Home for the holidays

I am back in Baltimore and will be here until January 4, when I fly back to Bangkok. I had planned on spending Christmas on the beach in Cambodia. But my recent back issues really took a lot out of me so I decided to fly home to visit family and friends for the holidays and recharge a little before embarking on the second half of my trip.

I'll be traveling in Southeast Asia and South America, so I'll be able to travel cheaply. But this is an extremely expensive detour so the second half of the trip will probably be shorter than the first.

I have places to stay while I'm here but I do not have a phone so, for the time being, email is the only way to contact me.

The temples of Angkor

Angkor Wat

I've been temple hopping in the ruins of Angkor for three days now and I haven't made a dent. Angkor was the capital of the Khmer empire which dominated Southeast Asia for about half a millenium, from the early 800s until it was captured by Siam (Thailand) in 1432.

It was home to about a million people in its heyday so it's just too huge to cover without wheels. One way to get around is to hire a tuk-tuk driver for the day. They'll drive you wherever you want to go for $15-20 per day.

Or you can ride a bike. The good news is that my guest house provides free bicycles. The bad news is this is the bike:



This is the primary mode of transportation for millions of people throughout Asia. It weighs as much as a battleship and only has one gear but it's indestructible. I thought riding this would be like a day in the Dick Cheney Suite at Guantanamo Bay but it hasn't been so bad.

The principal attraction here is Angkor Wat. The name means "royal city [that is] a monastery", putting it on the short list of "Most Disappointing Translations".

It is the largest religious building in the world, covering about half a square mile. It is surrounded by a stone wall and an enormous moat. There's really no way to adequately convey the scale involved. This aerial photo (which I stole from the net) helps.



There are two pools in the grassy area on either side of the causeway on the far side of the temple. The photo above was taken on behind the pool on the right.

The frontal view of the the temple is the iconic image of Cambodia and is even on the flag. (There are actually five central towers, or prasats, but from two are hidden from view when viewed from the side.) This photo was taken at about 4 p.m. -- check out the moon!


To the right of the center tower there are scaffolds where restorations are being done. Work is being done all over the temple, but it's all not so visible. And while I applaud the effort to spruce up one of the world's architectural wonders it's ruining my picture. Sheesh.

The outside of the temple itself is an enclosed walkway, the walls inside of which are covered from top to bottom all the way around with intricate carvings. Imagine what they must have looked like when they were carved, about 900 years ago, before time, vandalism and the tropical climate took their toll.



In fact, most visible surfaces of the interior were carved and decorated as well. Much of the stone used for the carvings is sandstone, which was carried by elephants and floated on rafts from over 30 miles away. Stone made of sand, it turns out, is not the ideal material for carvings in a country with a monsoon season...

It's something else I always wanted to see but never thought I would. In this trip I've been to Red Square, Tiananmen Square and Angkor Wat, three places that were inaccessible until recently. What a trip. And I'm only halfway done!

The Khmer empire was Hindu for most of its history and so most of the temples are as well. But King Jayavarman VII was a convert to Buddhism, so when he reigned the empire and all its monuments were converted. Most temples bear traces of both religions. Or so I'm told.

The temple of Bayon is Buddhist and definitely bears the mark of Jayavarman. Boy does it ever. There are 54 towers) each with four carved faces, pointing in the cardinal directions. The faces are believed to be a sort of melding of the king and a boddhisattva he identified with. No, I don't know what that means.



If you only see one other temple here, this is the one. Though the structure itself is large it's fairly small inside, all nooks and crannies and narrow walkways, with towers looming on every corner. It's like walking through a giant birthday cake.



No matter where you stand you are under the gaze of multiple likenesses of the former king.

Ta Nei is a small temple off the beaten path, literally. Most temples are accessible by bike but to see this one you have to park and walk about a mile. It's worth it, because most tourists don't know it's there or don't want to make the effort. I was the only one there. Though the site is under renovation, it at least gives some idea of what the area might have looked like when it was re-discovered by the French in the mid-1800s.



Angkor reminds me of Tikal, the Mayan city in Guatemala, but with a vastly greater amount of detail in the stone carvings. As with the various ancient ruins in Central American, in order to build cities in the Southeast Asian jungle it was necessary to hack away hundreds of square miles of thick rainforest. It was a constant effort to keep the it that way.

In the jungle, when humans move on plants quickly move back and "reclaim" the area. The implication is of a passive process by which the plants slowly creep back into areas from which they've been cleared.

At the temple of Ta Prohm it looks like all-out war. It looks as if the trees, enormous and majestic fig and silkwood trees, are waging a concerted attack on the temple. They are systematically tearing the temple apart, stone by stone. There's the sense that an intelligence is at work and a palpable sense of malice in the air. It looks like something out of a science fiction movie. In fact, it calls to mind the scene in "The Lord of the Rings" in which the Ents storm and destroy Saruman's fortress at Isengard.




I hired a tuk-tuk for a day to visit some of the more remote temples, including Banteay Srey, which is way outside of town, but worth the trip. Unlike most temples, which were built by kings, this one was privately built by two wealthy landowners. It's much smaller, then, than most of the temples, and has a cozier, more intimate feel. It was the first of the Angkor monuments to be rebuilt, in 1931.



The name means "Citadel of Women" because the locals were fascinated by carvings of devatas, or goddesses. It's a shame the ancient fashions haven't come back into vogue.


The carving here is considered to be the best of all the temples. The detail and the depth in this lintel carving is astonishing considering the temple was completed in the year 987.



I'm going to stay here for a few more days to visit some of the more remote ruins and go back to Angkor Wat again. When I was planning the trip I had a fairly set itinerary in mind up to this point. I've already seen what I expected to be the "highlights" of the trip. Now I'm not sure what to do!

I think I'll go south through Cambodia and circle counter-clockwise up through Vietnam, into Laos and back into Thailand. Then again, I might not. We'll see.

Things that may interest only me

Some of the temple ruins in Angkor remind me, of all things, of the buildings of Antoni Gaudi, the Catalan fin-de-siecle architect and one of my pet subjects. He was born in 1852, just about the same time the ruins were re-discovered. So it's possible he was familiar with them when he started designing. And with his "kitchen sink" approach it's possible he used them as inspiration.

This is an elephant motif from the Victory Gate here in Cambodia.


And this is the window from Gaudi's Casa Batllo in Barcelona.


These are the prasats (towers) of Angkor Wat.



These are the towers of Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia.

Maybe this observation has been made before. Or maybe I'm nuts. But I did spend literally minutes thinking about this.

Self-portrait: Angkor Wat

After two days exploring the temples of Angkor I have almost 2GB of pix and plenty to write about. In the meantime here's a picture of me in front of the world's largest religious structure.

Disaster averted

I haven't written much lately, partly because of the weather, partly because of the protests at the airport, but mostly because I've been nursing a bad back.

I had back surgery in 2003 and again in 2006. In 2005 I had a major car accident that left me with chronic back spasms. That didn't require surgery but I did go to physical therapy for months. At first I thought I might have re-injured it. The pain was downright scary. But I'm pretty sure it's just spasms. Not a show-stopper.

So I've spent the past five days resting in Bangkok. I'm extremely fortunate that it happened when it did. If it had happened on the trail in Nepal I would have been screwed. But I was able to stay in a clean, new hostel with a big, comfy bed and frigid air-conditioning in a modern city, with everything I need within walking distance.

And because the airports are closed, there have been no tourists coming in, so last night, not only did I have an 8-bed dorm room to myself, there were only two other guests in the hostel. How's that for peace and quiet!

For the bulk of the past five days I've been lounging on a careful arrangement of bean-bag chairs in the common room, reading and watching movies on iTunes on my laptop. All things considered, not a bad way to recuperate.

Even if I had wanted or needed to fly home I wouldn't have been able to. So I had no choice to rest until I either felt better or the airport opened. I'm feeling better, so tomorrow I'm taking a bus to Cambodia. I expect to feel like crap after eight to ten hours on a bus, but I decided I am not heading home without visiting Angkor Wat.

In two days or so I should have some awesome photos...