After seeing Kit and Claire off at Kuala Lumpur Viv and I flew directly to Siem Reap, the town that serves as the gateway to Angkor.
Though I had heard lectures on Angkor and had written essays about it I was stiil unprepared for the vast scale of the whole temple complex. We hired a tuk-tuk (motorbike rickshaw) and spent four full days exploring the main sites but even then there were many that we had to miss out. There is plenty of information online about Angkor so I will not bore you with history and description except to say that the name Angkor Wat applies only to the iconic mountain temple itself; the famous temple with the huge stone faces is The Bayon which is found in the nearby walled palace/temple/city of Angkor Thom. The other temples are scattered around the plain beyond.
The town of Siem Reap was curious as it was full of huge new hotels had a seemingly unpolluted river and a tidy riverside park, the streets were clean and all was extraordinarily ordered after Indonesia. As Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in South East Asia this was all the more curious and slightly disturbing.
After the civil war was finally over a vast amount of aid and investment money must have poured into the country and Angkor, a one of the modern Wonders of the World, will have been seen to be a prime site for investment in tourism. Indeed, Geoff Ryman in his novel about Angkor The King's Last Song says many of the hotels in Siem Riap are owned by the military seeking to make fortunes from the tourist industry. Later we saw that the tidiness only extended to the edge of the outlying slums where a barrage prevented the rubbish and filth thrown into the river from drifting downstream to the centre of town. I found the whole place very interesting and also very unsettling. One feels war is always there in the background; the war crime trials continue and most families have lost someone in the killing fields. Even men still in their late thirties are old enough have been recruited by the Khmer Rouge and small bands of musicians made up of land mine victims play outside all the main monuments at Angkor. The temple of Angkor Wat itself appears on the modern Cambodian flag, as it did on the flag of the Khmer Rouge and almost every other Cambodian political grouping; such is its power as a symbol of Cambodian nationalism.
Our guest house in Siem Reap, the MotherHome Guest House, was as good as many a three star hotel and all the staff delightfully friendly and helpful and yet despite the smiles and the cheerful banter I could not forget that this was the site of one of the most viscious civil wars of the twentieth century.
I mentioned my ambivalent feelings about Angkor in an email to Brooke, who remains in Malang to finish her studies, and she sent me this poem by Brecht.
I also tried rather inadequately to express my own feeling on seeing the monument to the Siem Reap killing fields after visiting Angkor and put that in too as I cannot do it in simple prose.
Bertolt Brecht 1935
Questions From a Worker Who Reads
Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them ?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph ?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone ?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him ?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep ?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it ?
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors ?
Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill ?
So many reports.
So many questions.
a tower of bones
we walked among the mountains built of stone
carved with bas-reliefs of parades battles, ceremonies
gods kings and dignitaries
and finally we came across the tower of bones.
here no vast impassive faces gazed
down on crowds that stood amazed
before taking photographs
a small square tower
painted white with walls of glass
a simple structure, the minimum of fuss
no carving, elaborate design or expectation
the bones and skulls became the decoration
and framed the words, 'remember us.'
and the crowd not knowing what to say
looked down and slowly moved away
and there were photographs
as if the bones had not the power
of a picture would not last.
the simple inexpressive faces of those about to die
as though there was nothing left no tears
no pleas no words, no fear
not even a last despairing sigh
what was there to be said
these were not carvings of the dead
oh yes there were photographs
on the board beneath the tower
we saw them briefly as we past.
the woman with a drill placed behind her head
the calm accepting look in her eyes
still disturbs unsettles terrifies.
she had stolen a cucumber a tour guide said
it was such a trivial theft
and such a very ingenious death
Someone took a photograph
and now her final hour
is for ever fixed set fast.
Later on the balcony of my hotel
I swirled the ice around the glass
And thought, oh well,
All that is history;
Ancient and contemporary.
But this is now, that was the past.
Though I had heard lectures on Angkor and had written essays about it I was stiil unprepared for the vast scale of the whole temple complex. We hired a tuk-tuk (motorbike rickshaw) and spent four full days exploring the main sites but even then there were many that we had to miss out. There is plenty of information online about Angkor so I will not bore you with history and description except to say that the name Angkor Wat applies only to the iconic mountain temple itself; the famous temple with the huge stone faces is The Bayon which is found in the nearby walled palace/temple/city of Angkor Thom. The other temples are scattered around the plain beyond.
The town of Siem Reap was curious as it was full of huge new hotels had a seemingly unpolluted river and a tidy riverside park, the streets were clean and all was extraordinarily ordered after Indonesia. As Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in South East Asia this was all the more curious and slightly disturbing.
After the civil war was finally over a vast amount of aid and investment money must have poured into the country and Angkor, a one of the modern Wonders of the World, will have been seen to be a prime site for investment in tourism. Indeed, Geoff Ryman in his novel about Angkor The King's Last Song says many of the hotels in Siem Riap are owned by the military seeking to make fortunes from the tourist industry. Later we saw that the tidiness only extended to the edge of the outlying slums where a barrage prevented the rubbish and filth thrown into the river from drifting downstream to the centre of town. I found the whole place very interesting and also very unsettling. One feels war is always there in the background; the war crime trials continue and most families have lost someone in the killing fields. Even men still in their late thirties are old enough have been recruited by the Khmer Rouge and small bands of musicians made up of land mine victims play outside all the main monuments at Angkor. The temple of Angkor Wat itself appears on the modern Cambodian flag, as it did on the flag of the Khmer Rouge and almost every other Cambodian political grouping; such is its power as a symbol of Cambodian nationalism.
Our guest house in Siem Reap, the MotherHome Guest House, was as good as many a three star hotel and all the staff delightfully friendly and helpful and yet despite the smiles and the cheerful banter I could not forget that this was the site of one of the most viscious civil wars of the twentieth century.
I mentioned my ambivalent feelings about Angkor in an email to Brooke, who remains in Malang to finish her studies, and she sent me this poem by Brecht.
I also tried rather inadequately to express my own feeling on seeing the monument to the Siem Reap killing fields after visiting Angkor and put that in too as I cannot do it in simple prose.
Bertolt Brecht 1935
Questions From a Worker Who Reads
Who built Thebes of the 7 gates ?
In the books you will read the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock ?
And Babylon, many times demolished,
Who raised it up so many times ?
In what houses of gold glittering Lima did its builders live ?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished, did the masons go?
Great Rome is full of triumphal arches.
Who erected them ?
Over whom did the Caesars triumph ?
Had Byzantium, much praised in song, only palaces for its inhabitants ?
Even in fabled Atlantis, the night that the ocean engulfed it,
The drowning still cried out for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone ?
Caesar defeated the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him ?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada went down.
Was he the only one to weep ?
Frederick the 2nd won the 7 Years War.
Who else won it ?
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors ?
Every 10 years a great man.
Who paid the bill ?
So many reports.
So many questions.
a tower of bones
we walked among the mountains built of stone
carved with bas-reliefs of parades battles, ceremonies
gods kings and dignitaries
and finally we came across the tower of bones.
here no vast impassive faces gazed
down on crowds that stood amazed
before taking photographs
a small square tower
painted white with walls of glass
a simple structure, the minimum of fuss
no carving, elaborate design or expectation
the bones and skulls became the decoration
and framed the words, 'remember us.'
and the crowd not knowing what to say
looked down and slowly moved away
and there were photographs
as if the bones had not the power
of a picture would not last.
the simple inexpressive faces of those about to die
as though there was nothing left no tears
no pleas no words, no fear
not even a last despairing sigh
what was there to be said
these were not carvings of the dead
oh yes there were photographs
on the board beneath the tower
we saw them briefly as we past.
the woman with a drill placed behind her head
the calm accepting look in her eyes
still disturbs unsettles terrifies.
she had stolen a cucumber a tour guide said
it was such a trivial theft
and such a very ingenious death
Someone took a photograph
and now her final hour
is for ever fixed set fast.
Later on the balcony of my hotel
I swirled the ice around the glass
And thought, oh well,
All that is history;
Ancient and contemporary.
But this is now, that was the past.