Salon Wanderlust | Under the spell of Angkor Wat

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Discuss your most memorable trips, travels or visits in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

R E C E N T L Y
Where the hula goddess lives
By James D. Houston
A sensual, sacred site in Hawaii
(03/02/98)
Cajun Mardi Gras
By Margaret Spillane and Bruce Shapiro
Singing, dancing, drinking and other mayhem in rural Louisiana
(02/27/98)
Looking for Kathmandu
By Jeff Greenwald
Gossip, chickens and sex in Nepal
(02/26/98)
Landing the Big One
By D.T. Max
Fishing and frolicking in Cabo San Lucas
(02/25/98)
Arigato, Nagano
By Cintra Wilson
Weird TV, naked hot springs and the big heart of Japan
(02/24/98)

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__UNDER THE SPELL OF ANGKOR WAT _|_ page 2 of 2

Woke up later than usual on my final morning and joined Sanday for a trip to the Rolous Group, a 30-minute drive from Siem Reap. These are the oldest monuments at Angkor, built nearly three centuries before Angkor Wat. I loved their grace and simplicity, the beautifully detailed lintels that, luckily carved from a high grade of sandstone, look as if they were finished last month.
More than the ruins, though, I relished the too-short drive into the countryside: past the covered market with its baskets of bananas, past the elegant wooden houses resting on timber stilts, past the dry rice paddies, the lean sweet cows, the farmers' daughters with red welts of therapeutic cupping on their cheeks and foreheads.
Once again, the idyllic appearance of the countryside is belied by Sanday's description of what lies beneath. Much of the region is still seeded with anti-personnel mines, designed to kill or maim. De-mining the region is a herculean task; it takes the United Nations teams nearly an hour to sweep each square meter of land. The only metal part of many mines is the detonator -- but any bottle cap or bit of foil, however small, will set off the detector. When this happens, the offending area must be probed with long needles, and the cause of the alarm discerned. When an actual mine is discovered, an attempt is made to neutralize the detonator. This is often impossible. The mines are painstakingly extracted from the ground, placed in a pile and blown up at the end of the workday. Sanday has heard several such blasts, which rattle the windows of his World Monuments Fund office.
What is it with this country? What is the root of its terrible luck? Sanday suggests that the Khmer -- like some equally unfortunate African nations -- are bedeviled by bad karma: locked into a demonic cycle of tribal war and self-destruction. (Declarations like these seem completely convincing here in Asia, where such concepts are not New Age platitudes but the bread and butter of spiritual life.) During my brief visit to central Cambodia, warnings of local Khmer Rouge activity were updated on a daily basis. Mine victims -- many of them children -- are everywhere. As recently as last July, political tensions in Phnom Penh erupted into violence, claiming more than 40 lives. Most telling of all, an entire generation of inhabitants seems to be missing, erased during the black reign of Pol Pot. Cambodia -- like much of Europe after the Second World War -- is a nation of the young and the old.
But there is, of course, the odd note of redemption amid the decay: the knowledge that renewal, at least on a historical scale, is inevitable. This is especially evident at Ta Prohm: a magical, lushly romantic temple that Malraux (in his avatar as minister of culture) declared should be left in its "natural," overgrown state.
Entering the ruin -- with its pale gum trees emerging from vaulted stone rooftops, root-laced bas-reliefs and mountains of broken stone pillars -- is like wandering onto the set of an Indiana Jones film. True chaos has a kind of innate perfection, and nowhere on Earth is it better expressed. Doug Coupland (I think it was he) once observed that colors in nature never clash. A true ruin, I realize, displays the same mysterious, unerring aesthetic. Every element seems in place.
And this is true on several levels. To step into Ta Prohm and explore its narrow passageways is to experience the awed, breathless rush that the first explorers must have felt when they located the famed Angkor ruins in the jungle. The place is a maze, full of dangers and surprises: The place looks static, but a loose stone -- or hidden Hanuman snake -- could kill you. The temple is also a case study, an illustrated textbook of the fate awaiting unrestored monuments.
Most compelling of all, though, is the view of impermanence the ruin provides. At loose in Ta Prohm, it's easy to imagine one is walking through the remains of Shea Stadium, or San Francisco's Financial District. Bulbuls hoot, and monkeys scream in the trees; the fallen buddhas and apsaras seem like natural denizens of the jungle. Only 800 years after its glory days, there is nothing here that did not belong to nature in the first place. At peace in a land of warring camps and mine fields, Ta Prohm provides an uncompromising example of the planet's ability to restore itself ...

A few days back from Cambodia I wake to a mild, almost caressing tremor -- that slight samba shimmy in the roof beams and walls. The quake is so subtle that my housemate, Chrissie, doesn't even feel it; but by the afternoon it's the talk of Kathmandu.
It makes sense that this southern edge of the Himalaya -- the world's youngest, most active mountain chain, rising at the breakneck pace of inches per year -- would be rocking constantly, and it amazes me that blood-curdling tremors are not a daily occurrence. Nepal has already had two devastating earthquakes this century: in 1934 and 1988.
The next one is due, if the royal astrologers are correct, within 15 days. Their prediction is being taken seriously; the past weeks have seen killer quakes in nearby Afghanistan and Pakistan. Smart expats are assembling their earthquake kits, complete with spare rupees, leather gloves and Pepto Bismol. The American Embassy has issued a "preparedness" report, advising that bathrooms are the safest place to hide and informing American citizens where the evacuation helicopters will be landing. Getting to them will be the problem; Kathmandu is a hasty erection of bricks, beams and poorly reinforced concrete, rising amid an octopus-ink linguine of power lines.
But as in San Francisco, so it is in Nepal. Dawn brings another Shangri-La morning. The bells ring down at the corner Ganesh shrine; brown-eyed cows parade down the dirt lane outside my gate, nonplused by the schoolgirls who touch them for a quick blessing. To the north, the mountains ripple like meringue. Disaster seems impossibly far away. What, me worry? It'll be like this until the summer monsoon -- bees and banana trees, singing birds and snapdragons, even as we're digging ourselves out of Ta Prohm-ish rubble.
Tomorrow is Shiva ratri: the dark new moon night of Lord Shiva, the great Hindu creator/destroyer. The days following will witness the celebrations of Lhosar, the Tibetan New Year. I'll report back from the K@mandu cyber cafe in a couple of weeks -- if the place is still standing.
SALON | March 3, 1998
Jeff Greenwald is Wanderlust's correspondent in Kathmandu. He is also the author of "The Size of the World," "Shopping for Buddhas" and "Mister Raja's Neighborhood."


T A B L E_T A L K Discuss your most memorable trips, travels or visits in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Where the hula goddess lives By James D. Houston A sensual, sacred site in Hawaii (03/02/98) Cajun Mardi Gras By Margaret Spillane and Bruce Shapiro Singing, dancing, drinking and other mayhem in rural Louisiana (02/27/98) Looking for Kathmandu By Jeff Greenwald Gossip, chickens and sex in Nepal (02/26/98) Landing the Big One By D.T. Max Fishing and frolicking in Cabo San Lucas (02/25/98) Arigato, Nagano By Cintra Wilson Weird TV, naked hot springs and the big heart of Japan (02/24/98) Browse the Feature archives		__UNDER THE SPELL OF ANGKOR WAT _\|_ page 2 of 2 Woke up later than usual on my final morning and joined Sanday for a trip to the Rolous Group, a 30-minute drive from Siem Reap. These are the oldest monuments at Angkor, built nearly three centuries before Angkor Wat. I loved their grace and simplicity, the beautifully detailed lintels that, luckily carved from a high grade of sandstone, look as if they were finished last month. More than the ruins, though, I relished the too-short drive into the countryside: past the covered market with its baskets of bananas, past the elegant wooden houses resting on timber stilts, past the dry rice paddies, the lean sweet cows, the farmers' daughters with red welts of therapeutic cupping on their cheeks and foreheads. Once again, the idyllic appearance of the countryside is belied by Sanday's description of what lies beneath. Much of the region is still seeded with anti-personnel mines, designed to kill or maim. De-mining the region is a herculean task; it takes the United Nations teams nearly an hour to sweep each square meter of land. The only metal part of many mines is the detonator -- but any bottle cap or bit of foil, however small, will set off the detector. When this happens, the offending area must be probed with long needles, and the cause of the alarm discerned. When an actual mine is discovered, an attempt is made to neutralize the detonator. This is often impossible. The mines are painstakingly extracted from the ground, placed in a pile and blown up at the end of the workday. Sanday has heard several such blasts, which rattle the windows of his World Monuments Fund office. What is it with this country? What is the root of its terrible luck? Sanday suggests that the Khmer -- like some equally unfortunate African nations -- are bedeviled by bad karma: locked into a demonic cycle of tribal war and self-destruction. (Declarations like these seem completely convincing here in Asia, where such concepts are not New Age platitudes but the bread and butter of spiritual life.) During my brief visit to central Cambodia, warnings of local Khmer Rouge activity were updated on a daily basis. Mine victims -- many of them children -- are everywhere. As recently as last July, political tensions in Phnom Penh erupted into violence, claiming more than 40 lives. Most telling of all, an entire generation of inhabitants seems to be missing, erased during the black reign of Pol Pot. Cambodia -- like much of Europe after the Second World War -- is a nation of the young and the old. But there is, of course, the odd note of redemption amid the decay: the knowledge that renewal, at least on a historical scale, is inevitable. This is especially evident at Ta Prohm: a magical, lushly romantic temple that Malraux (in his avatar as minister of culture) declared should be left in its "natural," overgrown state. Entering the ruin -- with its pale gum trees emerging from vaulted stone rooftops, root-laced bas-reliefs and mountains of broken stone pillars -- is like wandering onto the set of an Indiana Jones film. True chaos has a kind of innate perfection, and nowhere on Earth is it better expressed. Doug Coupland (I think it was he) once observed that colors in nature never clash. A true ruin, I realize, displays the same mysterious, unerring aesthetic. Every element seems in place. And this is true on several levels. To step into Ta Prohm and explore its narrow passageways is to experience the awed, breathless rush that the first explorers must have felt when they located the famed Angkor ruins in the jungle. The place is a maze, full of dangers and surprises: The place looks static, but a loose stone -- or hidden Hanuman snake -- could kill you. The temple is also a case study, an illustrated textbook of the fate awaiting unrestored monuments. Most compelling of all, though, is the view of impermanence the ruin provides. At loose in Ta Prohm, it's easy to imagine one is walking through the remains of Shea Stadium, or San Francisco's Financial District. Bulbuls hoot, and monkeys scream in the trees; the fallen buddhas and apsaras seem like natural denizens of the jungle. Only 800 years after its glory days, there is nothing here that did not belong to nature in the first place. At peace in a land of warring camps and mine fields, Ta Prohm provides an uncompromising example of the planet's ability to restore itself ... A few days back from Cambodia I wake to a mild, almost caressing tremor -- that slight samba shimmy in the roof beams and walls. The quake is so subtle that my housemate, Chrissie, doesn't even feel it; but by the afternoon it's the talk of Kathmandu. It makes sense that this southern edge of the Himalaya -- the world's youngest, most active mountain chain, rising at the breakneck pace of inches per year -- would be rocking constantly, and it amazes me that blood-curdling tremors are not a daily occurrence. Nepal has already had two devastating earthquakes this century: in 1934 and 1988. The next one is due, if the royal astrologers are correct, within 15 days. Their prediction is being taken seriously; the past weeks have seen killer quakes in nearby Afghanistan and Pakistan. Smart expats are assembling their earthquake kits, complete with spare rupees, leather gloves and Pepto Bismol. The American Embassy has issued a "preparedness" report, advising that bathrooms are the safest place to hide and informing American citizens where the evacuation helicopters will be landing. Getting to them will be the problem; Kathmandu is a hasty erection of bricks, beams and poorly reinforced concrete, rising amid an octopus-ink linguine of power lines. But as in San Francisco, so it is in Nepal. Dawn brings another Shangri-La morning. The bells ring down at the corner Ganesh shrine; brown-eyed cows parade down the dirt lane outside my gate, nonplused by the schoolgirls who touch them for a quick blessing. To the north, the mountains ripple like meringue. Disaster seems impossibly far away. What, me worry? It'll be like this until the summer monsoon -- bees and banana trees, singing birds and snapdragons, even as we're digging ourselves out of Ta Prohm-ish rubble. Tomorrow is Shiva ratri: the dark new moon night of Lord Shiva, the great Hindu creator/destroyer. The days following will witness the celebrations of Lhosar, the Tibetan New Year. I'll report back from the K@mandu cyber cafe in a couple of weeks -- if the place is still standing. SALON \| March 3, 1998 Jeff Greenwald is Wanderlust's correspondent in Kathmandu. He is also the author of "The Size of the World," "Shopping for Buddhas" and "Mister Raja's Neighborhood."