Angkor Wat: Cambodia Part II

Meeting a monkey for the first time was not a peaceful encounter. He was on his own turf; I was many latitude and longitude away from home, in a place called Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat is an ancient temple complex located in the northern half of Cambodia. It was built nearly nine hundred years ago and is the kingdom’s shining star and biggest tourist attraction. (Officially, Cambodia is a kingdom.) After my friend Ada and I had been in Phnom Penh with our friend Emily for four days, we purchased bus tickets for the five-hour ride north to Siem Reap to visit Angkor Wat.

“I hope the bus has air conditioning,” I told Ada as we packed. I was still recovering from a twelve-hour time difference and switching from Pennsylvania winter to the tropics. Every bad bus memory was coming to mind, from smelly school buses to an unpleasant ten-hour bus ride I once had in Alaska.

“I’m preparing myself for the worst,” smiled Ada. “That way I won’t be disappointed.”

Thursday morning we got to the bus stop and discovered our bus was actually a large van with air-conditioning and comfortable seats. The driver played classic Eastern music, the other passengers chatted in Khmer, Emily and Ada dozed, and I settled into road trip nirvana.

Once we left the tightly packed streets of Phnom Penh and entered the province—as the countryside is called in Cambodia— the scenery changed to small homes on silts, the occasional wat (Buddist temple), and rice fields.

It’s hard to get good pictures from a moving van, but here’s a few:

After a stop for lunch in a restaurant so large that birds nested in the rafters, our bus arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second largest city. It had more tourists and less traffic than Phnom Penh.

We stayed at a beautiful guesthouse with a goldfish pond in the courtyard. The owners were husband and wife, Phirom and Sothea. Phirom was also an Angkor Wat tour guide and we hired him for a sunrise tour.

Early the next morning, the four of us rode to Angkor Wat in a tuk-tuk driven by Phirom’s brother. Phirom spoke fluent English and has been an Angkor Wat tour guide for twenty years. As we drove in the pre-dawn darkness, we discussed Buddhism and Christianity. I asked Phirom if he had ever been a monk, and yes, he had been for a month.

Angkor Wat is the largest of a number of stone temples in what was once a massive city. Originally, they were built as Hindu temples, but when Buddhism arose, they were converted into Buddhist temples.

Eventually, the city was all but abandoned, and the jungle moved in.

Today, we were joining the masses of foreign travelers who visit the ancient ruins each year. Not as many as in the pre-Covid days, Phirom told us.

Watching the sunrise was beautiful but crowded. Afterwards, Phirom took us to the Ta Prohm Temple where there were less tourists, and elegant ruins covered in moss and massive tree roots.

Emily had suggested we buy traditional clothing to dress up in. “Khmer people love to wear nice clothing to take pictures in at Angkor Wat.”

So back in Phnom Penh, we had bought matching sarongs to wear over our other clothing. When Kimliang, one of the Khmer students, saw our sarongs, she laughed. “That isn’t clothing to wear to Angkor Wat. That is what my mother wears.”

With or without fancy attire, Angkor Wat and the other temples are a photographer’s dream. Emily took these two posed photos (above and below). The trick photo with a panorama setting was especially suited to a mysterious place like the ancient ruins of jungle kingdom.

The next stop was the Baphuon Temple. This temple included towers that had carved faces of ancestors of the king when the temple was built.

“Sandstone,” said Phirom when we asked what the rock was. The sandstone came from a quarry thirty kilometers away. “Slaves worked in the quarry. They used canals and elephants to move the stone to the temple sites.” Once the stone was in place, the craftsmen carved the bas-relief pictures into the rock “very slowly and carefully.”

After a stop for sugar cane drinks, we prepared to move on to the next temple. Ada and Emily went to use the restroom. That’s when I met the first monkey I had ever seen outside of the zoo.

The long-tailed macaque was running along, carrying a phone charger probably snatched from another tourist. He sat in the leaves and began gnawing on the charging cube.

Holding out my phone, I crept closer and knelt down to take pictures. I knew I shouldn’t get too close, but he was only the size of a loaf of bread and so cute and fun to watch.

Suddenly, the monkey got tired of chewing on the phone charger.

Putting it down, he glared in my direction and charged with a squeal.

I got to my feet and hollered, “BAD MONKEY”(maybe he knew English?) and swung my purse broadside at him so I could get away. He backed off, then came toward me again, and I swung again. He may have been the size of a loaf of bread, but he was a loaf of bread with teeth.

As I was darting away from my attacker, my friends arrived and Emily began taking a video. When the monkey saw Emily and Ada, he started after them instead of me. “Quick!” said Ada. “Get into the tuk-tuk!” As we climbed abroad, an unexcited Phirom and his brother chased the macaque away.

“Wonder if the monkeys here carry rabies?” Ada the nurse said as we sped away in the tuk-tuk. That made me feel even more relived that I didn’t get bitten. I think the monkey was angry there was nothing to eat inside the charger.

I was not the only one having monkey troubles that day. Later that afternoon, we watched a group of macaques sitting along a busy path. When a woman walked by with a bag full of drinks, a big monkey sprang up and grabbed the bag. The startled woman surrendered her drinks and we all stared as the monkey selected a bottle, punched a hole in the top, and started drinking.

“Where’s your purse, Susan?” said Emily. But I’d had enough monkey business, and we turned off the path and away from the monkeys.

About a week later, I saw an article from the Guardian about monkeys in Cambodia in my newsfeed. I was amazed, not by the algorithm, but to learn that macaques from Cambodia can carry a pathogen called “Burkholderia pseudomallei”. I had never heard of a bacteria with my last name before, but sure enough, Burkholderia was named after Walter H. Burkholder, a plant pathologist from Cornell University.

Inside the main temple complex, we climbed steep stairs to the top of the highest tower.

In the main part of the temple, Phirom took this picture of us to show the size of the building. Angkor Wat is the largest religious structure in the world.

Incense smoldered in the inner room of the temple. Even in our secular age, spirituality is an element within all people. The religions of this world can’t all be correct, but eternity— and the knowledge that there is more to the world than the physical, “is set into the human heart.”

The afternoon was hot, and it was time to leave. We returned to the Air Bnb, thanked Phirom and Sothea, and then went to the bus station to catch the evening bus back to Phnom Penh. The air conditioning felt frigid after a long, warm day in the sun. We stopped for supper and I shoved fried rice into my mouth with chopsticks. Then we went back into the van, and we promptly fell asleep, for the long trip back to the city.

Happy New Year! May 2023 bring you new experiences.