The Way of Wanderlust (37 page)

Over the next two and half days, I immersed myself in a giddy, deluge-dodging round of ruin-hopping and restaurant-gorging in Siem Reap. I saw Angkor Wat at dawn and dusk, mysterious strangler-figged Ta Prohm, the benevolent, beguiling faces of Bayon, and exquisite Banteay Srey. I slung back Indochine Martinis at the seductive Miss Wong bar and savored a six-course seasonal feast at acclaimed Cuisine Wat Damnak. I was exultant to have reached the place I had dreamed of for decades, but somehow among the thousands of balloon-panted, sarong-wrapped, selfie-snapping foreigners, I sensed the essence of Cambodia eluding me. Even immersed in the cultural heart of the country, I felt somehow distanced from the place.

So it was that on my third morning, filled with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation, I set off with Mr. Kim for Banteay Chhmar. The drive was spectacular—palm trees, rice paddies, cassava fields, stilt houses, bright-eyed children waving and calling “Hello!”—and it was only when we arrived at the outskirts of the village that I realized I literally had no idea where I was going. The emailed reservation confirmation had said to check in with the CBT office when I arrived in Banteay Chhmar, but I had been too distracted in Siem Reap to think about re-reading emails, and the only thing I could remember was that I had arranged a meeting the following morning with a man at the Global Heritage Fund (GHF), an international organization that was working to restore the main ruin in Banteay Chhmar.

“So you are staying at the Global Heritage Fund house?” Mr. Kim asked.

“No, I don't think so.”

“Anyway, we go there,” he declared and turned back to the road. A few minutes later we saw a sign for the GHF and Mr. Kim pulled into a fenced, two-building compound. A dignified man strolled toward us and asked if he could help. This, it turned out, was Sarun Kousum, the assistant director of the GHF project and the man I was supposed to meet the following day.

“Is Mr. Don staying with you?” Mr. Kim asked Sarun.

Sarun looked uncomfortable. “No, no, he is not staying here.”

“He says he made the reservation on the computer.”

“Oh, that must be through the Community-Based Tourism office,” he said. “You need to go there.”

After bouncing, sloshing, and skidding along the main street for another ten minutes, we reached the two-room, thatch-and-metal-roofed CBT office, where a smiling young man named Sokoun Kit greeted us.

“Ah, I have been waiting for you!” he said. “Welcome! Please fill out some paperwork and I will take you to your home. It's just a short walk from here.”

As I wrote, Sokoun explained that since my host family was not equipped to serve meals to guests, I would take all my meals at the CBT office. The village had electricity from 6:00
p.m
. to 11:00
p.m
. each night. He would be happy to lend me a flashlight.

“How about Internet access?” I asked.

“I'm sorry,” Sokoun said. “There is no Internet access.”

A few minutes later, Mr. Kim parked at the edge of an unpaved road outside a muddy compound of stilt houses, and sloshed my suitcase on his shoulder through the muck and around the puddles, scattering chickens as he walked, to the two-story home where I would be spending the next three days.

Sokoun joined us in the spare, open-air, concrete-floor living area under the second story of the wooden house, where a middle-aged couple stood to greet us.

“Don, these are your hosts,” he said, gesturing to the man, who was wearing a polo shirt and shorts, and the woman in a bright patterned sarong. They both smiled and bowed slightly, and the man said something to Sokoun. “They don't speak much English, but they are very happy to have you here,” Sokoun said. I smiled and bowed in return, and said the one word I had learned in Khmer, “
Agung
!”—thank you.

Their eyes brightened momentarily, then the man gestured toward a wooden staircase that led to my bedroom. Mr. Kim kicked off his sandals and carried my bag up the stairs. I sat on a child's red plastic chair that had been placed at the bottom of the stairs and laboriously liberated my feet from my muddy shoes. With a quick nod, I ascended with my backpack.

Sokoun and I had arranged to meet later that afternoon, and after calling out, “Make yourself at home,” he left to take his lunch. Mr. Kim had said he would stay with a friend who lived nearby, and we confirmed that he would meet me at the CBT office four days later for the drive back to Siem Reap. He left too. Then I was alone.

I sat on the edge of the mosquito net that covered the queen-size four-poster bed that occupied most of my room. The noontime sun blasted through the room's barred windows. The humidity hammered on my head. Outside I could see a half dozen wooden stilt homes surrounded by muddy patches and palm trees, a clothesline hung with shirts and sarongs, tree branch kindling stacked under a storage shed, a scrabbly vegetable garden where smoke plumed from a dying fire. Roosters strutted and crowed, dogs barked, babies wailed, adults called from home to home.  

Suddenly I felt utterly overwhelmed: What had I gotten myself into? My hosts didn't speak English. I was cut off entirely from the outside world. The roads were a muddy mess. I had no means of transportation and no idea what I was going to do for the next three days. Sweat poured down my face. Was there a shower, or even running water? And what about the toilet—where, and what, was that? What had I been thinking when I booked three nights here?

It took all my energy simply to lift my mosquito net and crawl into its cocoon.

The next morning, over coffee in the GHF courtyard, Sarun Kousum told me he had first visited the main Banteay Chhmar ruin in 1997. “It was a huge surprise,” he said. “Only a little bit of the dirt and trees had been cleared at that time, but already you could tell from the size of the ruin and the quality of the work that it was an important site.” GHF began its efforts there, under the directorship of John Sanday, in January 2008. “I have been a part of this project from the beginning,” Sarun said, and his face glowed with a quiet pride.

After coffee Sarun grabbed a couple of umbrellas and took me on a tour of the site. As we walked toward the ruin, Sarun explained that the Banteay Chhmar complex had been commissioned in the late 12th century by King Jayavarman VII, the architecturally ambitious ruler who had also commissioned the magnificent Ta Prohm, Angkor Thom/Bayon, and Preah Khan complexes. When it was completed in the early 13th century, Banteay Chhmar was one of the largest and most important religious sites in the kingdom, rivaling Angkor Wat in size and grandeur.

We reached the spectacular 180-foot-long wall that greets visitors who approach from the eastern entrance, now the principal entry to the site, and Sarun said, “One of our first projects was to secure, stabilize, and restore this wall.”

The restoration showcases a stunningly detailed bas-relief depicting battles between the Khmer and their long-time enemies, the Cham. In one section, long ear-lobed Khmer soldiers bearing spears and shields march over a battlefield under the command of their larger-than-life-sized king. The Cham soldiers, identified by their curious headwear, which looks like lotus flowers plopped upside down on their pates, flee from the advance. As the narrative unfolds, the Khmer offer the heads of their now vanquished enemies to the king. Later, musicians and dancers perform in a palace celebration.

“The builders in the 12th century were very skilled,” Sarun said. “Even though their tools were unsophisticated, the quality of the carvings they did is astonishing.”

A gentle rain began to patter on the leafy boughs that covered much of the site, and Sarun led me along a muddy path to an area where a concrete-floored, metal-roofed storage and work space had been built; beyond that a portion of wall about thirty feet long had collapsed into a jumble of stones.

“I was here in January when this wall fell down,” Sarun said. “There was a big wind during the night, and the next morning when we came to the site, we were surprised to see this toppled portion. In all, 214 stones fell over, and we are using computer imaging to put the wall back together. We paint a number on each stone, then we carve the number on the stone. Then we take pictures of each stone, do hand-drawings, and put the pictures and drawings on the computer. Then we begin to put the pieces back together on the computer. It really is like a puzzle, based on the shape of the rock and any carving on the stone. The experts know what they're looking at and are very skilled in reconstructing.”

We toured the ruins for an hour without encountering any other visitors, and this poignant place—sculpted stones scattered as though a giant had smashed the temple with his club—cast a spell on me. As we exited by the western temple wall, Sarun showed me perhaps the greatest of Banteay Chhmar's masterpieces: two breathtakingly detailed depictions of the Buddhist god of compassion, Avalokitesvara, one with thirty-two arms and the other with twenty-two arms. A gaping hole in the wall next to one of these marked the spot where looters made off with two other Avalokitesvara reliefs. Happily, Sarun said, these were intercepted near the Thai border and are now on display at the National Museum in Phnom Penh. Unhappily, another stolen section with two more reliefs has never been found. Sighing, he said, “We must preserve these for our culture, our heritage.”

Sarun's pride in these ruins was so evident that before we parted, I couldn't resist asking him one last question. “You've been working here non-stop since January 2008. These ruins must be so deeply a part of your life by now, do you ever dream about them?”

He looked at me with smiling eyes. “Oh yes, sometimes. . . .” he said, and then he looked away with a shy laugh.

That afternoon I met Sopheng Khlout, the slight, smiling, twenty-something CBT president. Sopheng had kindly arranged to be my guide for the rest of my stay, and over the next two and a half days, through an ever-changing flow of sunshine, light showers, and deluging downpours, he went far out of his way to give me an exceptional tour of Banteay Chhmar. We began by visiting two of the region's nine satellite temples. The first was Prasat Ta Prohm, just a few minutes' ride by motorbike south of the main temple. Ta Prohm is a four-sided tower, elaborately reinforced by modern carpentry, that soars about forty feet out of the surrounding vegetation, with Bayon-style faces—a prominent, wide nose; thick lips upturned into a slight smile; and protruding almond eyes—on each side. It looked to be entirely overgrown, but Sopheng knew a trail that wound through the vines, bushes, and branches to a hollow under the tower itself, where I was surprised to find not only ancient inscriptions but also fresh incense and candles. There was a red cloth wound around the tower, and Sopheng said that the cloth showed that this was a living temple where locals came to leave their offerings and to ask the gods to answer their prayers.

Next we motored eight miles south past tranquil rice paddies and simple stilt houses to Banteay Torp, a temple built to honor Jayavarman VII's troops for their defeat of the Cham. The most impressive feature of this sprawling, densely overgrown, crumbling complex was three towers that rose teeteringly over the ruins. For me, the place poignantly pictured the destiny of all ancient temples, and it gave me an even deeper appreciation for the dedicated efforts of John Sanday, Sarun, and the GHF—and other individuals and organizations like them—to rescue and restore these sites.

“It's hard to imagine what this must have looked like 800 years ago,” I said to Sopheng.

“Yes,” he replied, gazing over the ruins. “Mostly people come here to picnic now. I think this temple has become a place to worship nature.”

Finally we visited a reservoir formally known as Boeung Cheung Kru, but more popularly called the Pol Pot Baray (
baray
means reservoir), because it was built during the reign of the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot. The scene was blissfully beautiful: a placid expanse of water with patches of lotuses floating here and there, birds swooping and settling, children splashing, adults wading with fishing nets. On the horizon, green hills marked the border with Thailand. The peacefulness of the scene entirely belied its past.

“Yes,” Sopheng said with a pained smile. “It is hard to believe how much suffering took place right here, to build this
baray
. We hear the stories. People worked at least twelve hours a day, every day, and they were fed only a little rice or soup. People were killed without reason.”

For a moment his face darkened, and he turned away. After a long silence, he said, his voice tight, “We don't understand these things.”

Immediately I recalled a moment in Mr. Kim's car, on the ride from Siem Reap. We had talked about Siem Reap's main tourist sites, ancient Cambodian history and Khmer culture, Buddhism and Hinduism, and the Cambodian economy. Now he was telling me about current politics and how the government was seeking to unify the country and focus on the future after being brutally ripped apart during the Pol Pot years from 1975 to 1979.

I had been reluctant to bring up the subject of Pol Pot, but this mention seemed to open a channel in Mr. Kim's mind. Suddenly the words streamed from his mouth.

“You can't comprehend what it was like during those years,” he said, shaking his head. “No one who didn't live it can understand. Before the civil war, nine million people lived in Cambodia. After the war, there were six million left. Pol Pot killed one-third of the people. One-third!

“I was lucky. I was a commander in the Cambodian Army against Pol Pot. But I know so many people who were not so lucky.

“They took all the people from the cities—educated people, teachers, office workers—and put them to work in the fields. Then in the fields, if someone got sick, they would be killed. If someone wasn't working hard enough, they would be killed. Sometimes even if you just looked at a soldier the wrong way, you would be killed. These were Cambodian people, killing Cambodian people.”