Waves Rise, Empires Fall, Temples Remain

Some do it because they must; others do it because they can.  Sometimes it's easy to tell who fits into each category.  Other times, not so much.

I'm thinking now about the folks who live on Tonle Sap, often called Cambodia's "Great Lake".  Like the Great Lakes of North America, it has its own climates and ecosystems.  It also has its own distinct human communities which, for all I know, Ontario, Erie, Huron, Superior and Michigan may also have.  

I took a tuk-tuk to the shore of Tonle Sac, about an hour from my hotel.  The ride took us from an industrial area on the edge of town into expanses of rice paddies and forests.  At times, the pavement on Highway 6 gave way to dirt, which turned to mud when it began to rain.

The road also narrowed, which meant that my tuk-tuk driver had to follow the unwritten, unspoken rule of the road in this country:  You move over for anything that's bigger than what you're driving (or pedaling).  That, at times, meant swerves through potholes of some liquid about the same color as an iced blonde macchiato at Starbuck's.

(Why am I mentioning the Evil Empire of coffee when writing about Cambodia?)

Oh, and all manner of living things cross the road--including oxen and cattle.  One of them might've impaled me on his horns had my driver's reflexes been any slower. 

But he got me to the shore.  I didn't uncross my fingers, though: It seemed that we'd been riding in and out of downpours.  

That tuk-tuk ride was a harbinger of things to come. Or maybe I hadn't "seen nothin' yet".  For all I knew, Tonle Sac might be like an inland sea, with all of its caprices in currents, tides and the like.  

Turns out, I knew more than I realized.  The boat I took could've been built by a Khmer farmer a century or two before any Europeans showed up.  The only difference was that it had an engine.  

The driver of the boat took us through a community of floating houses, which includes the school he attends.  He is 16, he told me, and had been driving the boats since he was 13.  He enjoys it, he said, but he wants to continue his schooling to so he can "help out" his family.

Would "helping them out" mean getting them out of that floating community--or simply finding a way to live better in it?  

One thing I must say for him is this: He isn't stupid.  I asked him to take us out into the open lake, where no land was visible.  There, choppy waves turned into walls of tide that bounced us like a beach ball off the nose of a circus seal.  He told me he could continue if I wanted to, but I could tell that he would have preferred not to.  And I didn't blame him, so we didn't.

But I did get to see fisherman unfurling, fixing and casting their nets; women cooking and cleaning. (On most of those houses, at least two sides are open.

Out in the open lake, all four sides are open--to the wind and storms as well as the decisions made by young captains and their passengers! 

Once back on shore, my tuk-tuk driver suggested two temples about a third of the way back to Siem Reap: Bakong and Preah Ko.  

Bakong, one of the oldest temples, has been called the "Khmer Pyramid" due to its shape.  It also has, perhaps, the steepest stairs to climb.  Like Angkor Wat, it was originally built as a Hindu shrine; other temples constructed for Buddhists tend not to have such steep stairs.  My theory is that Buddism stresses the importance of learning and--in some branches, anyway--an ordinary person is capable of becoming a Buddha, or enlightened one.  Hinduism, as I understand it, is like other theistic religions in that it says people have a long, steep climb to reach the Gods.

Preah Ko was built a bit later than Bakong, but is still one of the oldest Khmer temples.  King Indravarman built it late in the 9th Century CE to honor members of the king's family, whom it relates to the Hindu god Shiva.  Interestingly, it was built from bricks on a sandstone base, in contrast to later temples made from sandstone and lava.

(Note:  Both of these temples are accessible with an Angkor Wat pass.)

Temples And Bikes

Another temple, another bike.

No, I didn't buy another bike--or a temple. (If I could afford to buy a temple, I probably wouldn't have flown economy class!)  I did, however, managed to ride third different bike in as many days.  After mounting the machines provided by the organizers of the rides I took the previous two days, I did some exploring on this machine.

Here in Siem Reap, as in much of Cambodia, hotels and guest houses have bikes for their guests to use.  They are the sorts of bikes ridden by people who live here:  heavy and completely utilitarian.  Then again, most places charge only a dollar or two a day.  The hotel in which I'm staying provided the one in the photo for free.

You can tell this bike was not maintained in any systematic way.  Fragments of brackets for parts and accessories long gone are still clamped to the bike in various places. Did the bracket on the front hold a basket?  A light?  And the old shifter pod on the handlebar:  Was it for a three-speed?


The hotel desk manager actually knew enough to fill the tires before letting me ride it.  He even helped me to adjust the saddle. And the chain was surprisingly well-oiled.  But, as I found out when I dodged a tuk-tuk, a dog and a motorbike at the same time, about a kilometer from the hotel, the brakes weren't.

Fortunately, I found a hardware stall in a market strip.  The gentleman tried three different wrenches, all brand-new, before finding the 10mm open- and box-end wrench that fit the front brake's cable fixing bolt.  When I asked his price, he waved his hand.  So, I insisted on buying the wrench.  His price?  2000 rials, or 50 cents.  For good measure, I noticed he had a cooler full of cold beverages for sale.  I took a small can of lychee nut juice, which made for a grand total of one dollar.

(Most day-to-day transactions in Cambodia are done in dollars.  Rials are used only for amounts less than a dollar.  So, for example, if you buy something for $7.50 and pay with a $10 bill, you will probably get two dollars and two thousand rials in paper notes for your change.  Coins seem not to be in circulation in either currency.)

After adjusting the front--a simple side pull--I went for the rear and found what appeared to be a kind of disc brake in which the pad rubs the outer rim of the disc rather than the sides.  I didn't need the wrench to adjust it: I simply turned the cable barrel.

Then I was on my way.  First up:  the Ta Prohm temple.  I had already visited it with Vichea and Stuart, but it was along the route I happened to ride.  I certainly didn't mind seeing it again and, because I have a seven-day pass, I didn't have to worry about paying to get in.

Note:  The admission prices for what is known collectively as the "Angkor Wat complex" seems high:  $25 for one day, $54 for three and $72 for seven.  But those passes allow admission to the Angkor Thom temples (which include Ta Prohm) as well as others nearby.  Also, the seven-day pass is for seven days of visits, and can be spaced out over a month.  I figured that if I spent three days in any of the temples--which I have--I will have gotten my money's worth.

Anyway, there was no sign of Lara Croft, so the temple had to make do with me.  All of the temples are interesting in their own ways, but this one has what might be the most maze-like internal structure.  And, of course there are those trees that twine themselves around and under walls and other structures.  While all of the temples had things growing on them and creatures (and, probably, people) living in them when the Europeans found them, they didn't look like Ta Prohm.  Even there, some of the trees were cut away.  The ones that remain couldn't be cut or removed without damaging or destroying the structure.  A debate lingers as to whether the trees should be removed if a way can be found to extricate them without sending the walls tumbling down.

From Ta Prohm, I rode along varying combinations of pavement, dirt, ruts and rocks to Banetay Kdei.  Whatever its architecture or other attributes, it makes sense as a Buddhist temple for its peace and quiet alone.  It lacked the crowds of Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom.  It's so quiet, in fact, that you can hear the chirps, caw-caws, moans and other sounds of the surrounding jungle!

It was built in the late 12th and 13th Centuries CE  by Khmer King Jayavarman VII, who also built Angkor Thom and completed Angkor Wat.   So, not surprisingly, some features of Banetay Kdei, including the gopuras, or face towers at the gate, echo those of Angkor Thom.  Some go as far as to say that Banetay Kdei is a sort of Angkor Thom in miniature.

From there, I got some guidance for the rest of my ride--and day.

Somehow they managed to steer me back to Angkor Wat.  I didn't mind:  I mean, it really is one of those places worth returning to, crowds be damned.  Also, seeing it again helped me further appreciate the other temples I'd seen, which in turn helped me to further appreciate the Angkor Wat.

As for the creatures:  They're not as nice as they are cute.  (I've dated a few people like that.)  A few hang around Angkor Wat.  As I was leaving, one jumped on a tourist.  One of her traveling companions swatted at it, but it finally let go when another companion tossed a pineapple chunk onto the ground.  Good thing that monkey was hungry! 

You Weren't Expecting Angelina Jolie, Now, Were You?

In The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock, T.S. Eliot's eponymous speaker laments, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons."

Most of us, I believe, have measured out something or another in our lives in ways that have nothing to do with the metric or Imperial systems.  Me, I've gone on bike rides that I didn't measure in miles, kilometers, minutes, hours, days, pedal strokes or calories.  

As for the latter, I have followed the example of an old riding buddy and measured out my rides in bananas, water bottle refills, "gorp" or trail mix packets, dark chocolate squares, pizza slices or other foods consumed during the ride--or what was consumed afterward. 

I have also measured rides in the number of climbs or amount of climbing, temperature changes or the number of chateaux I visited. 

You know which country I was touring when I was counting chateaux.  Although the country where I've ridden the last few days was a French colony for a bit less than a century, that method wouldn't work very well. But there is a parallel method of measuring a ride in the vicinity of Siam Reap, Cambodia, where I am now.  


To wit:  I have been able to gauge my rides, more or less, by the temple ruins I've visited en route.  Only one of my rides so far have included none at all, though that one--the PURE countryside tour--took me to a currently-operating temple and monastery.  My other two rides both included the "big one": Angkor Wat.


As I mentioned in yesterday's post, my ride with Grasshopper Adventure Day Tours began with sunrise at Angkor Wat. (Interesting fact:  Angkor Wat is really a nickname. It means "city of temples".  Its original name, in Sanskrit, was Parama Visnuloka.)  Stuart and I, led by Vichea, rode a series of trails that Vichea knows about because he rides and races in this area.  Those trails took us to other temples that have at least some relation to Angkor Wat.  

They were actually part of a complex called Angkor Thom.  If Angkor Wat is the "Temple City", then Angkor Thom is the "Big City"--literally.  It's Angkor Wat on steroids--and at least one other mind-altering drug (at least according to my amateur knowledge of psychopharmacology).  It covers 9 square kilometers, or 3.5 square miles: roughly the size of Manhattan below 14th Street. 

Since it was designed as a city, it has  ports, if you will:  gates leading to  bridges lined with carved images.  All of those bridges and gates have more or  less the same architecture and carvings, which depict the deities involved in the Hindu creation myth.  

Once inside the gates and cross one of the bridges--we came in through the North side--possibly the most striking monument is Bayon, which is full of ecstatic depictions of Hindu deities.  The style of the place is often described as "baroque", in contrast to the "classical" Angkor Wat.  The latter has a symmetry that Bayon lacks, but it's hard to imagine Bayon built, or its carvings rendered, in a more restrained way.

Then there is a temple you might have seen even if you've never gone anywhere near Angkor Wat.  At least, you might have seen it on a screen much bigger than the one you're using to read this post.  Now, though, you get to see it with me in it.  Who needs Angelina Jolie, right?

I'm talking about Ta Prohm, more commonly known as the "Tomb Raider" temple.  Aside from its intricate structure, it's known for the trees whose roots ravel themselves around and under various walls and other parts of the temple.  Next to one of those trees, Jolie's Lara Croft character picks a jasmine flower and tumbles through the earth into....Pinewood Studios.  Hmm...I don't recall seeing that in Dante's Inferno.

I saw other temple ruins with Vachea and Stuart.  But Angkor Wat, Bayon and Ta Prohm were enough to make the ride a monumental one, however many kilometers we pedaled, tree roots we rumbled across and mud we flung from our tires.  Oh, and just as nature re-conquered the Ta Prohm site once dominated by Khmer kings, at least one creature showed us who really has the run of this country, however slick we were at riding the trails and roads!

Give me a home where the (water) buffalo roam!