Last weekend I traveled to Siem Reap with a friend. The last-minute trip was a great exercise in how to secure a shared (or private) taxi from a fixer-type at Central Market. “You want taxi with Cambodians or No Cambodians?” “Cambodians!” “Okay, you wait maybe two hour.” Uhhh… “No Cambodians!” “Okay five minutes.” And it was five Western minutes too. So Ben and I hopped into the backseat of a black Camry and rode up to Siem Reap. Four hours later we found ourselves dropped off at the Golden Banana Bed & Breakfast, sipping a welcome drink. You have to love Asian service sometimes. After a drawn-out lazy lunch at the Blue Pumpkin, and a tour around the city with a motodop that could not find a travel agency (he took us to a painted advertisement for Angkor Air after first attempting to take us to the airport), we finally made it to Angkor Wat for the (free) sunset. We walked upstream as hoards of myocardial infarction-prone fat white tourists made there way out of the temple and snuck in as far as we could before the night set in. After pizza, beer, and having secured the taxi services of one tuk-tuk, Mr. Mee for the next day, we turned in for the night.
4:30am, the alarm rings and we sleepily tumble out into the darkness of Siem Reap. Wearing his cool headlamp (I asked for one for Christmas),Ben’s drunk a bottle of Royal-D (lots of vitamins and sugar) so he’s less jet-lagged, and the cool air folds around us as we travel through SR towards the temples. Veering away from all the other early morning risers, Mr. Mee takes us on the forested path to Bantey Kdei— another good spot for viewing the sunrise. “Pretty-girl, you buy?” Nope. No more than five seconds after we are dropped off are we hounded by the young temple children selling bracelets, books, and offering cool drinks for our driver. Guess the sunrise spot was not as quiet as we’d thought it would be.
Once the sun rose over the man-made retention pool, we embarked on our fast-track expedition over many-a-temples. Surely Mr. Mee had never seen tourists work at this speed. As Ben pointed out, Mr. Mee was probably offended by our lack of cultural umm… observance of the temples built by people of his land. What can I say? We were just a couple of Speedy Gonzalezes eager to see as much as we could before it got hot. We also forgot our guidebook. Never mind. History works best when it relies on the imagination. With self-given PhDs in history and anthropology, we toured ourselves around the churning sea of milk murals (they made brie duh!), the dancing bridge (before the concubines were thrown to the crocodiles), the Kindergarten (short doorways) and the keepers of the temples (children with banana-leaf crowns signing for alms).
Like I said, it was my second time seeing the Angkor Temples, but I saw everything in a different light. Corners where I had once passed through were now deemed “danger areas” and vice versa. New scaffolding had creeped up stones, and disappeared against others; the history I’d read before (and forgotten) wittily replaced by imaginative stories and descriptions.
So here we ask a question facing contemporary storywriters: Are facts better than fiction? All I know is we may learn from history, but we also live from our imaginations. It’s a shame there aren’t Ancient Khmer Empire fiction novels out there, because with the tough issues facing this society, sometimes we just need to laugh.
That night I jet set across Cambodia back to Phnom Penh via air travel (I apologize for my moment of eco-unfriendliness). Forty-five minutes of airtime shared with a nice Chinese-man wearing a light pink shirt with the black graphic outline of Angkor Wat printed across. As I angled my camera at the plane window attempting to catch the sunset, he made a point to smile at me and state, “Sunset. Romantic. Happy to share with you.” Like I’d never heard that one before… “Xie-Xie,” I replied with a smile. We shook hands and the stewardess brought over “free” water and a slice of banana pound cake. Good times.
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