Accidental Pilgrimage
I think I just made an accidental pilgrimage. Now back in Bangkok, the past four days are a blur, where Monday morning I bought a ticket to Cambodia and in the afternoon I was stepping off a plane in Siem Reap. I was in a place I never thought I’d be, seeing things previously known to me only through films, like the ending of Wong Kar Wai’s In The Mood For Love.
There I was, the next morning, as the outlines of ancient temple Angkor Wat rose like spears out of the pre-dawn darkness. How did I get there? Why was I crying? The roosters were crowing and the Cambodian tour guides were chatting and smoking indifferently as the tourists sat and watched the background lighten as the triumvirate towers of Angkor darkened temporarily before the rising of the sun.
And then a sudden slice of sunlight hit me in the eye, pointing, selecting me and I felt then my incredible luck; to have been able to do all of this, to travel and change my plans as I desired so I could witness this sunrise, these magical buildings. A moment later the light was slicing bits of the ruins, illuminating the carvings of the Apsaras, the celestial nymphs that adorn so many of the temples at Angkor.
In another minute, all was brightness.
I made my way slowly with Christine, my new friend and travel partner who I met at the peace organization conference I attended in Bangkok, to the monument. And as we approached the scale became more apparent. Angkor Wat is massive. Full of doorways, tiers, and an overwhelming number of steps, the Khmer people tried, when they built Angkor Wat, to represent the order and creation of the universe in this one temple. After climbing those steps, and getting the view from one of the three towers, you may even get a sense of the omniscience of the gods.
The structure of Angkor Wat makes each turn a surprise, with a discovery of a saffron draped Buddha, or a series of doorways within doorways. Outside the temple is a lotus pond where the butterflies seem to mirror the temple. Like Angkor Wat itself, they are heavy, slow. And as one flew by me in this temple of 1000 Buddhas, I couldn’t help but imagine that somehow the place was making the butterflies, like me, drunk and dizzy with its splendour.
As the day became hotter we left to tour other temples but were finally exhausted after wandering the Bayon in the morning heat. After a quick breakfast where I pulled burrs out of my pants on what would be the first of many occasions, and a little more touring, we collapsed in plastic chairs with cold drinks at a roadside stall. There we began to doze off, and the Cambodian stall owners offered us their hammocks for an early afternoon nap while they guarded our bags. We napped then, trusting our hosts completely, as rain began to fall gently outside and the afternoon passed on without us.
When we awoke the stall owners wished us well and we drove off to Ta Keo, another temple in the Angkor series. There we met Lin, Superman and Spidermonkey, three kids between the ages of 5 and 7 who gave us a tour in exchange for promises we would buy cold drinks from them afterwards.
Children are everywhere at Angkor, begging, selling, playing, and most speaking beautiful English. We climbed Ta Keo, which, Spidermonkey informed us, had 97 steps, best climbed from the east side. The west side, Superman said, had last seen two Japanese tourists fall down and break four teeth, two cameras and a pair of glasses. “But not dead!” they chanted in a chorus. Spidermonkey ran up and down the steps of the ruin as if it was a playground as Superman told us that little Lin was half-boy, half-girl. At the top, in the shade of a tower, I pulled ridiculous faces at the kids since they were very adept at tricking me into believing I had something on my shirt, and when I looked down, smacking me on the chin.
We climbed back down again to chants of “We can do it”, mainly for my benefit, along with a countdown of steps, to end up finally at their stalls to buy cold drinks. Christine bought one from Spidermonkey and I bought one from Lin, and then I tried to give Superman some Baht coin. But no coins are accepted in Cambodia and I had no paper cash. Even though this play was business for these kids, it was also accompanied with a sense of the personal, and little Superman was crushed that he would be left out. He ran to a tree and began to cry as I looked on, devastated, and able to do nothing. Our next stop was supposed to be the bank, where I could get some money. I had none. And then our driver, Mr. Chea (taxi driver, Siem Reap, Angkor. tel: (855)12950068 – he was great) pulled out a 1000 Riel note and gave it to Superman when he saw how upset we both were.
As we drove off, we waved frantically out the window, which reminded me of the children in Pakistan, and again how wonderful connecting with children is, how simple, in a way, and how complicated.
We arrived back at the hotel completely drained. As I fell asleep I thought of that morning (how could it all have been one day?) and how, if I closed my eyes at sunrise, I could see the outline of Angkor Wat still there, recorded in my skull and on the back of my eyelids.
I dreamt the Khmer dream of steps upon steps and of endless doorways within doorways of possibility.
