See the Day

[smokingboot]

Preah Ko, Bakong, Lolei, Banteay Srey, East Mebon, Pre Rup, Kravan, Angkor Thom South Gate, Elephant and Leper King terraces, Preah Khan, Ta Keo, Ta Prohm...and Angkor Wat. The climax is always Angkor Wat.

Tours sell this idea of Angkor Wat at sunset, but it's only OK then, because the main gate is the Western one and the sun lands behind you in an unassuming clump of trees. Angkor Wat is a specifically calendrical sunrise temple. On the Spring and Autumn equinoxes the sun ascends directly above the central lotus tower like an upside down exclamation point, but it's dramatic in any season and its moods are many.





Once as a child I was caught sleepwalking stood at a bedroom window. My mum asked me what I was doing and I said 'I will see the dawn.' Over 50 years later I have seen many dawns and hope to see many more, but if there is such a thing as the dawn, perhaps this is it. If something goes wrong and I pop off on the operating table sooner than expected, there will always have been this sunrise.

To get the best out of Angkor Wat, a good idea is to arrive before sunrise and watch, taking all the photos you can bear, then go have breakfast somewhere and return for 8/8.30 when they open the interior. It's well worth the time to experience Angkor Wat as a living temple full of monks, devotees to Vishnu and/or Buddha, tourists, ordinary people, and instagram lifers.

And there we are at the last;

I like this because while there's more to us all than camera snapping shadows, perhaps thats what we are in terms of this nation's reality, pleasant phantoms who come, see, go; I'm fine with that if we add to the economy and genuinely help people get up. We had left behind the mermaid with the jolly photographer, the youngest of the three cancer sufferers and the difficult person. But still we had the hooty lady, two laughing wanderers including the one with instinct, the guy with the serial killer vibe and his old school Out of Africa wife, the poetic school teacher and her hearty husband, the knower of many things, and the world-travelling joker whose quips must be recorded so I never forget them;

Q.What did the buffalo say to his boy on his first day going to school?
A. Bi son.
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I bought a buddhist hoover once. No attachments.
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People will ask me what this temple was like. I'll tell them; it's complex.