Salon Wanderlust | Under the moon at Angkor Thom

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(10/09/98)
Rules of the Wild
By Francesca Marciano
The seductive subculture of whites in Kenya -- and the addicting allure of Africa's vastness
(10/08/98)
Maiden voyage
By Susanna Stromberg
A 19-year-old finds lust and illusion on a Love Boat cruise to Alaska
(10/07/98)
Family values in Africa
By David Kravitz
An elephant herd teaches a dad and his teenage daughter a valuable lesson
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UNDER THE MOON AT ANGKOR THOM | PAGE 1, 2
- - - - - - - - - -
The great temples of Angkor were mysteriously abandoned by their builders around 1300 and slumbered in obscurity until the mid-19th century, when they were rediscovered by a young Frenchman on an extended mule-trek across Cambodia. The approach to them, though indifferently paved, had not altered much in the intervening years.
The entry gate was imposing, guarded by an endless row of monstrous Hindu sentinels carved from stone, their features twisted into expressions I had come to associate with horror films that cut to sudden close-ups of manic gargoyle faces. The road curved gently around a wide lake, where farmers bathed beside their even-tempered buffaloes. The lake slowly resolved itself into an immense moat and suddenly Angkor Wat appeared.
Despite the asphalt parking lot and the buses disgorging streams of little old ladies with pocket cameras, my first sight of Angkor could not have been more awe-inspiring had I stood beside the first explorer, hacking away the vines to see its great spires darkening the sky. It was neither a ruin nor rubble, but rather a city carved from stone, and one that no earthly hands had made. Dancing maidens with almond eyes and perfect breasts adorned the walls and endless, echoing corridors led to dappled courtyards and smooth, pillared chambers. It was surprisingly well preserved. The secret of its immortality lay in the integrity of its architects and builders; the stone blocks were huge and their joinings perfect, every edge still sharp and clean. From the walls themselves the long-dead artists spoke in reliefs that told complicated tales of Hindu gods, their myths, their history and livelihoods. Turbaned elephants led armies to the fields of war while monkey gods spun heaven into earth and fishermen fought crocodiles for their morning's catch. It was a mystical place where one could lose oneself forever without regret.
Until the midday sun, hammering mercilessly on the thirsty earth, baked the stone to blister heat, and even the deepest chambers gave up their crisp, chill air. I went outside to lie in the shade of a banyan tree and pant.
The Angkor ruins were said to have a thousand separate sites, scattered over miles of wooded virgin land. Many still lay undiscovered under dense canopy and others had succumbed to the ravages of nature and the depredations of temple thieves. The greatest single limitation to exploration, however, was neither time nor money, but politics. The Khmer Rouge guerrillas controlled the surrounding countryside and clearly valued territory over history. Although the Cambodian government took pains to protect its tourist income, the three main ruins around Angkor Wat were the only ones where they truly had control, and visitors were not encouraged to venture farther afield. Rumor had it that a month earlier an American couple had ignored the unspoken warnings and hired a minibus with a soldier escort to see a fourth temple 12 miles away. They were ambushed along the road and the woman killed, her husband taken to Bangkok to recover from his wounds. The details varied but the tragic message did not. Cambodia was still at war.
And yet the two flights daily from Phnom Penh were booked solid and an unbroken line of buses waited near the entrance to unload their human cargo. To my surprise the tourists that shuffled through were mostly older folk, the women dressed in white and clutching matching leather handbags, the men picking their way across the cobbled stones with the occasional aid of a rubber-tipped cane. They flooded the monuments like the daily tide, filling Angkor Wat in time to watch the sun rise over the great stone pillars, then hurrying over to Angkor Thom to see the afternoon rays set off the immense Buddhist faces in golden light. The monks did good business in the tiny anterooms of the more popular monuments, where they had set up statues garlanded with colorful flags and Buddhist offerings. Tourists were invited to light incense sticks and place them in convenient pots. The burnished offerings bowls overflowed with a dozen currencies.
After a successful afternoon spent stalking four hapless monks whose shaven heads and saffron robes were an irresistible target for my camera, I wandered wearily back to the guest house. Jochen soon arrived, cherry red with sunburn and contentedly fingering nine rolls of used film. It was a full moon, he pointed out, and scheduled to rise shortly after sunset. A few photos of Angkor Thom by moonlight would be to die for.
Several minutes later we were tossing rolls of bread and half-cooked eggs into a pack and racing the fading light back to the ruins. Jochen negotiated with the reluctant motorcycle drivers to return for us at 8. We set up tripods under the protective gaze of the enormous Buddhist faces and spread out our haphazard picnic. It was a mystical setting: the rising moon turning the stonework a luminescent shade of blue and the unaccustomed silence echoing across the ancient parapets and into the silver-tipped forest beyond. I toyed with the idea of spending the night high up on one of the turret tops, and wondered if a Hindu God might not deign to visit me in such a sacred place.
Jochen pointed out with devastating common sense that safe by day did not imply safe by night and that the limits of Khmer territory might become quite fluid with the setting sun. Thieves too plied their trade by moonlight and carried more than crowbars.
Eight o'clock slipped by without the expected appearance of our drivers. We didn't really mind; we mourned the passing of each moment and gazed, unblinking, at an unearthly landscape that would soon be nothing more than a cherished memory.
And then I heard a whistle, a sound like an inquiring catbird, only it was after dark and all the birds had long since gone to roost. Jochen heard it too and froze, one finger on the shutter release of his Minolta. Silence, then the unmistakable sound of metal hitting stone and a whiff of bitter local cigarettes. I cast a desperate glance at the smooth stone walls, wondering where to hide.
And then they slouched around the corner and into our midst.
There were five of them, swaggering and heavy-lidded, with thick belts of ammunition slung across bare chests and machine guns dangling from bent fingertips. They seemed surprised to see us, and huddled tightly around a crackling walkie-talkie, pausing from time to time to point at our tripods with the muzzles of their guns. I would have given my right arm to know what they were saying. You're going to be kidnapped, I thought. No, you're going to be killed.
Eventually they motioned us to pack our bags and come with them, and I noticed their ragged pants were army green, not Khmer black as I had first assumed. We followed them down to the entrance, where to our astonishment a dozen further soldiers milled around with several more arriving with every passing minute. Jochen's driver was also there, surrounded by a sea of soldiers and clearly terrified. He caught sight of Jochen and urgently patted the plastic seat of his motorbike, barely giving him time to climb aboard before whisking him away without a backward glance.
A military man pulled up beside me, looking grimly futuristic under his visored helmet and polished, purring bike. I climbed on board without waiting for an invitation. The gleaming helmet bent forward and we were off.
The wide tires and absorbent shocks ironed out the road's uneven surfaces and soon the shadowy landscape was sliding by in a dappled blur. We slowed briefly as we approached the main parking lot, where over a hundred police and soldiers were gathered around an assortment of bikes and jeeps. I caught a glimpse of Jochen's driver caught in a roadblock, his waving hands eloquently demonstrating his desire to be elsewhere.
Then we accelerated along the road to Siem Riem, and I hoped fervently that whatever our destination, it would take a long time to get there, so smooth and seamless was the ride. In truth it seemed like I might be getting nothing more dangerous than a free lift home and I felt silly for my foolish paranoia and overwrought imagination.
Roadblocks were everywhere. We slalomed through one after another with barely a break in speed. I was surprised when we slowed along an empty stretch of road for no apparent reason. The driver eased the bike onto a half hidden driveway and we burst into a parking area ringed by barracks. Several soldiers sat, their fingers wrapped around beading bottles of beer, and chatted with a smooth-faced man impeccably attired in a white suit and shiny black shoes. He stood and introduced himself, in flawless English, as the chief of police for the entire Siem Riem province, then offered me a glass of wine. He listened gravely to my driver's report before turning back to me and asking, in the politest possible terms, if I could make a point of leaving the Angkor ruins by sundown. "We have no wish to inconvenience you," he explained, "but it is an awkward time to be investigating the ruins unchaperoned. Prince Sihanouk is temporarily living at his palace in Siem Riem and has chosen this very night to dine at Angkor Wat" -- lured there, no doubt, by the same moon that had so enchanted us. The police chief's entire local force of 520 police and soldiers had been combing the area for hours. "In addition," he added with extreme delicacy, "several of the ruins are mined from dusk to dawn to discourage the unconscionable thieves who have already ransacked several of our most valuable monuments."
As we talked, a cavalcade of blaring bikes and limousines roared by, and he reluctantly excused himself to return to business. He ordered one of his waiting men to take me to my guest house and bid me goodnight. His gentle lecture had been almost fatherly in its concern for my well-being but had probably failed in its objective. I was so taken by his good manners and soft-spoken thoughtfulness that I would happily have scampered back through the ruins if it meant another opportunity to speak with him.

The next morning I arrived at Angkor Thom with an oversized roll of recycled wrapping paper, a bottle of hair spray and a handful of charred wood from the guest house cooking fire. I had already spent days wandering among the elaborately adorned walls, running surreptitious fingers over braille-like carvings, filming them in almost every conceivable light and wishing, in the selfish vein of Western thought, to take a piece with me and hang it in my living room. The possibility of booby traps and my fear of letting down my favorite police chief nixed the idea of a midnight raid, but an impression of the sculptures seemed both harmless and unique. I taped up my wrapping paper and began to rub.
An elephant appeared beneath my sooty fingers, its trunk a graceful curve and its tusks still edged and sharp. On its back a barefoot rider gradually took shape, armed and clinging to an ornamented saddle. Another sheet taped randomly, and this time a battlefield swam into view. I closed my eyes and let my fingertips discover the raised lines and ridges, and when I opened them again a shaven monk was standing at my side, admiring my work. She bowed her head in gentle acknowledgment of my silent request to continue, and bestowed her blessing by sinking to her knees and grinding more charcoal into paste for me. She seemed content to watch and help, and put aside my suggestions that she take a turn herself. Not so the children; they came in droves, and poked experimental fingers into the charcoal dust, and stood in solemn knots, debating which carving they would choose, and why it was the best. Soon the walls were plastered with large sheets of paper and eager, inky hands, enthusiastically rediscovering the ruins they played in every day.
The monks lit incense day and night, the archeologists struggled to shore up crumbling walls, but it was the children of Angkor who were the true inheritors of the fallen kingdom. They scampered casually through the ruins they called home, picking the noses of the stone-faced Buddhas, laying garlands of woven grass over the heads of weather-beaten statues and playing complicated games of tag among the towering parapets. They knew every stone, every hiding place. While we were scrambling in the dirt, looking for old memories, they were busily creating new ones.
I made liberal use of the hair spray on dusty drawings, stray locks and curious fingers and then rolled up my masterpieces and moved on. I had my sights set on bigger and better things.
A 40-yard fresco adorned the western corridor of Angkor Wat, a stunning depiction of the heavens being churned by a hundred monkey gods and an endless, rope-like snake. I timed my arrival to coincide with the afternoon meltdown, when only lunatics were still around, too addle-brained to escape the midday heat.
I chose a section near the floor, beneath the pot of Shiva, and set to work. A glorious melee of fish and crocs and turtles gradually emerged, their outlines taking shape, then gaining substance. I was so involved that I failed to notice a swarthy man slouched against a nearby pillar. He watched me make two drawings, then abruptly disappeared, and when he returned he had a policeman in tow.
"Take them down," the young man demanded in Cambodian, his sharp-edged gestures as eloquent as any words. Such liberties come only at a price.
"How much?" I asked in English, my fingers still wandering innocuously over leaping fish, solidifying scales and sharpening stray fins.
"One thousand dollars," he snapped, then wrote it out in charcoal on the ground.
My hand slid innocently over to a crocodile, still slightly undefined around the jaws. "But look," I said. "I make no mess, and touch the carvings only through a sheet of paper, where other tourists run their sweaty hands along the wall as they walk by." I indicated a section of the relief where the stone was rubbed to a high polish, its details long since worn away.
In reply he tore down my drawing, and pointed imperiously at the guard. I was under arrest. I gathered my things and let him lead me away.
The police chief had moved his table to a shady patch under a eucalyptus tree and exchanged his snowy suit for one in somber gray.
"Hi," I said with genuine enthusiasm. "I'm sorry about all this, but it was the only way I could think of to see you again."
He laughed and inclined his head to accept the compliment. "The pleasure is entirely mine," he said, without the slightest undertone of insincerity. He seemed quite taken by my rubbings, and asked to keep one as a souvenir. We spoke for over an hour, and then he invited me to a ceremony at the old stadium the following afternoon. He would be happy, he told me, to send one of his men to pick me up at my convenience.
We each leave behind a few regrets in life, scattered like birdseed beside our fading footprints. I yearned to ask him questions of his life, his politics and his country's future. I should have stayed. I should have stayed!
But Jochen and I had agreed to take the fast boat on the morning tide. So I left.
And now I trace my charcoal memories, and wonder idly what rubbings I might still have made, had I spent one more moonlit night at Angkor Thom.
SALON | Oct. 12, 1998
Karin Muller is a writer and filmmaker. Her first book, "Hitchhiking Vietnam," was excerpted in Wanderlust.


	T A B L E_T A L K Great food, wine and down-to-earth people: Discuss the virtues of rural Provence in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y Seduced by Kenya By Don George An interview with author Francesca Marciano about Africa's attractions and contradictions (10/09/98) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news (10/09/98) Rules of the Wild By Francesca Marciano The seductive subculture of whites in Kenya -- and the addicting allure of Africa's vastness (10/08/98) Maiden voyage By Susanna Stromberg A 19-year-old finds lust and illusion on a Love Boat cruise to Alaska (10/07/98) Family values in Africa By David Kravitz An elephant herd teaches a dad and his teenage daughter a valuable lesson (10/06/98) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		UNDER THE MOON AT ANGKOR THOM \| PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - The great temples of Angkor were mysteriously abandoned by their builders around 1300 and slumbered in obscurity until the mid-19th century, when they were rediscovered by a young Frenchman on an extended mule-trek across Cambodia. The approach to them, though indifferently paved, had not altered much in the intervening years. The entry gate was imposing, guarded by an endless row of monstrous Hindu sentinels carved from stone, their features twisted into expressions I had come to associate with horror films that cut to sudden close-ups of manic gargoyle faces. The road curved gently around a wide lake, where farmers bathed beside their even-tempered buffaloes. The lake slowly resolved itself into an immense moat and suddenly Angkor Wat appeared. Despite the asphalt parking lot and the buses disgorging streams of little old ladies with pocket cameras, my first sight of Angkor could not have been more awe-inspiring had I stood beside the first explorer, hacking away the vines to see its great spires darkening the sky. It was neither a ruin nor rubble, but rather a city carved from stone, and one that no earthly hands had made. Dancing maidens with almond eyes and perfect breasts adorned the walls and endless, echoing corridors led to dappled courtyards and smooth, pillared chambers. It was surprisingly well preserved. The secret of its immortality lay in the integrity of its architects and builders; the stone blocks were huge and their joinings perfect, every edge still sharp and clean. From the walls themselves the long-dead artists spoke in reliefs that told complicated tales of Hindu gods, their myths, their history and livelihoods. Turbaned elephants led armies to the fields of war while monkey gods spun heaven into earth and fishermen fought crocodiles for their morning's catch. It was a mystical place where one could lose oneself forever without regret. Until the midday sun, hammering mercilessly on the thirsty earth, baked the stone to blister heat, and even the deepest chambers gave up their crisp, chill air. I went outside to lie in the shade of a banyan tree and pant. The Angkor ruins were said to have a thousand separate sites, scattered over miles of wooded virgin land. Many still lay undiscovered under dense canopy and others had succumbed to the ravages of nature and the depredations of temple thieves. The greatest single limitation to exploration, however, was neither time nor money, but politics. The Khmer Rouge guerrillas controlled the surrounding countryside and clearly valued territory over history. Although the Cambodian government took pains to protect its tourist income, the three main ruins around Angkor Wat were the only ones where they truly had control, and visitors were not encouraged to venture farther afield. Rumor had it that a month earlier an American couple had ignored the unspoken warnings and hired a minibus with a soldier escort to see a fourth temple 12 miles away. They were ambushed along the road and the woman killed, her husband taken to Bangkok to recover from his wounds. The details varied but the tragic message did not. Cambodia was still at war. And yet the two flights daily from Phnom Penh were booked solid and an unbroken line of buses waited near the entrance to unload their human cargo. To my surprise the tourists that shuffled through were mostly older folk, the women dressed in white and clutching matching leather handbags, the men picking their way across the cobbled stones with the occasional aid of a rubber-tipped cane. They flooded the monuments like the daily tide, filling Angkor Wat in time to watch the sun rise over the great stone pillars, then hurrying over to Angkor Thom to see the afternoon rays set off the immense Buddhist faces in golden light. The monks did good business in the tiny anterooms of the more popular monuments, where they had set up statues garlanded with colorful flags and Buddhist offerings. Tourists were invited to light incense sticks and place them in convenient pots. The burnished offerings bowls overflowed with a dozen currencies. After a successful afternoon spent stalking four hapless monks whose shaven heads and saffron robes were an irresistible target for my camera, I wandered wearily back to the guest house. Jochen soon arrived, cherry red with sunburn and contentedly fingering nine rolls of used film. It was a full moon, he pointed out, and scheduled to rise shortly after sunset. A few photos of Angkor Thom by moonlight would be to die for. Several minutes later we were tossing rolls of bread and half-cooked eggs into a pack and racing the fading light back to the ruins. Jochen negotiated with the reluctant motorcycle drivers to return for us at 8. We set up tripods under the protective gaze of the enormous Buddhist faces and spread out our haphazard picnic. It was a mystical setting: the rising moon turning the stonework a luminescent shade of blue and the unaccustomed silence echoing across the ancient parapets and into the silver-tipped forest beyond. I toyed with the idea of spending the night high up on one of the turret tops, and wondered if a Hindu God might not deign to visit me in such a sacred place. Jochen pointed out with devastating common sense that safe by day did not imply safe by night and that the limits of Khmer territory might become quite fluid with the setting sun. Thieves too plied their trade by moonlight and carried more than crowbars. Eight o'clock slipped by without the expected appearance of our drivers. We didn't really mind; we mourned the passing of each moment and gazed, unblinking, at an unearthly landscape that would soon be nothing more than a cherished memory. And then I heard a whistle, a sound like an inquiring catbird, only it was after dark and all the birds had long since gone to roost. Jochen heard it too and froze, one finger on the shutter release of his Minolta. Silence, then the unmistakable sound of metal hitting stone and a whiff of bitter local cigarettes. I cast a desperate glance at the smooth stone walls, wondering where to hide. And then they slouched around the corner and into our midst. There were five of them, swaggering and heavy-lidded, with thick belts of ammunition slung across bare chests and machine guns dangling from bent fingertips. They seemed surprised to see us, and huddled tightly around a crackling walkie-talkie, pausing from time to time to point at our tripods with the muzzles of their guns. I would have given my right arm to know what they were saying. You're going to be kidnapped, I thought. No, you're going to be killed. Eventually they motioned us to pack our bags and come with them, and I noticed their ragged pants were army green, not Khmer black as I had first assumed. We followed them down to the entrance, where to our astonishment a dozen further soldiers milled around with several more arriving with every passing minute. Jochen's driver was also there, surrounded by a sea of soldiers and clearly terrified. He caught sight of Jochen and urgently patted the plastic seat of his motorbike, barely giving him time to climb aboard before whisking him away without a backward glance. A military man pulled up beside me, looking grimly futuristic under his visored helmet and polished, purring bike. I climbed on board without waiting for an invitation. The gleaming helmet bent forward and we were off. The wide tires and absorbent shocks ironed out the road's uneven surfaces and soon the shadowy landscape was sliding by in a dappled blur. We slowed briefly as we approached the main parking lot, where over a hundred police and soldiers were gathered around an assortment of bikes and jeeps. I caught a glimpse of Jochen's driver caught in a roadblock, his waving hands eloquently demonstrating his desire to be elsewhere. Then we accelerated along the road to Siem Riem, and I hoped fervently that whatever our destination, it would take a long time to get there, so smooth and seamless was the ride. In truth it seemed like I might be getting nothing more dangerous than a free lift home and I felt silly for my foolish paranoia and overwrought imagination. Roadblocks were everywhere. We slalomed through one after another with barely a break in speed. I was surprised when we slowed along an empty stretch of road for no apparent reason. The driver eased the bike onto a half hidden driveway and we burst into a parking area ringed by barracks. Several soldiers sat, their fingers wrapped around beading bottles of beer, and chatted with a smooth-faced man impeccably attired in a white suit and shiny black shoes. He stood and introduced himself, in flawless English, as the chief of police for the entire Siem Riem province, then offered me a glass of wine. He listened gravely to my driver's report before turning back to me and asking, in the politest possible terms, if I could make a point of leaving the Angkor ruins by sundown. "We have no wish to inconvenience you," he explained, "but it is an awkward time to be investigating the ruins unchaperoned. Prince Sihanouk is temporarily living at his palace in Siem Riem and has chosen this very night to dine at Angkor Wat" -- lured there, no doubt, by the same moon that had so enchanted us. The police chief's entire local force of 520 police and soldiers had been combing the area for hours. "In addition," he added with extreme delicacy, "several of the ruins are mined from dusk to dawn to discourage the unconscionable thieves who have already ransacked several of our most valuable monuments." As we talked, a cavalcade of blaring bikes and limousines roared by, and he reluctantly excused himself to return to business. He ordered one of his waiting men to take me to my guest house and bid me goodnight. His gentle lecture had been almost fatherly in its concern for my well-being but had probably failed in its objective. I was so taken by his good manners and soft-spoken thoughtfulness that I would happily have scampered back through the ruins if it meant another opportunity to speak with him. The next morning I arrived at Angkor Thom with an oversized roll of recycled wrapping paper, a bottle of hair spray and a handful of charred wood from the guest house cooking fire. I had already spent days wandering among the elaborately adorned walls, running surreptitious fingers over braille-like carvings, filming them in almost every conceivable light and wishing, in the selfish vein of Western thought, to take a piece with me and hang it in my living room. The possibility of booby traps and my fear of letting down my favorite police chief nixed the idea of a midnight raid, but an impression of the sculptures seemed both harmless and unique. I taped up my wrapping paper and began to rub. An elephant appeared beneath my sooty fingers, its trunk a graceful curve and its tusks still edged and sharp. On its back a barefoot rider gradually took shape, armed and clinging to an ornamented saddle. Another sheet taped randomly, and this time a battlefield swam into view. I closed my eyes and let my fingertips discover the raised lines and ridges, and when I opened them again a shaven monk was standing at my side, admiring my work. She bowed her head in gentle acknowledgment of my silent request to continue, and bestowed her blessing by sinking to her knees and grinding more charcoal into paste for me. She seemed content to watch and help, and put aside my suggestions that she take a turn herself. Not so the children; they came in droves, and poked experimental fingers into the charcoal dust, and stood in solemn knots, debating which carving they would choose, and why it was the best. Soon the walls were plastered with large sheets of paper and eager, inky hands, enthusiastically rediscovering the ruins they played in every day. The monks lit incense day and night, the archeologists struggled to shore up crumbling walls, but it was the children of Angkor who were the true inheritors of the fallen kingdom. They scampered casually through the ruins they called home, picking the noses of the stone-faced Buddhas, laying garlands of woven grass over the heads of weather-beaten statues and playing complicated games of tag among the towering parapets. They knew every stone, every hiding place. While we were scrambling in the dirt, looking for old memories, they were busily creating new ones. I made liberal use of the hair spray on dusty drawings, stray locks and curious fingers and then rolled up my masterpieces and moved on. I had my sights set on bigger and better things. A 40-yard fresco adorned the western corridor of Angkor Wat, a stunning depiction of the heavens being churned by a hundred monkey gods and an endless, rope-like snake. I timed my arrival to coincide with the afternoon meltdown, when only lunatics were still around, too addle-brained to escape the midday heat. I chose a section near the floor, beneath the pot of Shiva, and set to work. A glorious melee of fish and crocs and turtles gradually emerged, their outlines taking shape, then gaining substance. I was so involved that I failed to notice a swarthy man slouched against a nearby pillar. He watched me make two drawings, then abruptly disappeared, and when he returned he had a policeman in tow. "Take them down," the young man demanded in Cambodian, his sharp-edged gestures as eloquent as any words. Such liberties come only at a price. "How much?" I asked in English, my fingers still wandering innocuously over leaping fish, solidifying scales and sharpening stray fins. "One thousand dollars," he snapped, then wrote it out in charcoal on the ground. My hand slid innocently over to a crocodile, still slightly undefined around the jaws. "But look," I said. "I make no mess, and touch the carvings only through a sheet of paper, where other tourists run their sweaty hands along the wall as they walk by." I indicated a section of the relief where the stone was rubbed to a high polish, its details long since worn away. In reply he tore down my drawing, and pointed imperiously at the guard. I was under arrest. I gathered my things and let him lead me away. The police chief had moved his table to a shady patch under a eucalyptus tree and exchanged his snowy suit for one in somber gray. "Hi," I said with genuine enthusiasm. "I'm sorry about all this, but it was the only way I could think of to see you again." He laughed and inclined his head to accept the compliment. "The pleasure is entirely mine," he said, without the slightest undertone of insincerity. He seemed quite taken by my rubbings, and asked to keep one as a souvenir. We spoke for over an hour, and then he invited me to a ceremony at the old stadium the following afternoon. He would be happy, he told me, to send one of his men to pick me up at my convenience. We each leave behind a few regrets in life, scattered like birdseed beside our fading footprints. I yearned to ask him questions of his life, his politics and his country's future. I should have stayed. I should have stayed! But Jochen and I had agreed to take the fast boat on the morning tide. So I left. And now I trace my charcoal memories, and wonder idly what rubbings I might still have made, had I spent one more moonlit night at Angkor Thom. SALON \| Oct. 12, 1998 Karin Muller is a writer and filmmaker. Her first book, "Hitchhiking Vietnam," was excerpted in Wanderlust.