My eyes blink awake to see morning light pouring into the room. I am barely able to un-glue my tongue from the roof of my mouth, that sticky sick feeling of whisky and cigarettes still clinging to my mouth like a bad memory. It is day three of the Khmer New Year Celebration, the final day. Tomorrow marks the year 2555 on the ancient Angkorian calendar and there is no time for feeling sorry for myself, no time to allow a magnitude 9 hangover to keep me down. It is bright and early, the sun is just coming up and even though my head has just hit the pillow it is time to get up.
I pull myself together the best I can, brush my teeth, take a cold shower and hit the streets. The morning sun over Siem Reap, Cambodia is already blasting too bright for my delicate eyes which means two things: I am late and I need my sunglasses. I fish my shades out of my pack and then remember that I had lost my rental bike the night before. This means I have no transportation which doesn’t help my tardiness.
I begin walking due north out of Siem Reap, heading towards the sprawling temple complex of Angkor. I manage to thumb a ride on the back of a Moped, the driver heading out to Angkor to peddle his wares to the minions of tourists from around the world.
I make it to Ta Prohm, just as the perfect morning sunlight hits the ruins through the jungle foliage. Ta Prohm in the most “authentic” of all the immediate Angkor ruins, meaning it was so completely overrun by jungle upon it’s re-discovery that it was utterly impossible to untangle the stonework from the encroachment of the forest. It is a maze of jumbled rocks, huge tree roots and crumbling towers. Its east gate is topped with an eerie all seeing quadruple face relief, typical of later Angkorian architecture. The faces seem to look in every direction at once, a mask of serenity but also surveillance. It is said that in the later centuries of the Angkor period, the empire was divided up into 54 separate states. The faces are incorporated into the architecture to send a clear message: “we are watching.” They were an important symbol for a kingdom that had become diverse and sprawling, with a long history of revolt and usurpation.
I sit on a broken piece of a sandstone pillar and look up and the faces glowing with morning filtered sunlight. They stare back. I wait. I am supposed to be meeting my friend here, he should be arriving at any moment on a 1967 Soviet-imported Minsk motorbike. He picked the bike up somewhere along the trail in Vietnam. It had been used to run weapons between Viet Cong strongholds in the war years before changing hands over and over until it arrived firmly under the weight of my buddies backpack. He had been traveling for two months with it, all throughout Vietnam and now finally across the border into Cambodia. We had agreed to meet at Ta Prohm to go on an excursion together out to some of the farther constructed complexes, places that you can’t get to normally without your own transportation. I am a little late. Hitchhiking never goes well with schedules.
Through the dust and chaos of the traffic which has began to descend upon Ta Prahm for the morning light photo ops, I see Chris approaching. The Minsk is rattling along, the two-stroke engine popping like a lawn mower. Chris’s face is all smiles. He wears a cut off plaid shirt, headband, jean shorts and haggard flip flows. He looks like he has been on the road. He looks at one with the bike. He looks as excited as I am.
We head to a local food stand and pound down some Lok Lak; fried beef hunks, covered in mystery sauce and served over rice with onions. It s the Khmer food staple, whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It is a hearty meal and we both know we are going to need it for the day’s adventures.
I strap my red day bag over the back of the bike as he restarts the engine with a pop. I grab his backpack, sling it over my shoulders and settle onto the back of the bike. It is not a large bike and I struggle to find a place for my feet amongst the frame. There are no pegs for the second passenger, the bike is as bare bones as it gets, utilitarian to the core. The only reason it has survived for 50 years is by its hardy simplicity.
After some awkward flailing and re-adjustments we zip away from the main Angkor complex into the countryside.
Now some people know this, some people don’t, but there is really no better way to see a place than by motorbike. It is the ultimate vehicle, personal in the sense that the scenery is literally washing over you, the wind and smells confronting you as you drive past whether you like it or not. Food stands, animal carcasses, burning trash piles, sulfury swamps, or cool lake air, whatever you pass you literally seem to taste. Cruising past other travelers huddled into tour buses or expensive Tuk-Tuk’s we fly deeper into rural Cambodia. We are going on the path less trodden, out first stop the mystic carved river banks of Kbal Pean located about 30 kilometers outside of Angkor proper.
The scenery becomes more rural as we continue on. Houses built on stilts are the most common type of construction, high enough off the ground so that when the rains come and flood the fields for growing season, their livelihoods remain dry and elevated. Farmland stretches out in every direction, cows graze along the road or take a nap in the center of the thoroughfare. Dogs go about their lazy lives, yawning and sprawling in the shade as the temperature continues to climb. Huge post apocalyptic tractor contraptions become the most standard vehicle, their engines un-covered, churn way out front, attached to a swivel that extends back like an elongated rotatiller. The handles are attached to the swivel and controlled by the driver who is perched on a makeshift cart. Sometimes dozens of Khmer’s are stacked onto the cart going to or from work.
We pull up to Kbal Pean after a brisk ride, stopping far enough down the path so that we don’t have to pay to park the bike. From there we head into the jungle, the electric buzz of insects are everywhere, clicking and chattering. The Cambodian jungle hangs thick around the path, vines draping down like huge swings, boulders swallowed by root systems and the sun absolutely blasting through the canopy any place that it filters through the jungle thicket.
For an hour or so we hike upward, along cliff sides which overlook the valley below, scrambling over broken rock and under debris. Finally we reach the river bed and behold the ancient carving therein. In the rainy season the river rages downward, helping to sustain the crops of the lower Khmer’s for thousands of years. In the dry season, the water shrinks to no more than a trickle and it was then that the ancient artists of Angkor came to do their work.
The riverbed itself is carved into intricate designs. Relief’s of gods and kings as well as purely decorative patterns mingle with the natural rock, some times hidden behind a bolder, sometimes tucked up on the cliff side. Everywhere we look we can see another secret, another piece of art that took untold hours to carve. Lingams and Yoni’s are everywhere, by far the favorite decoration of the area. The belief was that water was the center of ancient Khmer life, it was the nectar the nourished the entire civilization. The riverbed was carved to honor that water, so that the river would flow over Gods and Kings before reaching the lowlands. It is an impressive sight and unimaginable that the carvings remained in such detail after being flooded by ragging torrents of water every season for thousands of years.
Local kids play in the trickle of the waterfall and in the punchbowl in the stone which the water has created over
countless wet seasons. Locals are lounging in hammocks, cooking fish over small fires and enjoying the coolness of the jungle shade. It is fascinating to think of their ancestors before them putting tool to stone to create the timeless pieces that remain today. It is impossible to not be overwhelmed by the richness of history and culture here, it is everywhere, literally carved into the living stone.
We head back down out of the sacred hills, we still have a lot of ground to cover today and the sun is reaching it’s zenith in the sky. Fully flexing its power, the heat makes both of us sweat profusely on our down hike. We get back to the bike, un-lock the chain we have woven between the back tire spokes and get situated. The Minsk has no ignition key and when she is feeling good tempered, she can be kick started at any time and driven away unless proper lock-down precautions are taken. After we de-tangle her, she starts right up and with map in hand we zip back out onto the main road.
Our map is haggard and out of date, crumpled and soggy, but it is our only reference. Our next intended stop is Beng Mealea, one of the most mysterious ruins of the Angkor period. It was built along the old highway system which linked the urban and political center of Angkor Wat with the rest of the outlying cities. It is a less visited ruin because it lies far away from the cluster of structures, which are on the standard tour of the “Angkor complex.” The mystery of Beng Mealea lies in its decay which is nearly absolute. The re-colonization of the site by the jungle after Angkor decline was thorough and devastating, completely overrunning the defenses of the outer wall which, although effective against invaders, could do nothing against the juggernaut of raw nature.
The ruin lays somewhere off to the east. We are not sure exactly how to get there but that is precisely why we are going. No one goes there.
After an hour of riding and a few stops to rest our aching asses and slurp down some moderately cool refreshments from roadside vendors, we reach a crossroad; a crossroad that doesn’t look like anything on the map at all. We know the correct direction to go and we know that the ruin lies six kilometers from the ancient and sacred mountain of Phnom Kulen. We can see the “mountain” rising up to our left, looking like a long finger of jungle covered cliffs that stretch as far as the eye can see into the country side. The left fork of the crossroad heads in that direction, but it looks far from well maintained. The pavement abruptly stops and turns into an iron-red dirt track cutting into the alluvial plain. The “road” doesn’t exist on our map, but we are sure that it must lead to our secret ruin. At this point it is the only logical road to take: the road less traveled.
We peel off into the dust and grime of the un-pavement and immediately wash out in the deep sand which gathers in piles at various points along the road. Nearly taking a bad spill mere moments after the inception of our new plan, we stop again and take a few deep breaths. “We better just take this slow,” I say looking down at my calf that is throbbing after being burnt when the exhaust pipe of the bike lay over on top of my leg. “Um yeah,” says Chris, “ I have never really ridden a bike off road before, let alone with two people.”
An awkward silence follows as we both gaze down the dirt track that leads for unknown kilometers into the countryside. Then at the same time we both exclaim, “We’ll be fine,” and with a chuckle we take off again.
Chris is actually a master off-roader, he just didn’t know it yet. Before long we hit our rhythm, zipping in and out of crater sized potholes, around drainage ditches, sand pits and jumbles of rock. We are truly off the beaten track, in the middle of nowhere now, paralleling Phnom Kulen as we head nearly due east. The surrounding area is farmland as far as the eye can see in every direction.
We stop for a rest after some time, giving ourselves a break from the constant borage of bumps and jolting which we have endured for what seems like hours. Stopped on a small bridge over a lagoon the scenery is timeless. It feels like we could be in any moment of time in the last few thousand years. Nothing is around but low-tech cultivated farmland, a dirt track, a magical mountain, a few palm trees and us. Well, and the motorbike which is barely from this century.
Eventually up ahead we spot pavement again. It is an exhilarating feeling. Although we still don’t know where we are, at least we know that some kind of humans must use this part of the road. We must be nearing something. The long finger of Phnom Kulen has slowly sloped back down to the lower levels of the plains, meaning that according to our calculations, the ruins should only be 6 kilometers farther east and an unknown number of K north.
We are beginning to look like total disasters. We are both completely covered in mud. The mud started as dust but after in combined with the perspiration which has erupted out of our bodies while riding through the mid day heat it turned to pure slimy grime. We make it into a town finally and promptly, as if on cue, as if the bike had done its best to avert a total disaster but can take the abuse no more, we blow out our back tire.
Now this kind of break down could have been really really bad. If it happened out in the middle of the dirty track we would have been really and truly fucked. We would have been hiking in the heat for hours with no hope of help. However, after Chris managed to keep the bike upright long enough to not kill us both, we coasted to the side of the road and a little convenience shack. There we ordered beers and asked if it was possible to fix a tire in this small outpost of a town. Well as it turns out, directly across the road, not even 100 ft away was a little stand that specialized in inner tube repair. It is probably the only place which provides such a service for hundreds of kilometers and we have basically blown a tire at their doorstep.
We roll the Minsk over to the workshop and throw the bike up on wooden blocks. We then rip out the inner tube, dowse it in water and pump air into the dilapidated tube which already looks like a Frankenstein creation of puncture patchwork. Sure enough the hiss of escaping air and the bubbles which the puncture whips up leads us right to the hole. Some kind un-identifiable metal object had ripped right into the inner tube.
At this point Chris drops his camera in a giant vat of stagnant water and simultaneously finds a filthy forgotten hammock on the workshop floor. Our luck is getting eerily Shawnish, sure we popped a tire, but then we were easily saved, Chris destroys his camera but then finds an important object for our later night’s plan. We have been looking for a hammock for Chris all day, the reason for which is a dangerous mission to be embarked upon after dark. The hammock is a filthy pile of flea ridden garbage but Chris was stoked, he bought it from the tire fixer for 50 cents and paid him another dollar for the patch.
With uncanny efficiency, the type that can only come from having your entire livelihood and career be based off of fixing flat tires, the local tire guy fixes us up, throws on a patch, lathers some kind of crazy glue all over the tube, sets it all briefly on fire to seal every thing up and send us on our way. One tire fixed, one hammock acquired, one phone down.
At this point it is getting late. We know that we want to spend a good amount of time exploring the temple of Beng Maelea and there is only a few more hours of daylight left. We are both starving, we haven’t eaten since early in the morning and have been hiking and biking intensively all day. That said, there is no time for food now, if we want to get our temple ramble on we need to do it now. We know we are close so we skip food, skip buying water and tear off northward, hoping to see the temple soon.
We know we are on the right track when we see a massive checkpoint up ahead. The type of place where you stop, pay an entrance fee and get a ticket to go in. We stop a little way away, watching a few locals go through unmolested, just waved through by the guards. “OK man,” I say, “whatever you do, just don’t make eye contact and look like we know what we are doing. And if things go bad, just gun it.” With that we rip off toward the checkpoint, accelerating through the gates as the guards wave and yell and try to get our attention. We just look straight ahead and fly past, the Minsk popping along, revved up into the red, screaming as we zip through.
Beng Maelea appears suddenly. The massive ancient moat which surrounds the city alerting us initially to its presence. We park our bike at the ancient stone bridge over the moat which is adorned with 9 headed dragons. No time to lock up the bike, we just have to trust that no one is sinister enough or smart enough to steal her. We run across the moat, over the ancient bridge towards the central ruin.
Beng Maelea is tragically beautiful. On approach it looks like a total pile of rubble. The main gate has an avalanche of sandstone blocks pouring out of it. You can immediately tell its former grandeur was epic in proportions and beautifully constructed, but Beng Maelea is also a perfect symbol of the crumbling of Angkorian society. Grand in scope but brutally destroyed upon its downfall. We climb straight up the mountain of rubble and ignore the semi-established path which circles around to the north. It is time for some proper temple rambling and Beng Maelea is the absolute best place to do it. Left basically as it was found, it is a labyrinth of dark corridors, collapsed towers, impressive walls and intricate carvings. There is no security, no rules, you go where you want, where your interest takes you, trying to re-construct in your mind what this sprawling complex looked like in it heyday.
The way that the jungle has annihilated the place is more than impressive. Huge trees sprout up in the most un-likely of places, on doorway arches, over walls, winding between statues. One of the most humbling thoughts is that although the trees are massive and ancient, probably 2-3 meters thick and hundreds of years old, these trees are the grandchildren of the original flora invaders. They are babies in the re-colonization campaign of the jungle. The total destruction of the structures can not be understood with the current jungle, but only if you remember that this is the third generation of assault, huge corridors and roofs which now lay in total disrepair where attacked centuries ago, finally crumbled under the wait of the jungle, only to have the trees which annihilated them die themselves, fall over, decompose and disappear. The effect is that although the destruction seem incomprehensible it must be seen in the context of millennia.
The best way to explore Beng Maelea is to take the high road. Most of the roofs of the temple have long collapsed, which means that the thousands of tons of stone which had created intricate arches and watertight corridors have all fallen inward, filling the spaces below which they once sheltered. The best way to get around is to crawl over the walls, using them as elevated highways to get from one place or the other. In this way, not only are you up four or five meters up and can move free from the rubble, but you also have a commanding view of the entire complex.
One of the most intriguing intricacies of a temple ramble is to see a random piece of sandstone block, cast amongst the debris of a thousand other sandstone blocks, no more special than anything else, a lonely piece stone which was once part of something greater. On this one block, which I randomly decided to focus on there are unbelievably skilled carvings. Now it lies cast aside, no more special than the pile it rests on, but so intricate, such an amazing achievement. Every piece of debris tells a unique piece of the overall story, a story of a culture which placed unbelievable amounts of emphasis on their architecture and art, creating spaces that were greater than their individual parts, but also fascinating in their detail. They created pieces of art which were livable.
This is exactly why I came to Cambodia. This is the dream I have had since I was a little boy, experiencing the magic and mystic of Angkor. Fueled off Tintin, Indiana Jones and National Geographic’s it is this experience that I wanted. A true exploration of something ancient and mysterious, still half swallowed by jungle where any discovery you make may be the key to unlocking thousand year old secrets. We get lost for hours, sometimes together sometimes separating as our noses and eyes are close to the ground searching for something precious or fascinating.
We left Bang Maelea completely starving and completely dehydrated. The Minsk was still parked at the ancient bridge right where we left her, so that was one good thing. We headed off back towards Siem Reap, only one part of our mission left to accomplish, the most illegal part, the part that involves hammocks.
Chris has broken his flip flop in our ramblings, which just adds to our general demeanor of flusteredness. We are filthy, hungry, thirsty, out of money and ready to get back. We take off back in the direction we came, again gunning it through the security gate as guards try to run out and pull us from the bike. We bypass the “non-road” we had taken along the base of Phnom Kulen and take the normal highway.
Just when the ol’ Minsk gets up to speed and we are feeling like we are finally heading back toward civilization she gives a sputter and a cough and dies. We coast to the side of the road. Out of gas in the middle of nowhere. “Last time I was on a motorbike I ran out of gas, “ I say. “Well, in two months of riding around half of Asia I have never run out of gas, “ replies Chris. “It must be your luck.” The poor guy doesn’t know how true that probably is. The hazards of traveling with me, the ups and downs of Shawn luck when it strikes hard can be unrelenting. Sometimes I feel like I should come with a warning label telling my future travel buddies the hazards they are engaging in just being near me when I am on the road.
At this point there is no option but to send me on ahead as Chris stays behind and slowly pushes the exhausted bike down the road. I hitch a ride on an Ox cart with a kind faced old man and his young son. The cart is piled high with huge blocks of charcoal. I scramble up on top and promise Chris that I will return as soon as I can with a litre of gas. We manage to extrapolate that a side of the road gas-station is only a few kilometers up ahead where they sell litre’s of gas in whisky bottles. So off I jostle down the road, the sun is now setting and casting brilliant swaths of orange across the sky. I laugh at my predicament and praise life for its randomness from my new throne on top of the charcoal. The scenery is beautiful and wild, I feel totally isolated in my predicament, somewhere in the Cambodian countryside hitchhiking on an Ox cart.
I arrive at the gas station and buy a litre of gas in a glass bottle of Red Label Whisky. I walk back out onto the road to start thumbing in the opposite direction back towards Chris when I see a commotion up ahead. Something is coming up the road towards me, I can see its headlight, but it sounds like it is working really hard for such an even grade of road. As the vehicle approaches and materializes out of the near dark duskness I see that it is Chris, still riding the Minsk, but being pulled along by a moped driven by too saintly young ladies. With one hand he is steering and with the other hand is gripping the rack on the back of their Moped. He had done a little hitchhiking of his own.
So we met in perfect timing, dump the gas into the tank, sincerely thank all of our saviors, the women, the ox cart driver, his son and the shady whisky bottle slinging gas station attendants. Again we zip off, this time into the blackness of night.
Now we are really and truly exhausted. We still haven’t eaten since breakfast and our water was long gone hours ago, all that we want is to reach Siem Reap where we know there is civilization and we can prepare for the final and most ambitious mission of the day. As we will ourselves forward, thinking of nothing but the approaching city we again feel the Minks sputter under our bums. Thinking this must be some cruel joke we pull over on the road, unable to believe the sad but true: we are out of gas again.
Again we start walking, pushing the Minsk along with us. We have bigger problems than normal because the two-stroke oil which must be mixed with the gasoline is also completely depleted. We need a legit gas station or mechanic shop or we are doomed. As Shawn luck would have it, after a mere 10 minutes of walking we come upon a moto repair shop and garage, out in the middle of nowhere. They supply us with both gasoline and oil and again we prepair to leave. This time though the Minsk is less cooperative. The kick-start won’t work so Chris has to bump start her on the flat road. It is one of the funniest things I have seen in a long while, Chris on the seat of the bike, his two legs working like giant paddles on either side of the bike as he wobbles down the road trying to get enough speed for the motor to turn over. Traffic is zipping by, nearly clipping him as he weaves in and off the shoulder. Finally I hear the motor catch and rev up. We are good to go, I hop on the back and we make our final approach to Siem Reap.
Civilization has never looked so good. We look like total messes. Dirty, grime and filth, broken flip-flops, sunburned, sullen dehydrated faces and darting eyes which come from extreme hunger and fatigue. We stop and eat some noodles, some of the best food of my life. Then quickly I head to my room, grab my hammock, Chris goes to his place and takes a quick shower. We meet up again in 10 minutes flat and prepare for the final stage of our crazy Khmer New Years day. The best part, the most dangerous part, the most illegal part is mere moments away. We are both nearly shaking with anticipation about what we are about to do. It is a ballsy move, historical, it has never been attempted and it is the pinnacle of the adventure. Again I pile on the bike and off we zip into the night hoping that the ration of good to bad luck from the day puts us ahead for this next phase. The stars are shining brightly as we head into the forest, I look up and think to myself, “we are going to need a lucky star for this one.”
(Continued soon, promise)
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