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Churning the Sea of Milk 3 February 2003 I'm back, with apologies to my fan (sorry, AJ) for being away so long. I have no real excuse. Eight days in Thailand (plus two to get there and back) and then a deadline for a publisher that I had to meet. A dedicated journalist would have stayed up all night to meet his obligations, but while I admire dedication, I tend to do so at a distance. Anyway, now I'm back at my desk, with Josephine making it difficult to type as she lies between me and the keyboard, and I hope not to disappoint you again. This week's entry is merely a travelogue, but hopefully I will have more trenchant comment next time. In the meantime, to make up for the last three weeks' absence, all I can do is point you towards AJ's website: www.silvercyber.org.uk. Start from the foot and work your way up. Just over a fortnight ago Chris and I stepped off a Bangkok Airways plane in Siem Reap, the town in the northwest Cambodia a few miles from Angkor. It took almost an hour and ten immigration officers to process the 120 tourists that had flown in that morning and who were shunted from queue to queue as we filled in our visa application forms, handed over our $20, were given our entry forms, filled them and were finally let into the country. Outside the airport, instead of the taxi touts we expected clamouring for our custom, a sign on a small shack announced official airport taxis and for $5 we were a Toyota Corolla drove us into town. It was disconcerting to see that all the cars had right-hand drives - because they came from neighbouring Thailand - while traffic drove on the right, but unlike Thailand, the pace was leisurely, they were few other cars and the only traffic to be overtaken were motorbikes with pigs on their backs lying trussed on the pillion. Our driver was in his forties. Quiet, informative, he recommended a guide to Angkor and we accepted. An hour later we had left our bags in the Ta Prohm hotel, a three star establishment which couldn't decide whether it was going up or down in the world, and were on our way to Angkor. Ignorance had told me that Angkor Wat was a massive temple in the jungle that had lain undiscovered for hundreds of years until the mid-nineteenth century; the guidebook informed me that Angkor was the collective name for dozens of structures that had been built between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, of which Angkor Wat (the City Temple) was merely the largest and most imposing. And while some of the temples had been overgrown, others had continued to welcome a few monks or devotees, although they were too few in number to maintain or restore the buildings to their former glory. And glory is not a word I use lightly. Look at the pictures here below (the thumbnails take you to full size versions). These are extraordinary works of art. Massive stone structures surrounded by moats, with towers over a hundred feet high, and porticos and galleries that go on and on. Most were built for the worship of Hindu gods, Vishnu and Shiva and the central towers have dizzily steep steps that symbolise the difficulty mortals face in reaching the divine. Others celebrate the Buddha, whose giant enigmatic face is carved into the walls looking north, south, east and west. At the entrance to the larger temples, the gods and demons pull on the giant serpent wrapped round the pole that churns the sea of milk that grants immortality. In one of the temples, intricate carvings reveal the daily life of the Khmers a thousand years ago, the armies that march into battle, the women that cooked the meals, the water buffalo pulling the plough, the shops where food is sold, the fishermen and fish of the nearby great lake of Tonle Sap. In another temple wall after wall is covered with the Hindu myth of Ramayana, of the abduction of Sita and Rama's efforts to have his wife returned. Heaven is portrayed with all its splendour, as are the torments of hell. And in every temple there are two or three statues of the Buddha, some relatively new and whole, others centuries old and decapitated or otherwise disfigured in one of the periods when Hinduism was restored as the state religion, but draped with the saffron robe and with the burning incense at its feet tended by worshippers, elderly shaven-headed nuns or young equally bald monks. We had thirty-six hours in Angkor. We needed a week. Not to spend every hour listening to our guide (knowledgeable though he was, there are limits to the amount of Khmer history and Hindu cosmology that a European can take in at any one time), but to lose ourselves in the complex. There were tourists, of course, but fewer than we had expected and the complex is so large that it is easy to find a deserted spot, at the top of a tower, or in a quiet gallery, and in the warm tropical sun to look out over the jungle and the grey stones and contemplate not so much the divine but both the futility and exquisiteness of human existence. I tell myself I will go back. Frustrated with London and a Britain that is both economically powerful and falling apart, Chris and I are planning to move to Bangkok for a year or two. From there, assuming that the longstanding anti-Thai sentiments which exploded in the last week have subsided again, it will be easy to return. Whether I will or not, is another question. But if I go, it will have to be soon, while the numbers of tourists are still small, while Japanese plans to build a railway to and through the site are unfulfilled, before it as overcrowded, noisy and as devoid of beauty as Westminster Abbey and St Paul's. for another article on Cambodia, click here March 2008: Several things have changed in the last five years. I have since been back to Angkor Wat. The Japanese railway has not yet materialised but Siem Reap has become another overcrowded, overbuilt tourist destination. Every day the temple complex is overrun with camera-wielding, gum-chewing, tourists who have little understanding of where they are or what they are seeing. Such is the fate of every historical site in an overpopulated world... 
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