Mystic Cities of the Gods

Rumors of a “lost city” veiled by the deeply entwined jungles of Cambodia had been fascinating European travelers through that ancient land for a generation, when a French explorer named Henri Mouhot first heard the tales. Wandering Buddhist monks, passing through those near-impenetrable jungles had occasionally come upon the forbidding remains of some long ago forgotten metropolis. Wholly ignorant of their origins but immediately recognizing those temple’s sacred natures, the monks quickly romanticized what they had seen. Those mysterious sanctuaries had obviously been built by the gods of primeval times, they would say – and as the centuries passed and their first-hand accounts of the ruins passed into the realm of sheer mythology, pilgrims from the distant reaches of Asia began searching for this mystic city of the gods with little to no success. The occasional Portuguese trader or other European adventurer would catch wind of these tales, so they were widely circulated in the antiquarian circles of that Victorian Age; but few educated men (who’d been weaned on the unsubstantial fable that was El Dorado) believed the stories to be anything more than what they seemed . . . legends.

It was 1859.

Mouhot was visiting Battambang, near the TonlÃ?© Sap, on behalf of the Geographical and Zoological Societies of London when a European missionary, whose name has been lost to time, first related to him the rumors that a series of ancient ruins was hidden by the neighboring jungles. Utterly fascinated by the very idea of such a place, the Frenchman decided to risk further exploration. His surprisingly loyal guides led him up through that dense tropical forest until at last they came upon the fantastic structure that we know today as Angkor Wat. He spent three weeks there drawing sketches and otherwise documenting what he called “. . . a rival to the [Temple] of Solomon, erected by some ancient Michael Angelo.” And, after “making no pretension whatever to architectural or archaeological acquirements,” Mouhot went on to give precise descriptions, measurements and the compass directions of balustrades and balconies, of porticos and galleries, of columns and cornices. “These bas reliefs are perfect; [all] others are inferior in workmanship and expression,” Mouhot pronounced. And the Frenchman’s lovingly detailed descriptions of those carvings – of warriors mounted on tigers, angels carried by griffins and people entering Paradise in the galleries around the lower level of Angkor-deeply stirred the imaginations of his contemporaries, inaugurating more than a century of sensation surrounding his find. The fact that Mouhot succumbed to a malaria driven fever and died while exploring Laos in 1861, leaving the improbable work of returning all his journals and specimens to Europe to a servant, named Phrai, only served to enhance the effect of what he’d written. Other explorers followed in his footsteps, and in 1907, the scholars and archaeologists of the Ecole d’Extreme Orient began a slow, painstaking restoration and reconstruction of Angkor’s magnificent temples that managed to survive all the horrors of Pol Pot’s Khemer Rouge and continues to attract visitors to this day.

Cambodia is about half the size of Italy, topographically dominated by that great lake known as the TonlÃ?© Sap, the swathe cut across it by the mighty Mekong River and the towering peaks of its Dangkrek and Carmadon Mountains. It’s bordered to the south by the Gulf of Thailand, on the east by Vietnam, to the north by Laos and to the west by Thailand. Though it’s primarily known in the west by virtue of its infamous “Killing Fields,” and still bears their scars, Cambodia’s a country that’s slowly embarking on the path to recovery. The peace is young but stable enough to have encouraged a tourism upswing. One that owes itself not only to the fame of Angkor Wat, but to the large numbers of endangered species, thought to be extinct elsewhere – including rhinos, leopards, gibbons, bats, elephants, tigers and crocodiles that are believed to be hidden away in its remote interiors.

You’ll be arriving in its capital city of Phnom Penh’s Pochentong airport via a flight out of Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong or Ho Chi Minh City. Once there, travelers will quickly discover that the weathered French-era architecture of Phnom Phenh offers up a hauntingly picaresque atmosphere of bustling markets, riverfront pubs and street-side cafes that make it perfect for wary explorations. It also happens to boast a National Museum famous for its spectacular displays of Angkor-era arts and crafts and a number of magnificent wats (monastic-temples) of its very own – including the fabulous Silver Pagoda, the Wat Lang Ka, the headquarters of Cambodia’s Buddhist Patriachate Wat Qunalon and the Wat Phnom from which the city drew its name.

Lest you risk forgetting precisely where you are in the world, I’d recommend taking a (15km) day trip out to see the Memorial Stupa that’s been erected on the site of the bloody Killing Fields of Choeung Ek – where at least 17,000 people were brutally murdered by the Khmer Rouge and 8,000 of their neatly arranged skulls now wait behind glass to remind visitors of the atrocities that ended their lives. Though it will definitely be quite disturbing, you must not leave Cambodia before paying them your respects.

Heading up-country will both rightly and inevitably lead you through the quiet city of Udong. Between 1618 and 1866 it served as Cambodia’s capital and its pre-colonial ruins are scattered across a pair of distinct ridges. Supposedly, treasures dating back to the 16th-century are concealed beneath the larger of the two. It’s capped by the remains of a rather large sanctuary (vihara) and what’s left of a statue of The Buddha that was partially demolished by the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s. Encircling those ruins are those of several mostly-intact but smaller stupas, Buddhas and viharas. And at its base, a memorial to even more of Pol Pot’s victims awaits. The smaller ridge holds a somewhat lesser display of ruined structures, several interesting stupas and the bullet-pocked remnants of the Ta San Mosque.

Before finally pushing on up toward the proximity of Angkor, you’ll definitely want to pay at least a quick visit to Kompong Luong, a town that floats permanently atop the TonlÃ?© Sap on boat-based foundations – its schools, houses, restaurants and music halls rising and falling with the tide. Not unlike the Vietnamese Floating Village on the lake’s northward stretch, there’s nowhere to stay and not too much to do. Visiting is strictly a matter of getting to survey its on-the-water atmosphere; preferably while using the lip of an ice-cold beer as your sextant.

All the above will be fascinating and enlightening sights to be sure. But if you’ve made the somewhat less than completely safe trip into Cambodia’s hinterland, you’ve come to see the once-forgotten glories of Angkor Wat, built between the 9th and 13th centuries at the peak of an ancient Khmer Empire that stretched from what is today the Bay of Bengal in the west through Vietnam to the east and right up into the heart of Yunnan in China. Following the rapid fall of the empire that once called the place home, nature took its course and engulfed much of the sacred complex. Even today much of the area remains concealed by a dense tropical forest which has in some ways both taken its toll on the temples and served to enhance their natural beauty. Mouhot himself once observed that: “. . . an exuberant vegetation has overgrown everything, galleries and towers, so that it is difficult to force passage. The crowning glory of towering silk-cotton and fig trees straddles the walls of the temples, spreading their roots in a vice-like grip on the stones.” That remains as true today as when it was written.

Made up of well over a hundred temples, perhaps the greatest shock awaiting Angkor’s visitors is the sheer size of the complex that spreads out into the thicket of jungle surrounding Siem Reap.But three of these, the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat, Bayon, and Ta Prohm, clearly surpass all the others in their beauty and so are musts-sees for any traveler. Considered by many to be one of the greatest monuments ever constructed by man, Angkor Wat, like Great Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, simply awes its visitors with the sheer grandeur of its five soaring towers and exquisite bas reliefs.

By way of comparison, Bayon seems far more intimate, and from a distance it appears to more of a mess of decrepit ancient rocks than anything else. But as you near, Bayon gradually takes the shape that’s made it famous – fifty-four enormous faces representing the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara stare down at visitors from seemingly everywhere. There is a definite other-worldly air to Bayon, each path revealing yet another gigantic disdainful stare from the ancient god, as P. Jennerat de Beerski wrote of the site in the 1920’s, “. . . with slightly curving lips, eyes placed in shadow by the lowered lids utter not a word and yet force you to guess much.”

At Ta Promh, where the ruins have deliberately been only scarcely restored, the truly awesome power of the surrounding rainforest can best be seen. Gluttonous root-systems thrust themselves up out of the black-earth to tear massive sections of the temple’s ancient walls apart. Its massive stones lie scattered about like a child’s building blocks, leaving only narrow corridors and passageways and a distinct feeling of discovery that, unlike any of the other Angkor temples brings one closest to replicating the lost and hidden atmosphere that must surely have greeted Henri Mouhot over a hundred and fifty years ago.

Head out in November, December or January. November if you’d like to catch the country’s most impressive festival Bon Om Tuk, held early in that month. December or January if you’d prefer drier weather, cooler temperatures and a bearable level of humidity that won’t remind you of any of Oliver Stone’s films. But in either case, as P. Jennerat de Beerski wrote, “Go to Angkor My Friend, to its ruins and to its dreams.”