02 May 2024

Cambodia

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Other Asia Reviews

The temples of another time

A simpler life where tourisr tat and fast food restaurants have still to appera - that's what Jill Hartley found in Cambodia.

Cambodia - Amazing tree roots at Ta Prohm

1 Amazing tree roots at Ta Prohm 2 Local Cambodian boys 3 Temples of Angkor Wat

WHAT A PITY THAT you are not allowed to pack a machete in your suitcase. If you were, you could slash your way through the jungle in Cambodia and discover an ancient temple to call your own.

According to Ly, our guide in Siem Reap — home to the famed temples of Angkor, north-west of Phnom Penh, and once the 11th Century stronghold of the Khmer kings — bits of ancient masonry are still being discovered in the forests.

He could be exaggerating but there is no reason why he should.

One thing is for certain, Cambodia is on the threshold of a tourist boom. In the past only the hardiest travellers made the journey by boneshaker bus over the Thai border.

Mystery and adventure

Doom merchants say Cambodia will eventually go the way of other Far Eastern countries, which have turned to tacky fleshpot tourism to boost their flagging economies. For now, Cambodia is still brimful of mystery and adventure. So far there are no Western fast food chains or shops, no Identikit hotel chains, no themed heritage centres and very little tourist tat.

On the airport road to town it is easy to see how such a wretchedly poor country relies on the foreign dollar. Ly grinned with pride as he pointed out the potholes in the road recently patched up with a donation from a Japanese philanthropist, the children’s hospital funded by the Swedes and the women at the roadside unpacking Red Cross clothes parcels from Canada.

We felt a little awkward checking in to the colonial, marble-halled opulence of the five-star Hotel Danker. Sensing our discomfort, Ly said: ‘Don’t worry. We need tourists like you herein Cambodia. You may not think you are rich but to us everyone is a little bit rich.’

He left us to settle in and suggested we visit the Angkor Wat temples in the cooler time just before sunset. He was right. The smoky, amethyst twilight softened the blackened stone outline of the three central towers and gave a sensuous Mona Lisa smile to the many carved faces.

The mysterious stone friezes and figureheads are said to have as many layers of meaning as James Joyce’s Ulysses. Ly showed us exquisite carvings of gods; demons, monkeys, snakes, elephants and water buffalo, as well as the hauntingly beautiful aspire. Described in the history books as ‘heavenly nymphs’, it is thought they were the dancing girls of the court and there are 1,750 etched tributes to their supermodel looks.

Ly asked us to imagine Angkor’s construction, allegedly undertaken by 40,000 elephants, 60,000 slaves and 7,000 artisans. As we tried to conjure up the images, dozens of lovers were arriving by bicycle and moped in the rosy glow of the sunset to stroll arm in arm across the 650ft-wide stone moat fronting the temples.

Water buffalo were bathing alongside black-eyed street urchins in a lake covered with blue hyacinths, which once held sacred temple crocodiles. Doe-eyed cows with tinkle bells grazed peacefully and the air was filled with the perfume of dust, dung, joss and diesel, with a heavy top note of sweet wood smoke from thousands of cooking fires.

Angkor Wat justly deserves its ranking as one of the world’s must-see places alongside the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal but for me, Ly’s ‘very special place’ was the highlight of the trip. The 12th Century Buddhist temple of Ta Prohm has been preserved as a UNESCO site, which ensures that it is left untouched, still in the grip of the jungle and just as it was on the day it was discovered in the Twenties by European explorers.

Enchanted fairytale

As a result, it is an enchanted fairytale of a place. Giant silver-barked kapok trees, some said to be up to 200 years old, stretch their graceful branches to the sky like jewelled dancers. Some have taken on an eerie almost human form and their roots have twisted round the crumbling masonry like giant boas, squeezing the lifeblood out of the ancient stone.

In the brain-numbing heat of the afternoon we had the surreal atmosphere, helped by the screeching parakeets and low-circling crows, to ourselves.

Seeing I was entranced but decidedly hot, Ly looked at his watch and said: ‘I can see you agree that it is a special place but I think it is time for English tea.’

We took him back with us to a cool, colonnaded veranda of the hotel for a welcome cuppa and listened as he chatted with remarkable humour about how his country was slowly recovering from the destruction and terror of the Pol Pot-led Khmer Rouge regime in the Seventies.

While his tales of family tragedy at the hands of the communist oppressors made us shift in our seats, we knew that by visiting Cambodia we were helping to repair the damage.

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