Cambodia's ruins well worth the trek

Published Jul 24, 2009

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It' s early on a Sunday morning in Cambodia and I'm standing at a 12th-century moat. Traces of mist hover above the lotus leaves that dapple the water. Across a causeway, through a tumbled-down gate, lies Banteay Chhmar, one of the largest temples to be built by the ancient Khmer Empire. My friends and I are going to have the place all to ourselves.

We walk in. It turns out that we do end up sharing it, with a local man who brings his cows on to the grounds to graze. And with an affable mason who leads us across hectares of fallen stone to see a message from the past, an inscription chiselled into the doorjamb of a holy tower. This kind of company we welcome.

Cambodia's great temples of Angkor, 105km away, have long since been rediscovered after a quarter-century of closure by war. They now draw more than a million foreign visitors a year, not a few of whom regret that so many other people had the same idea. At peak hours, human traffic jams can form at temple steps.

But go beyond Angkor and you can find places that serve up the old solitude and sense of discovery.

You can explore at your own pace, to the sounds of birds and the breeze that stirs the leaves overhead. In emails home, you will search for words worthy of your sentiments of wonder.

Banteay Chhmar is among the most spectacular of these places. Getting to it entails hours on very bumpy and dusty dirt roads. Staying the night means making do with primitive accommodation: candlelit rooms in local homes, bath water drawn from that same moat.

I stayed the night and it turned out to really make the visit. The next morning I rose early, as everyone here does, and took a walk in clean country air. I passed mother hens foraging with their chicks, boys tending a mud oven in which charcoal was being made.

I was seeing not only a temple but a way of life.

Today several thousand people - rice farmers, cattle herders, market vendors - make their homes on all four sides of the temple. They grow vegetables on the banks of a series of moats; they pile straw within the walls of lesser ancient buildings that dot their settlement.

The ancient and the present co-exist.

Spending time here also means doing a good turn, spreading a bit of wealth in a part of a war-recovering country that has largely missed out on the tourist dollars that Angkor is bringing in.

People do have cellphones (charged by generator) and some have small tractors, but there are few other signs of affluence here.

Banteay Chhmar was created in the Khmer Empire's last great burst of construction, under the 12th-century Buddhist king Jaya-varman VII. His engineers were thinking big even by Khmer standards: to contain a great settlement, they built earthworks and moats that formed a square measuring roughly 1.6km on each side.

At its centre, within another square moat system 0.8km on each side, they built the temple.

More than a century ago, French archaeologist Etienne Ay-monier found the temple to be in a state of "indescribable ruin". It still is, despite the efforts of that friendly mason, who is part of a small reconstruction team.

But that's part of what makes the site so enticing. Exploring it means climbing over huge piles of large fallen stones, something to be tackled only by the sure-footed.

We passed ruined towers, courtyards and ceremonial walkways. Sometimes the stones were so high that we were walking at roof level.

The temple is no longer a formal religious site, but Cambodians believe that it, like all those that their forebears left behind, remains a holy site. In one surviving chamber we found a small contemporary shrine, with a Buddha image wearing a cloth robe, where people made incense offerings.

When rain is needed, local people are reported to walk in a procession around the temple, imploring heaven to help.

One of the best parts of this temple is the many hundreds of metres of basreliefs on its outer walls. We had to scramble up more stones to get a good view.

Before us was a full sample of life 900 years ago: processions of elephants, prominent ladies tended by maids, children playing around, villagers in a sampan, servants tending a stove.

There were also many scenes of war with Champa, the long-vanished rival state to the east: the temple is in large part a memorial to four generals who lost their lives in that long conflict.

On land, the men of arms go at one another fiercely with spears (you can identify the Chams by the curious blossom-shaped headdress they wear). On water, rows of men pull at oars from galleys as others strike at the enemy with spears.

There are also images of the divine, notably the god Vishnu, with 32 arms arrayed like rays of light emanating from the sun.

The carving style is similar to that of the Bayon temple reliefs in Angkor. The difference is there's no need to fight for a view.

We did cross paths for a few minutes our first day with a party of about 20 French-speaking tourists. We saw no other visitors that day or the next.

Late in the afternoon, we went for a look at what the ancient Khmers could do with water. Just east of the temple, they created a reservoir that measures roughly a mile by a half-mile. Academics disagree over whether this body, and others like it, did only symbolic duty as earthly stand-ins for the mythic Sea of Creation, or were part of a vast irrigation system, or both. Whatever the truth, I was awed by the scale. The tree line, way, way off in the distance, was the northern bank.

The reservoir was now largely dry, but because its floor is low and collects water before the surrounding land does, it has been divided into rice paddies.

We went for a stroll, walking along paddy dykes to keep our feet dry. We said hello to members of a farming family who were tinkering with a small tractor.

A woman had caught a bucketful of paddy crabs and insects, which she would sell as food. In the final daylight, we passed a group of young men bringing cattle home.

I passed the night at the house of a Cambodian family, friends of a friend. They couldn't have been more gracious. They gave me a room of my own, bottled water, mosquito coils and a big luxury: a car battery hooked to a fluorescent light. I could have light all night if I wanted it.

Other members of our party slept at a formal homestay, the term given to guesthouses as well as family homes that accept paying guests, a few steps from the temple's gate. It had two rooms with large beds covered by mosquito nets. Downstairs there was a basic bathroom with a squat toilet and a scoop bath.

Staying the night brought another cultural experience. A festival was going on nearby and its amplified music carried into my room as I sat reading. Then at about 10 pm, silence. Private generators don't run all night, even for a celebration.

I first visited Angkor in 1969. Back then, you could be alone in the big temples even there.

I once walked through the largest of them, Angkor Wat, encountering hardly a soul. It's good to know that such an experience can still be had. You just have to work a bit harder for it. - The Washington Post

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