe at least in some detail how the classes are going before they come to an end (what we are learning, aspects that are challenging and so forth), a considerably greater part of me feels that I should instead recap our incredible excursion last weekend to the temples of Angkor, especially since it involves an incident in which I almost perished. So know that classes are going well, and I will try to touch on them a bit later.
Angkor is an ancient city made up of various temples built over a thousand years ago by a long succession of Khmer kings. The northward journey from Phnom Penh to the city of Siem Reap in which Angkor is now located takes about seven to eight hours by bus and so we left early on Friday. The night before had been a long and fuzzy one indeed on occasion of our instructor Steve’s birthday. A boat had been rented, alcohol provided, bad decisions encouraged; it was as
if those responsible had planned ahead of time for us to have the most miserable travel-day possible. Consider it sufficient to say that the bus next morning smelled like spilled garbage in a distillery; the driver might have actually caught a buzz from our fumes because we got turned around several times before eventually pulling up to our hotel in Siem Reap.
After an early-to-bed for almost everyone, we awoke to discover that a storm had passed through during the night and the streets were flooded with water. We hopped back on the wretched bus and plowed through the channels to pick up our tour guide before continuing on to Angkor. The guide was a smartly dressed man named Sim who spoke English quite well, which presented a problem once we realized that he planned to spend the day not only impressing the group with history of ancient Angkor but also sharing dirty Cambodian phrases he had translated to English. Driving past several five-star hotels, the tour spiel unpredictably swung to what one would ask for if a prostitute was desired (“Boom Boom”). Then he asked us all if we liked Boom Boom. Nobody quite knew what to say
and so, to avoid an uncomfortable silence, I shouted out, “I sure like Boom Boom!” to which he responded, without blinking an eye, “Boom Boom big nipple?”
It was then I decided that I must invest in a quote-book for the remainder of my travels.
The temples of Angkor all are relatively close to one another so we were able to cover a good number of them over the course of the day. In complete disregard to the instructions we were given that morning, half of us left Sim and the tour group at the first opportunity and permitted ourselves free reign over the temple ruins. In my defense, I’ve always been something of a wanderer and while one might learn a lot of history staying with a guide, I feel that it’s oftentimes more fun to explore the unknown. Fellow LanguageCorps members Chris and Josh shared this sentiment and so we took to scampering and clambering around the temple grounds, letting curiosity be our guide.
Exploring Angkor was a stunning experience but also a strange one because it felt as if I had been there before. Many of the ruins are comprised of a surreal blend of
stone, tree roots, vines, and moss and admiring the exquisitely detailed characters etched into wall faces, I realized that I was looking at a perfect model of the “Jungle Temple” theme. I was looking at Donkey Kong running from the huge stone wheel and bouncing from tire to tire. I was looking at James Bond trying to outwit Baron Samedi with the golden gun in the catacombs. It was no surprise when I found out that much of the movie Tomb Raider was shot in Angkor; it just looks exactly what you would imagine when thinking of a lost civilization overgrown by nature. Also fitting the image was the wildlife. Oversized bugs patrol many of the temple walls and to feast upon them are even larger lizards and geckos that simply would not be caught no matter how hard we tried. And of course, no jungle temple would be complete without monkeys. We spotted some monkeys in a field near the edge of the jungle and managed to get close to them without scaring them off. They were all fighting over a piece of bread another tourist had fed them and watching them hop and swing around with their tails
reignited my desire to one day own a pet monkey who will wear a hat and steal loaves of bread for me from the market.
In a half-assed attempt to check back in with the tour, we unintentionally got disorientated and ended up wading through shin-deep water down a flooded road and dripped our way into a very rural, third-worldish looking area that I’m fairly certain was not on Sim’s agenda. No other foreigners were in sight and naked children splashed around in a pool laughing hysterically. I brought out my camera and they became very excited, repeatedly asking me to take pictures as they performed all kinds of flips and twists off the edge into the water. I found it joyously refreshing to finally see children playing and having fun after earlier having to walk through throngs of kids trying desperately to get me to buy Angkor postcards, t-shirts, posters, trinkets, instruments, anything that might get them and their family through another day.
Of course the can’t-miss attraction in Angkor is Angkor Wat, which is really a city in its own right. However, before concluding our tour at its grand finale, we stopped by Angkor Thom, one
of the largest Khmer cities ever built and naturally, my personal favorite. (NOTE: Sim informed us that “Thom” means “Big” in Khmer. So essentially, the only thing I learned from our tour guide all day is how to say “Big Boom Boom” when addressing a local.) Angkor Thom lived up to its name and provided hours of fun hiking up stairs and investigating nooks and crannies galore. And it was in doing such nosying around that my life almost came to an abrupt end.
Angkor Thom has a labyrinth of corridors, stairs, and dead-ends below the towers and several of the entrances to passageways branching off others are fantastically dark, pitch-black to the extent that putting your hand through the doorway is like sticking it into some strange science-fiction warp; it basically disappears. Chris and I discovered one such hallway and as Chris walked in first, I got to stand behind and watch him get swallowed by void. It wasn’t a long corridor, bending round slightly to the right and we were able to move through it just fine by walking slowly and keeping our hands in front of us. The experience was slightly thrilling and so when we
happened upon another pitch-black entrance, we didn’t hesitate to descend into the blackness once more, with me going first this time. For the first couple of steps it was just the same as the previous corridor, but then I felt something in front of me. It was a stone, waist high, and seemed to have all sort of gaps and contours about it. Crumbled stones are scattered all around the temple and so I figured it was just some rubble blocking the corridor and wouldn’t be too difficult to find my way over, even if in the dark.
I eased myself up so that I was sitting on top of the stone and then lowered myself down facing forward while still holding on behind me until my feet found footing. And this is where something I can’t quite explain happened. Although my feet were both planted on solid ground, somewhere in the back of my head was a little voice telling me that I shouldn’t let go of the stone I was still holding on to. I don’t know what it was but something about the air in front of my face seemed different. Maybe colder, and more empty. It’s
amazing the extent to which senses sharpen in such blackness. Chris, who had followed me inside and was now standing on the other side of the rubble, asked if everything was okay. I reached down to the pouch on my belt that held my camera and delicately brought it up while still holding on to the stone. With one hand, I took out the camera and switching the flash on, told Chris to look over my shoulder to see what lay ahead of us.
*CLICK*
It was a well. It was a 20-foot deep well that I was literally half a footstep away from plummeting to the bottom. And the “rubble” that I had so been so cavalier to climb over was in fact an ornately carved railing quite specifically designed, I’m sure, to keep nitwit tourists like me from suffering such a fate.
In the brief instant that illuminated the black and revealed all of this, Chris jumped backwards and I nearly dropped my camera grabbing for the railing with both hands in a frantic embrace. After about half a minute of my head pounding so loud that I couldn’t hear a word of what Chris
was saying (I’m told it was mostly expletives), I managed to ease myself back over the railing and sat there against it for a good while, trying to comprehend what had just happened. When my legs had stopped shaking to the point that I could stand again, we found a rock and threw it to the bottom. It hit hard ground right below the surface of the water. If I had fallen, I would have likely gone in head over heels still in stride and suffice to say that if the fall didn’t kill me, my face would have been permanently rearranged into a nice bloody Picasso.
The funny thing is after the initial shock, the whole ordeal put me into a very relaxed, peaceful state of mind. Walking around Angkor Wat and reveling in the perfectness of it all, I felt like I was living on borrowed time, playing with house money. I had just narrowly avoided a horrible fate and now every little bit of wiggling my toes, swatting a fly, humming a tune was something to savor. I dropped some Riel into every donation tray I saw and basically had a smile on my face from
that moment all the way up to the bus ride back to the hotel when Sim started making jokes about how easy it was to get away with feeling up girls’ chests in the dark.
I have a lesson plan to prepare for tomorrow so that will have to be it for now. I’m not sure if I stressed enough how amazing the temples were but after all, isn’t that what pictures are for?
As always, love to everyone and thank you for all the emails and comments. I really am making an effort to reply to you all but until I get back to Vietnam and a steadier schedule, I’m not to be relied on.
Cheers for now
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Chris McKee
non-member comment
Holy
THOM. I just read the epic adventure of almost falling into a well. Holy. Shit. Use a flashlight night time, okay? CHRIST! Sounds epic though.