floccinaucinihilipilification

An Act of Estimating Something as Worthless.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

L'Itenaire du Cambodge.

This is an all-in-one travelogue of my seeming adventures in
Cambodia, summarized for your reading pleasure. If you've been
searching for the older set of chaotic posts, I've removed them and
put this one instead. Let me stress that this was a rough-and-ready
account of what happened as it happened; as such, I haven't quite
bothered to correct the spelling or grammatical mistakes that exist.

> 28th Dec (afternoon)
> - Leave Singapore for Johor Bahru, Malaysia
> - Take coach to Kuala Lumpur (KL)
> - Reach KL in the evening, spend the night there

The plan went horribly wrong; spent 4 hours *crossing* the border to
Johor Bahru, which is across the stream, so to speak, and another 4
hours to reach KL. The saving grace, though, was Malaysia's bus
system; got one of those business class seats for dirt cheap prices
(24 ringitts!), and reached KL in relative comfort.


One thing about KL; it's more colourful and all that than Singapore
ever can be, but folks there often make the most outrageous
assumptions about you. For instance, the bus guy was graciously trying
to tell me that we'll reach KL in time, and even offered some water to
cool my temper down. Unfortunately, he did that in Malay. A fellow
passenger helpfully tried to translate that for my benefit. In Tamil.

Took a while to convince them that, despite being Indian, I spoke
neither of the two languages, and that they were better off speaking
to me in broken English.

> 29th Dec
> - Take off from KL at 10:00AM by Air Asia flight, AK846
> - Land at Siam Reap, Cambodia, at 11:00AM

One word to describe Siem Reap: Sri Lanka with the wrong lanes. Okay,
that was one phrase, but you get the idea.

The airport is idyllic, and small, smaller than Phuket's airport even,
for those of you on the list who've been there; but as with Phuket,
and indeed, with Negambo in Sri Lanka and Nedumbassery in Kerala, the
coconut-tree to people ratio is vastly in favour of coconut trees I'm
afraid. Curiously enough, everyone keeps to the right here, like they
do in mainland Europe; that, and the big, red sign at Siem Reap
airport welcoming us in French, are perhaps, the only vestiges of
French left in the countryside; all cars, imported from Thailand no
doubt, are all right-hand drives, and there's more English on the
streets and on signboards, than there is French anywhere.

The French, though, are back here big time; loads of funding and help
for artisans, monument protection, and unsurprisingly, promotion of
French culture. At least here in Siem Reap, that's as popular as
Alliance Francaise is in, I suppose, Puttaparthi (a temple town in
South India that's popular with international tourists); it's there
only for the tourists.

> 30th Dec
> - Check out Angkor Wat

One word:- mind-boggling.

Let me emphasise that.

MIND BOGGLING.

There, I said it; the Angkor Wat is, perhaps, the most astounding
monument you'll ever see in this part of the world. The sheer scale
and grandeur of the monument hits you so tremendously and powerfully,
that you'll be left gasping for answers. We'll be back in action at
the temple complex tomorrow, but as Lonely Planet - Cambodia says,
this is one construction that is as multi-layered, pun intended, in
meaning as James Joyce's Ullysses is; we've bought books and maps, and
we're still discovering hidden treasures there. The entire Hindu
mythology, we're talking *everything* from Ramayana, Mahabharata to
all the Puranas, Vishnu, Shiva and others alike, is represented here,
culminating in a Mt Meru-like garba griha.

Surprisingly, all Angkor temples follow a certain South Indian
pattern, there's a prahari (praehara), gopuram, garbha griha and so
on, and all of them have elaborate Sanskrit names. There's also a
certain ideological war that went on in those ruins; in other
constructions, particularly, the Bayon in the capital Angkor Thom,
Hindu idols had been replaced by Buddhist ones, in turn replaced by
Hindu ones, before a majority Buddhist country stopped maintainence
and such of the temples. There's drama here in those fallen bricks.

Which brings me to the real question that's been bothering me
eversince: why did the Khmers stop worshipping here? Why are the
temples in *ruins*, and not in ceremonial use, as the Vedic-age
temples in India (Khajuraho, Srisailam, Tanjavur etc) are?

> 31st Dec
> - Check out Angkor Wat

The important thing to understand here is that Angkor Wat is just
*one* of the many Angkor monuments out here. Reality is that there are
loads and loads more stuff; the entire Angkor Conservation Village is
at least 40-50 km at its widest. And that, mind you, is only about the
*known* stuff outside Siem Reap; deep in the heavily-mined,
thickly-forested jungles, you can be sure that there are countless
other constructions worthy of our attention and, as I realised to my
immediate surprise, affection. The ancient Angkor-ians thought big; at
its height, the city of Angkor Thom apparently supported close to 1
million residents. That might not sound like a large number for those
of you living in Delhi, Singapore, Hyderabad or New York, but consider
this:- 1 million is about 11% of Cambodia's current population.

The other important thing to understand is that many of these
monuments, despite the steep US$40 admission tag, and the group-tour
hordes who have now come to dominate the proceedings, are ruins in the
best Indiana-Jones tradition. The Angkor-ians were rather literal when
they tried to build Mt Meru replicas; to scale those chaotic boulders
is to engage ourselves in rock-climbing. Those granite faces outside
Hyderabad are probably easier to scale; at least you have a harness
and some safety equipment.

But I'll say this: whatever the risks to personal safety, they are
worth it. Here's why.

The first is sheer vistas offered on top; again, not immediately
apparent, the Angkor monuments are not only about man-made splendour,
but also about *natural* splendour. Consider this: you climb one of
these, in particular, Phnom Bakeng or Angkor Wat itself, you'll find
yourself in an endless sea of greenery that stretches for as far as
you can see. Somewhere in the middle, naturally, are a couple of huge
splots that constitute the Angkor-ian monuments, but apart from that,
it's all dense jungle out here. As a mind-exercise to appreciate this,
step back for a moment, go up to your terrace, and see the skyline
around you for a moment. Now, blank out all man-made structures save
the tallest three or four, and imagine greenery all around you. That
is an exact analogy to the forests here; most of that endless greenery
was, in fact, a huge megalopolis back in the 12th century.

All options for natural photography aside (and trust me, you won't
stop clicking once you get here), the second reason to scale those
walls is to see the sculptural (is that a word?) opulence of the walls
here; everywhere you look, every inch of these walls have been
sculpted to show some scene from Hindu or Buddhist mythologies or
Khmer mythistory. The Indic, particularly, Pallava/Chola, influence is
omnipresent; I've had been pleasantly confronted with scenes from, not
just the Ramayana or Mahabharata, but also the Vishnu puranas. For
instance, the churning of the Ocean Milk ('kshera saagara madanam' in
Sanskrit; will explain at length later for the
Hindu-mythology-challenged) is a recurrent topic here, as are
traditionally Shaivite inspirations such as Nataraja (the 'dancing
Shiva'), Durga and Ganesha. Dig deeper, and you're sure to find
(broken) lingas, half chipped Asura faces ('dishTi bommalu' in Telugu;
scary faces to ward off evil), Apsaras in various stages of dancing
and much much more.

In short, they are same-same, as your "normal" plain-vanilla South
Indian temple, but different; they have their own highly evolved
iconography and architectural language that is quite unlike what
you'll ever see in India. Ancient Angkor then, is a bit of a long-lost
judwaa bhai ('twin brother') lost in a village fair, to use a
Bollywood metaphor; one would imagine a Pallavan tourist to feel right
at home after arriving in 10th century Kambhuja Rajya, just as a
modern-day American would feel right at home in Canada. (This Indian
tourist would reserve his judgement until he flies back).

Ironically enough, I "survived" all climbing attempts everywhere,
until I got back to my guesthouse and tried to get into my room. There
was a live Khmer band peforming in the restaurant next door, and the
performer was singing this sweet, melodious tune that would melt your
heart in that lilting Wordsworth-ian way; completely transfixed by the
performance, I overlooked a gap in the staircase and stuck my knee in
a huge gap between two stairs.

Ouch.

The leg's slightly swollen, and I've slept for 10 hours now, but I'm
doing fine really.

> 1st Jan
> - Check out Angkor Wat

I have written extensive prose already, and most of you would,
perhaps, be tired by all the scrolling. My apologies for the length,
and thanks to all of you who've reached here without incident, but
there's another bit of a travel experience that I must elaborate on,
in order for you to appreciate Angkor fully. I call this the Enigmatic
Faces of Bayon, and considering Angelina Jolie's recent adoption of a
Cambodian orphan, I'm not the only person moved by it all.

Bayon, you see, is Angkor's second most famous monument; it's at the
heart of the Angkor Thom town, and going by the historical write-ups
I've been reading, no one seems quite sure as to what it is. The
closest thing I've seen to a consensus is that, in its final
iteration, it was perhaps a Buddhist temple, considering that it was
built by Jayvarman VII, that 12th-century Builder of Magnificent
Buildings, Benefactor of Certain Hindu Temples, and Destroyer of
Certain Other Hindu Sculptures. That is to say, he seems to be a
curiously multi-layered character when it comes to religion; while he
was certainly a Buddhist evangelist, I'm still not sure about his
tolerance of Hindu iconography.

All this is important, considering the public face that Bayon
presents; uniquely enough, the garbha griha ('sanctum sanctorum' in
Sanskrit) has four huge faces sculpted onto its four sides.

The Bayon faces are well-designed, for their east-west inclination,
and well-sculpted, for their sheer size and aura. They are, more
importantly, enigmatic, for the smile on their faces, and in
understanding what they represent. As again, no one is quite sure just
who was depicted there; the Japanese team working on the site erected
a huge noticeboard offering four theories (Buddha, Brahma, Jayavarman
VII himself, and someone else), before lambasting all of them. All
that exists there, apart from the extensive 2km-long bas-reliefs on
its walls, is that face's mysterious smile; whether he (and it is a
male face) was grinning at Angkor's glory or smiling wrily at its
later despondence is something we'll never know.

What we will experience, though, are Angkor-ian kids throughout the
Conservation Area. Scores of them, and always smiling.

Now, I know I probably sound sound mushy, or even NRI-isque when I say
this, but you can see all of humanity in their innocent eyes. My
travel buddy, Gene, had a sureshot strategy in dealing with them; he
suggested not making eye-contact and walking ahead fast, an easy task
for him, as he wore his sun-glasses and dug deep into his guidebook.
To be sure, that's exactly what I generally do myself when faced with
touts and beggars in India; anyone who's walked out of an Indian
airport will know exactly how it feels.

The Angkor-ian kids are different from the tout-swarms in India in
four different respects:- first, they are much less in number, so you
dont really feel ambushed and second, they are much less vicious so
you don't feel the urge to fight back, as it were. Third, and this is
where it starts getting mushy, the historical irony of their state
isn't something you can ignore; while they languish in sheer poverty
of a scale not seen elsewhere in South East Asia, it was their direct
ancestors that built and lived in these monuments of architectural
splendour.

Fourth, and most heart-warming, they are extremely cheerful and
extremely articulate; I've had kids coming up and discussing our
mutual nationalities with me. Their Khmer-influenced accent is soft,
poetic and subtle; you stumble back and realise they arent singing,
but talking to you. Their expressions gentle and their intent earnest;
in return for those few beads or that badly-printed t-shirt, they want
you to provide them with their daily dollar. And then there are those
who wouldn't mind settling for a chat or a game perhaps; at least
three of them have bestowed a 'friend' title on me and wanted me to
visit them again later in the evening.

I didn't go, because of time-pressures and because I won't be able to
find them anyway, and indeed, because it was just a sales tactic;
without doubt, they'd accost me later with offerings of bottled water
or badly painted depictions of the Angkor Wat. But sales pitches
apart, there was a lesson in humanity in there somewhere; by
yesterday, I found myself warming up to strangers and generally
chatting with anyone who could care.

And strangely enough, most people I talked to seemed to have found my
enthusiasm infectious; a backpacker from London confided in me that
he's just been recovering from substance abuse, that he picked up his
girlfriend at a seedy bar downtown, and that I could, as well,
likewise do the same for a fee if I needed 'feminine companionship' (I
didn't) Then there was this tuk-tuk driver who offered to teach me the
Khmer script (But I don't have too many hopes on that account; his
English is rather bad, Im afraid) An elderly gentleman, who was
otherwise kneeling down in front of a Buddha statue at Angkor Wat,
offered to translate the book he had in his hands. I found his book,
which was made of palm leaves, a true-to-heart 'thaala patra grandham'
as we call it in Telugu/Sanskrit, interesting, and had tried to ask
him what it was, in broken Khmer. He was so enthused, that he finally
found an interpreter for me, and proceeded to tell my fortune.
Surprisingly enough, he initially declined my paarijaatam (is that the
right word? I mean the offering you give to folks like this),
muttering something about my being good, but finally couldn't resist
the one-dollar bill I was offering.

And finally, there was this restaurettuer (is that the right
spelling?) who, after a few beers, took me to his room and showed me
pictures of his wedding; for some reason, or perhaps because I found
the ceremony so much like an Indian one, he took a printout of him and
his wife in their traditional costume, saying that I deserved some
sort of "return gift" anyway, in addition to getting some free beers
on the house. I offered to keep in touch by email.

It is a strange and unprecedented time out here, a time when a kid's
"Buy One" contracts itself into an enigmatic "Bayon", a time when I
find myself smiling all the time, and one where you feel a part of
this great big world. Naiveity, apparently, has no place in all of
this; for now, I seem quite content with kids ripping me off for a
dollar or two, no amount of meditation or Neuro Linguistic Programmng
can, it seems, give you this amount of joy.

> 2nd, 3rd Jan
> - Check out Siam Reap, nearby stuff such as the Tonle Sap Lake, a
> national park, a Vietnamese floating village etc

Now, calling the Tonle Sap a 'lake' is a tad misleading, really,
seeing that it is connected to the Mekong by a series of short
tributaries. You can, in fact, travel to Phnom Penh from Siem Reap by
boat on the Tonle Sap; the lake compresses into a raging river some
100km south, before joining the Mekong at Phnom Penh, thus telling us
the reason for Phnom Penh's location.

But this network of tributaries and rivers gives us one very
interesting result; it has the world's largest catch of freshwater
fish. Indeed, some biologists maintain that some fish travel all the
way to China from here; certainly, the volume of water in the wet
season was affected last year when the Chinese built their first of
many dams on the Mekong. Anybody's guess on what will happen when they
build *all* of their proposed nine dams, and Cambodia/Laos build
theirs.

Curiously enough, the Chruoy Chengvar bridge, a bridge with, as we
shall see, significant historical implications, is just before Tonle
Sap joins the Mekong.

> 4th Jan
> - Leave Siam Reap for Phnom Penh via Sulon, if possible.
> - Reach Phnom Penh, check out stuff in and around PP

That was the plan, naturally, but me being me, decided to play around
with it a little. Instead of heading to Phnom Penh, I had planned to
hit this eastern town of Kampong Cham on the Mekong riverside, spend
the night of the 3rd there, and then venture out to my ultimate goal,
the town of Kratchie in northeast Cambodia. I had explained this to
the receptionist at my guest house in elaborate detail, even pointing
out all the towns on a large map, and gave me schedules for each town.
She nodded all throughout, and even re-narrated my plan in broken
English, just to make sure she understood correctly.

Unfortunately, it now appears I had explained it too well; instead of
giving me a ticket to Kampong Cham, she gave me a ticket to Phnom
Penh, but with the words 'Phnom Penh' struck off and the word 'Kampong
Cham' written instead, all in Khmer. I found this out *after* the bus
had left Siem Reap.

One alternative, the bus guy suggested, was that I get off in this
town called Skoun (pronounced su-kaun) on the way and take a
share-taxi (which is just what it sounds like, a taxi shared by many
people) to Kampong Cham. It'll be cheap, he insisted, I could get a
ride for less than an American dollar. I agreed; decided I didnt have
much choice anyway.

That's when my adventures really started; I was starting to get off
the map, so to speak.

Now, you must understand this about the Cambodian countryside; it is
waaay more deserted than you can ever imagine. All towns on the
National Highway were carefully catalogued, marked and commented upon
in Lonely Planet; there was a wat here, a monument there and so on.
The towns themselves aren't expansive, for want of a better word, as
they are in Thailand, Malaysia or India; they are compact, sparsely
populated and concentrated on the main road itself.

All, that is, except Skoun.

For its geographical location, that's where the highway to Siem Reap
and Kampong Cham meet, Skoun seemed to be understated in books and
pamphlets. It wasn't hard to see why; not only is it bereft of any
sights of historical or social interest, it is also home to one of the
strangest culinary delights I've ever seen. They eat spiders there for
lunch.

Seriously.

Spiders.

And locusts, and prawns, but big, black, eight-legged, freshly-caught spiders.

I took exactly one minute to decide that I didn't want to change buses
there and continued on to Phnom Penh instead.

Days later, on my return trip from Kratchie, we stopped at Skoun again
for a bite. I bought a freshly made baguette from a roadside stall;
the girl whipped out a bun from her oven, pasted some butter, put some
salad and some meat, and gave it to me. The meat smelled and tasted
like fish, but quite understandably, I didn't want to get to the meat
of the situation, pardon my pun; there are some details, you'll agree,
you don't to know.

> 5th Jan
> - Leave Phnom Penh for the east. Possibly spend a day in rural
> Cambodia, perhaps in a farm or something near Kampong Cham town.

I spent the night of 3rd Jan at Phnom Penh, but, no offence to Phnom
Penh-ers, it wasn't a place I wanted to stay for long. Phnom Penh is
like any other Asian city; sweltering, chaotic, slightly-polluted, and
always-on-the-move. It is, arguably, smaller than most Asian cities
I've been to, a mere 1.2 million in population, but still, it was
chaotic nevertheless. I was back on the road by the next morning,
still focussed on reaching Kratchie and seeing freshwater dolphins there.

It was, perhaps, the most quioxitic of all my travel decisions,
imagine travelling 340 km to spend a few hours, only to return the
very next morning, but I'm glad I made it; Kratchie is one of the
quaintest towns I've ever been to. The only way to describe it, you'd
think, was to imagine how the Wild West would like, had the French,
and not the Americans, gone up the Oregon Trail. The roads were dusty,
and served exactly three blocks from the Mekong River; the town
stretched itself along the Mekong in an apparently desperate attempt
to establish civilisation there.

I can't say they have fared that well, I'm afraid; while the
French-style roadside cafes were pleasant, and the views on the Mekong
marvellous, it still is a constant struggle against nature taking
over; the Governer's mansion, for instance, had deer running wildly.
At night, the Mekong and its other bank was one of the darkest
horizons you'll ever see; for as far as I could see, there was not a
single speck of light anywhere. This was heartland Cambodiana, a place
so dense, and so remote, that even the Khmer Rouge avoided it.

I stayed at a place that was right out of The Good, Bad and Ugly,
edition francais; instead of a saloon, we had a Paris-ian cafe et
boulangerie. And instead of horses, and horse-drawn carts, we had
motos (mopeds) and moto-drawn carts.

Which is how I went to the dolphin-watching site, some 15 km away from
Kratchie. I can't say it was a letdown now, but initially it did seem
to be; for the first 15 minutes after the boatman switched off the
motor, there was nothing. The Mekong river out here is massive; its at
least a kilometre or two wide, and had lush-green forests with no
sight of human inhabitation anywhere near. There were, perhaps, two
other boats full of tourists, but they were far, the river had space
for us all.

And then they struck. Tons of them, all around us, in synchronicity.

No one knows why the dolphins honk and jump out of the water, but they
do that very often, and do it elegantly. It was a majestic sight; a
lonely boat surrounded on all sides by sleek, pinkish-grey mammals
that are all but extinct, except here and somewhere in Laos. After a
while, I think they were playing with us, or perhaps, playing among
themselves; it is always a bad idea to anthromorphize animals, but you
couldn't help but think they were racing each other away, or towards,
the boat.

There are about 75-100 freshwater dolphins left in the wild in
Cambodia. There are all but extinct in India, they might exist in a
few numbers in Burma, and they certainly do exist in southern Laos;
but this is where they are at their most.

Unfortunately for all my photography skills, and the 30-odd shots, I
wasn't able to catch a single dolphin in action; they were too fast
for my cameras' processors. But I can describe them to you; they're a
bit like sperm-whales, in that they have no noses like the
sea-dolphins have, and are, it's a difficult colour to imagine, but
bear with me, pink-ish grey. But they're worth seeing at least once in
the wild; at least, I think I had paisa-vasool (value for money) for
the time and energy I spent in reaching this remote corner.

> 6th Jan
> - Reach Kratchie town for a possible freshwater dolphin sighting.
> Spend the night there.

Back in Phnom Penh now, just "did" the Chouvy Chengvar Bridge, the
French Embassy, Wat Phnom and the National Museum. Will be "doing" the
Tuong Sley Musuem in a few minutes, and thought I'd jot down my notes
so far before venturing out there, which, I'm sure will be another
elaborate experience.

(after seeing Toul Sleng Museum)

A few quick impressions about Phnom Penh: First and I seem to be
repeating this ad nauseaum, but it's like any other Asian city; it's
messy, chaotic, bustling and always on the move. Unlike any other
Asian city I've seen, though, it is also small, compact and very
well-organised, at least on the map. Mysteriously enough, or perhaps
because I'm so used to Hyderabad's endless mazes, its street map made
perfect sense to me, the first time I saw it; a couple of wide, long
boulevards, connecting huge blocks of residential, commercial and
touristy interests, each in turn laid out in perfect rectangular
grids.

On the ground, however, it's a steaming pile of unlaid concrete and
sand; the street-numbering system seems to have been designed in base
6.7, and no one's sure where anything is.

Which lead me to interesting situations. A moto driver this morning,
for instance,
took me to the other end of the town, to the Russian Market, when I
wanted him to take me to street 360, which was in the next block. I
ended up navigating him through Phnom Penh's perfectly laid-out Rues;
surer than not, we arrived exactly where I wanted to go, without
needing any further assistance, much to the driver's understandable
surprise. It's not often, it seems, that a travelling bayang knows a
Phom Penhoi on navigating through his own town.

An understanding of Phnom Penh's planning philosophy is not really
necessary ito truly comprehend the human travesty that the Toul Sleng
prison is. But it certainly helps, for the sheer mundaneness of evil,
as it were; the Khmer Rouge's primiere torture chamber was, you see,
set in, what was till then, an unremarkable, mundane school in a quiet
neighbourhood. The location comes up on you very surreptiously and
very strongly; quite like, you'd think, how the Khmer Rouge took over
Cambodia.

I don't want to go into the details of exactly how the Khmer Rouge
tortured people. I really don't; let's just say it was barbaric,
horrendous and unprecedented in human history for the sheer evil it
encompassed. I'll just narrate this personal anecdote nevertheless;
when I entered the compound, among other things, I was told that, in
addition to Cambodians, the Khmer Rouge also tortured and killed
Indians as well. That started a parlour game of sorts for me; after
seeing those torture chambers and the
classrooms-converted-into-claustrophobic-cells, I started looking for
Indic faces among the many photos of the victims shown there.

It took me another 15 minutes to finally see the pointlessnes of my
effort; in the final analysis, it didn't matter did it, if the victims
were Cambodian, Indian, American or Pakistani; the fact was that this
facility, at its peak, devoured close to a 100 victims a day, and for
utterly trivial reasons. Those that were interred here were later
taken to the Cheoung Ek Killing Fields, some 20 km away from Phnom
Penh, where they were killed and buried in a mass grave.

I didn't go to the Killing Fields; it didn't seem proper to treat a
place as inhumane as that as a tourist attraction. Those two hours at
Toul Sleng was heavy enough; in the end, all I could do was write
'sarve janaa sukhino bhavantu, Om Shanti' (May all rest in Happiness
and Peace) in the guest book.

> 7th Jan
> - Return to PP from Kratchie in the morning.
> - Leave PP for KL by Air Asia flight AK853 at 16:35 hours
> - Land at KL at 19:20 hours
> - Find ways of coming home to Singapore that night, or spend the night
> at KL, and come home early next morning.

I didn't want to end my Cambodian trip on such a low note, so I
decided to head back to one of the most fun segments of my trip,
contemporary Cambodian music and dance.

My original introduction had actually started off on a rather humorous
note; a week back, in Siem Reap, my travel mate then, Gene, had
originally suggested that we go to a Cambodian
buffet-cum-dance-performance. Misreading 'dance' to be, well, 'dance
floor', Gene had expected some sort of a participatory exercise with
food, a bit like those salsa sessions that a certain Andorran
restaurant has out here in Singapore. I hadn't quite gotten on his
confusion until much later, because to my ex-pat Indian brain, 'dance'
meant 'ballet', while 'clubbing' meant 'dancing', so I ended up
wondering why he expected he could dance to Khmer ballets without
learning it.

I just wrote a thank-you email to the association head; I'll just
copy-paste what I wrote there on Apsara dancing:-

Apsara dance performances such as yours are an important link for us
to relate ancient Angkor-ian sculptures and monuments to contemporary
Cambodian culture; I must commend your organisation's efforts in
ensuring this intangible link remains alive even this day. The sheer
subtlety and elegance in the narrative is, quite frankly, amazing; as
another visitor from New Zealand was commenting, the manner in which
Khmer dance draws its audience into the story-line is rather nuanced
and speaks of a cultural refinement that is unparalleled.

On a personal note, it was fascinating to interact with artistes
there, both on the performance night, and the morning next day; the
intricable similarities between our mutual cultures, Cambodian and
Indian is, indeed, interesting and worthy of further exploration.
--

Actually, it was more than that; my reaction, as it were, to Apsara
dancing more or less sums up my reaction to Cambodia. Apsara dancing
is entirely remniscient of Indian classical ballet such as
Bharatnatyam or Kuchipudi, in mudras (hand gestures), subject matter
(Ramayana), and even in music; indeed, some of the dancers I met there
were well-versed in Kathak as well. But even more than the common
inspiration from ancient India, is the sheer schizophrenia of it all;
the dancers in performance seem to be entirely different people from
those back-stage. It was almost as if the souls of the characters they
were playing somehow entered their bodies and directed them instead;
they had that 'kala' that traditional Kuchipudi masters possessed.

Which, then, is a great metaphor for Cambodia in general; behind the
mundaneness of third-world penury, and a dehibilitating civil war,
this is one country and culture that can still turn your heads with
its sheer innate beauty, richness and, despite its tortured history,
humanity.

> > 8th Jan
> > - Rest day at home

Seriously, couldn't wait to get home then.

> > 9th Jan
> > - Start work at Avanade from 08:30AM sharp.

Or, mysteriously enough, to start work.

I have since rescinded both thoughts and have, officially, felt
claustrophobic sitting in a small cubicle, staring at a laptop and its
code. You really can't blame me; been travelling 2000+ km, meeting
countless people, exploring new sights, learning new things. Things
are just not the same anymore; I, for one, can't wait to start, and
accomplish, other personal goals I've had for a long time. For
instance, I intend to work ahead on my linguistics project; will tell
you more if you're interested.

2 Comments:

  • At 11:37 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    I can't believe I am the first to comment on this. Marvellous travelogue! And the first to seriously get me excited about visiting Cambodia, and perhaps even retrace your steps.Your flair for narration transports the reader to that place in a jiffy; and verily into your thoughts as they occurred while you were there - fabulous stuff really!

     
  • At 11:59 pm, Blogger The Cydonian said…

    Asuthosh,

    Good of you to drop by, and glad you liked this piece! :-)

     

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