smokingboot

Siem Reap was low rise and welcoming, an easy stay; cocktails at the Foreign Correspondence Club, visits to the night market and Pub Street, the viewing of Apsara dancers who are only just beginning to demonstrate their art again (thousands went to the killing fields cos the KR considered dancing to be useless) there are tuk-tuk drivers everywhere eager to help, including the one who rescued R's fedora from its escape along a busy road, there's coconut water and beer, and pineapples stuffed with rice and shrimp. And there was one more place I wanted to visit; https://apopo.org/support-us/apopo-visitor-center/
Cambodia's got one of the worlds highest populations of amputees, due to landmines and clusterbombs. It's far from the only country with these disastrous devices peppering farmland and landscape. Apopo trains African Giant Pouched Rats to seek out TNT components in the soil; they're smart, got an incredible sense of smell, and are too light to trip the explosives.

There was a disappointing element of ewww rats no way from most of our group but I guess people can't help it. Others simply couldn't join us because the heat had got to them. In the end it came down to me and the Hooty Lady with the Nawks; but somehow that turned out to be just right. I looked across to see her cuddling a rat and she looked uplifted, happy. When it was my turn to hold one I recalled Mum's hysteria about rabies.

'Are they all vaccinated against everything?' I asked the attendant. She laughed. 'Their healthcare's better than mine,' came her reply, 'fully vaccinated and two health checks every month, they're very safe.'

Goodbye Cambodia. With all my heart I wish you well. I just wrote a philosophical essay here and deleted it: maybe I should ponder on how much of my understanding comes from Marcus Aurelius courtesy of Hannibal Lecter, and 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 via A Wrinkle In Time, but I'm not going to worry. Instead here's a pic of Zefania and me. I'm a tired traveller, she's been saving lives for about 4 years.

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.

'I'm sure he was one of them,' she said, hard eyed with lips pressed into a thin line. It was unlike her; this lady was one of the most fun members of the group, lively and smart, but she had 'taken agin' our gentle guide's replacement and her displeasure was obvious. She hung back, wouldn't attend and never kept up as the new guy tried to guide us round the temples.'I'm not taken in by his goofy grin,' she announced, 'there's something wrong with him.'I was as astonished as I would have been had one of us accused a Munich guide of being a Nazi, and wondered if it was all built on the remnants of shock combined with incipient heat stroke.

'[Our earlier guide] told us he learned English in this chap's house,' I mused aloud, 'and it's clear that this gent is a very devoted Buddhist. He's not what we're used to, maybe that's all.' Our tour leader had hurt his foot and needed to take some time off. His replacement was a Unesco trained local, an eloquent man full of smiles and information.

'My instinct is pretty good about this sort of thing,' came her rejoinder.

The source of tension didn't remain for long; Our original guide was quickly back with us, and temple based travels were many. The pass covered three days, including Angkor Thom with its bridge of adversaries facing each other. On one side stand the demons who have a certain attitude:

On the other stand the heavenly warriors who are supremely unbothered about griefy vibes from their foes;

And here is the Buddha welcoming you into the city, though there's more to him than meets the eye. https://www.facebook.com/727806753/videos/pcb.10163693690236754/1098422637939989
Just goes to show one can never be sure of what's in people's heads.

Then there was Banteay Srei, called the Lady Temple;

Ta Prohm, familiar to devotees of Lara Croft,

And and and...so much incredible artistry and beauty everywhere.

One place struck me more than any except Angkor Wat itself. Ta Keo is a strange temple, very high and steep, built in a way which renders climbing right to the top almost impossible without putting ones hands on stones which grow increasingly hot as the day progresses. Most tourists don't bother, but now and then I am possessed by a spirit of unbearable machismo and have to do stupid things. I climbed to the top. How grand and forlorn it was, silent under the relentless sun. I felt alive and alone.

Later I learned one legend of this temple; it was intended to represent Mount Meru, home of the gods and centre of many if not all universes. The temple was specifically sacred to Shiva but was struck by lightning before most of the carving started. The builders treated this as a sign to go no further and leave it alone. I was puzzled, attributing lightning to Shiva and therefore surely favourable. But in early Hinduism, Indra ruled the sky, rain and lightning. Indra, once the king of the gods, is demoted in later Hinduism and his relationship with Shiva in particular seems turbulent. No-one would want to get caught in the crossfire between this pair.

It made me think of the Lightning Struck Tower, which has a different name in the Marseilles Tarot; La Maison Dieu. This gets translated as the House of God, but it actually means The God House. I feel a distinction between those two meanings. On the other hand, leaving out the 'de' may have been easier for 17th/18th century card printers. An old friend of mine called Mark McCann had a pet theory that Turkey's Mount Nemrut, with its decapitated gods, was the origin of the card's symbolism, but from Babel to the Bastille the possibilities are endless. And even if we accept the theory that a lot of medieval imagery/legend made its way from India across trade routes to Europe, Turkey makes sense, Cambodia less so. How would travellers know about Ta Keo?

Whatever the story, I looked out and down at a world grown small, the stones radiating thick heat back at me. Unlike some other high temples, there was no easy way back, and no, I never consider these things til I have to, like a cat up a tree staring down wondering how this happened. I retraced my steps a little shamefacedly as I spotted the whole group waiting for me under nearby trees. Worth it though. It felt like a place of power. Ask me what power/whose power/how that feels/why that is, and I'm worse than the lady with her instincts; I have no cogent answer at all.

Phnom Penh to Siem Reap can be quite a journey. Cambodian speed limits are something like 40 miles an hour, so everything takes forever, but there were several breaks. One was here: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-08-23/Underprivileged-Cambodian-children-get-dual-education-JonpQ0HCiA/index.html

At one point, the children broke into a hymn. Being Brits we instantly wanted to sing a song back, but votes were divided between All You Need Is Love and I'm A Little Teapot, complete with accompanying actions, so instead we bought things and left without puzzling the orphanage.

Then we came to Spidertown. You know when you're approaching this place because there's a big sculpture of two spiders on the road not far from it. Spidertown has a heck of a lot of tarantulas, many of which get eaten, along with grubs, crickets, tiny frogs etc, and the market sells them. We were advised not to eat any of the food on offer, not because of what it was but due to the length of time it might have been parked in the sun. The cooked tarantulas are the black pile.

Our guide joked with us that 'Cambodians will eat anything that flies except an aeroplane, anything with four legs except a table.' He mentioned that he would certainly catch and fry a cricket if he found one, he quite liked them. In the wet season he goes back to his farm where his produce includes chickens, ducks, and frogs.

People who approached us off the coach included those carrying live tarantulas; one lady paraded around holding her baby, wearing two of them like brooches on her sash/scarf. Apparently one joke the local kids like playing entails running up to visitors, plonking a tarantula on them, and running off again. There's no malice in this, it happened to one of our number who took it all in his stride.

Some whiney kid approached me with his tarantula, and I tried to steel myself to hold it. But this was not like those rose-kneed characters who just sit there placidly. It was constantly moving, full of life and interest, and I got the distinct impression that any attempt to hold it would result in the beastie running straight up my arm with glee. What I should have done, were I not so tired with heat and emotional overload, was to buy the tarantula and just set it free in the sand. Then again, I didn't know if it was actually his pet so I gave the kid a dollar and took some hopelessly bad photos of said tarantula, who wouldn't keep still long enough for me to get a proper portrait.
( not for arachnophobes )

We left and our tour guide took us for some proper soul mending, to see the floating community of Kampong Khleang on the great lake of Tonle Sap.

We did not go into the village itself, rather we watched in silence as the sunset filled sky and land and water, understanding that Cambodia's beauty is so extraordinary that nothing can withstand its power; it makes evil look very small. We saw kids playing volleyball on the shore, passed one place in the middle of the lake with music playing as though someone was getting ready for a party. Beyond that, where the birds flew through reds and purples into deep twilight, waited one of the greatest sunsets anywhere on Earth.

( Potentially distressing image )

Anyone who could read. Anyone who could write. Anyone with more than one syllable in their name. Anyone who wore glasses. Any medic. Any teacher. Any dancer. Any factory worker. Any office worker. Anyone who spoke a foreign language. Anyone of foreign descent. Anyone who argued. Anyone who criticised. Anyone who disobeyed. Anyone who obeyed. Anyone.

Most of all the Khmer Rouge hated knowledge and intellect.The city people were forced to go into the countryside, the farming people were told to go and fish, the fishing people were told to go farm. If those people reached their quotas, the quotas were upped. Failures to meet quotas meant execution. No-one knows exactly how many died on forced marches along roads to nowhere, how many died of starvation and exhaustion, how many were killed just for the sake of it.

A man told us of his father who was informed by friends among the KR officers that the regime was coming to his village. If said friends had been discovered they would have been sent to places like Choeung Ek for being traitors. The man's father told his family to leave everything behind but the oldest pots and pans as they took to the roads, and he gave them all new very simple one-syllable names that meant things like 'big' and 'small.' They had to act as sturdily ignorant as possible, and if the KR wanted whatever, they gave them whatever without question.

The leaders wanted Year Zero, some fantasy agrarian reset, and for that a popular theory suggests they sought to whittle the population down to about 40,000 people perfect in dogma with no connections to the old ways, no thoughts, no analysis or critical thinking; just obedient brutes. They wanted to exceed Mao Zedong's 'great leap forward' with no intervening pauses and to be rid of the 'New People' (i.e those who joined the party after 17th April 1975) because they considered their lateness as a sign of reluctance/insincerity/lack of commitment. Eventually the creeping-to-raving paranoia that was such a tell of this regime became a universal snare; from officers to executioners who worked at the killing fields, all lived in fear of being denounced as traitors then killed and replaced, presumably because someone somewhere understood the need for secrecy. At Choeung Ek they played blaring music to hide what they were doing and sprayed DDT over all the corpses to cover the smell, as well making sure that anyone still alive in the pits wouldn't stay that way.

Many such sites have been discovered in Cambodia.

At Choeung Ek, most famous of the killing fields, there is a tree. Once there was a nail in it. If the nail is still there, one cannot see it for the trunk is covered with offerings, bright trinkets for little hands, shoes for very small feet. It was in front of this tree that Kang Kek Lew/'Comrade Duch,' leader of the government's internal security forces and overseer of S-21, broke down and confessed his crimes. He died during life imprisonment, having converted to Christianity, presumably with fingers crossed regarding Matthew 18:6.

Kek Lew's overseer was Son Sen, the man who designed the torture procedures at S-21, and was also intimately involved in their application, as well as, for added measure, ordering the massacre of 100,000 people in Eastern Cambodia 1978. Son Sen and thirteen members of his family including children were murdered on Pol Pot's command.

Saloth Sâr, known to the world as Pol Pot, was eventually imprisoned by General Ta Mok and died thereafter. There was reported evidence of strychnine poisoning, others claimed he overdosed on a combination of valium and other drugs so that he wouldn't be handed over to the Americans. Ta Mok didn't wait for an autopsy to confirm or deny. He and Pol Pot's wife had Pol Pot cremated, covered in rubbish on a pile of tyres.

I listened aghast to our Cambodian guide when he spoke of the Khmer Rouge; how do folk get past all that without being filled with burning hatred in their hearts? How to forget, never mind forgive?

'We don't want civil war,' he said, 'many of these people had no choice, many were young. We send them to temple to learn, and they do, they understand what they did wrong, they repent.' He was a quiet man but I had noticed his devotion, paying respects whenever we had wandered into the sacred, his way so unobtrusive that none of us ever felt preachy presence. I remembered our Vietnamese tour leader, an open extroverted guy saying, 'I can speak honestly to you, but it is not the same for Cambodian guides. People still disappear over there.' So what was I seeing then? Was this extraordinary compassion born out of faith and a deeper spiritual insight, or internalised mass trauma, fear, caution? Were my assumptions arrogant? Our Cambodian guide did not seem afraid or wary.

'The Buddha tells us not to take revenge,' he said, 'if I am angry, who loses sleep? Not the person I am angry with. And now,' he spread his hands a little, 'most Cambodians think we are in paradise.'

Paradise.

I looked at his gentle face illuminated with hope and sincerity, and I may have got the timing out a little or jumbled up conversations from before and after...but I'm almost sure this was the exact point when my heart broke.

Current Music: Nevermind - Leonard Cohen

Writing this is hard.

We had seen the silver pagoda and the royal palace, brilliant and intricate with the four faces of Buddha shining from its tall spire; directly under that spire lies the king's throne upon which he only ever sits once, in order to be crowned. In the sacred act of coronation it is hoped he will be imbued with the four noble qualities of Buddha: Equanimity, Loving Kindness, Sympathy and Compassion.

Then we went to S-21.

If I saw the devil standing before me right now, I would go over to him and apologise for all the sht we place on him, all the times he gets used as a scapegoat, the devil made me do it . What a comfort to have something or someone else to blame! But I suspect that if we traced each image and idea of the adversary backwards from Tom Ellis through Eliphas Levi, from Dante to Bosch, back, back, back before the Books of Job or Genesis, we would find ourselves eventually discarding snakes and goats and looking at a stick figure on a cave wall; the artist might put horns on it or a ring around it to set it apart, but the figure will always be based on the human.

( Upsetting, beware )

I didn't know what to expect from Cambodia; there was no feel for it in my imagination beyond a pity for the history I had read and an interest in Ankhor Wat; I had been nearly as ignorant about Vietnam, with any mental picture of the place being based on little more than The Deer Hunter, Good Morning Vietnam, and Al Stewart's The Year of the Cat.

The reality of Cambodia smacked us straight off the bus with furnace style heat. In Hanoi the weather started as cloudy/temperate but never cold, and ramped up degree by degree as we travelled down the coast. According to our Vietnamese guide this was just acclimatising us to Cambodia, which he joked has only two seasons; hot and f*cking hot.

The next real thing - which turned out to be unreal on this occasion - regarded Cambodian visas. These are sorted on the day at the border. Our guide told us all to bring passport style photos because one potential issue entails a demand for these as necessary for the visas. If you just didn't think to bring a couple, what do you do when a lot more money is asked to cover that lack? You're in No Man's Land unable to go forwards into Cambodia or back into Vietnam. We had the photos; turned out they weren't needed at all, so maybe it's just a nervy travellers tale. But our guide knew his stuff so I would always take the photos just in case.

Other things we learned fast:
Endless deet to be sprayed several times a day ('whenever you leave your hotel room.')
Endless slap to be applied several times a day.
Bottle refilled with water every thirty minutes or so.
Cambodian ATMs love dollars. They love dollars so much they may only give out £100 dollar bills. But don't try to do business with scrunched up/ crumpled/messy notes. People will often refuse these for fear that they're forged, so it's important, when getting money out, to check that Mr Franklin's still facing the right way etc.
We were told many times to guard our bags in Pnom Penh, at the same time as being reassured that it was as safe as any other capital city so we were thoroughly confused and a bit paranoid. But we got over it.

Phnom Penh felt odd. The sun set with breathtaking if ominous poetry:

There's a lot of construction going on, but for whom? A lake has recently been filled in to provide a foundation for new dwellings, doesn't seem sound. Investment is needed and Chinese investors are making their mark here, which implies the presence of the Chinese government. This would make me a little nervous; reports from Vietnam do not attribute particularly benign principles to the great neighbour. Much is made of China's intentions towards Taiwan, but that might be too bold and stupid given how important Taiwan is to the West. Cambodia though? It would give even greater control over the Mekong, and catch Vietnam in a pincer. Why bother? Oil off the coast of the Nam is but one potential lure.

Phnom Penh means the Hill of Lady Penh, legendary founder of the city, who in 1372 found four statues of the buddha on the river bank and built a pagoda on a hill to house them. This became the centre of the settlement, one day to grow... and later shrink again, to become known as The City of Ghosts. But that can wait for another post. For now, the bad days are done, and she has her own little shrine next to the one of Buddha. Many people visit her there. Clearly they care for her very much.

Here's a young entrepeneur trying to sell peonies for the lady's shrine.

I don't know whether he had actually fished his wares out from the bins beneath him but he was having no luck and decided on a new venture quickly. When gentlemen took their shoes off to go into the temple, he and a friend would hide the shoes saying they were looking after them, then ask for a dollar to bring them back. Unable to stop laughing, R said no deal and with sheepish expressions they brought the shoes back anyway. Later he went back and gave them a dollar, just because... what can you do? We're tourists, we're meant to explode in showers of gold if we can. We can but assume Buddha would approve.