But let's go back, to our landing in Viet Nam, where we head directly for the airport to fly to Cambodia:
To get from the wealthier Viet Nam to Cambodia, it's necessary to pass through this glitzy portal above in the Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) Airport. Phnom Penh remains the beautiful capital city of a devastated country. While Viet-Nam has it's mega-nasty two-stroke Chinese motorcycles, there are still quite a few bicycles in Cambodia:
Drive down this street with me:
Like Thailand and Viet Nam, Cambodia has the spirit houses everywhere, which I always enjoy. They're like the Greenman legacy underneath X-tianity in Europe—a gesture to that natural world, with its shadows and dreams, where nature resounds:
The National Museum is impressive, but only allows photos of its gardens. Inside there are the magnificent sculptures and artwork from Angkor Wat (whose structures you will soon see) and other sites throughout the country. Outside, it be like this, spires and blades—silhouettes:
Everywhere I'm able to add to my photographic collection of beautiful doors:
Join these Therevada monks for some down-time by the coi pond:
Here ya go: a screensaver to escape the chaos of your computer files:
Our old friend, Ganesha, remover of obstacles:
The National Palace is equally impressive, if you like gold bling, as Cambodians and Thais do:
Maybe you, tu, mis amigas, could reach enlightenment, Bud(dha Lite), if you could sit under this real-life body-sat-there tree, in bloom?:
Inside the grounds, there's a teensy present from the French, busy with colonization; does it look out of place?:
How about a short afternoon boat-ride on the Mekong, whose delta winds down to Viet Nam? Even there, another of beloved tug-boats:
Squatters, including a Muslim group, live on the islands, and along the shore:
If you don't mind feeling like a voyeur, go ahead and look into their lives:
We seem to be on shore, so let's stroll down a dark, busy street, and greet a few hundred children at the Palm Tree Orphanage in Phnom Penh, okay? This place is run by former SAS students, and I enjoyed trading drawings with some of the children, in my quest to create round-the-world coloring books toward fund-raising:
I gave her my drawing:
And she gave me hers:
I got all sixty SAS students to come up with a quick couple hundred extra bucks, which we left so that the entire orphanage could have a big meal in the courtyard, with some local musicians. There was a rough moment that caught me off guard, as we exited to the street in the dim light. Children were hugging the students who had spent time with them. One girl, perhaps six years old, stood about ten feet back at the gate, watching the distressful-yet-comforting goodbyes. There was enough light to really see her expression, and when she caught me looking, she jumped like an NFL half-back into the endzone of my arms, clutching me tightly. There was that part of me that wanted to just stop my traveling, and begin signing the adoption papers. Any orphanage will remind us that we're just one unlucky birth away from having zero prospects...
It was doubly hard to then go to a fancy restaurant, where my privilege floated in on the open air, under candlelight:
The orphanage had slowed my momentum, so this is the way I experienced the meal, complete with cold beer, as the evening began to sweat:
The next day we moved toward the most difficult place I know, the Teun Sleung Museum, a former school-turned-torture chamber in the capital city. Like those intellectuals who taught Western knowledge in China and were imprisoned in their own schools during the Cultural Revolution, the students, teachers, intellectuals and leaders who opposed the Khymer Rouge were tortured at this former school. It was heart-breaking for me in many ways, including the dark side of my lucky number (21 was the number for this area).
The schoolrooms were turned into tiny cells, where prisoners were shackled to beds or the floor in stress positions. Water-boarding and other techniques were used. To understand the importance of Obama's closing of Git-Mo in Cuba, you have to know a bit about the torture itself. Here's a site where David Corn tries to make a distinction between torture executed to find the "truth," and the water-boarding that was intended to get a "confession," at any cost:
http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2006/09/this_is_what_wa.php
At first, the place doesn't look too imposing:
Then the rooms offer themselves, full of ghosts:
On the walls are recovered photographs of what happened on these beds, with their shackles and chains:
Outside there are graves, for some of the last to die here:
In the upstairs rooms there are lists of those murdered, and pictures of the victims:
I think of the horrifying photos from that now-forgotten prison during the Civil War, Andersonville, which no American should forget. One victim's picture, out of thousands, especially interests me, for he (I tried to find his name among the lists, to no avail) is smiling in the face of death:
There is also sympathy lurking inside the viewing of the brain-washed children, separated from their families, who became the automatic-weapon-toting killers of the Khymer Rouge:
I'll spare you the history lesson, except to remind us that it was the carpet-bombing of Cambodia, denied by Nixon, that not only turned Cambodia into the world's largest unexploded bomb and landmine location, that de-stabilized the country, and led to the ascendancy of Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge, whose reign of terror ran wild from 1975-79, when old enemies from Viet Nam took over the country. My friend, documentary film-maker Skye Fitzgerald, has made the definitive movie about this, The Bombhunters (cf. http://www.bombhunters.com), which I encourage you to view. There were more bombs dropped here than anywhere before or after.
From this location, the tortured were taken to over 343 "killing fields," where they dug their own mass graves and were executed into them. Perhaps there were as many as three million killed. We drove outside the city to a site that had 129 mass graves, and houses a memorial. Here's a grave:
The torture continued inside the execution, making even the beautiful old trees allies to the insanity:
Insanity included the habitual brutality, as per this sign:
The exhibits in the memorial include gruesome evidence, to help us remember what was done here:
At one point, I was walking around the site with a guide, who asked me to look down. He asked me what the white specs in the trail made of hard-packed dirt were. I looked more closely and knew it was exposed bones!
While writing this entry, a student I know on board sat down beside me, and showed me a poem she was reading and liked. Perhaps it's the way the sea had been preparing us for the Killing Fields? Here's an excerpt:
"A Grave"
by Marianne Moore
"Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as you have to yourself,
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,
but you cannot stand in the middle of this;
the sea has nothing to give but a well-excavated grave.
The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey-foot at the top,
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of the sea;
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look—
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer investigate them
for their bones have not lasted:
men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are desecrating a grave,
and row quickly away—the blade of the oars moving together like the feet of water-spiders as there were no thing as death."
Then again, perhaps were just as ready to reflect upon war and peace because cottonwoods shed their fuzz or because we've let nuclear winter blow through our skulls while watching Posh Spice do an interview...
Against the poverty and degradation of today's Cambodia stands its ancient past, which also has close contact with forced labor, in order to make, arguably, the most important cultural and religious site anywhere in the world—Angkor Wat. I've wanted to visit this massive temple complex since I saw a pic of it, age fifteen, in a public library. Remember that current scientific viewing of ancient sites—including this one and the Mayan ruins in Central America—argue that we have only uncovered about five percent of what's still buried. It took two days of trekking to enter the many gates of Angkor Wat.
It's hard to imagine the scale of this fantastic place: 203 acres inside the moat and wall. The moat looks like a river:
Buildings up to 65 meters high. While this site began in the 12th century, it was "re-discovered" in the mid-19th century, just like many of the Mayan sites, by Europeans. It would be tempting to discuss all the details of what's impressive when you're inside, or what is no longer there (the no-doubt amazing carved, wooden doors). But I know the architectural historian reading this already knows those things, and some of you may not want to, yet. At any rate, if you get curious, the Wikipedia articles are a fairly decent embrace of the factoids:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat
First we flew form Phnom Penh to Siem Riep:
This outpost for viewing Angkor Wat is a Vegasy tourist clump of hotels with classical roofs plunked on top of stone rectangles:
Inside there was some traditional music, including the haunting erhu, being bowed here, alongside an instrument very like the Chinese jung:
Perhaps the best way to approach this vast temple complex is dawn:
Slowly the light comes up, brightening the sandstone:
Much of the statuary is missing, either stolen or placed in the National or other museums:
The many freizes are all a place to stare and enjoy:
As always, there's a photo to collect for my world-wide collection of perros vagros:
Different gates offer very diverse views of the main temple complex:
There's a balloon ride advertised, but it only slides up on a rope for an overview, and goes nowhere:
How about another screensaver?: these beauties were floating in a pot of water:
Guardians protect the gate over one side of the moat:
Here are some of the students I led through the ruins:
In the 107 degree F. heat and full-tilt humidity, the sky is always a player:
On one side, a long wall becomes the Elephant Terrace:
BRIEF RANT: IT TAKES ABOUT FOUR MINUTES TO UPLOAD EACH IMAGE TO THE BLOG, AS THE SHIP INTERNET, AS FAST AS ANY SHIP'S, IS PITIFULLY SLOW!
Ta Phrom (where Angelina Jolie—that psychopath with a heart of gold—shot the film, Tombraider) is the part of the complex that is particularly astounding. On the walk through the forest to the temple there are men who have been mutilated by landmines, many with amputations, who perform traditional Cambodian music:
The enormous trees have sent their tendrils into the stone, entwining with the ruin that has deconstructed these temples.
Some of them are in danger of falling, so are scaffolded:
Like the German Aspara restorations underway in the main temple complex, there is plenty of work to do here, re-fitting fallen walls and still undiscovered rooms:
As the sun crashed, I drove ahead with a young German tour operator, dodging bicycles, carts, scooters and cars, and processed all the passports and tickets for the 60 students on the trip. Waiting for the flight, I sat among 35 Japanese tourists, cheering for the Japanese baseball team, who defeated Korea in the world championships.
