Rounding the corner amid a tangle of
motorbikes, tour buses, taxis, tuk-tuks, dogs, elephants and pony carts, I
suppressed a sob as I saw the first towers of Angkor Wat. As a professed New World
ruins freak, seeing Cambodia's
12th-century gem had been a personal mecca for 20 years.
Chip Carroon and I flew from Bangkok
on an obscenely overpriced flight to Siem Riep, a tourist ghetto in an area of
rural poverty. Cambodia has
one shining attraction that half of its 1.4 million tourists came to see in
2005: Angkor. Unfortunately, once-sleepy Siem
Riep, a city with many colonial buildings left over from its tenure as part of
French Indochina, is being rapidly overdeveloped, as evidenced by the myriad
brand-new huge hotels on the road to the airport. But we chose a perfectly
adequate family-run guesthouse for $7 per night.
Our first afternoon, following the
advice of guidebooks, we rented rickety girls bikes for $2 a day for the
three-mile ride to the ruins. Taxis and "tuk-tuks" - open-air
carriages powered by a motorbike - are the transport most people choose, but we
chose the physical exercise and freedom of two wheels.
Just before the Angkor Archaeological Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) is a
large sign designating that the area had been cleared of mines, planted by U.S.
troops at the end of the Vietnam War, as part of the effort to stop the bloody
excesses of the infamous Khmer Rouge regime, from 1972-75.
One cannot see all of the temple complexes in fewer than three days; four is
recommended. We bought a three-day pass for $40, which allowed access to the
major complexes plus outlying ones. Tours give you a choice of the
"Small" or "Grand" circuits. But on the bikes we had
absolute freedom.
Angkor Wat proper is the first
complex you see. It is the most famous image of Cambodia, and shows up on its
currency, flag, in the Siem Riep airport's name - even on the country's most
popular beer's label.
Like the Mayans, the shape of the temples, or wats, represents the people's
cosmology. At Angkor, MountMeru, the Hindu mythical
home of the gods, is represented by the tall temples. They are surrounded by a
moat, which is the Ocean of Milk from which life
evolved.
On a Saturday afternoon, the causeway across the moat was jammed with tourists:
Europeans (very few Americans here), Japanese and middle-class Cambodians, for
whom seeing Angkor is the equivalent of an
American's pilgrimage to the Statue of Liberty.
Although the earliest temples date
from 820 AD, the most spectacular and famous were built by one king, Jayavarman
VII, who reigned from 1181-1219. Angkor Wat took more than 37 years to build
and was consecrated in about 1150. The wats are built of sandstone and
laterite, and their resemblance to Mayan ruins I've seen, particularly Guatemala's Tikal, is uncanny. Neither culture discovered
the Roman concept of an arch with a keystone, so the buildings are long and
narrow, or very tall and small, for without a true arch, the weight of the stone
cannot be borne.
The most extraordinary thing about Angkor is
its bas-relief murals of battles, from the Hindu gods' exploits in "The
Ramayana" and of earthly kings. Many-armed Vishnu, astride a peacock,
goose or rhinoceros, battles Hanuman, the monkey god. The troops of the gods
and kings have human or benevolent spirits' faces while the adversaries have
simian faces or are grimacing demons. Screaming elephants lock tusks and
trample the fallen, lions roar, and crocodiles and fearsome fish devour corpses.
But the finest sculpture at Angkor Wat is the celestial dancing maidens, or
apsaras. As in France's
nearly contemporaneous Chartes Cathedral, most of the 1,500-plus images are in
niches. Each bare-breasted woman strikes a different pose, with distinct
hairstyles, symbolic hand gestures, decorated sarongs and detailed jewelry. We
wandered in awe of the figures' delicate grace and evocative, enigmatic smiles.
A very steep staircase led almost 200
feet up to a small temple with views of the surrounding jungle. Saffron-robed
monks prowl the halls, eager to practice their English on tourists. One monk,
perhaps age 16, laughed heartily in disbelief when I told him my only
"children" were cats.
Chip photographed evocative images of prasads, high conical towers, and the
moat's lotus flowers in the sunset before we plunged back into the traffic jam
heading for town. I heard an odd noise behind me, then a motorbike shot past
bearing two men and a huge, upside-down, grunting hog.
Next morning, we set off early for what was to be a 23-mile circuit of the
Grand Tour. The Angkor Thom complex is approached by a causeway flanked by
demons and guardian spirits wrestling with a giant naga, or many-headed cobra.
The gate beyond bears the first
gigantic head of the Buddhist deity Lokesvara, whose fleshy cheeks and full
lips reminded me of Olmec heads I'd seen in Veracruz, Mexico.
Archaeologists believe that the heads - four on each side of 54 towers in the
Bayon complex alone - are portraits of Jayavarman VII. It's hard to imagine how
incredulous the first French explorers must have been in the 1850s when they
first saw the giant faces rising above the canopy.
The bas-relief murals of the late-12th century Bayon are more deeply incised
and better preserved than those of Angkor Wat. Scenes of armies and kings
vanquishing earthly and mythological foes alternate with charming depictions of
everyday life, many the same as still seen in modern rural Cambodia. Women haggle in the
marketplace; men urge on fighting cocks, boars and dogs; people play chess;
girlfriends chat while picking lice out of each others' hair; and a midwife
assists at a birth. Lokesvara's faintly smiling face and the apsaras preside
over the action.
The Terrace of the Elephants consists
of 750 feet of bas-relief, nearly life-size behemoths. One beast strangles a
lion with its trunk, and elephant parents tenderly shepherd their baby.
Triple-headed elephants, beloved of the god Indra, support platforms.
Here, we gratefully left the crowds and pedaled to the outer complexes. Jungle
gave way to rice paddies and a lake, and Brahma bulls and water buffalo grazed
by palm-thatch-roofed houses made of reeds or wooden planks. Women wore
traditional collarless, long-sleeved blouses and sarongs with red-checked turbans.
Naked boys swam in irrigation ponds with ducks and pigs. Every kid in Cambodia knows
one English word - "hello" - which they shout at you from their yards
or the back of a motorbike, much to the amusement of their mothers.
We rode back in time to temples built 300 years earlier than Jayavarman VII's
masterpieces. Most were not as meticulously excavated as the Grand Tour
edifices, the vegetative fringes adding to their exoticness.
The most famous is Ta Prohm, built in
the mid-12th to early-13th century. It was left just as archaeologists
discovered it, with the roots of tall kapok, banyan and strangler fig trees
wrenching apart the walls and oozing down into the masonry's cracks. Screaming
parrots add to the romantic atmosphere.
Night falls like a guillotine at 12 degrees latitude, but the brief twilight of
our ride back afforded us a look at two wildlife species. Leaf monkeys came to
the edge of the main road for picnic leftovers. On the bridge over river that
bisects Siem Riep, I screeched to a halt to stare in gape-mouthed wonder at
hundreds of huge bats leaving their roost. Unlike our insectivorous bats,
fruit-eating bats fly in a determined, straight line with slow wing beats. From
the ground, they looked gull-size, but may have been flying foxes, which have a
wingspan of up to 4 feet. The final night of a full- moon water festival was
going on, with small, lotus-shaped boats containing candles floating down the
river beneath me.
On our final day, we needed to see the most-distant temple complexes so we
hired a tuk-tuk, for $18 for the entire day. I particularly wanted to see 967
AD Banteay Srei, which my guidebook said, "has some of the most gorgeous
stone ornamentation that you are ever likely to set your eyes upon." We
were not disappointed.
Every portico and gallery of this
small temple was covered with bas reliefs so deeply incised and prominent that
I found myself looking at them sideways to ascertain if they weren't, after
all, three-dimensional.
Set among elaborate floral lintels and atop arches were delicate figures
displaying much emotion: dying monkey warriors and their concerned companions;
a terrified goddess Sita, the wife of Rama, being kidnapped by Ravana, the god
of the underworld; and apsaras and other divine guardian spirits in the
hip-slung stance called "contrapposto" in Renaissance art.
The Roulos Group of temples contains the oldest structures in the Angkor area. Pra Kreah, built in 881 was an ancient ruin
revered by Jayavarman VII, who topped it with a new prasad. Badly eroded
statues of nagas, elephants, lions and bulls guard the crumbling structures. Of
note at late-ninth century Lolei were Sanskrit inscriptions on the door
supports proclaiming that the temple was built to honor the parents of King
Yasovarman.
The stone faces
of the Bayon's towers, the Terrace of the Elephants and Banteay Srei's carvings
match anything I've seen in Latin America, and
have become an unforgettable addition to my fascination with ruins.
