Enamored by Angkor Wat

I’ll still never forget the first time I saw the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, gazing at it while sandwiched between hundreds of strangers.  Chatters from the tourists were only amplified by the cavernous chapel, creating a wall of noise. “Silencio”, barked the guard, his pleas going unnoticed. So vast, so detailed and so impeccably to scale were Michelangelo’s paintings that they had an almost transcendent quality, capable of silencing the buzzing of tourists that Italian guards could not.  It’s been almost ten years since I visited the Sistine Chapel and few places have had a such a transfixing effect. That is until we visited Angkor Wat, a stunning 12th century temple complex in Cambodia.

I’d seen the temple complex in photos before — the imposing towers of Angkor and the smiling faces of the Bayon — but the sheer scale and ambition of the place was unknown to me until I visited.  We were among over one million tourists that visit per year, many of them coming in busloads from China and Japan.  Yet despite these crowds, it was still very possible to take in the temples and to feel at times that we had newly discovered them hidden in the jungle.  Some of it was due to visiting in low season, some due to timing the predictable schedule of the tour buses. But much of it was because of the seductive quality of the extensive bias reliefs that wrap Angkor Wat, the soothing smiles of the Bayon towers, the intricate carvings of Banteay Srei, the tree-laced ruins of Ta Phrom and the 9 square kilometer scale of the ancient city of Angkor Thom.

While capable of quieting the crowds, the awe-inspiring temples did not shadow the immense poverty that circled them daily.  Beggars deformed and amputated by the Khmer Rouge and landmines from war reached out for coins while children in tattered clothes aggressively sold trinkets and postcards. “hello suh, one dolla, one dolla, you buy, you buy.”  When we asked why they were not in school or playing with their friends they became quiet and persisted in their sales pitch. Our guesthouse owner, Ponheary Ly, a CNN hero for her work with children in Cambodia has urged tourists not to buy from children as it offers incentive for them to drop out of school to continue selling. Hard as it was, our policy was to purchase only water from adults and to save our money to give to Ly’s foundation, which provides school supplies, bicycles and teacher salaries in order to keep Cambodian children in school.  We reasoned that the money would be best spent by a reliable foundation instead of by handouts, which can promote begging and end up in the hands of scammers.

Click through below to see more pictures of Angkor Wat:

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