WINTER'S JOURNEY 4

PART IV: CAMBODIA – A PLACE APART

Picked up by a moto taxi, the driver took me down the main road into the city. Lining the road were five star luxury resorts, catering to the flocks, and in between were the local residences and shops. The contrast, straight off the bat, was phenomenal. It was literally shantytowns interspersed between gigantic buildings that looked like they belonged in downtown Tokyo rather than in this jungle country, where the air was constantly thick with a murky combination of auto exhaust and a fine dust from the red dirt that most roads were made of. We pulled into my hotel, where I paid the rather expensive (for Cambodia) rate of $9 a day for a single room, changed into shorts and went out into the 80 degree January evening. Too late to visit the temples, I hired out a driver who took me to the Tonle Sap lake, the largest in Cambodia, for a sunset boat ride around the floating village. Located several kilometers outside of the town center, the trip took me through parts of the country side, providing an exposure to how Cambodians really lived.

As I’ve already said, I’ve seen similar things before - during high school, in rural Mexico, and last year, in parts of China. Given a bit of a stretch, they also exist in parts of the United States, such as Appalachia and parts of the Midwest. If asked for a word, poverty comes to mind, but it’s not quite accurate. For poverty to exist or to be properly understood, something above must exist. In the developed world, this is the class system, with a small upper class, a vast middle class, and the lower class, the lower strata of which is said to live below the poverty line, and therefore in poverty. But in Cambodia, outside of the palatial residences accessible to foreigners and the handful of rich Cambodians living out of sight (and probably in Phnom Penh, the capital) everything was poverty.

As we drove down a paved road which soon became covered in dried mud rather than asphalt, the scenes unfolding around me seemed unreal. The same automotive mayhem as everywhere else, but mostly mopeds and various other strange biwheel constructions. The few cars that were there were early 90s green Toyota Camrys. The tour buses, so visible in the city, were few and far between, except those carrying loads of Japanese tourists to the same lake destination. It was common to see entire families on one moped, with the smallest child up front, propped against the frame, with another child behind him, then the father, then another child, and the mother bringing up the rear. How they managed to maneuver around in the swarm of other traffic continues to elude me. The road was lined with literally shacks. At first, they appeared like some kind of shops, but upon a closer look, they turned out to residences. These people lived there. Basically, it was an elevated room, built on stilts to protect against the floods, made entirely of wood, and housing all of a family’s meager possessions. It was still light, so the people were outside. Shirtless children running around, mangy looking dogs chewing on God knows what, people sitting around, not doing much of anything. Chickens and pigs everywhere. And the dust, the incessant dust. Riding through all of it, I went through a mixture of awe, admiration, and sympathy. This is their way of life, I thought, this is what they know and the only thing they know. My privileged background gnawed away at my conscience as we made the twists and turns through the country and neared the lake, where I was charged an obscene $20 (which is enough for a family to live on for at least a week, if not more) to board a rickety boat, which took me down the muddy tributary leading out into the open lake.

Here was the floating village, which turned out to mean simply residences on the water, built on stakes jutting into the shallow river. As the sun began its descent, I could see people collecting inside the houses, sitting down to dinner. They cooked around a stove at the side of the room, which appeared to be the living room in the most genuine sense of the word. As we made our way down the river, I listened to my driver, who, in a difficult English, attempted to tell me about his life, about the tribulations of rural Cambodians, about how he and his seven brothers and sisters have to get by, how every single house on the river is flooded and washed away and rebuilt during every monsoon season, and how it is necessary to rebuild in the same spot because it is close to the fields where these people work. I listened and I watched. I must have counted eight or nine other boats filled with Japanese tourists, all snapping pictures, all potentially thinking the same things I was. My driver told me that the Japanese are actually the most common visitors and that they really help the Cambodian economy. I could believe it.

The small river twisted and turned and eventually, we came to the lake itself, a vast body stretching out of the line of sight. We got off at a general store, I bought a few beers, shared them with the driver and the boat operator. We made our way out into the lake a little ways, where we watched the beautiful sun, the same as everywhere else, slowly settling down into the horizon, illuminating the stretches of beautiful jungle lining the coast for miles and miles around. Slowly, we turned the boat around and headed back. The houses had electricity, usually consisting of a single light bulb, and many even had T.V.s, which were now seemingly the centers of attention of the occupants. At some point, our boat’s motor broke down, and it took a good twenty minutes to repair it. By the time we got back, it was already dark and the scarce street lights made the bumpy ride back adventurously interesting. My driver took me to get a massage, then to a nice place to eat. At night, I ventured into the nightlife district (basically one street filled with Western type bars, pubs, and restaurants, dubbed Bar Street in the guidebooks) and commingled with the likes of myself, travelers who had come to marvel at the ancient beauties of this land and received a healthy dose of the reality for the majority of the world’s people.

Several hours after sunrise the next day, I was in the back of a tuk tuk, making my way to the vast wonder that is the Angkor Archaeological Park. Undoubtedly Cambodia’s main attraction of the global spotlight, this is an immense concentration of temples and other structures that stand today to remind us all of the once flourishing glory of the Khmer civilization. The earliest temples, built around the end of the ninth century of the Common Era, are scattered around Siem Riep province, but as the ancient kingdom expanded and consolidated its power, its capital arose at Angkor, where the majority of the temples now stand. Although the architectural and artistic styles evolved and changed over the kingdom’s five hundred year history, the purpose of the temples did not. Centering around the royal palace (which today, ironically, is largely inexistent), each temple was built by an Angkor king and dedicated to a specific deity, who was believed to be the guardian god for that particular administration. Active worship and rituals took place at the temple, as well as many other state and official occasions. When the king died, the temple reverted to a place of worship of the dead king. In this way, each peg in the dynastic line would be revered and remembered by all succeeding generations. And this also explains why so many temples were constructed within such close proximity of each other. All in all, today, over forty sites are accessible to tourists. Naturally, they are in various states of deterioration, with some mere piles of rocks but others retaining the majority of the grandeur that once represented one of the greatest powers in this region of the world.

And so, after paying the dues and receiving my laminated pass, my driver for the day, Mr. Hen Chenda, dropped me off at the base of Bakheng Hill, stop number one of the two day mini tour.

My words cannot do these temples justice. For a little more fairness, go see my pictures, but even then they do not capture what needs to be seen, heard, breathed and felt. Having climbed up to the top of the hill, I had a clear view for miles and miles around. It was a beautiful sunny day and the splendor took some minutes to take completely in. In addition, this was actually the only moment of my entire time at the park where I felt some sort of unexplainable connection with a time now long gone, a sort of communion, if you will, with the people who constructed and worshiped at these temples. At the time, I attributed this largely to the absence of the immense crowds of tourists, which from that moment forth would mar any other quiet and tranquil area in the park. From the beginning of the ascent to the return, I encountered exactly three people, so for the most part, I had the vast area to myself. Even though the temple itself was not in exactly pristine shape, it was nevertheless preserved enough to picture what it may have once looked like. As I sat there, taking it in, and briefly reading over the guidebook, I reflected some more on the history of the country.

Cambodia has always been located as a kind of cross-roads in Southeast Asia, as a kind of bridge between the greater Chinese and Indian empires to the North and West and the seafaring peoples of the islands to the south including Malaysia, Indonesia, and greater Oceania. So, naturally enough, many different traditions and cultural implements passed through Cambodia at one time or another and its own culture took shape as a conglomeration of various other regional attributes. The Khmers, who unified the kingdom and expanded its boundaries well beyond its current borders into Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam, were thus subject to many different influences from the outside. It is not surprising, then, to find that the religion of the Angkor kings was a fluid mix of Hinduism, Buddhism, and a more ancient animist paganism local to Cambodia itself. At many of the temples, statues of the Buddha and various Bodhisattvas once stood along side those representing the immense Hindu pantheon. And although each temple was predominantly dedicated to a deity of one faith or the other, the religious intermingling goes to show that a key quality cherished in this part of the world, then and now, was tolerance. Unfortunately, none of these statues remain in the park. Most have become victims of looters and have probably found their way into the homes of private collectors, others have been moved to the museum at Phnom Penh, but the walls and stones, and the elaborate miles of carvings and bas-reliefs still stand. It is these that make a trip here fascinating, for sketched into the walls of Angkor’s temples are mythical and actual histories that trace the development of not only Buddhism and Hinduism, but the Angkor people as well. It is no wonder some people spend weeks here.

Through a series of wars, the Angkor kings were eventually weakened and had to seek refuge in a safer place, moving the capital to Phnom Penh. Cambodia itself faced invasion from the outside and instability at home, and while some of the temple compounds remained active as Buddhist temples, most of them fell prey to their biggest enemy of all, the subtropical jungle. When the French, Cambodia’s overseers for almost a hundred years (it was part of French Indochina), began restoration efforts in the mid-19th century, the temples were so consumed by jungle growth that it was a miracle they were discovered in the first place. Scores of years would go by before they were reconquered from nature’s fury. To this day, this is still clearly visible. One temple was deliberately left in its originally discovered state. Another temple, my favorite actually, Preah Kahn (Tomb Raider), is still at the mercy of the jungle, as powerful trees tore through parts of the structure, corrupting it, and actually becoming a major support pillar to the walls. Once the trees die, they collapse and deteriorate, thus leaving major weak spots and often leading to a more general collapse. Although millions of dollars are now at play in reconstructing, rebuilding and preserving these temple treasures, it will be a long time yet before they can regain their former glory. Additionally, even though major restoration was carried on through most of the 20th century as well, it had to be stopped in the late sixties with the beginning of civil turmoil in Cambodia and could not be resumed again until the 90s, when the civil wars finally came to an end. Shockingly, the country was not officially opened to tourism until 1999, but it has since become a definite stop on the itinerary of the Southeast Asian traveler.

Eventually, I came down from the hill and was taken to Angkor Thom, which was at one time the site of the royal compound, a city within a city that housed the administrative units of the empire. Some of the grandest temples stand here. Even trying to write about them all is fruitless, so I’ll spare the details. Climbing the steep stairs, looking at the bas-reliefs, catching the shade in secluded corners, all would have been rewarding activities if not for the throngs. I very soon became suffocated by the overwhelming presence of people, snapping pictures, talking loudly, listening to their guides with a potential but unconvincing interest on their faces. I’m not sure why I was so irritable, for they had as much right to be there as I did and I had no right to judge them on their decision to be there, but nevertheless it was very difficult for me to truly do these temples justice. As my guide took me from site to site, I became increasingly exhausted and unable to concentrate fully. After yet another curry for lunch, we visited a few more temples and finally came to the big one, the one most people associate with Cambodia and with Angkor, Angkor Wat.

The majesty of the five towers, coming into full view from quite far away and growing ever bigger upon coming closer, truly justifies why this particular temple is so renowned all over the world. For one thing, it is the biggest religious structures on the planet, and with the likes of the Notre Dame and its compatriots in Europe, as well as some pretty monumental Buddhist temples in the East, that is saying a lot. It is layer upon layer of complexity, concentric circles surrounded by walls harboring vast landscapes which range in content from the creation of the world, to the great battles of Hindu lore, to the everyday struggles of the Khmer people. As one climbs higher and gets closer to the central tower, representing Mt. Meru, the Hindu Olympus, which is a gateway to the divine realm, one senses the great power that once rested here. The elaboration, both of the remaining stones, and the one evoked by the imagination, guides one to a place where great beauty and a direct contact with the gods once existed, and although today it has become a crawling ground for tourists from all walks of life, it is nevertheless the one temple where a connection to the glory of the past is most directly felt. I walked around, took the requisite pictures, and although the temple has some great vantage points for a grand sunset view, the day was cloudy and it was growing dark fast. It was here that I met and chatted with some Buddhist monks, who candidly told me about their lifestyle and what it is they are hoping to achieve. And sitting there, in the central courtyard of Angkor Wat, looking at the juxtaposition of the fleeting, represented by the crowds, and the eternal, represented by the temple itself, I had another one of those rare moments of tranquility, of a satisfying inner peace, without anxiety, without worry, and without any trace of the preoccupation that usually plagues the mind wherever it happens to be. I bid adieu to the monks and walked with the crowds down the long bridge over the moat, found Mr. Chenda, and made my way back to the hotel.

Earlier that day, I actually met two people I knew at the temples, the first unexpectedly, and the second with much less surprise. First I met Bernie, who is a fellow English teacher in Japan who happens to live literally a six minute drive from where I do. We are not really friends, but seeing her all the way out in Cambodia caused a brain cell or two to tremble, thinking about the meaning of such an encounter. The second was Kevin, one of the people we had traveled with in Thailand. We had agreed to meet up, but never really made concrete plans to do so and it rather happened by accident. Later that night, we got some Mexican food, which in Cambodia, is far from Mexico quality but topped the Japanese version with flying colors. Later, we made our way to Bar Street, where another interesting encounter occurred.

We were shooting pool in a bar, and it was still early, so not very crowded, when I noticed the presence of four or five lovely looking ladies, dressed rather provocatively, and showing way more interest in our pool game than is typical for me, my looks, and my billiard skills. Now, naturally, had my life turned out differently and I had been a pool virtuoso, I would have been more deluded about this situation, but it became quite clear, quite quickly who exactly these ladies were and what they were after. But, no harm in playing a game of pool. So, we shot a couple of games and something else became clear as well. This second realization was actually more fun than the first, in a way, because it created a whole new kind of interaction mechanism for me and kind of propelled me into a whole new ballgame. In the end, nothing happened, just a few games of pool, for once prices were put on the table, it all kind of lost its appeal. But nevertheless, it did make for an interesting social experience. Needless to say, they were lady boys. I’ll leave defining that up to the imagination.

Afterwards, we went to another bar, with a dance floor, filled with foreigners, with the only reminder of Cambodia being the drink prices, and at the end of the night, ended up in a real Cambodian night club, primarily populated by locals and those looking to service them. As I was later told, that industry is quite active in Cambodia and other parts of Southeast Asia, which is a widely known fact. What is much less well known is the fact that over 80% of it exists for the local, native population and not the millions upon millions of tourists who come through the region. Thinking about all that kind of turned me off a good time, so, calling it a night, I slowly made my way home.

The next day was occupied by more temples and while I said earlier that I can understand their appeal enough to require a week’s stay, I do not understand how such immense crowds could be tolerated. Although I had purchased a three day pass, I realized that two would be more than enough. No, the real jewel of this day came in the evening. After a short nap and a massage (people, people, come to Asia, where you pay $6 for two hours, not $45 for 20 minutes), Mr. Chenda took me to his friend’s wedding party. He had told me about it before, and since I had hired his services for three days, he was technically working for me and could not go to this party. But, there was no way I was about to get in his way of going and so I graciously and excitedly accepted his invitation. Unfortunately, we arrived after the ceremony (to which he had gone while I was taking a nap in the afternoon), but just in time for the party. Set up far from the tourist areas, it was basically a large canvass sheet flung over an alleyway, suspended from the roof of two buildings. Underneath, about twenty round tables were set up, with a dance and singing area at one end. By the time we arrived, most of the food had been eaten, but I was amazed to see some brought over to our table fairly quickly. I’m not really sure what it was, but it was delicious none the less. Chenda introduced me to his friend, the groom, who graciously poured Asahi for me. We drank it with ice and later, when the ice ran out, we were drinking it warm. Round after round, both of drinks and karaoke flew by as I was continuously amazed at the warmth and hospitality of these people. Knowing enough about how they lived and what they earned, this kind of generosity could only be explained by their true inner goodness. I congratulated the wife, drank rounds with happily drunk adolescents, learned a couple of traditional Cambodian dances, most of which centered around a rhythmic walking around in a circle with certain hand, arm, and leg gestures, and by the time people were clearing out and heading home (no doubt most had work early in the morning), I was sufficiently satisfied with my Cambodian experience to call it the best part of the trip.

On the way back, Chenda invited me to his house. We drove down a bumpy road in complete darkness, for the only light was the single bulb in his moped. In Cambodia, some places get electricity for only a quarter of the day, another fact of many I learned from a well-traveled Russian I met a couple of days before while sitting on a bench in downtown Siem Riep, wondering how six or seven city blocks in the prime area of town could suddenly go completely dark, which they had, blacking out the streets for a good three hours. We took a turn from the main road and down some side streets and finally he parked his moped outside of a little hut. Four straw walls and a straw roof. We walked in. It was around one in the morning. What met me was a surreal scene. In the middle of the room, a large bed. Surrounding the bed, the barest of necessities: clothes hanging from hangers in one corner, an all-purpose desk-table covered in papers and books in another, and in between all sorts of odds and ends collected over the years. Other than the bed, the room had barely enough space for one person to move around, and yet Chenda lived here with his wife, his two children, his brother, and his brother’s fiancée. Perhaps the brother and fiancée had their own room, but I wasn’t sure because the entire family was awake and waiting to meet me. They offered me a bottle of water and I sat speaking with Chenda’s brother, whose English was good enough for him to become an actual tour guide, a position of hope and some prosperity to the locals of Siem Riep. We talked about all sorts of things, he asked me about my life, I asked him about his. The lamp flickered. In addition to the night sounds of the nearby jungle, there was an incessant clicking, coming from a contraption that looked like a tennis racket but actually designed to kill mosquitoes by electrocuting them. The whole family appeared kind and curious, looking at me with a certain degree of awe on the one hand, but also with a discernible shame on the other. Shame of their meager life, I would imagine. I could not find the right, simple words to tell them that there was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, that their life was so pure, so free of the typical bullshit that plagues more well-off families, that I felt so honored to have been invited in, to share a tiny part of their inner happiness.

We bid our goodbyes and Chenda drove me back to the hotel, and the whole way there I could not shake the thought that I had just witnessed what is a daily experience for the majority of the world’s population and definitely could not shake the guilt that came with realizing that not once had I seriously thought about that fact.

The next day, I loafed around, went shopping for some last minute stuff, met some incoming travelers at the hotel, told them about my trip, and around six o’clock set off for the airport with Chenda. He dropped me off, we exchanged addresses, and I gave him the last of my US cash, which for me would have lasted perhaps a typical weekend night or two, but for him would be enough for his whole family to live on and equaled about a month’s wages. From the moment of entering the airport to the time of arriving in my hotel room in Bangkok for literally a night’s stay, I was overwhelmed by a very powerful emotion. The airport was packed to the brim with travelers. The Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Europeans, the Russians, the Americans. A veritable melting pot. Later, I spotted one Cambodian on the plane, a terrified-looking adolescent girl whose facial expression made it obvious that it was her first plane flight. In addition to the airport workers, I didn’t appear to see any others. All around me, many languages were spoken, undoubtedly going over the experiences of the trip, what was done, eaten, or seen. It was an entire airport of people whipping out their pens and placing check marks in their little notebooks labeled “Places to See.” With a considerable degree of sadness, I place myself in the same group. Now, many would argue that this kind of tourist activity is the life-blood of the Cambodian economy, and I am sure it is, but how people get over the contradiction between their own well-off lives, which enable them to make such a journey, and the poverty all around them, is amazing to me. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it is inevitable that they would at least feel the pangs of this paradox clutching them at some point, but, just like me, once they were reunited with the familiar, back in the luxury of a modern airport, once again surrounded with the likes of their own, it quickly melted away, shelved somewhere as a unique experience to bring up when regaling others back home about their trip. I must say, mine lingered longer, causing me to look at these people with a disdain, on several occasions even building to the point of nausea, but back in the Bangkok hotel, with a nice room service curry and a Manchester United game on the T.V., I was miraculously cured. By the time the morning arrived, it was remarkable how surreal those feelings seemed.

The final day was once again about travel. For the sixth time I arrived in Bangkok’s brand new international airport and got on my flight to Taipei, where I had to spend about six hours lounging around the airport before boarding my evening flight for Osaka. Back in Japan, in the dull of winter, in the crowds, munching on my curry and rice omelet which cost about the same as a nice dinner and massage in Thailand, I thought about this trip, about how lucky I was to have seen what I did. I thought about how amazing the world is, about how expansive the array of experience, both practically and spiritually. And as I drifted into sleep on my night bus back home, this journey undoubtedly became etched into my unconscious as one of the best trips of my life…