G+O ready for some temple action
.
we shacked up in siem reap in a hotel called (believe it or not) the golden banana, a base from which to explore the temples of angkor and beyond.
.
photo ID for unlimited access
.
angkor wat, which features on the cambodian flag, is at the very core of the cambodian people's sense of identity. the largest religious structure in the world, it was built ~1100CE blah blah blah...(click here if you're interested)
.
despite the ranting and raving, gerard and i found angkor wat to be probably the most uninteresting of the temples, and whilst it was quite spectacular, things in angkor just got better and better...
.
the walkway to the main temple inside angkor wat
.
monks lounging around in the ancient library
.
asparas (divine nymphs) in an angkorian bas-relief.
.
more nymphs and a satyr
catching some shade in the central temple complex
.
just outside the central complex
.
ankor wat from a distance, with a floating horse in the foreground
.
Gerard and i next made our way to angkor thom, a huge fortified city north of angkor wat. the highlight is the central temple of bayon, a temple made up of 54 towers decorated with 216 smiling faces of the deity avalokiteshvara (modelled on the face of the king jayavarman)
.
who is this? it simply doesn't get any cuter than the big G, standing among the gods that guard angkor thom
the frog loses himself at the temple of bayon
.
.
.
.
bayon temple from outside
.
a monk outside baphuon temple
.
the jungle reclaims preah palilay temple
.
the temple of ta prohm has only been minimally restored, and appears to be in ruins - fig roots clutching at half-collapsed walls, and foliage creeping in through the scattered stone supports. it was one of our favourites.
.
the front entrance to the central temple complex, shrouded in fog
.
a tree establishes itself as the dominant life form
.
la grenouille looking très cute in his poncho
.
ruinopolis
.
a massive root, so to speak
.
.
.
.
.
.
.for good measure, we took our bicycles and rode out to some of the less popular sites around angkor. it was sore-arse city.
.
northern gate of angkor thom
.
detail of the gate
.
preah khan temple
sweating it out at preah khan
. 
preah neak pean
.
eastern mebon
.
coucou mon cheri!
.
.
we took it fairly easy. in between temple-time we ate like kings at some of siem reap's restaurants and street stalls, drank lots of coconut milk, got attacked by mosquitoes, developed fevers and nightsweats, and did lots of practice for the world cuddling championships. it was a veritabe conte de fée, but after the nightmare of malaysia, it was a conte de fee with a touch of realism, brimming with possibilities.
.
but gerard's holiday wasn't as long as mine, and just like that the wolf was gone, and i found myself wandering the streets of phnom penh in a daze. to offset the depression that comes when you've been abandonned by your lover in a foreign city, i decided to hire a motorbike and go cruising around cambodia. i rented a 250cc animal that i named 'the beast', and together, we made tracks to the south coast.
.
the beast
.
ondrej refuels en route with some coconut milk
.
the beast refuels at a roadside stall, where diluted petrol is sold by the pepsi bottle-full
.
on the second day of my journey, i decided to go off-road, and took a 32-km jungle path through a mountain national park to a 100-year old retreat on its summit. originally built by the french to entertain their elite, bokor hill station was abandonned more than 40 years ago. the road is in disrepair, and in parts there is nothing but mud and jungle pressing in on all sides.
.
part of the road up to bokor hill station
.
abandonned buildings at bokor
.
hotel and casino
.
post office
.
one of the bridges i had to cross. the planks were rotten and my heart was racing, but the beast knew what to do
.
it rained (torrentially) for about half an hour on my way down. the muddy rocks that passed for a road went from unmanageable to deathly. i slid off the bike at one stage into a rut, snapping off the beast's brake. thank god that bitch had another one.
.
alright, fine - they're cute. but i still hated them.
.
.
the cambodian countryside is gorgeous. endless views of rice-paddies stretching to the horizon, frequently punctuated by tall palm trees and the raised wooden houses the locals live in.
.
.
.
.
initially when i rented the beast, i thought i would take it easy and cruise along the south coast slowly, taking in the sights. what i forgot to take into account was my need for speed, and let me tell you something baby: i drank from that cup. i guzzled. despite the fact that i was wearing a helmet, there were times when i was going so fast that i knew an accident would be certain death - my neck would snap like a carrot, and my brain would be mashed to a pulp by the sheer force of the impact. i took a strange comfort in that fact as i put the pedal to the metal (or rather twisted the handlebar around to it's fullest extent, as the pedal was my one remaining brake)
.
.
back in phnom penh, i visited the killing fields of choeung ek, where thousands of cambodians were murdered by the khmer rouge and buried in mass graves. people were walking around with really solemn expressions on their faces and avoiding eye contact (some even communing with the skulls in the pagoda - awaiting inspiration to flow forth from the cracked skull of an infant perhaps), and it struck me as rather ridiculous, and rather ironic. i felt like shouting 'these killing fields do not stop over there at the gate! the passive genocide of children and adults in this nation and all underpriveleged nations continues unabated! the crimes of the modern world are much greater and more atrocious than this field of bodies, and we are participating in and perpetrating those very crimes! yes - be shocked at what has happened here, but do not consider it 'other'. consider it a candle in the burning sun of shame we should feel at our murderous inaction!' but nobody would have listened. they, like me, were too busy wondering what they were going to have for lunch. truth be told, i think inaction is human behaviour. our shame is rather the pretence of action.
.
skulls in the pagoda at choeung ek
.
a tree against which children were beaten and killed
.
after choeung ek, i went to S21 - a secondary school that was converted into a prison and torture chambers by the khmer rouge.
.
a classroom where people were tortured
.
one passes through classrooms where metal beds and instruments of torture are strewn about, and small prison cells (barely 1 square metre large) to try and give you an understanding of what occurred there.
.
.
the most powerful aspect of the S21 museum, in my opinion, were the rows and rows of photos of victims of the khmer rouge torture chambers. the khmer rouge were meticulous, and had each victim measured, photographed, and a biography written before torturing started, confessions were extracted and eventually the person was transferred to cheoung ek and murdered.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
as the facts are reported, the US secretly bombed the cambodians during the war with vietnam and caused several hundred thousand cambodian deaths, in addition to incapacitating the agricultural sector, so that an ensuing famine killed up to 4 million people.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
the khmer rouge capitalised on the desperate state of affairs to seize power and implement their own program of ultra-communist social regression, necessitating the execution of the intelligentsia and people with real or suspected non-khmer rouge political affiliations, adding several hundred thousand to the body count.
.
.
stalin himself said that 'one death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic', and nothing could be more true when thinking about what cambodia has gone through in recent history.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
but to stand in front of these pictures and see the frightened expressions on these people's faces - many of whom were just children - and to realise that behind each pair of eyes is a whole world of ideas and thoughts and dreams and expectations, and to then know that each individual was subsequently starved, tortured and murdered - that strikes at the very core.
.
.
one of the most frightening aspects of the imprisonment and torture is that many of the guards were just teenagers themselves - just children. and while my brain can process and neutralise executions and murders, to think of one person inflicting agony and suffering on another, simply for what they thought or who they were...this aspect of the cambodian experience is just chilling.
.
..
.
back in darwin now and the build-up continues to intensify. counting down to the first week in december when gerard and i visit marvelous melbs!
.
the forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence, that makes no demands for sustenance and extends generously the products of its activity; it affords protection to all beings, offering shade even to the axeman who destroys it.
