Siem Reap Day 2: Temple Whoring Off The Beaten Path
As I had exhausted all the options for majorly touristy things to do, I decided that it was now time for something completely different. I enlisted the aid of a Kim (finally, a driver with an intelligible name), whose modus operandi is a tuk-tuk, thusly named because it sounds cute to foreigners. A tuk-tuk is kinda like a cross between a rickshaw and a scooter: insert 1 x foreigner in the cart, hook up 1 x cart to back of scooter, engage 1 x ignition by 1 x said driver and broooooooooooom, you're off! It's a little bumpy at times, and has the singular downside of being equipped merely with nature's air-conditioner (ie fast-moving air gusting by like great big piles of gust), but other than that, tuk-tukking around Angkor was definitely the better choice.
So this morning I got up at a normal hour, having already done 'The Definitive Sunrise Experience'. I ate my breakfast leisurely (bananas the size of my thumb, what's up with that?) and had a long soak in the tub. I met Kim outside the hotel at 9am, ready and raring to kick off with Banteay Srei, described by many as a spiritual experience. The Lemmony Planet describes it thusly (I resort to their words merely cos' using my own requires too much thunking and the heat has dehydrated all my cranial fluid right u): "considered by many to be the jewel in the crown of Angkorian art, the temple is cut from stone of a pinkish hue and includes some of the finest carvings seen anywhere on the planet." I agree. Even for an off-the-beaten-path site that one has to drive an hour to get to, there were still waaaaay too many Japanese tourists floating around with their 80s sunglasses and their socks up to their ankles. Actually, as an aside, there are loads of French tourists here too. Must be something to do with History or some other 'ism' I suppose. After 9 months in Taiwan, it's nice to hear white people speaking in something other than American/British/Aussie/South African accents. Here, I've come across Frenchies as I said, German, Russian and even Dutch, although the Dutch guy had an American accent!
Anway, back to the spiritual site of Banteay Srei. As an active Healy-Feelyist, I walked round and round the carved stones waiting for some sort of spiritual enlightenment to strike me. None did! Still, that didn't diminish the beauty of the place or the outstanding carvings, which really do stand out outstandingly. What did strike me later in the day (perhaps the spiritual wisdom was delayed by the ridiculous heat? or the thought of me in purple pantaloons?) was that why should it be a spiritual experience just because the book says so. Surely, for something to be a truly spiritual experience, it should be entirely individual. It's like the watched pot that never boils: you can't force a spiritual experience. Anway, just my little rage against the esoteric machine there for a moment...
There was something about today's temples that made them stand out from yesterday's. Yesterday I spent a lot of time literally climbing up the incredibly steep sides of these majestically magnificent temples. Today, there was little climbing, and, in a way, less temple. Three of today's archipelago of temples were surrounded by waterways, sadly dried up. The third, alas I know not what is its name, was a man-made series of 5 pools dug by this MAJOR king who seriously dug his temples (pun that anyway you like!). There was one square pool in the middle surrounded by 4 further, and smaller and shallower, pools on all sides. In the middle of the middle temple stood a massive temple, which the king, when done swimming, would no doubt sunbathe upon. Granted, this was all going on some 800 years back but with a little concentration, I could almost picture what the site looked like, watered up to the gills. The more perceptive of you may argue that this was because I was now suffering from mild heatstroke...
Now, on to today's highlight: East Mebon, which is about as close to a spiritual experience as I've had all day. It's a 2-tiered structure in the shape of a square, guarded by monolithic stone elephants at each corner, which are almost perfectly intact. The place was so dead quiet when I arrived. It was like being inside a piece of scenery as some famous fiction writer would describe it. You know, 'the forest, so peaceful, so eerily quiet, all he could hear was the occasional buzz of a fly in his ear, the scrunch of this shoes on the ground and the whistle of the leaves in the trees'. Cliched but true. The building itself looked as though it had sprung from the very soil of Narnia or from the pages of The Neverending Story. It was almost Ivory Towerish. At any moment, I half expected a satyr to pop his round a pillar and exclaim, "What in the name of Aslan are you, strange creature?"
By 1pm I was physically exhausted and in dire need of nutritious Khmer-cooked food off the side of the road. Lunch was pork with vegetables and ginger (which made me think of my gran's ginger chicken for some reason, although her chicken is far more Jewishly cooked that the Khmer-style piggy wiggy). The food was more ginger than anything else, but I love ginger so was happier than a satyr who'd just stumbled upon a Son of Adam (yes, I'm re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia as we speak)!
Truth is, it's just too ridiculously hot to temple-whore between 12 and 2, so Kim is fetching me tomorrow morning at 7 and we're doing some more out of the way temples, back to hotel for lunchtime chill (and much-needed shower), followed by further temple-whoring. Then sunset at Angkor Wat shall complete my 3 days here. Pheweeeeeeeeeeeeee!
So this morning I got up at a normal hour, having already done 'The Definitive Sunrise Experience'. I ate my breakfast leisurely (bananas the size of my thumb, what's up with that?) and had a long soak in the tub. I met Kim outside the hotel at 9am, ready and raring to kick off with Banteay Srei, described by many as a spiritual experience. The Lemmony Planet describes it thusly (I resort to their words merely cos' using my own requires too much thunking and the heat has dehydrated all my cranial fluid right u): "considered by many to be the jewel in the crown of Angkorian art, the temple is cut from stone of a pinkish hue and includes some of the finest carvings seen anywhere on the planet." I agree. Even for an off-the-beaten-path site that one has to drive an hour to get to, there were still waaaaay too many Japanese tourists floating around with their 80s sunglasses and their socks up to their ankles. Actually, as an aside, there are loads of French tourists here too. Must be something to do with History or some other 'ism' I suppose. After 9 months in Taiwan, it's nice to hear white people speaking in something other than American/British/Aussie/South African accents. Here, I've come across Frenchies as I said, German, Russian and even Dutch, although the Dutch guy had an American accent!
Anway, back to the spiritual site of Banteay Srei. As an active Healy-Feelyist, I walked round and round the carved stones waiting for some sort of spiritual enlightenment to strike me. None did! Still, that didn't diminish the beauty of the place or the outstanding carvings, which really do stand out outstandingly. What did strike me later in the day (perhaps the spiritual wisdom was delayed by the ridiculous heat? or the thought of me in purple pantaloons?) was that why should it be a spiritual experience just because the book says so. Surely, for something to be a truly spiritual experience, it should be entirely individual. It's like the watched pot that never boils: you can't force a spiritual experience. Anway, just my little rage against the esoteric machine there for a moment...
There was something about today's temples that made them stand out from yesterday's. Yesterday I spent a lot of time literally climbing up the incredibly steep sides of these majestically magnificent temples. Today, there was little climbing, and, in a way, less temple. Three of today's archipelago of temples were surrounded by waterways, sadly dried up. The third, alas I know not what is its name, was a man-made series of 5 pools dug by this MAJOR king who seriously dug his temples (pun that anyway you like!). There was one square pool in the middle surrounded by 4 further, and smaller and shallower, pools on all sides. In the middle of the middle temple stood a massive temple, which the king, when done swimming, would no doubt sunbathe upon. Granted, this was all going on some 800 years back but with a little concentration, I could almost picture what the site looked like, watered up to the gills. The more perceptive of you may argue that this was because I was now suffering from mild heatstroke...
Now, on to today's highlight: East Mebon, which is about as close to a spiritual experience as I've had all day. It's a 2-tiered structure in the shape of a square, guarded by monolithic stone elephants at each corner, which are almost perfectly intact. The place was so dead quiet when I arrived. It was like being inside a piece of scenery as some famous fiction writer would describe it. You know, 'the forest, so peaceful, so eerily quiet, all he could hear was the occasional buzz of a fly in his ear, the scrunch of this shoes on the ground and the whistle of the leaves in the trees'. Cliched but true. The building itself looked as though it had sprung from the very soil of Narnia or from the pages of The Neverending Story. It was almost Ivory Towerish. At any moment, I half expected a satyr to pop his round a pillar and exclaim, "What in the name of Aslan are you, strange creature?"
By 1pm I was physically exhausted and in dire need of nutritious Khmer-cooked food off the side of the road. Lunch was pork with vegetables and ginger (which made me think of my gran's ginger chicken for some reason, although her chicken is far more Jewishly cooked that the Khmer-style piggy wiggy). The food was more ginger than anything else, but I love ginger so was happier than a satyr who'd just stumbled upon a Son of Adam (yes, I'm re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia as we speak)!
Truth is, it's just too ridiculously hot to temple-whore between 12 and 2, so Kim is fetching me tomorrow morning at 7 and we're doing some more out of the way temples, back to hotel for lunchtime chill (and much-needed shower), followed by further temple-whoring. Then sunset at Angkor Wat shall complete my 3 days here. Pheweeeeeeeeeeeeee!