In the middle of the journey of my life, I am--as always--a woman on a bike. Although I do not know where this road will lead, the way is not lost, for I have arrived here. And I am on my bicycle, again.
As soon as I walked into my apartment, she was at my feet. As soon as I sat down, she sat on me and would not get up for anything--not even the promise of a can of tuna. I was away for two weeks. She probably thinks that if I get up and out the door, I'll be gone for a long time, again. I have a dentists' appointment. Really, I do. I'll be back in a couple of hours.
I actually do have a dentists' appointment. But I just might sneak out for a bike ride. Dear readers, please don't tell her!
Yeah, I know. But I really don't want this trip to end. Now I'll lapse into another cliche, this one from a living person: I'll be back!
At least, I hope I will. In any event, late the other day I returned to Siam Reap, Cambodia. Yesterday I said "goodbye"--at least, I hope, for now--in the most appropriate way I could: with one last look at the Angkor Wat.
It still functions as a Buddhist temple, so I wasn't surprised to see a mini-service at one of the shrines
or groups of novitiate monks walking around.
Even though this is a sacred site, the folks in charge know it's important to keep the king--and tourists--entertained:
Since I won't be able to see much besides clouds once my flight is en route, I made a point of giving myself another aerial view
and one from the ground--or, at least the second mezzanine. After all, you haven't been in a place until you've put your feet (yes, bike tire treads count) on the ground.
We all know that things are sometimes lost in translation, and other times meanings are added unintentionally. If you've been on the London Underground, you've seen the "Mind The Gap" signs. What they're telling you, of course, is not to step into the space between the train and platform. Apparently, the person who created that sign was hired for this:
Ironic, isn't it, that it's on the grounds of a Buddhist monastery? "Mind your head": Is that what it means to be "mindful"? On the other hand, this sounds painful:
and could lead to this
which is what might have happened to me if my surgery had been botched. OK, I'll stop with the cheap jokes. Luang Prabang is a wonderful place.
The next time you complain about your commute, reflect on these young women:
If you are my age, you might be lamenting "today's young people" who don't look up from their phones. But they did talk to me. Their commute starts like this
and continues with this
and goes up even further
until, finally, they reach the top of the hill and have all of the best views of Luang Prabang.
As nice as the view is, I''ll bet they don't think much about it. That's what happens when something becomes a part of your work routine: It wouldn't surprise me to know that waiters and other workers in Windows on the World stopped noticing the view, if they ever cared about it in the first place. Maybe they laugh at folks like me who trudge up those stairs as part of their "vacation"
or pay 50000 kip (about $6) to release two young birds into the air from the viewing area.
Or maybe they don't. Either way, I have respect for them because, even though there are two ways you can ascend or descend Pho Si, neither involves an elevator (lift) or escalator (moving stairs). One route, on Thanon Phousi, includes several viewpoints "manned" by statues along its 355 stairs. The other, which starts on Sisavangvong Road (opposite the Royal Palace Museum) takes 328 steps. That's the way I came down; I went up the Thanon Phousi.
It makes perfect sense that those statues, and other images of Buddha, are found on the hill: Phou Si's literal meaning is "sacred mountain". Some people climb it to watch sunsets. Yesterday I couldn't get there in time; on the two previous days, the weather didn't cooperate. To me, the walk up and the view were rewarding. And I'll never, ever complain about my commute again!
In a way, Luang Prabang reminds me of Florence: It's not very big, with only four major streets, all of which run the length of the peninsula. This means that if you're on a bike, no place is more than a few minutes from anyplace else. Another thing the onetime capital of Laos has in common with the epicenter of the Italian Renaissance is that it's full of artistic and cultural treasures. Not surprisingly, both cities are UNESCO World Heritage sites and attract visitors from far and wide.
One difference to me, though, is that I felt the presence of those travelers much more in Florence than I do here. Granted, there aren't as many tourists here as there were in Venice, in part because this isn't the peak tourist season in most of Southeast Asia and, perhaps, because Luang Prabang isn't quite as well-known as Florence. But visitors here don't seem to fill up the narrow streets and to simply "take over" as they do in the Italian city. So, everything seems so much less pressured here: the "vibe", if you will, is actually quite calm.
I was mulling this comparison on my way to a shop that rents bikes when I bumped into Heiko and Pamela, two German tourists. The shop wanted our passports as a "deposit"; we all agreed that we don't hand our passports to anyone who isn't a border control agent of a country we are entering. As far as I know, no such international boundary exists around that shop.
So I suggested that we take a walk down a street called "Utopia" (really!) I had walked it yesterday, and I seemed to recall seeing a rental shop or two. Whether they would demand our passports, I didn't know. As we were walking, Heiko articulated exactly what I had been thinking about Luang Prabang. "It's interesting, but so peaceful," he said. "People don't seem to get upset or impatient." We wondered whether it might have something to do with all of those monks and meditations in Luang Prabang. Everywhere you turn, you see the monks, some of whom look too young for puberty, in their saffron robes. And those temples are all over the city. The cycling was really good, especially after we crossed this wooden bridge
leading out of the city and into the countryside.
It was calm there, too, but that wasn't a surprise given what we've experienced here. Why, there's even a place in the city that's decorated in gold and red felt as if it were bluer than the Blue Mosque:
Wat Mai Suwannaphumaham, referred to as simply the Wat Mai, is so calm that, behind the Buddha that stands over everything, I found this:
No wonder this city can "slow your pulse," as the editors Lonely Planet claim.
Big Buddha is...well, I don't know whether he's watching you. From what I know about him, and what I understand about Buddhism (which, I admit, isn't much), I don't think he would want to. Still, it's hard to deny that the man taught much by example. I would say that even if he weren't about 20 times my size! You can find that statue of him--the largest in this city, and one of the largest in the world
in the Wat Wison Narath, the oldest operating Buddhist temple in this city--Luang Prabang, Laos. I arrived here last night in a heavy rain that didn't let up until late this afternoon. This original temple on this site was completed in 1513, burned in 1887 and rebuilt. Although it charges a small admission fee (20,000 kp: about $2.50 at current exchange rates), it still operates as a temple and thus, visitors are told, a procession of monks might enter the premises. And, as in other functioning Buddhist temples, visitors are required to leave their shoes and hats at the door. Also, silence and modesty (no revealing garments) are expected. I must admit that, if nothing else, I felt very relaxed, as I wasn't thinking about the things I normally think about. In fact, I wasn't thinking at all. I didn't try to achieve that: It just sort of happened. Maybe it had to do with the calm in that place. The funny thing is, I've felt really calm since I've been here--even in the central part of town, where most of the shops (and tourists) are. Maybe it has to do with all of the temples in this town: There seems to be one on every other block.
The guest house in which I'm staying is on the Nam Khan River. This city is built on a peninsula. At the tip of it, the Nam Khan merges with the Mekong, one of the world's mightiest rivers. I haven't been to China, and won't make it there on this trip. But if it's any part of it is like Laos or Cambodia, it makes perfect sense to me now that one of its major rivers is called the Yellow River: waterways in this part of the world seem muddier than in other places I've seen. Part of the reason was literally at my feet when I descended some stone steps used by fishermen to the shore of the Meking, probably no more than 100 meters below the Nam Kahn confluence.
Speaking of fishermen, one waved to me and didn't seem to mind that I was photographing him.
The fishing might be the easier part of his job: I can only imagine what it's like to navigate his boat--not much different from what his forebears used centuries ago--in the raging waters. (I must say that this is the first time I've seen muddy waters with such a visibly strong current!)
Later, after the rain stopped, a couple of streets in the center of town were closed off to make the Night Market, a kind of bazaar with tents overhead. This city is justly famous for its fabrics: Local artisans pride themselves on their skills in weaving and coloring silk, cotton and wool.
Before I headed down the aisles, I snacked on something called "coconut pancakes". They are about the size of small macarons, and their insides have an almost custard-like texture. They're served in a "cup" made of banana leaves and were well worth the calories! I did a bit of a splurge, buying a sarong skirt, a pair of shorts that look like they could pass a sarong, a scarf, two zippered pouches and a batik collage fabric figure of a cat I probably will give to my friend Mildred, who is caring for Marlee while I'm away. I bought an embroidered patch of the Laotian flag and a refrigerator magnet. The total? 257,000 kip. The current rate is around 8500 kip to the dollar. I'll let you do the math, since you probably are better at it than I am.
After all that, I went to a restaruant called the for a traditional Lao meal. Laap consists of marinated meat, with a combination greens and spices. Sometimes the marinating "cooks" the chicken and it is served cold: something like an Asian ceviche It can also be cooked after marinating and served hot, as mine was. My laap had chicken, lemongrass and, according to the waiter, "morning glory." Surely he didn't mean the flower, did he? No, not quite: He meant the shoots and leaves of a flowering plant that's often called "water morning glory" or "river spinach" in English. In any event, it was served--like most Lao dishes--with sticky rice. It's actually a different species from the rice most other people know: Its grains are shorter and it has a higher starch content--but no gluten. Although it's usually associated with Northern Thai food, its true origins are in Laos. As it happens, Northern Thailand has almost as many ethnic Lao people as Laos itself, so much of what is called "Northern Thai" or simply "Thai" in the US and other countries is really Laotian. When I asked for chopsticks, the waiter gave me a somewhat condescending smile. So did a waitress who happened to overhear the conversation. You're really supposed to eat sticky rice with your hands and, in fact, use it as a utensil to scoop up your laap (or whatever else you're eating) much as Ethipians use injera, their pita-like bread. This trip is proving to be educational in all sorts of ways!
Nobody here should be impressed with me. (Actually, I don't think anybody should be impressed with me.) But the people I've talked to all seem to look up to me, and not because I'm taller than they are. Sometimes it's because I'm a professor (university lecturer, actually), as educators and, more important, education are revered here because so many can't get it, or get enough. A couple of people were in awe when I did something a lady isn't supposed to do: reveal my age. One woman--about whom I'll say more later--said her mother is ten years younger and "looks older." Days spent in hard, repetitive tasks in the sun, heat and humidity will do that to you. And then there are those who think I'm other-worldly because I live in New York City. Sokhana (sp?), who works at Green Park Village, the hotel where I'm staying, was simply astounded that I rode a bike about 85 kilometers. She simply had to tell her co-workers, the manager and everyone about it. If you've been reading this blog, you know that I've done much longer rides than that. If anything, if they want to admire me, it should be for going that distance (about 53 miles) on the bike I borrowed from the hotel. Yes, that one. And, perhaps, that someone from a temperate climate pedaled through the heat, humidity and rain (late in the afternoon). I could have taken the tuk-tuk. I'm sure the driver would have known how to get to the Banteay Srei temple. But I simply felt like riding. The town and district are named for Banteay Srei, hence the name of the Butterfly Centre I mentioned in yesterday's post. My ride took me into the countryside, much like the PURE bicycle tour I took. A curious visitor ambled up to the side of the road:
Just meters away, a farmer waded through a rice paddy, barefoot. His manner of growing the grain, and the ways in which he tended the cow (if indeed the cow was his) probably don't differ much from those of farmers at the time the Banteay Srei temple was built, in the 10th Century CE.
The temple is known as the "Citadel of Women." There are indeed many carvings of female figures, but they are mainly divine nymphs or celestial dancing girls knows as aspara or minor female deities, shown standing and called devata.
The real reason why it's known as "The Citadel of Women," though, would not pass today's standards of political correctness: It's because of the temple's small size, at least compared to Angkor Wat or Bayon, and the intricacy of its carvings, which have survived remarkably well. That detail was possible, in part, because most of the temple was built from red sandstone, which lends itself to such work and at times looks like wood. So, although it is relatively small, the reddish color and those details, visible from a pretty fair distance, give Banteay Srei a striking, unique experience. You might say that if Angkor Wat is the virtuoso and Bayon is the show-stopper, then Banteay Srei is the crowd-pleaser. And, yes, you can enter it with a valid Angkor Wat pass. On my way back, I passed the Butterfly Center and stopped at the Landmine Museum, but not to look at the exhibits. The young woman at the admission desk remembered me and allowed me in when I asked to see another young woman who works in the gift shop. An Youn and I had a very friendly talk when I first visited, and she really liked the pendant I was wearing. This time, I gave it to her. Rarely has anyone been so happy for such a small favor from me. Of course, I didn't tell her the real reason I gave it to her: I was trying to lighten up the load for the rest of my ride back to the hotel! ;-)
The rain started some time before I woke up. I think the young woman at the hotel's front desk knew it would rain throughout the day, and called a tuk-tuk driver for me.
That was a really good call. The rain came and went until about two this afternoon. Then it washed down in a torrent through the rest of the day and well into the evening.
I first saw Apocalypse Nowon a cold, rainy day (Christmas Eve, no less) the year that it was released. So I guess it makes sense that on a rainy day here I would go to--wait for it--the Landmine Museum.
Yes, such a thing actually exists. (I wasn't so surprised: After all, I went to a Mushroom Museum and Mustard Museum in--where else?--France!) But you don't have to be a military buff to appreciate it. In fact, the aim of Aki Ra, its founder, is not to glorify war or fetishize weapons. Rather, he wants to alert people to the fact that there are so many landmines and the harm they cause. And he has a goal of de-mining Cambodia by 2025.
U
In spite of his Japanese-sounding name, he's actually Cambodian. He chose that name for himself after a Japanese journalist gave it to him. Before that, he had a number of different names, not because he was trying to evade debt collectors, but because he was essentially "adopted" so many times.
Except that his "adoptors" weren't well-heeled go-gooder Western families. Rather, as he says, he doesn't know exactly when he was born, but he believes it was in 1970. Orphaned early, he was conscripted as a child soldier, first by the Khmer Rouge and, later, by the Vietnamese army after that country invaded. As he recalls, he was taught how to use a rifle that was bigger than he was, and he preferred using rocket launchers because, at least, he could lie down while aiming them.
His training also included the installation of land mines. He became such an expert with them that he was called on not only to install them, but to find them. That also gave him the expertise to find other kinds of munitions on the ground.
After the fighting ceased, he used his expertise to de-mine. He's not the first to undertake such a task: Many a Khmer peasant has dug up, or simply stumbled upon, these explosives. To give you an idea of just how poor they are, they disassembled them to sell the scrap metal. Some didn't live to tell about it; many others lost limbs, eyes, ears and other body parts. I have seen a few such unfortunates in my travels here.
Sun Ra himself admits that, even with his expertise, he is very lucky to be unscathed--at least physically--from the thousands of mines and other munitions he found. They became the basis of the collection in the museum he started, which is run by an NGO he helped to found. Today, that organization works to detect and extract land mines, not only in Cambodia, but in the Middle East, Europe and even the Americas.
As the museum's commentary reminds visitors, once placed, landmines can cause damage indefinitely. In 1965, an explosion in Alabama resulted from mines placed a century earlier, during the US Civil War. And, less than a year ago, 70,000 people were evacuated in Frankfurt, Germany when a British bomb from World War II was found.
The NGO Aki Ra helped to start is staffed entirely by Cambodians and, it says, pays "liveable wages". It also runs a school adjacent to the museum, but not accessible to visitors. Many Cambodian kids never attend school for a variety of reasons--mainly, because their families need their help on the farms or other enterprises, or because they can't afford the fees. The stories of some of those students are posted in one of the museum's exhibits.
So, on a rainy day, what did I do after spending a couple of hours among munitions from the US, China, the USSR and other countries, as well as art and other works related to them? I went to another museum--a preserve, actually, about two kilometers down the road.
So what was preserved there? Not dragonfruits or lychee nuts or pineapples. The things "preserved" there were living and not meant to be consumed, at least not on the grounds of the preserve. I'm sure, though, that someone has eaten them: They sound tasty, at least in the English word for them.
I'm talking about butterflies. More species have been identified in Cambodia, and in Southeast Asia, than in any other part of the world. But, even though this area isn't as developed as the US, Europe or Japan, some of those species are, if not endangered, then declining in numbers. As the exhibit reminds visitors, butterflies are a good "barometer" of ecological health: Where they can't live and thrive, there are other problems. I couldn't help but to think about how, last year, I didn't see the flocks of migrating Monarchs I had seen in earlier years on Point Lookout, Long Island.
Like the Landmine Museum, the Banteay Srey Butterfly Centre is run by an NGO that employs Cambodians, from farmers who collect butterfly eggs to the tourguides and the folks who raise the butterflies through all of their stages of life. Some of the butterflies--which, of course, I'd never seen before coming here--look more like other kinds of insects, or even birds or bats, than what we normally think of as butterflies. Others look like the ones most of us in the developed world have seen, only in different colors and patterns.
Admission is five dollars (two for kids). For another four dollars, you can have lunch in the center's cafe. I had something a staff member recommended: a Khmer curry with chicken, pumpkin and other vegetables. Frankly, I would have gladly eaten it no matter where it was offered, and at a higher price!
I can't help but to wonder whether there's some "product placement" going on here: a butterfly center with a sumptuous lunch just down the road from a landmine museum. It's sort of like watching Breaking Awayafter you've seen Apocalypse Now.
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.)
