Indiana Jones Called, He Wants His Temples Back (Cambodia)

Good temple exploring music

Get ready for some updates, people! My Asian adventures have been going non-stop, and I’ve been in a bit of a blog funk, but recent… shall we say… pestering… from my mom convinced me that I should get back on the bus, so to speak, and catch up.

When last we met, I was just getting ready to leave Thailand after an amazing week with Jess. From Bangkok, I hopped on a bus to Cambodia, which is about a four hour drive to the east. As with most border crossings in the region, you have to take it in two parts – one to the border, where you walk across, and then hop on another bus on the far side. This border in particular is known for the huge number of scams tourists encounter just trying to get across. Luckily I was well prepared for it, and was able to spot the “Fake Border” scam, the “Get your Visa Here!” scam, the “Get your Required Immunization Record Certificate Here!” scam, the “The Border’s Closed for Lunch – Why Don’t You Eat Here!” scam, and a few others. Heck, even when I did make it to the right office to get the right visa, the person who handled my visa started telling me that he’s a tuk-tuk driver in Siam Reap, and would I be interested in a tour guide tomorrow on his off day? Definitely the most shameless scammers I’ve encountered so far – luckily they are the exception and not the rule when it comes to locals in the area, and a little preparation goes a long way.

Another couple hours past the border with Thailand is Siam Reap, a provincial town that’s seen a lot of development in the last few years. The main attraction near Siam Reap is what remains of a massive Khmer civilization – a series of ruins known as the Angkor Complex.

Billed as the 8th wonder of the world, the Angkor Complex, with the main temple of Angkor Wat, and the main town area of Angkor Thom, are really something to behold. I spent four days in Siam Reap exploring the temples each day, and I still felt like I could have spent more time. To get around, I rented a pedal-bike from a local shop, and each day I would make the 10km bikeride to the temples and back, through some pretty amazing scenery. On my first day, I spent the entire afternoon at Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat was built by King Suryavarman II in the 12th century AD, as a temple to worship the Hindu god Vishnu. In the years since, much of the Hindu influence has been replaced or transformed into Buddhist images (it was easier to renovate than rebuild, apparently). One clear remnant of the Hindu past however, and certainly one of the best reasons to visit Angkor Wat, lay in the incredibly detailed bas-relief carvings that cover over 600 meters of exterior wall space. Each of the four sides of the temple, on the first level, is split in two (around an entrance to the upper levels in the middle of the wall). That creates 8 spaces for 8 different massive stone panels that are each carved to tell a story. All but one of the reliefs tells a story from Hindu mythology, with the final one showing the procession of Suryavarman II to the site of Angkor Wat. My favorite, by far, was the panel that told the story of The Churning of the Sea of Milk.

In this relief, Vishnu appears as his divine form and as his turtle avatar. The naga is wrapped around the mountain (behind Vishnu) and extends tens of meters to the left and right, where there are gods and demons carved holding the body and tail of the naga. Tiny sprites are born from the chaos and fly above the scene.

In the story of The Churning of the Sea of Milk, the devas (demi-gods), after a series of events that has left them powerless and at the mercy of their nemeses the asuras (demons), convince the asuras to join them in the creation of the elixir of immortality. With the collaboration of the god Vishnu, they take the giant naga (a many headed snake) named Vasuki , and wrap it around Mount Mandara. Together, they take turns pulling back and forth on the naga, rotating the mountain (which is supported by Vishnuu as his turtle avatar) and churning the celestial elixir of the heavens. After a thousand years, the elixir of life is created, but the gods go back on their promise to share it with the demons, and take it all for themselves. Bad juju results. The bas is so detailed and so huge that it’s impossible to appreciate in pictures, but it was really a highlight of my travels in Asia to see with my own eyes.

As amazing as Angkor Wat was, I found the rest of the Complex to be equally interesting and beautiful. I spent most of my next couple days exploring Angkor Thom, which is the massive civilian area north of Angkor Wat, and the surrounding ruins and temples.

If any of this looks familiar, maybe it's because Tomb Raider was filmed here...

Interestingly, most of Angkor Thom was built under the rule of the successor to Suryavarman II, who was Buddhist and not Hindu. The Buddhist symbolism is very clear in the architecture here, and the result is no less extraordinary.

Since I was visiting the area in the off-season, one thing that made exploring the ruins both rewarding and challenging was the unbelievable amount of rain. Boy, when they say rainy season here they mean it! There were many times when it was raining so hard that I was frightened to take my camera out of my bag (which I had covered in plastic) because I thought it would be instantly destroyed by water damage. I did get a couple hours here and there with no rain, during which I was extra prolific with my photography, but the majority of the time I spent throughout my time in the Angkor Complex I was soaking wet in ankle deep rainwater. Actually, however much it sucked, it was equally awesome. I was often the only person exploring any given ruin (read: only person crazy enough to be outside), and since the rain wasn’t cold I was comfortable in it after a fashion. To be alone in these amazing temples, with rain pounding all around me, soaked through but happy – I felt like I was Indiana Jones discovering this place for the first time. It was definitely give-and-take, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.

Siam Reap basically turned into a swimming pool during the rains. I had to bike through this flood coming back from the temples one night - terrifying nightmares of hidden potholes followed.

After Siam Reap, I took a bus 6 hours to the south, to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Phen. My first night there, I had the good fortune to be able to meet up with John Thomas, a fellow Earth-Systems major at Stanford, who was working in Cambodia on a project he started back on The Farm with a group of other students in a class called “Design for Extreme Affordability”, which focuses on creating practical solutions for problems in the developing world. John’s team was working on a sort of half-toilet for rural areas and separates urine and allows for it to be used as a fertilizer (saving money and the environment). Very cool project, and John was getting ready to pass the torch and head back to New York, so I got to crash in on his farewell dinner. It was definitely a treat to see a familiar face in Cambodia, and to hear a bit about some really cool projects happening in the Cambodian countryside.

I didn’t actually do much sightseeing while I was in Phnom Phen, because I had some business to take care of, including getting Visa pages added to my passport (running out of pages in my passport – how cool of a problem is that?), and getting my visa for Vietnam, which can’t be obtained at the border like with most countries. I did manage to make it out to S-21, the prison/torture facility that served as the center for evil during the bloody 3 year, 8 month reign of the Khmer Rouge, during which time over 2 million intellectuals, artists, scientists, businessmen and helpless civilians were killed under Pol Pot’s scheme to turn Cambodia into an agrarian utopia. Cambodia completes my modern-day genocide trifecta (along with Bosnia and Rwanda), and like both of those places before, the memorials to the victims were haunting and real. It really does place an entire society in a different context when you think what some of their older citizens have had to endure.

Anyways, once I had the bureaucratic things behind me, I was anxious to move onto Vietnam, so I got on a bus and made for the border. That update’s just around the corner!

Clay