Cambodia: Beauty and the Beast – Ed Wisneski

Photo: Bayon temple in Angkor Thom, the largest former capital city of the Khmer Empire

Just outside the northwest city Siem Reap, the world-renowned, 154-square-mile Angkor Ar­chaeo­logical Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, guards the remains of the capital cities of the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer (Cambodian) Empire, which ruled most of Southeast Asia from 802 until 1431 when Angkor was sacked by Siam (Thai) invaders.

In Phnom Penh – a two-day boat ride from the Angkor temples down Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong River – the Choeung Ek Killing Field and S-21 Genocide Museum remain grim reminders of the atrocities committed by the beast, Pol Pot, and the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979 that wiped out between 1.3 and 2 million Cambodians, about 25 percent of the population.

At the Angkor Archaeological Park, temples get top billing. The Oscar winner is Angkor Wat (“city with a temple”), the largest religious monument in the world spread over 400 acres.  Its trademark towers are embla­zoned on the Cambodian flag and some denominations of the coun­try’s currency (riel).

Suryavarman II, who considered himself a god-king, ordered construction that took three decades to complete from 1120 to 1150. Unlike most Khmer temples, Angkor Wat faces west toward the setting sun, a symbol of death, which indicates Suryavarman II intended the complex to include a mausoleum for himself as well as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu.  Angkor Wat gradually turned into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th cen­tury. It is still used for worship today.

Because most of the 300,000 workers believed Suryavarman II to be a god, they considered their labor acts of worship.  As many as 6,000 elephants transported five million tons of sandstone from the Siem Reap River, where giant blocks of sandstone quarried 30 miles away floated down on rafts.

Angkor Wat’s intricate carvings, inscriptions and bas-reliefs adorning columns, walls and doorways are remarkably well-pre­served considering their age and the temple’s minimal use for cen­turies after the capital was moved Phnom Penh. French naturalist Henri Mouhot stumbled upon Angkor in 1860 while searching for exotic insects in the forest around the temple. Unfortunately, he was bit by a poisonous one and died a year later.

Two-and-one-half million annual visi­tors test the dura­bility of the nearly 900-year-old ar­chitectural won­der of the world.  I joined the ritual of photographing the sil­houette of the temple at sunrise.  Then I followed the crowd along a con­venient causeway over the moat to passageways weaving to an area where I managed to climb steep stairs to the Bakan, the summit of the cen­tral tower.  The panoramic perspective captured the immensity of Angkor Wat.

The railings and wooden steps made it possible for a 74-year-old with two artifi­cial knees, a fake right hip and an impending replacement of the left one to stumble to the top.

As I explored other parts of the temple, I came upon other fenced-off stairways at a 70-degree incline to the top.  I never would have made it if that had been the only option.

Back on the ground I explored the 1,706-foot-long wall of bas-reliefs, the longest in the world, depicting scenes from Hindu mythology as well as weapon-bearing soldiers during battles.

I learned a new word – ap­sara.  Meriam-Web­ster diction­ary never heard of it.  AI solved the mystery.  It is a ce­lestial be­ing in Hindu and Bud­dhist my­thology, often depicted as a beautiful, youthful, and ele­gant nymph or fairy.  There were 2,000 bas-reliefs of well-en­dowed ap­saras – celestial danc­ing girls – on the wall and 1,000 elsewhere in the temple.

Angkor has an impressive supporting cast of temples and gate­ways.  An eight-mile long, 26-foot-tall wall surround Angkor Thom (“great city”), once the largest city in the Khmer empire that once supported a population of 80,000 to 150,000 in an area the size of Manhattan. They lived in an intricate grid system of canals, roads and houses in a perfectly square pattern.

Two rows of 154 stone statues, gods on the left and demons on the right, flank the causeway to the massive 75-foot tall South Gate with four gigantic stone faces facing the four com­pass points.

Bas-reliefs blanket the walls of the city featuring images of everyday life in 12th century Ankor.

The late 10th century Banteay Srei temple is also called the Citadel of Women. Legend has it that because the intricate and delicate carvings on its pink sandstone walls and lintels were thought to be so fine, they could only have been crafted by the hands of women.

Ta Prohm (“ancestor of Brahman”), originally a Buddhist monastery, was deliberately left to the condition the French archaeologists and restorers found it during the colonial period of the 19^th century.  As a result, the roots of giant banyan trees stran­gle some of the temples.

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Cambodia’s war-torn history has left Angkor Archaeological Park unscathed. The U.S. carpet-bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War focused on the Ho Chi Minh Trail far away on the eastern border with Vietnam.  Millions of Cambodians were dis­placed from their farms to the cities, where the notorious com­munist Khmer Rouge capitalized on their anger and resentment to recruit them to its cause.

During the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge regime, the area around Angkor Wat saw some conflict. The dangers of the Khmer Rouge genocide and landmines halted visitations and archae­ological ex­ploration and restoration.

In addition to murdering anybody associated with the pre­vious government, intellectualism and foreign influence, the Khmer Rouge looted and destroyed schools, hospitals and reli­gious sites.  Pol Pot spared Angkor Wat because it represented Cambodia’s powerful past.  “If our people can build Angkor, they can build anything.” he said.

Sites of the Khmer Rouge’s homicidal reign of terror remain in Phnom Penh.  My blood curdled as I strolled next to lumps of earth signifying mass graves at Choeung Ek Killing Field, the most well-known of the approximately 300 spread throughout the country.

Display cases of the bones and clothing of the 8,895 victims, most of them slaughtered with pickaxes to save bullets, heightened the horror of the trail leading to the coup de grâce, a 203-foot tall Buddhist stupa (place for relics and meditation) with approximately 5,000 skulls piled up on shelves like books in a library.  Cam­bodian authorities and international aides ex­humed this killing field in 1980, shortly after the fall of the Khmer Rouge.

The equally gruesome S-21 Genocide Museum sits on the grounds of Tuol Sleng Prey High School, where five buildings were converted to one of the 190 prison and interrogation centers operated by Khmer Rouge. The caption of one large picture of seven men states that 18,063 victims perished on this site, with only 12 survivors, eight adults and four children.

The classrooms converted to interrogation rooms show pictures of torture victims tied to bed frames. Signs outside list the names of the prisoners detained in the room.  Later, Pol Pot’s paranoia led to purges where thousands of party members considered potential leaders of a coup against him were rounded up with their families, brought to Tuol Sleng and mur­dered.

Today there are similar contrasts between the heights of human ingenuity at Angkor Wat and the depths of depravity in the Killing Fields.  The inspiring transformation of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from the ashes of fire and the despicable killing instigated by Russia in Ukraine come to mind. Good has overcome the worst evil imaginable in Cambodia.  That has given me hope that it will happen again in our world today.