My Third Visit to Angkor Wat, Cambodia

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For more of my photos, or to buy my book, please visit www.nickkembel.com

Buddha Eyes over an Impoverished Nation

So just as my year of teaching in China was coming to an unexpected end due to visa problems, my sister Jen and her fiance Dean were flying to south-east Asia to do some traveling, and since I was only a 2 hour flight away, I couldn't NOT go to meet up with them! And I have never been one to turn down yet another visit to one of the most spectacular complexes of ancient ruins in the world, Angkor Wat.

I have always cited Cambodia as one of my top-5 travel destinations. Besides the amazing ruins, it also offers a quick escape from the rampant tourism that is taking over neighboring Thailand. The contrast between Thailand and Cambodia is enormous, and you are hit in the face with it when you cross the super-shady overland border from Aranya Prathet to Poipet .

This border is notorious for it's pickpockets, beggars and petty crime, and Thais cross over by the thousands to gamble in Poipet's numerous casinos. Entering Cambodia you leave behind paved roads, organized public transportation, and everything becomes more dirty, dusty, and outright poor.

But the one thing that always blew me away about Cambodia was that despite extreme poverty, crumbling infrastructure, rampant corruption, and a population that is still recovering from the anguish of genocide, Cambodians are some of the friendliest people I have ever encountered.

I will never forget the shock I felt the first time I entered Cambodia (in 2001, only a few years after they first reopened their doors to tourism post-genocide), in the back of a pick-up truck, and as we drove through villages groups of children would run alongside the truck waving hello, and passing vehicles with absurd numbers of people sitting on top would all shout greetings and exchange contagious smiles with our group of travelers.

On this most recent occasion, I would not argue that the people were any less friendly, but perhaps just not quite so shocked to see foreigners anymore, as the crowds from Thailand have been spilling into the tiny impoverished nation. Indeed I actually witnessed a traffic jam of tourists in tuk-tuks and elephants at the Entrance Gate to the city of Angkor Thom in Angkor Wat, whereas on my first visit I found myself all alone at the main temple of Angkor Wat in the early hours of the morning, an experience I am now aware will probably never again be possible.

The small city of Siem Reap, gateway to Angkor Wat, also seemed to very different then I first remembered it. Many of the roads were now paved, and there are hundreds of hotels and tourist amenities. However, the area around the Old French Quarter seems to be cleaned up and many of the buildings restored. I really enjoyed the colonial feel of this district, and there are many delicious and authentic Khmer restaurants, along with the usual tourist shops.

We also managed to take in some margaritas at the Mexican restaurant, some massages from blind victims of street crime at the Seeing Hands Massage Parlor, and Jen developed a love affair with south-east Asian street banana pancakes lathered with chocolate sauce and sweetened condensed milk.

After a night of drink and rest, we got our sightseeing on. We arranged for a motor-rickshaw and driver to take us around, and started out our visit with the most famous temple of the them all, the grand scale Angkor Wat. Built over 800 years ago, Angkor Wat was the center of a vast Hindu-Buddhist empire that ruled much of modern day south-east Asia.

Today the ruins cover an enormous area, with over 1000 individual temple ruins, and the main structure, Angkor Wat itself, is the largest religious structure in the world. To amplify it's enormous size, it is also surrounded by a huge moat and an outer wall that is no less then 3.5km long.

Visiting this structure is always an overwhelming endeavor. The senses are truly overwhelmed with the sheer scale of it all, and one can actually sense the ancient presence in the damp air of the various corners and rooms of the complex.

One of the most interesting things about Angkor is that it is still an active site of Buddhist worship, so that statues inside, or what is left of them thanks to all the looting during the war and genocide, are adorned with saffron robes and incense burns throughout. Then to add some extra excitement to the deal, there are monkeys frolicking about, and other creatures and critters from the jungle can be seen crawling amongst the fallen ruins.

Between temples one is accosted by various vendors and especially children selling 3$ photocopied Lonely Planets, drinks and other trinkets, or you can escape the heat and have noodles, iced coffee, or fresh French baguettes, one of the leftovers of French colonialism, under one of the many covered food stalls.

Angkor Wat itself is the most famous, but there are two other complexes that have left perhaps even deeper impressions on me every time I have visited. The first is Angkor Thom, a walled city of sorts, with giant entrance gates and rows of Buddhas at each of it's celestial corners. At the core of the city is the magnificent Bayon Temple, which despite not looking all that impressive from afar, is most famous for it's giant serene Buddha faces looking out in all directions.

The third complex that definitely warrants mention is Ta Prohm. Unlike the other two it is not particularly monumental, but rather sprawling. But what makes it unique and perhaps my favorite temple at Angkor Wat is that the archaeologists left it as they found it, completely swallowed up by the jungle, so that immense trees grow on top of the temple ruins, with roots snaking like veins down the sides of the temples. It is truly an impressive scene to encounter deep in the Cambodian jungle.

The heat forced us to end most of our days short, and take to the patios of Siem Reap for afternoon beers, naps, and games of pool. One interesting visit to note was the Butterfly Garden Restaurant, an establishment where you can have a beer while giant butterflies flutter around you. The owner pays local street children to catch them and let them out in the enclosed area.

We also made time to visit the Siem Reap Land Mine Museum, which details evidence of one of the worst atrocities of the Vietnam War, the millions of land mines left behind which still kill and disfigure innocent people on a regular basis to this day. The man who set up the small but dramatic museum was responsible for disarming thousands of these devices, long forgotten by the murderous nations who left them behind.

Next it was on to the capital city, Phnom Penh, with it's moto-clogged streets, impoverished urban sprawl, and gold spired stupas. The air conditioning and ventilation on our bus fell apart towards the end, and the overpowering sun heated up the interior of the bus like an oven, to the point where all of the passengers were dripping sweat on to the seats and we were approaching exhaustion and near-insanity by the time we finally arrived. As we got off the bus, policemen had to use sticks to fend off the mob of taxi and moto drivers that descended on the bus.

In Phnom Penh we stayed in an area I had never been to before, a super run-down mini travelers district on the shore of Boeung Lake, with Happy Pizza shops galore, and hotels with balconies floating right on the lakewater. The front of our place looked out to a spectacular panorama of the plant covered lake, fronted by shacks and derelict homes in all directions.

During our short stay in the city, we visited the eye-opening and very depressing Choeung Ek Killing Fields, where you can walk amongst enormous mass graves and gaze upon a tower of human skulls. As you walk along the paths you sometimes occasionally look down to note that are stepping on fragments of clothing and human bone.

From there we moved on to the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, a schoolhouse that was converted into torture and detention center when as much as a quarter of the Cambodian population was murdered by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge army in the late 1970's, without much more than a glance from the rest of the world, which was preoccupied with the war in Vietnam. The classrooms of Tuol Sleng are now filled with murals of the thousands of photographed portraits that the perpetrators took of their victims before they put them to death.


Always a humbling experience, but perhaps a suitable way to end an incredible journey: by reminding the visitor of some of the things we take for granted, and of the atrocities and hardships that many of the people in the world must endure. And in Cambodia, where smiles and pleasant conversations with locals greet you at every turn, you stand face to face with concrete evidence that the human spirit is indestructible and alive.

For more of my photos, or to buy my book, please visit www.nickkembel.com

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Photos

Siem Reap
Base for visiting Angkor Wat

Ta Prohm
Where jungle grows from the ruins

Butterfly Bar, Cambodia
Have a beer amongst the butterflies

Boeung Kak Lake, Phnom Penh
View from our hotel patio

Faces of those who died, Tuol Sleng Museum
A school converted into prison during the genocide

SEVEN PEOPLE on one bike
My personal record spotting

Tourist Traffic Jam
Angkor gets more packed with tourists every time I go