HOLIDAY IN CAMBODIA

Pavillon Indochine, Siem Reap, Cambodia (November 23, 2006). One of the first things you notice upon arriving in Cambodia is the pace of life.

To say it’s slower doesn’t really do justice to the difference.

Bangkok moves like a motorcycle, blaring down a street at noon.

Cambodia rolls by quietly, an old bicycle on a dusty road.

Time here doesn’t flow. It oozes.

It moves at the speed of kapok tree roots, creeping over the ruins of lost temples and fallen empires.

Today is Thanksgiving.

Kay and I dined on curried chicken and beef, prepared in a traditional Cambodian style, at an open air roadside restaurant in the countryside, forty miles outside of Siem Reap. Sharing dinner with us were Seum Sophal, our kind, wise guide, and a shy young driver from our hotel.

We were among the few guests at the diner, and the owner and his wife were happy to fuss over the stove preparing a variety of dishes for the feast. A group of children, five to seven years old, sat barefoot at a nearby table, eyes glued to a silly Thai soap opera on a small TV set in the corner.

Across the highway, young boys took turns leaping from a dock and splashing in the river that flowed between us and the ruins of Beng Melea, the last temple we would visit in the vicinity of Angkor.

I challenge anyone to visit this country and not be moved.

The monuments of the Khmer kingdom rise out of the jungle like giant stone gods.

Huge moats surround fortified walls that encompass the remains of parade grounds, promenades, causeways, guest houses, libraries, and, above all, temples.

Impossibly steep steps climb to level upon level of vaulted halls, inner courtyards, dizzying precipices, and porticos laced with delicate balustrades.

No description prepares you for what you find there.

Murals carved in exquisite detail. Stone sculptures of gods, warriors, mythological beings. Countless representations of the apsaras – celestial, ethereal beings that radiate a sense of beauty and peace.

The architectural elements are in such perfect proportion and balance they tempt you to believe nature itself must be as ordered and rational.

Kay and I wandered for hours in the ruins, guided gently by Seum and his friends at the many temples.

These are historical sites that should be sealed off, protected from the public and preserved by armies of archaeologists.

And yet they are not. They lie exposed in the jungle. Descendants of the temple-builders live and work within the walls of some of the compounds. Visitors clamber over giant blocks of stone. They stand atop city walls. They step through windows onto ledges that overlook vast plazas.

Kay and I, lawyers that we are, could not help but remark on the dangerous setting and the disregard that both care-takers and visitors seemed to have for safety.

In the U.S., we imagined, there would be ropes and rails, barricades and guards at every turn to protect the public from the ruins – and vice versa.

But Cambodians, no doubt, have a different perspective on life and its risks. There is no safety net for the people here. They rely on themselves, their neighbors and their own good judgment to survive in a country that is desperately poor.

The very absence of barriers and protection ultimately serves to draw you closer to the monuments, heightening their reality.

In temples like Angkor Wat or Ta Keo, you wander freely through dark halls and step into empty atriums. Incense hangs in the air. It feels as if, just moments before, nobles, monks or royal courtesans may have lingered there, and might soon return.

Other temples – like Ta Prohm and Beng Melea – have fallen into spectacular decay. Bridges, gatehouses, and halls have collapsed and been overtaken by the jungle. Giant kapok trees have grown up in the courtyards and on walls, forcing their roots into cracks and wrapping themselves like pythons around crumbling stone blocks.

Ta Prohm is a popular temple for tourists, and thousands visit it on any given day.

But Beng Melea lies far from town, and on this Thanksgiving Day we walk through it in solitude under a leafy canopy amid supreme and riotous ruin.
A wiry, white-haired man – a widower with no family – lives in the temple. He guides us over piles of stones, showing us how to scale the heights, and how to descend. Time seems frozen. Only birds and forest animals can be heard.

I challenge anyone to visit to Cambodia and not be moved.

But not just by the temples. By the people themselves.

Getting to the temple of Beng Melea requires a long drive from Siem Reap. Most tourists don’t bother with it. The distance may be only forty miles or so, but the journey is slow and takes hours.

It’s funny, really, because the roads are actually quite good. A Westerner might expect to make the trip in about forty-five minutes.

But that is not the way of Cambodia.

The roads that carry you to Beng Melea are not simply motorways. They are arteries that carry the flow of life through the countryside, and they move at their own pace.

You sit in the back of your hired car and stare out the windows at the living, breathing whole of Cambodian village life.

Along the roadside, women prepare food in beautiful patterned skirts. Men, shirtless, repair carts or tools in their sarongs. Children in spotless uniforms travel in packs, laughing to and from school. Small children, naked, chase each other under palm trees.

At points along the highways trees break away and reveal rice fields stretching off to the horizon, dotted with palms under clear blue skies. Houses rest on stilts – some of modern construction, some of thatched roofs and woven panels.

Oxcarts trundle by on wooden wheels, loaded with fertilizer. Motorcycles bearing everything from groceries to pigs to bamboo poles travel to and fro, their drivers occasionally clutching a child or two, along for the ride. Villagers peddle bicycles, dwarfed by woven baskets strung together and strapped in a heap to the back.

And, inevitably, your eyes are drawn to the people.

Unforgettable faces, skin burned brown in the tropical sun. They stand in the doorways of homes. They sit cross-legged on platforms under stilted houses, carrying on the daily business of their lives. Sewing. Cooking. Building. Cutting children’s hair.

Children are everywhere. A nation recovering from the killing fields, Cambodia’s young sons and daughters are its hope for the future. Laughing, playing, either bare-chested in the noonday sun or in their school uniforms – blue trousers, ankle length skirts and blindingly white shirts.

As you look out at the people, they will often stare back into your eyes, holding the gaze, open, and unafraid. Sometimes they smile. Sometimes they wave. Sometimes they just stare.

The Cambodians are a beautiful people – their faces mirror the grace of the apsaras and resolve of the warriors preserved in the stone sides of the jungle temples.

Their beauty, the simplicity of their daily lives, and the knowledge of the tragedies they have collectively witnessed all combine to sear their images into the back of your brain.

When you visit Angkor Wat, the temples appear as lightening bolts. Big and bold. Seemingly forged by the Khmer gods themselves.

But long after those flashes fade, the quiet beauty of the Cambodian people lingers with you, like a soft thunder rolling over distant rice fields.

POST SCRIPT ON ANGKOR WAT – A STAIRCASE TOO FAR

A word of caution to those traveling to Angkor Wat – the undisputed “big daddy” of all the Angkor temples.

You will want to climb. The pyramidal towers beg to be ascended. The views are well worth the effort.

But the steep monumental steps are far easier to mount than to descend.

That is my word of caution.

At the end of any given day, after several hundred tourists have crowded the top of the central spire, a collective recognition sets in among all those perched there.

Only one of the several staircases leading to the ground has a handrail – a spindly thing to which tourists must cling as they slowly maneuver themselves hundreds of feet down in the fading light.

The flow of descending tourists moves at a glacial pace. It would not surprise me if there weren’t a few souls still negotiating their way down at midnight.

It really is a funny scene.

For a brief time on our first day, however, the jolly humor in the situation quite eluded us.

That was because Kay and I, in an effort to avoid the interminable wait to descend via the handrail, opted instead to descend an equally steep and far less-traveled staircase that had no handrail.

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that I may have been the more enthusiastic party to this venture.

Kay’s reluctant participation may have come only after some rather extensive persuading on my part – pleading that would have been complicated by fact that this was the same staircase below which the crowd in the courtyards would applaud and cheer any time an intrepid traveler managed to negotiate the precarious climb up or down.

About halfway down this unconventional alternative route, Kay’s nerves decided they had had enough.

Unfortunately, by this time Kay had reached a point in the climb where the trip down and the trip back up each appeared equally perilous and unappealing, and the prospect of clinging motionless and white-knuckled to the sheer stone blocks seemed the infinitely preferable course.

The sun was setting, and the situation we found ourselves in was something less than optimal.

I tried to relieve Kay’s fears by explaining, that if she could manage to climb down a few more of the tall, narrow steps, a fall from such a lesser height would probably result only in serious bodily injury, and not death.

Such assurances failed to achieve the desired result and seemed only to tighten Kay’s lichen-like hold on the sheer rock sides of the temple.

The crowd blow began murmur. I suspected wagers were being made.

The light grew dimmer. And when the situation seemed at its worst, we heard a cry from the plaza.

“Ms. Kay! Hold on! I’m coming!”

It was Seum Sophal at the base of the steps, starting the precarious climb to our level.

This was the same Seum Sophal who had looked so strangely at us when we said we wanted to go to the top and who had politely declined to accompany us, noting the near vertical nature of the climb.

His concern for his two charges, however, momentarily trumped his concerns over heights, after a friend below drew his attention to Kay’s predicament.

When he finally reached Kay’s side, she had two persons to assist her in the climb down. Seum stayed with her, holding her hand as she tentatively backed down each steep and narrow step.

I descended just below her on the steps, explaining that, if she were to fall, she would inevitably collide with me and I would then serve as a convenient cushion for her when we both reached the stone courtyard some distance below.

That assurance may not have helped the situation, but I do believe it strengthened Kay’s resolve, as I think I heard her mutter something to the effect that such a result would serve me right.

In the end, Seum’s friend, a fellow guide, was waiting to welcome all of us when we safely reached the bottom.

There was great relief on the part of all.

The one consolation of the whole ill-conceived affair was that, well after we had exited the temple and were proceeding down the long causeway leading to the gate, we could look back and see hundreds of tourists, still stuck at the top in a giant knot, as a stream of bodies slowly trickled down the side of the temple, hands gripping that single rail like a lifeline.

And there was also consolation (at least on my part) in the fact that Kay had generously elected not to kill me for being the proximate cause of the whole affair.