11-22-08
In celebration of the Bon Om Tuk (Water Festival), in which bunches of people watch boat races in Phnom Penh (and the ever-popular water parade with Vegas-style lights on a bunch of boats at nighttime), my friends from the province came to visit my site and we all went up to Banteay Chhmar temple to watch a smaller scale of boat races and tour the local ruins.
The boat races were a little bit like watching a game of baseball for me, with the exception of having a cool stadium to peruse, lots of awfully unhealthy food and drink to consume, and really entertaining fans to make me laugh. In fact, there is little to no cheering and I was eating grapefruit for my snack while we sat on a river bank and saw just a few seconds of action in any given 20 minutes. It was a little disappointing…but I think that most of you know that I can have fun just about anywhere, so of course I enjoyed myself.
And then there was the temple…wow. There is a huge complex with towers and walls and lakes and tunnels and the adventures are endless for climbing and discovering beautiful scenery. “Climbing: is certainly the optimal wo
rd there, though, because the whole complex is in ruins, with these immense stone bricks stacked up in some haphazard way…I continuously wondered how they had gotten into such a state considering how sturdy and secure they were under my feet. We can climb to the top of the tower spires and go into the “Narrow Fortress” (aka Banteay Chhmar) underneath the tall walls. We explore the walls littered with old Sanskrit engravings and try not to trip in the blinding darkness broken only with tiny creaks that we can somehow squeeze out of back into the tree shadowed sunshine. It would be easy to get lost in the temple, with the many towers beginning to look like one another and all of the rubble confusing your sense of direction. The corridors under the high walls begin to look all the same and the little ponds and grassy knolls within the complex somehow have all of the same people around.
But it is so gorgeous and so fun… On one of the walls there is Apsara with more arms than I could count, and a giant Buddha statu
e nearby, and so many Poloroids-to-be that I could barely keep my batteries from running out.
And then the rest of the holiday… After a leisurely meal with my friends, we went with my family to the nearest wat in the town. Normally the quietest place in town, that night the party was there, and it looked like a carnival and a rave and church at Christmas all in the same little complex. Rowdy kids had firecrackers just like the Fourth of July, the monks were leading a lengthy prayer to the ancestors, and the rest of the young folk were dancing in the big circle of fencing while everyone was milling about and eating more sweets than I am sure that they need. My sisters bought little boats made from flowers and foam and ribbon and lit the candles to send them off in the nearby pond. I think that that could have been a really pretty sight if there were a whole sea of little flowers and candles, but the wind was wrong I think. It was fun anyway, and then we went home.
The boat races were a little bit like watching a game of baseball for me, with the exception of having a cool stadium to peruse, lots of awfully unhealthy food and drink to consume, and really entertaining fans to make me laugh. In fact, there is little to no cheering and I was eating grapefruit for my snack while we sat on a river bank and saw just a few seconds of action in any given 20 minutes. It was a little disappointing…but I think that most of you know that I can have fun just about anywhere, so of course I enjoyed myself.
And then there was the temple…wow. There is a huge complex with towers and walls and lakes and tunnels and the adventures are endless for climbing and discovering beautiful scenery. “Climbing: is certainly the optimal wo
rd there, though, because the whole complex is in ruins, with these immense stone bricks stacked up in some haphazard way…I continuously wondered how they had gotten into such a state considering how sturdy and secure they were under my feet. We can climb to the top of the tower spires and go into the “Narrow Fortress” (aka Banteay Chhmar) underneath the tall walls. We explore the walls littered with old Sanskrit engravings and try not to trip in the blinding darkness broken only with tiny creaks that we can somehow squeeze out of back into the tree shadowed sunshine. It would be easy to get lost in the temple, with the many towers beginning to look like one another and all of the rubble confusing your sense of direction. The corridors under the high walls begin to look all the same and the little ponds and grassy knolls within the complex somehow have all of the same people around.But it is so gorgeous and so fun… On one of the walls there is Apsara with more arms than I could count, and a giant Buddha statu
e nearby, and so many Poloroids-to-be that I could barely keep my batteries from running out.And then the rest of the holiday… After a leisurely meal with my friends, we went with my family to the nearest wat in the town. Normally the quietest place in town, that night the party was there, and it looked like a carnival and a rave and church at Christmas all in the same little complex. Rowdy kids had firecrackers just like the Fourth of July, the monks were leading a lengthy prayer to the ancestors, and the rest of the young folk were dancing in the big circle of fencing while everyone was milling about and eating more sweets than I am sure that they need. My sisters bought little boats made from flowers and foam and ribbon and lit the candles to send them off in the nearby pond. I think that that could have been a really pretty sight if there were a whole sea of little flowers and candles, but the wind was wrong I think. It was fun anyway, and then we went home.
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