MYSTICAL ANGKOR WAT

September 7, 2011, 6:00pm

 

Do not forget: If it’s your first time to visit Angkor Wat, do not approach it from behind. To avoid the crowds, our well-intentioned guide led us in through the back, but on hindsight, it was a crime. Your first sight of the temple towers should be from the edge of the long paved road leading to it, which is guaranteed to take your breath away. That is the primary reason why thousands of tourists come to see this thousand -year-old cluster of stone temple mountains, and is the trip’s most unique experience.

It has been a little over a century since the famed Khmer structures first captured the attention of the world. In 1860, French explorer Henri Mouhot published a book with vivid descriptions and detailed pen and ink drawings of the lost temple city, and that started a steady, if at first trickling pilgrimage of tourists, eager to pay homage to one of the ancient architectural wonders of the world. If you haven’t had the chance, do it now. Like most tourist attractions in the Third World, the Angkor runs the risk of commercialization, as well as exploitation by political powers. But right now, although the threat of these dangers can be freely felt, the magic of the ancient walled temples and rustic life of Siem reap, the Cambodian city it is located in, are still safe and ready to be experienced.

Access to this ancient Khmer capital, formerly overrun by the jungle, is now made easy through air routes. My group of modern pilgrims from Manila and Cebu met up in Singapore for a Silk Air flight to Siem Reap, then completed our three country journey with a stop at Vietnam’s third largest city, Da Nang. The trip from Singapore to Siem reap, takes a little more than two hours, and our arrival at the Sofitel Royal Angkor Resort & Spa was a perfect prelude to the glory of the Angkor monuments we would witness the next day. Set in a sprawling landscaped complex, the French and Khmer architecture merge to form 238 rooms and suites with five-star views and amenities. It is a good base to come home to after a trip around the city, which is still very rustic, and in many places, poverty -stricken.

We only spent a day at the famed Angkor temples, but I find it strange that the ancient stones have left an imprint in my memory, becoming more distinct with time. The Angkorian period, in which the temple complex was built and the Khmer empire was consolidated as a major power in Southeast Asia, encompasses more than 600 years. Between 802 AD and 1432, various kings led the Khmer through alternating periods of war and peace, and glory and decline, all the while each building his own architectural tribute to his reign. The first of the rulers who called himself a god king was Jayavarman II (802 to 850). He claimed for himself the all-reaching powers of the Hindu god Shiva, and it’s common belief that the temple mountain he built in Phnom Kulen was reminiscent  of the holy mountain at the center of the universe, Mt. Meru, the dwelling place of Shiva. Succeeding rulers vied to surpass each other in celebrating their glory and divinity through their own temple mountains. Angkor Wat, the most magnificent of these, was built from 1112 to 1152 by King Suryavarman II as a manifestation of his devotion to the Hindu god Vishnu.

A leisurely stroll around the Angkor Wat complex reveals thousands of bas reliefs, many unfinished. the largest temple in the world with a perimeter of two square kilometers, the stone needed to build it equals that of the Cheops pyramid in Egypt. Some corridors have been reclaimed for worship, and there are monks in many places. Massive and expert restoration of the Angkor temples in the 60’s have made it possible for the tourists to virtually  transport themselves to the golden age of the Khmer kings, and it is suggested that one be at Angkor Wat during sunset to see it in full glory.

Number two on the must-see list is Angkor Thom. Built after the Chams of southern Vietnam attacked and occupied the city of Angkor for four years. Angkor Thom was erected by Jayavarman VII in 1181, inspired not by the Hindu gods but by the Buddha of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara. The Bayon temple is the central architectural piece in Angkor Thom, and is famous because of the 216 serene smiling faces–commonly thought to be a cross between the face of Buddha and Jayavarman VII – on its 54 towers.

There are still many temples to see, but leave time to visit the floating village. these village, complete with homes and schools, move with the tide, such that its actual physical location can vary from one to almost two kilometers. The simplicity and poverty in the village is in stark contrast to the grandeur of Angkor, and it is difficult to imagine that ancestors of these people were the architects of such majesty. Little boys floating in plastic wash tubs beg for money from tourists in passing boats, and families squat in their miniscule  floating homes which have no chairs. The ingenuity of the Khmer, however, shine through soon enough. A big structure with children playing in balconies joins the string of boats coasting through the center of the village, and one realizes that it’s the schoolhouse bringing children home.

The same Khmer talent and industry that built the temple mountains can be seen in the little children selling trinkets to tourists visiting the Angkor. They have learned to speak English with perfect accents and go to school either very early in the morning or after sunset in order to make a living during the day. The US dollar is legal tender in Cambodia and authorities in Siem Reap have made sure the streets are safe even at night for tourists. tourism is the main source of income for this city and there are policemen stationed every 100 meters in major tourist areas. In Angkor Wat, the ancient Khmer kings may have left a legacy that is not only a source of pride for present Cambodians, but a hope for their future economic prosperity as well.

CHANGING TIMES IN BALI PARADISE

By: John Borthwick – April 16, 2011, 7:58 pm

Bali, Island of the Gods (and Odds and Sods) is booming, with up to 700,000 Australian tourists expected this year. Following the bombings of 2002 and 2005, and the consequent mass avoidance of their tourism-dependent island by international visitors, many Balinese struggled to put food on their tables.

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It would have been callous during that era to call attention to the negative impacts there of tourism.

But now that the island is again awash with holiday-makers, honeymooners, surfers and Eat Pray Love seekers, it may be time to acknowledge the downsides of tourism – that is, of our own footprint on this fabled, burdened island.

In 1972 Australian painter Donald Friend (who lived near Sanur from 1968 to 1980) wrote in his diary: “There is no one like these people left in the world, and no such enchanting place.”

He revelled in “a sort of joy in the colour of the leaves, of sea and sky, the ever-present sound of music and laughter”.

Today’s visitor is likely to sense only dim echoes of those times as he or she sits stalled amid seemingly a million motorbikes in the constant traffic jam that bedevils the roads from Kuta to Seminyak to Sanur.

Outside the car are the perennial minor irritants that one can live with – shonky money changers, incessant taxi touts and kleptomanic temple monkeys. More serious are the rabid dogs. Some 300 Balinese died of their bites last year.

Friend beat the Western rush to Bali, living there when (as Barry Humphries writes in the introduction to The Donald Friend Dairies) “Bali still retained some of its prewar magic, which exists today only in the remoter regions, and long before it was invaded by the worst type of Australians.”

Friend foresaw Bali’s fate as early as 1969, when international tourism planners and bankers arrived. He wrote: “Their advice really is on how to convert villages, forests and mountains into vast, profitable jukebox alleys.”

Today, I find many Balinese to be as kind and courteous as ever. I also find them under stress by many forces including overpopulation.

According to I Gusti Wayan Yasa Murjana, chairman of the Forum on Bali’s Population, the island’s real capacity is just 1.5 million people.

The actual population, however, is already 3.9 million, with another 25,000 new Indonesian settlers arriving each year from elsewhere, drawn by Bali’s apparent prosperity.

Add to these the estimated 2.6 million international tourists who landed last year – up 18.5 per cent on the previous year – not to mention huge numbers of domestic Indonesian visitors.

A stroll down any street in Seminyak, Ubud, Candi Dasar or other tourist destinations shows how village “sawa” rice fields have been gobbled up by resorts, galleries, villas, boutiques, tapas joints, sushi restaurants, day spas and bars. This is Joni Mitchell’s “paved Paradise” perfected, parking lots and all.

The term “authentically Balinese” today is used, without irony, to describe louche seafront restaurants whose menus and prices differ only marginally from those in Perth, Sydney or Melbourne, except with far lower staff wages.

Balinese accommodation is no longer the family losmen with a cold-water mandi sluice bath and an alang-alang thatch roof that we might have first loved in the 1980s. Today, we need temples of marble and glass, complete with mandatory spa and 24/7 wireless hot spots.

Once-snoozy Kuta is now said to have the highest concentration of surf shops in the world. Its extended beach – from Tuban to well beyond Seminyak – has become a strip melee of hawkers, jeep jams, bungy jumpers, ravers, malls and CD stalls. In the gloomy words of anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss: “A proliferating and overexcited civilisation has broken the silence of the seas once and for all.”

So what to do about it? We can’t put the spray back in the can, the toothpaste in the tube – that is, wind tourism back to the 1930s or even 1970s.

Nor can the Balinese, as one Australian extraordinarily suggested to me after the bombings, “just forget tourism and go back to planting rice”. The Bali we find today is the Bali we have all made.

The Balinese well understand the struggle between the forces of greed and goodness, of darkness and light, that are constants within the universe, if not the village, and our own hearts and minds.

In fact, black and white is their national colour: all those chessboard cloths that you see draping performers and statues across the island are not merely decorative. Their pattern, poleng, is a philosophical illustration, representing literally the “black versus white” struggle inherent in all.

From this perspective, even the Balinese landscape is, as Friend noted, “a setting for the struggle between opposing forces, the ever-present demonic element haunting the rich, warm, placid fields and groves”. This “battle for evermore” still goes on today on the beaches and in the boutiques.

Other than staying home – or diverting to Lombok, there to watch the same dynamic at work – there is no way to unwind the damage done. Perhaps just lie back and think of Bali – as it was – while you enjoy another massage.

Before the current era of country clubs, cigar bars and lifestylers in villas, we came to Bali for the beach and beauty.

The sunset – matahari terbenam – is still a showstopper. The sun sizzles into the sea. The swell slides in like ripples on a liquid mirror. The sky is tattooed with light . . . and we remember why we came.

Traditions live on.

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