day 3 angkor

it's getting a little warmer here!

Day 2 of angkor was definitely a warmer one but amazingly, in the early predawn mornings, driving in a 2 seater tuktuk open to the air, it's cold. day 2 was our chance to visit angkor wat, at sunrise. actually, angkor wat itself did not feel inspiring to me, it was a lot like Versailles in that it is so symmetric, so tucked in that the mystery is hard to feel. however, at the back of angkor wat, on one of the upper levels, a group of about 12 cambodian (we think) tourists (or maybe not) were clustered outside the stone balustrade, on a small platform area, facing east, out of view, and they were chanting and chanting, for about an hour. Sounded like yohorem ke chanom, yohorem ke chanom, yo horem ke chanom. they were all wearing normal street clothes and no one was shaved headed, and when they finished, after the sky had tinted pink, they all giggled and laughed and enjoyed themselves just like a california spiritual womens group like one of kate Munger's might do. it was real fun to sit and be part of this. And to listen to the early morning bird song, and occasional gecko, and occasional cicada, and occasional monks chant. Another really nice moment was that we left angkor itself but were still within the moat and drifted into the grounds of one of the operational buddhist wats, and sat with the bougainvillea and looked back at Angkor Wat as it started to get lit by the risen sun, and visited with a really nice 13 year old girl named something like sorong who told us she was an orphan the buddhists took in along with her 5 sisters and 2 brothers... or something like that. She was real cute and so was her 4 year old sister who was wearing a diamond studded Little Mermaid style tiara as she swept with her twig broom. Sorong was a bit more serious actually, and had her hair blunt cut like she might have recently cut it off, in mourning or something... bonnie would know about that.

Another odd highlight of Angkor wat was having coffee with condensed milk at a little stand run by a guy who coralled us on our way in: he said 'just ask for me, my name is Bond, James Bond'. we sat at our picnic table next to the lawn next to the muddy lily pond where tourists continued to snap their Ángkor wat at sunrise photos...

Then we had another nice treat, we went to climb Phnom bakeng which is a hill that has a ramplike path up the side of it, through the forest; at this time of day, thanks to bonnie's advice, we saw no tourists but we did travel up the hill in company of a pretty large Cambodian family including Tutu and Tutukane, and two kids, one a girl of about five in no kidding size 13 mens flipflops. she flew along in them and enjoyed flapping their big heels. when we got to the top, the kids all sat on the giant cement Brahma bull there, just like kids on any large civic sculpture, then, granny and mom caressed the bull and offered money and incense in front of it. Then we climbed up the very, very steep, ziggurat like temple at the top of the hill. We looked out over the plains. i guess this is where everyone else comes with their tours for the sunset... I would skip it.

Our sunset was exceptional... we went out to so far my favorite temple, Preah Khan, which has just the right combination of tumbled-down ness and fabulous carvings and trees growing throughout it and the golden evening sunlight was superb. Then we went home and walked out to dinner through the local redlight district to a small place Bistrot de paris and had the best french bistro food and wine we'd had in a long time. $20 for the meal, $22 for the wine which was St nicolas de Bourgheuil and we sat next to a nice french couple who turned out to be Quebec-ers who knew all aobut sherbroooke and memphremagog and my dad's childhood haunts. Our food was to die for pork with mustard sauce and saucisses. it was the owners birthday, and someone brought by some sparklers, which are in abundance now here and there because chinese new yeears is coming and there are a few ethnic chinese in Cambodia. oh, forgot lunch. so lunch was in a lovely set of pedestrian alleys and we ate at a plce called 'Traditional khmer food'and had grilled egplant topped with chopped pork, and honey roasted duck, and warm tapioca with pumpkin chunks for dessert. precededby iced coffee with cndensed milk, and some really nice cats to stroke while waiting for lunch. served by a very lovely Khmer young man, lovely manners of course, people are culturally so polite and it's nice. Next to us at lunch were two young chinese girls also speaking some english with each other, not sure if from hong kong or singapore, comparing the new purses and shirts they bought, they don't seem too interested in ruins. yes, the Angkor crowds are nasty at times, but so amazing to be juxtaposed with all these visiting foreigners from the world over.

we had fabulous luck today, day 3; we hired a car. for some lucky reason we were among the very first this morning at bantei srei, saw the sunrise there, shared it with two chinese speaking couples, saw and photo'd lots of it and walked around its moat before the hordes arrived. Thisis a quite small ruin, out in the country, with the most amazing pink orange tone in the rock and it must be quite hard rock because the carvings which cover nearly every surface are as clear today as they ust have ever again. Then again we were couple number 2 to arrive at Kbal spean , which is a great petroglyph site where hindu religiuos figures and lingas (male fertility objects) have been carved into the rock of a streambed where it disappears into and under a stone bridge and then washes down into a waterfall; we were so early that we were all alone, in this stream in a ravine that at this dry time of year reminds me of the streams in lucas valley, and we got to enjoy the carvings, (a timurta brahma and the lovely carvings of vishnu sleeping giving birth to brahma through a lotus from his umbilicus, or something like that) at the top of the stream where we started, i think we woke the guard up there and he showed us a few carvings we might not have seen, then as we wandered downstream we started to see and hear more people.

then we drove over to beng meala. This is an amazing indiana jones type ruin. Not sure if we were lucky or unlucky, but we were following old directions and circeled away from the wooden stairway, and then, one of the guards beckoned us over the wall and we spent a good long time clambering over the rocks into empty chambers and into one of the long covered galleries that had some offerings in it, took about twenty minutes before we saw a glimpse of the wooden walkways. meanwhile we kept seeing visions of puck, a ten year old boy who was lightly running over the tops of everything. Amazingly none of the cantilevered hallways collapsed under him.

And my friend Bonnie was very right about the beauty of the countryside. even in dry season. pleasant to see the wooden houses, up one story, on stilts, with all the important daily action taking place below them in the shade; and to watch school kids and moms, and taking pigs to market on the backs of motorcylces, and listening to water buffalo lowing, and generally enjoying the view of flat coiuntryside iwth surprising little mountain/hill ranges here and there.

I miss the feeling of uncontaminated culture that i got to feel some of in laos, in 1999, but you can't beat angkor. time has passed, in asia. I find myself looking for beautifully crafted sinhs and instead i see silk handbags, but that's ok.