September 21: Angkor Ruins, Continued
Wi-Fi at our hotel has been down all day today, so my apologies for the tardiness of this post.
Like yesterday, today was a wet day, but for a different reason that I’ll explain below. Khom and Yon picked us up at 9:30 in Khom’s Toyota; no tuk-tuk today. We started a little later thinking that we would also finish a little later and then watch the sunset from the top of Angkor Wat. After a massive downpour the night before, the ground was still wet, but the sky was blue and the sun was shining.
Our first stop was Banteay Srey, the “citadel of women,” which is a couple hundred years older than the buildings we toured yesterday. Banteay Srey was constructed mostly of brick over lava stone, unlike Angkor Wat and the Angkor Thom complex, which were built mostly of lava stone covered with stucco (now worn away). It’s scale is also more human than Angkor Wat or the structures that comprise the Angkor Thom complex. It’s quite striking but not nearly as intimidating (awe-inspiring?) as the sites we visited earlier.
We made a brief detour forward in time to visit the Cambodia Landmine Museum and Relief Facility, which was founded by a former Khmer Rouge child soldier who is now working to clear Cambodia of the millions of land mines and ordinance that still litter his country. This NGO provides assistance to victims of land mines and displays at the museum disarmed mines and munitions that have been recovered by its founder. It was a little disconcerting to walk past five-foot tall bombs and to see piles of mines that appeared to be as harmless as lids from cans of hairspray. After a brief education, it was back to the tenth century.
I have to be honest now and admit that the names of the sites we visited after the CLMRF are so foreign to my ear that I can’t remember any of them. When I get back to Columbus, I may compare my photos with online sources and try to figure out where, exactly, we were, but for now, here are some photos from an area east northeast of Angkor Thom.
Our next stop inspired the title of today’s post. We arrived at Neak Pean–a unique site among our stops–after lunch. Neak Pean is a site for healing, or perhaps blessing would be more accurate; Yon frequently described it as a kind of hospital. It has a central tower rising from a central pool that flows into four smaller surrounding pools. Their water was thought by ancient Khmers to offer healing and protection. Each of the pools had its own properties: one cured fever, another conveyed wisdom, a third gave protection in battle. The ancients approached the site by crossing a moat in boats. Today, the approach to the moat was flooded, and we debated whether or not to try to cross. Because this would be our only chance to see Neak Pean, we decided to wade 100 yards through the three-feet-deep water until we reached the bridge that would carry us across the sacred moat. Even the bridge was under two to six inches of water. Fortunately, I was wearing my awful red thrift-store pants. (You know which ones I’m talking about, Jennifer.) They have velcro straps on the waistband and hooks at the hems of the pant legs that allow me to hike them all the way up and secure them. I’m just glad I didn’t find a fish in my pocket. As we were wading back to the car, what we would call “park rangers” pulled up to the water’s edge and posted signs closing the crossing.
We ended today’s tour at Preah Khan, which is the sister temple of yesterday’s Ta Prohm. Where Ta Prohm was dedicated by the sponsoring king to his mother, Preah Khan was dedicated to his father.
We started our drive back to Angkor Wat hoping to see the sunset, but by the time we arrived, the scattered clouds had coalesced into a threatening ceiling, and we decided that there would be no sunset to see today. It was a good decision. Just a few minutes after we passed Angkor Wat and the thousand or so people gathered there, the sky opened up.