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!

I Paid Again (Don't Tell Anybody!)

Yesterday was a milestone for me:  It was the second day in a row I did an organized ride I had to pay for. I pride myself on not paying to go on a ride unless there's a very, very good reason--say, an event or cause or some ride I purely and simply want to do. (That's why I paid the five-dollar fee in a couple of the early Five Boro Bike Tours.) And it would have been against something--I won't say my religion, because I don't have one--to pay to ride two days in  a row.

 The way I rationalize this second consecutive day of pay-to-ride that I am in a completely unfamiliar place.  I can get around Paris almost as well as I can navigate New York.  After spending a day riding with a guide, Rome wasn't so difficult to figure out from the saddle.  Ditto for Montreal.  But Siem Reap is a whole different experience in every way--from the traffic patterns to the language, of which I can use about five words.

Also, I have no qualms about this second consecutive paid ride because it's very different, in almost every way, from the one I took the other day.  I enjoyed both, but some of you might prefer one to the other, for various reasons.

Yesterday's bike ride was run by a company called Grasshopper Adventure Day Tours, which also organizes rides in other countries.  The first point of difference between the ride I took with them, and the one I took the other day with PURE, is that yesterday's ride was supported en route.  The driver even picked up me and Stuart, the other participant in this ride, from my guest house and his hotel.  

The driver brought us to Angkor Wat, where we watched the sunrise. Well, we saw the dawn, or the beginning of the day, anyway:  A curtain of clouds cloaked the sun and allowed a few orange and pink rays from its fringes.

Oh, well.  For me, it was two days in a row of clouds blocking the sunrise at Angkor Wat.  It's a cliche, but you can't do anything about the weather:  In January, when I went to Florida, I had two days when the temperature didn't get much past 5C (40F) and two nights when it dropped to -4C (25F).  

After that sunrise, we had breakfast.  Yogurt, cereal, bread condiments, juices, coffee and tea were provided, and the driver made omelets (good, in fact) for me and Stuart. But the show-stopper, if you will, was a plate of sliced fruits, including the small but succulent bananas that grow here, as well as papaya, pineapple, a couple of melons and a white dragonfruit I'd never had before.  I could have eaten any of them all day!

That breakfast made me feel like I was part of a racing team.  Perhaps that wasn't a coincidence: Our ride leader, Vichea, is a mountain bike racer here in Cambodia. At least, he is when he isn't leading tours like ours or working his regular job as a teacher.

Before we set out to ride, he took us on a mini-tour of the main Angkor Wat temple.  I complimented his commentary; he demurred, saying, "Well, I  know this because I've been here all of my life."  

He also knows the trails in this area.  Grasshopper promised that this ride would take us away from the crowds.  Indeed, it did:  Even when we arrived at the temples, we were ahead of the biggest throngs of tourists.

Stuart is a regular mountain biker in his native Australia.  I once was semi-regular, but I haven't been since I sold my Bontrager 15 years ago.  Since then, I've stuck to road and street riding.  But I felt comfortable riding with Stuart and Vichea as we bounced oer rocks and tree roots, and navigated the steep turns, on dirt, mud and rock trails between the main Angkor Wat temple and its satellites, including Bayon.  We even rode through jungle but didn't see elephants, lemurs or even big snakes.  Near the end of the ride, though, we did spot some water buffalo.

By the way, in another contrast with my PURE ride, I rode a GT mountain bike with disc brakes and a mid-range suspension fork. When I registered, the Grasshopper administrator asked for my height and I noticed that Stuart, who is taller, had a bigger frame and Vichea, who is shorter, had a smaller frame than mine. I did the  PURE ride on a local-brand "city bike", which is kind of ironic given that the ride ventured  into the countryside.  That bike probably came in only one size.


We concluded with lunch at a roadside restaurant: a Khmer chicken-and-vegetable dish for me, accompanied by a small fruit plate, as every Khmer meal seems to be.  Not that I'm complaining:  I enjoy getting at least a taste of fruits I don't find often, if at all, when I'm at home.  

Now I'll admit that I feel at least one point of pride about this ride:  Stuart and Vichea both complimented my riding. I hope--and suspect--they weren't slowing down for me or tamping the intensity of those trails just because I am nearly two decades older than Sturart and he, in turn, is about a decade and a half older then Vichea!I  Then again, they probably didn't know that about me, if I do say so myself.

Don't Blame Me If Her Roof Leaks!

When I told people I was going to Cambodia, I got one of two reactions:  "Wow!" or "Why the ____ are you going there?"

I think I can answer the latter group--and justify the reactions of the former--with this:

Even though clouds veiled the rising sun, it was still impressive to see the dawning of a day at Angkor Wat.  I plan to return in the hope of seeing one of its fabled sunrises without obstruction.

Then I spent the next two hours on a mini-tour with a guide.  I assured him that I plan to return and hope that he is my guide again.  He told me some very insightful and funny stories, including one about carvings of the dancers inspried by the Asparas, the female cloud and water spirits of Hindu culture.  "They kept the king happy," my guide explained.  "A happy king means a happy kingdom with happy subjects."  It makes sense, even though I don't know for sure:  I have never lived in a kingdom (although my own country is looking more and more like a dictatorship, or an attempt to create one) and have only visited a few, including Cambodia.  

Anyway, my guide told me, with some sadness, about how some of the carvings have worn out in spots--in certain spots in particular.  

You know which ones he was talking about--and why they "wore out".

After my visit, my day continued with my first bike ride in Cambodia.  Following the advice of my guest house host and a few other people, I went on a guided, organized ride, as cycling here is very different from anyplace else I've ridden.  Suffice it to say that I wasn't riding on bike lanes like the ones in Paris or Montreal.  

Debates over whether to ride 650B, 700C or 26 inch become pretty meaningless when you're riding on farm paths--or streets that look like moonscapes with trucks, cars, motorbikes, tuk-tuks and just about every other sort of vehicle you can imagine. The rule of road here seems to be that smaller vehicles get out of the way of bigger ones.

You Sert, my guide, promised to show me "the real Cambodia".  Being an American, who has been in this country for all of two days, I can't say exactly what that is.  But I do know I saw I side of the nation, or at least this section of it, I might not have seen otherwise.

He was conducting a tour for PURE, a not-for-profit dedicated to education and vocational training for local people.  PURE tours venture into the countryside out of Siem Reap and include, among other things, a stop at a marketplace--to buy fresh vegetables that become part of a lunch served by a local family.  (Delicious,by the way!) 

The first stop on our tour, probably about 10-12 kilometers out of the city, was a complex of shrines and monasteries.  One of the first things to catch my attenton was this

on a column of  a crematorium.  Apparently, cremation is a Khmer (the ethnicity of most Cambodians) custom, and the family keeps the remains "in a beautiful box," as You Sert said.

My tour also included a stop at a farm where a woman practiced traditional medicine, including "cupping"--which, according to her, revealed that I'm not ill and that my muscles are fine.  If nothing else, it felt like a nice massage. And her kids simply couldn't get enough of me!  According to You Sert, they all knew--although nobody told them--"she's a teacher".  

Another stop took us to You Sert's house, where he lives with his wife, mother, year-old son and sister-in-law, who looked 13 years old, if that.  Like most houses in the countryside--only 30 or 40 kilometers away from the city--it's basically a hut, open on one side.  It does have electricity, however, and his family watch TV and video games--and You Sert will be able to send me e-mails from there!

Yet another destination was another farm, where a woman showed me how she weaves tall grasses into the roof of her house.  When we visited her, she was weaving sections that would replace some that currently stand between her, her family and the elements. She even invited me to try my hand at it.  The technique isn't difficult:  You just have to make sure to do it right.  Also, as she explained--and I quickly learned--it's hard on one's back.  After weaving a section with her, I was ready to go back to the woman who practices "cupping". 

The ride itself was not at all strenuous. For one thing, it was flat.  For another, the pace was easy.  I don't know whether You Sert was underestimating my abilities or simply being cautious in the cobbly, chaotic road conditions.  He did say, though, that most riders want to sleep after his tours, but I obviously did not.  Also, he said he enjoyed our conversations.  "Most tourists just want to do a bike ride in Cambodia," he explained.  "They don't ask about my life and culture, like you do," he explained.

Oh, and after that ride, I went back to Angkor Wat for a couple of hours. I know I'll be spending more time there. 

So, the real question isn't why I came to Cambodia.  Instead, my acquaintances should wonder why I'm waking up at 4 in the morning during my "vacation".  Whether or not they ask, they shouldn't blame me if a Cambodian peasant's roof leaks!