Angkor Wat

In the morning, our tuktuk driver picked us up outside our guest house at 5 AM. It was still pitch black when we arrived at the park, and workers stood with flashlights to check our passes. I bought a hot tea outside the gates and we walked across the bridge to Angkor Wat, which is surrounded by a 190 meter-wide moat. It was strange to be walking in the dark, not able to see where we were going, with other tourists parading in the same direction, all early-risers whose excitement covered up the tiredness we all felt. We walked behind someone with a flashlight, and between that and the lightning strikes that began to brighten the sky, we could catch glimpses of the path before us and the majestic gateway that led to Angkor Wat. By the time we passed through the gateway and walked further down the stone path, the combination of lightning, flashlights, camera flashes, and the first tinges of daylight allowed us to better see where we were going.

We were here so early so that we might see the sun rise behind the large temple, built in the 12th century in the capital of the Khmer Empire. This Hindu complex is the largest religious monument in the world. As we arrived with the crowd, we found most people sitting on the edges of a small reflecting pool, facing the temple. We sat down in the grass nearby as it began to drizzle, and foolishly, we did not have our raincoats with us. The whole crowd would gasp in awe when the lightning lit up the temple. It was both eerie and exciting, beautiful and haunting, ancient and solitary. It was filled with people waiting eagerly to see it in daylight. We never saw the sunrise, because the clouds didn’t give way for at least an hour past the sun’s arrival above the horizon. Instead, it began to rain harder, and many of us in the crowd sought shelter in one of two small old temple buildings that sat on either side of the walkway, between the gateway and Angkor Wat. This temple was also somewhat eerie, with its crumbling brick, the darkness and lightning flashes, and the hole in the ceiling through which you could see the foreboding sky. I must have spent close to an hour huddled in that temple, waiting for the rain to let up. Malone went out into the rain before me to go explore Angkor Wat; I left about ten minutes later, after the rains had ceased to a drizzle, and stayed relatively dry and had the luxury of exploring the temple in solitude and at my own pace. Meanwhile, Malone was doing the same, in complete awe that she stood in the same places that her grandmother had so many years ago when she visited Angkor Wat.

There were people in the courtyards of the temple, but the hallways all around, filled with elaborate bas reliefs and statues of headless Buddhas, were completely empty of people. I wish there had been more text within the temple, explaining the stories told by the reliefs, but the only information was about when things were built and by what king. Instead of looking at the stories that the reliefs told, I looked at individual carvings within them—elephants, horse-drawn carriages, warriors, princes, yogis. I can’t imagine the time or number of workers that went into the completion of these carvings, which covered every inch of wall space. They were the most impressive part of the temple. I walked around the wet pavement of the inner courtyard and finally saw the sun come out behind the eastern wall. Outside of the temple, Malone and I found each other again, and she briefly went to explore one other part of the temple while I went to the northeast corner to watch the monkeys playing on the walls.

Outside of the temple, we ate fried rice for breakfast, then found our driver. There were probably hundreds of drivers and tuktuks parked outside of the temple, but our driver was always so helpful, finding us before we found him. He took us next to Ta Prohm, which was, by far, my favorite temple in the complex. The ruins, much more crumbled than Angkor Wat, were covered with green, leafy shade from the giant trees that stood outside the temple and grew amidst the ruins. The gray bricks were covered with green lichens and mosses, as were the statues and wall carvings. The trees grew, giant, with roots exposed, winding around bricks and over temple walls. The place smelled of wet rock and was lit with an ancient green light of ancient trees and ancient ruins.

We walked back down the wooded path away from Ta Prohm, where limbless victims of unexploded ordnances left by the Vietnam War played string instruments and percussion and vendors sold reed instruments, bracelets, and artwork. Our driver took us to Ta Keo, a temple with a similar layout and just as many, if not more, steep steps to the top as Phnom Bakheng the night before. We then drove along the forest-lined roads to Angkor Thom, an ancient fortified city that was home to one million people when London hosted only 50,000. It was surrounded by walls which opened at five different gates. The one we had passed through was the Victory Gate, where 54 statues of gods line one side of the road and 54 statues of demons line the other.

 

We walked along the main strip of attractions there, beginning with Bayon, my favorite temple after Ta Prohm. From a short distance away, Bayon looks like jagged mountain peaks. Closer, you can see the disarray of individual bricks, but the best part is the many giant stone faces carved on each side of the many tiers. The faces are peaceful, with big, lazily smiling lips, closed eyes, and broad noses. They are majestic carvings, overlooking the world beyond the temple. We walked along the Terrace of the Elephants, where long-trunked elephant heads lined the wall. It was a place used as a giant viewing stand for public ceremonies. On the Terrace of the Leper King, intricate carvings covered the brick and the top was used an area used to cremate royalty. A statue on the Terrace of the Leper King represents Yama, the god of death.

We had lunch in Angkor Thom, then passed by two smaller temples, Thommanon and Chau Say Tenoda, before making our final stop at Banteay Kdei, a pretty temple whose crumbled brick hallways stretched out pleasantly in the shade of trees. After this final stop, we knew our driver was getting tired, so we left the park early in the afternoon, rested a bit at our guest house, splurged on a pizza for dinner, and then visited the night market. Siem Reap was expensive because it was such a touristy down, but all the prices were in US dollars! Cambodia uses both the dollar as well as its own currency, the riel. So you will usually pay for something in dollars, and they will give you change in riel, and you will be slightly ripped off. The night market did have some great items. I still use the wallet, made from recycled rice bags, that I purchased there.

 
Our stay in Cambodia was short but filled with history and wonder. To imagine these majestic temples at the prime of the Khmer Empire was awe-inspiring. People flock from all over the world to see this religious monument, and it is no wonder. It was breathtaking. I think it brings out the primal spirit in everyone.

Arrival in Siem Reap

Since we were already in eastern Thailand, our next stop was Cambodia! For most of our trip, we were only planning our stops a few days in advance, so when we looked at our maps and our schedule, we didn’t find the time to travel throughout Cambodia. But we knew we had to make time to go see Angkor Wat, the 8th Wonder of the World! So from Pak Chong, we took a bus to Bangkok and another bus to Arayprathet, the Thai town on the Cambodian border. We stayed in a hotel on the border which was one of the nicer places we stayed, with an in-ground swimming pool that we took a dip in that night. Too bad we hadn’t arrived during the heat of the day!

In the morning, we crossed the border to Poipet. Our tuktuk driver tried to rip us off again by bringing us to somebody who would arrange our visa for us, but this time we were smart. He pulled up alongside this roadside shack where a man in business clothes came outside with paperwork and a big smile. We told the tuktuk driver that we wanted to go to the border, and the man in the business attire said, “This is the border!” Yeah, right. The tuktuk driver didn’t say anything while the man tried to convince us to come inside to have our visa arranged, but we kept demanding that the tuktuk driver take us to the border, and after several minutes of arguing, he finally did. He wasn’t too happy about it, though. Once we crossed the bridge and paid for our visas, everything was fine, and we found a taxi to take us the 2 or 3 hour drive to Siem Reap. It was a crazy trip, with the driver speeding and swerving around cars and motorbikes and people and animals, but I actually fell asleep during the ride. Once in Siem Reap, we found a place to stay and spent the afternoon relaxing in the guest house’s outdoor dining area.

At 4:30 in the afternoon, we took a tuktuk to Angkor Wat. I remember our driver very well. The tuktuk was a carriage attached to a motorbike. Our driver was a young man and very thin and looked almost comical when he put his large helmet on. He was very friendly but also shy and spoke no English. He was wearing nice pants and a white button-down shirt. We hired him for the evening and for the following day. Our tickets to Angkor Wat, $20, were good for both the evening and the next day. For the evening, we went to Phnom Bakhaeng to watch the sun set behind Angkor Wat in the distance.

 
We walked up a dusty path to the temple, where flocks of tourists also trekked, sometimes walking slowly, 5 or 6 across the width of the trail, making passing difficult. As we reached the top of the hill, the temple came into view behind a stone wall, and our first glimpses were of the hundreds of people perched on the temple steps and walls. They dotted the entire temple with different colored clothing, perched on the many tiers and steps of the structure, all facing west. We approached the western face of the temple and also began to climb it. The stairs were very shallow and very steep, making climbing difficult. I was surprised how many elderly and overweight people had made it to the top of the temple, though I did hear some huffing and puffing and see a lot of sweat and struggle. I even had to use my hands for balance and to pull myself up in some places. At the top, we explored the ruins: crumbling bricks and eroding statues lining the stairways. These were more impressive than the sunset, which was nearly nonexistent because of the cloud cover. As it started to get dark, we walked down the elephant path, stopping every so often and stepping off the path to let the elephants, clad in red and gold headdresses and with riders on their backs, pass us.

 

 

Back in Siem Reap that evening, we ate dinner and briefly checked out the night market before we went back to our guest house to sleep. We had to get to bed early because we had a very early wakeup call: 4:45 AM!

Wildlife

When we left Ayutthaya, we took a boat across the river to the train station for 4 baht and purchased tickets to Pak Chong for 23 baht each.  Then we got on the wrong train.  The conductors laughed at us and guided us off the train and took care of us and led us onto the right train.  Looking back, this train ride was one of the truest experiences we had in Asia.  We were quite literally the only foreigners on the train, and the people made this clear by pointing at us and saying “farang, farang.”  Across the aisle from us was an adorable baby who kept us entertained for most of the ride, and her family was very kind.  An older man sitting with the family was especially kind to us.  He even gave Malone a shot of whiskey as we passed by rice paddies and sky.  Up and down the aisles of the train walked people selling food and drink.  This sounds very nice, but it was very chaotic and meant that the aisles had to be completely cleared of feet and bags.  Many of the vendors had baskets slung across their shoulders and inside the baskets were large pots of noodle soup or other concoctions, and they would serve it up with a ladle to whoever wanted some.  There was also a man selling toys, and I almost died laughing when he squeezed a fish toy in Malone’s face, making the fish’s tongue stick out, then told her how much it was, as if she would actually want something like that.  These are the experiences that I don’t have pictures of—the experiences that were truly colorful and tell a story of the place.  Vendors on a train ride through rural Thailand, young boys selling durian from huge piles of the fruit on the side of the road, young Muslim children saying “Hello Mister!” then running away, screaming and giggling…But I have these pictures, at least, in memory.

When we arrived in Pak Chong, we took a tuktuk to the Greenleaf Guesthouse, ate dinner, and relaxed for the evening.  In the morning, we woke up for our day-long excursion at Khao Yai National Park.  The owner of the guest house packed us lunches, and we piled into the back of pick-up trucks, where benches lined the sides, with other tourists.  (Strangely, I can’t picture any of the other faces from the day we spent.)

When we entered the park, the first wildlife that we saw were pig-tailed macaques, small monkeys lining the sides of the road.  We saw them repeatedly throughout the day, but they were nevertheless exciting each time we saw them.  I’d never really seen primates in the wild before, with the exception of a quick glimpse of a white-faced capuchin in Costa Rica.  To our tour guide, the macaques were probably as exciting as seeing squirrels is for us.  Nevertheless, I liked watching them, especially when we spotted babies swinging on vines and falling out of trees and getting spooked and running and hopping around.

 

We stopped at an overlook, where we spotted a green leaf bird (for which our guest house was named), very bright against the misty morning sky.  We stopped by a fig tree to look for a hornbill flying over the road, but quickly moved on.  In the distance, I saw one fly across the road as we departed.  We stopped again to watch three gibbons—one black, two white, though they are of the same species—swinging from branches.  We stopped at a rest area and saw a mother and baby deer laying in the grass.  As many deer as I’ve seen at home, it was still exciting to see this Asian ungulate!

We then entered the forest.  We walked slowly, often pausing as our guide listened for birds.  But the first thing we saw was a scorpion—about three times the size of the ones I had seen in Costa Rica!—which our guide pulled out of its hole in the dirt with a long blade of grass.  We had done the same thing to get the tarantulas to emerge from their holes in Costa Rica.  Our guide decided that it would be a great idea for each of us to hold the scorpion.  He kept telling us that it wouldn’t sting as if it didn’t have the capability of doing so.  As he put the scorpion back in its hole, I asked him why the scorpion couldn’t sting.  “Oh, it can sting,” he told me.  Well, why didn’t it?  I asked.  “He’s my pet,” he said, and pretended to pet it before lowering it back into its home.

Elsewhere in the forest, we saw a red trogon, a snake skin, a cicada shell from a species that lives seven years below the ground and 30 days above, blooming ginger flowers, bear claw marks on a tree, evidence of wild pigs in the mud, strangler figs, ferns, palms, vines, fallen flowers, sunlight, leaf litter, epiphytes, and a brilliant green pit viper—venomous, but beautiful.  We saw a hornbill nest.  They use old woodpecker holes in trees for their nests.  The female goes inside and begins concealing the nest by using mud and feces to close the opening, sealing herself in the hole.  This helps protect her eggs from snakes and lizards.  She leaves just enough space in the opening to stick out her beak so that the male will feed her and her hatchlings.  As the babies get larger, the male breaks open the hole and the female comes out, and both continue feeding the babies.  The only problem is that if the male dies outside the nest, the female and the hatchlings will be stuck and left there to die.  Other than that, it seems like some great family cooperation and collaboration.

We took a break for lunch after spotting three more gibbons in the forest.  We ate rice and veggies with tofu and a coconut rice dessert wrapped in a banana leaf.  Then we drove to Haew Suwat Waterfall.  It wasn’t the most impressive waterfall we’d seen on our trip, but it was relaxing to sit at the foot of the water, though swimming wasn’t allowed.  We spent the rest of the afternoon “elephant hunting”—driving around the park, looking for wild elephants.  As we drove around at about 20 miles per hour, we saw a male hornbill feeding a female inside her nest, macaques and elephant dung lining the roads, and then we saw them!  I was almost thrown out the back of the pickup truck when it increased speed to about 60 miles per hour, racing down a hill because the guide saw the elephants exiting the forest to cross the street.  We were so lucky to see them.  It was split seconds from the time they exited the forest on one side of the street and entered again on the other.  Our guide kept telling us how lucky we were and how happy he was, and he kept giving the other guides shit for the rest of the day because they had missed it.

Driving back as the sun set, we saw an eagle, a hornbill picking fruit off a tree, another hornbill fly across the road and hop from branch to branch in a bare tree, and more deer.  We stopped to eat watermelon that the guide had brought for us as the sun dipped below the hills—a perfect end to a perfect day.  I didn’t feel like there was anything I had missed!

Siam

In the morning, we took a tuk-tuk to the Friendship Bridge, crossed back into Nong Khai in Thailand, and, unfortunately, ended back up in Udan Thanee, a place I never hoped to go again. We didn’t have a choice, though, so we had lunch in town before taking a bus to Ayutthaya, the second Siamese capital after Sukothai and another city filled with ancient ruins. At midnight, we were dropped off about 15 minutes outside of the city. We were being ripped off again, but we were stranded with no where to go. A tuk-tuk driver wanted to charge us 300 baht to take us into the city, when it would only cost 20 baht to take a bus there the following morning. So we decided to stay where we were, and he convinced us that the hotel he would take us to was far away and charged us 60 baht to take us there. It turns out it was only a block away, and the hotel was very expensive for the dirty state its rooms were in. But, alas, it was a bed to sleep in, and in the morning, we walked around a small courtyard where vendors sold food before getting on the public bus into town.

We found an expensive but very nice guest house (It was called the P.U. Inn, but didn't smell--it was actually quite clean) where we ate lunch (green curry and a watermelon shake) and then rented bikes to go check out the ruins. It wasn’t as cool as biking in Sukothai, because the ruins were interspersed throughout the new city, so it wasn’t as peaceful and empty, and we did have to cross busy streets to follow the recommended biking path. But it was beautiful—crumbling red-brick stupas and Buddhas with their heads knocked off but bright flowers in their laps. I made a 20 baht offering at one of the temples, where I placed a flower on the altar, lit a candle and incense, and put a gold leaf on the left knee of a Buddha statue, asking for the healing after Scott’s knee surgery to go well.  I remember that day being very hot, but the sunlight on the temple ruins brought out so much color.  As beautiful as the ruins were, though, they are remnants of a terrible time in Siamese history, when the Burmese invaded, destroying their temples and raping, enslaving, and killing their people.  You can't stand in front of the headless Buddhas without silence and respect.

My journal from our time in Ayutthaya is sparse because I was playing catch-up, but I do remember drinking a Coke in a gazebo overlooking the water, where brilliant flowers hung from willowy trees; costumed elephants walking by and a baby elephant chained to a post; biking past the ruins as the sun set, silhouetting them against the sky; checking out a small market within temple grounds; and having a long talk with Malone that evening over dinner and beer, one where secrets were revealed and I realized just how close we were getting as we traveled together, far from home.

The Worst Bus Ride Ever and The Buddha Park

Commence The Worst Bus Ride Ever.  We got to the bus station in Luang Prabang, hoping to take the 2 o’clock bus to Vientiane, which wasn’t running until 5 o’clock.  So we sat around at the bus station for hours in the heat.  Then we got on the stifling bus.  It was pretty empty when we got on, so we were hoping to have some room to spread out and get some sleep.  Our hopes were quickly dashed as the bus filled up.  In front of us sat a Lao couple with a baby.  The father sat in front of me.  He is remembered in my journal using choice words that I will not repeat here.  This man wanted everything to be perfect for his bus ride and had very little consideration for anyone else.  He had the people across the aisle close the curtains on their window; he closed his air vent and the air vent behind him (ours, and yes, it was still stifling); and then he reclined his seat to its maximum extent, right into my lap.  These seats were really close together to begin with, and I think his must have been broken because of how far into my space it extended.  I asked him to move his seat up, but instead, he pushed my seat back, similarly crushing the man in the seat behind me.  He sat back down and put his hands behind the head cushion on the seat, leaving his fingers about two inches from my face.  At one point, he even scratched me in the face with his long fingernails.  This all happened before the bus even left the station.  I knew I wouldn’t be able to bear it, so I asked the man behind me if I could sit next to him.  He was very kind, though we could only communicate through hand gestures.

The bus ride continued to be awful.  A woman across the aisle was vomiting the whole ride because of motion sickness.  Babies were crying, Thai pop music was blasting, and we made about one million seemingly unnecessary stops.  We picked up a man with a rifle.  Yeah, he just flagged the bus down from the middle of nowhere, rifle slung across his back, and got on.  (The Lonely Planet guide book said something about watching out for Hmong guerrillas along the route between Vientiane and Luang Prabang.)  I was incredibly nervous the whole ride.  I thought something terrible was going to happen.  I guess the worst thing that happened was that we had to endure the discomfort and windy roads and everything else for about 12 hours instead of the 8 or 9 hours we were told.  We got into Vientiane at about 5 AM on March 1^st.  We took a tuk-tuk into town and looked for a guest house, but couldn’t find one that was open so early, so we ended up staying in a more expensive hotel.  Even though it was so pricey, we were able to stay for the rest of that morning and the following night for the price of only one night.  Needless to say, we hadn’t slept a wink on the bus ride, so we slept for a few hours before waking up for breakfast, showers, and walking around town.  After a mango shake and some noodles, we got on a bus to the Buddha Park.

At the entrance to the Buddha Park was a spherical, pumpkin-like sculpture with three levels.  You could walk inside the open mouth of a giant face and walk up narrow steps to each higher level.  At each level was an inner room with Buddhas and other statues.  As I climbed the levels, I bumped my head on the concrete and then found myself crawling out of a very narrow passageway to get to the outside.  From the top of this structure, however, we could see the whole park.  The sun was throwing some amazing light on it, and the giant reclining Buddha statue was most impressive from above.

We walked back down to explore.  The place was totally bizarre.  It was filled with statues that were pretty creepy.  There was a woman holding a pinwheel embedded with colored glass.  There were small children pointing at each other and brandishing swords, with a robed man standing over them, his hands held up as if to say “Stop!” but with a peaceful expression on his face.  There was a man pulling the leg off a giant cockroach, an elephant standing in a pit of human heads, a monkey and elephant each bowing to a prince and presenting him with scrolls.  There were two characters, one on top with the head of a pig, pulling the hair of the one on the bottom, who was sticking out his tongue.  There was a cupid-like character, a prince and princess holding a serpent, many characters with multiple arms or faces, a three-headed elephant, an alligator, a man with wings, a prince smiling while being swallowed by a fish-like serpent (or serpent-like fish?), a man playing a mandolin.

For some reason, one of my favorites was of a giant standing Buddha-like character, but he had the face of a troll, shoes with teeth, and he was carrying a dead woman who was much smaller than he.  Another one was of a man who appeared to have a snake growing out of the top of his head, and he was sawing it off.  And interspersed throughout the weirdness of this park were totally normal Buddhas, to which people had made offerings of flowers and candles and incense.  I sat in the park, drawing and writing and snapping pictures as the sun shed light all over the crazy statues.