The Legacy of Pol Pot: Skulls & Silence

Buddhist stupa (shrine) Wat Thiem, Siem Reap, Cambodia: skulls of the many victims of the Khmer Rouge found by the Buddhist monks at this temple 


Some people say they can't sleep in Cambodia. I must say I slept pretty well but had very strange dreams. It must be all the souls who died violently flitting about the edges of consciousness. I can't help feeling I am now on the Asian conveyor belt whirlwind tour and am beginning to resent being a tourist. My next trip will not follow a tourist route. Although it is fantastic to see these places I am beginning to be overwhelmed by the 'Asian Miracle'. How can you travel to one of the poorest countries in Asia with such a tragic and violent past and concentrate on seeing fantastic temples, even those with World Heritage accreditation while always in the background are the Cambodian people looking for crumbs from tourists and their own government. I read in the paper on the flight out of Cambodia that the government are trying to get the malnourishment statistics down from 50% to 30% by 2012. That means that half of the population are officially starving. Meanwhile hordes of tourists bypass all the ugliness staying in air-conditioned hotels, shifted about in air-conditioned cars, unaware of the more recent - if less magnificent - history. A two day ticket to visit Angkor Wat and the other temples is $60. Over three quarters of a million people visited the temples last month - do the figures, this is not a small amount the government are making. Where is the money going? Why are the people starving? Why are such huge numbers of Cambodian women and children being trafficked for sex, mostly to western men? It seems to me part of this 'Asian Miracle' is the elevation of money as the new god, at the expense of peoples lives.

Buddhist alter at Wat Thiem, Siem Reap

Detail of skulls

Wat Thmei, Siem Reap, Cambodia: The Buddha Dreams

Angkor What?

One of the backdrops for the Tomb Raider movie, Ta Prohm, Cambodia

Of all the temples you have to choose from of the great smorgasbord of temples around Siem Reap, Cambodia, the jumping off point for Angkor Wat, I am so glad I chose Ta Prohm, or what is now commonly called in the local parlance, 'The Angelina Temple' as the first temple I saw. Not because of it's fame as one of the exotic locations for the film 'Lara Croft: Tomb Raider' in 2000, but because it is really the most incredible of all the temples at Angkor, hugely atmospheric with its background ambiance of flocks of circling wild parrots, ancient crumbling walls and...and then there are the trees. So much time has passed that these trees, giant banyan and kapok trees, are reclaiming the temple with limbs that are more like animal flesh than plant life, so much so that they appear animate, and it's as if you are not on the set of a movie about the search for a sacred talisman but to a science fiction movie, a cross between Day of the Trifids and something very alien from HR Giger.

Shortly after I arrived the light shifted to that pubescent yellowish purple pre-storm light and then the heavens cracked and it absolutely poured rain. Soon the red earth in which these huge trees and their now permanently attached temple ran bloodlike into creeper strewn ditches. People, and I was relieved to see I had chosen the time well because not many were there at that time in the afternoon, huddled in the interstices of  the dank temple looking out at the great opera of storm outside the giant stone-cut windows. I have to say that inside the temple there was no elevation of feeling or awareness I would associate with sacred architecture, which I have experienced first hand in the temples of Egypt. Here the overwhelming feeling, not negating the still powerful impact of Ta Prohm, was one of heaviness and morbidity, the huge weight of the stone above you that lent a sobriety to the experience, no elevation of spirit in sight. Actually, I had the same feeling here as I experienced at the Mayan temple of Chichen Itza in the Yucutan in Mexico, of great heaps of time stored in the stones, of the weight of murder and human sacrifice. Perhaps some of this effect is to do with the fact that the outline of Angkor Wat became a symbol on the flag of the Khmer Rouge during the four years when Pol Pot renamed Cambodia 'Democratic Kampuchea' and was busy killing 1.8 million of his fellow countrymen. The symbol then stood for the national traditions of the Kampuchean people - but only those that Pol Pot took to be the ones deserving of retaining. Perhaps that's why the outline of Angkor Wat is so resonant with meaning.

Afterwards, seeing Angkor Thom and then Angkor Wat itself, I was increasingly disappointed by these ruins I had heard so much about finding the architecture clunky and dischevelled and, eh, really rather ugly. As soon as I stepped into Angkor Wat I wanted to beat a hasty retreat and considered going back to Ta Prohm, because at least there I knew was a visual intricacy that the camera loves and that kind of thing makes me happy. I did photograph some of the other temples, but they were much less impressive visually than Ta Prohm.

Human context: the amazing, animal-like limb of a great Kapok tree as it embraces a moss-infested temple building at Ta Prohm temple, Cambodia

Detail of Kapok tree limb, Ta Prohm, Cambodia

Roots of giant Banyan tree in Ta Prohm temple, Cambodia

Temple door enmeshed in a profusion of alien like limbs, Ta Prohm, Cambodia

The Colour and the Chaos: Damnoen Saduak Floating Market

Leaving Bangkok was more of a sweet rather than bitter experience. The day before I went to the Damnoen Saduak, the tour mini van spending an hour collecting people from various hotels around the huge sprawling polluted stinking city that was already beginning to swelter and in the early morning sun. The relentless streams of mopeds, taxis, cars, trucks, buses all heading into the city in frantic, beeping choking unison, a cacophony of horns. The traffic in Bangkok is like a great noxious animal that rarely sleeps and seems to draw energy from the sun itself growing more ferocious in the heat. It is frightening, the thought of what the future holds for this huge metropolis that, if it once was the city of angels as it's name is said to mean, they have all up and flown away, leaving this city to the 'jiin', or spirits that are said to haunt it.

The night before I left I got lost out on the streets with darkness setting in and unable to get a taxi. Even though I had the printed address and map of the hotel I was staying in, the taxi drivers I hailed took one look and said, no, no... and sped off. Then, like a sequence of a bad dream, I stumbled across a woman sitting at the side of the road, slumped over her young child, both apparently asleep. Around the corner, further up the road, sat a little girl who could have been no more than two years old, with night coming on, sitting there alone, begging. 

One and a half hours outside the city is this market that is more of a floating tourist hell where the rampant consumerism isn't cloaked under any nice veneer. But within that there is still beauty, within the chaos and clamour there are distinct pockets of calm and clarity, the traders still resonating a warmth and a human touch that defies the conditions under which they live. I was blown away by the colour and beauty around me.

This seems to be a Burmese custom where women paint their faces with white like this woman, it can make them look quite fearful

You can buy anything at the Damnoen Saduak Market

Care and precision in the midst of mayhem, the women traders of the Damnoen Saduak floating market are the epitome of Buddhist calm

Three generations of a trader family at the floating market

The amazing Damnoen Saduak floating market

Old trader in floating market

Damnoen Saduak floating market, outside of Bangkok

Mango and sticky rice seller in floating market

Paradise in infrared: The Beach revisited...

Home of the Beach: Hollywood got there first…

Arriving at Phi Phi (pronounced as you would number onesies to a little child) is like arriving on the set of the biggest movie ever made with shooting starting the next day. The set is spectacular, sheer limestone cliffs rising on one side framing a bay that is speckled with boats of every shape and size, from giant cruise liners and perilously fast speedboats to hundreds of traditional Thai long-tailed boats criss-crossing the luminous lime green water, all only narrowly avoiding collision with each other. It all has the atmosphere of carnival, except on the pier they’re shouting, roll up, roll up, pay your twenty baht (about six euro) before they’ll allow you entrance.­­ These Thai pier workers are aggressive and unwelcoming as if they realize that regardless of how civil they are people will still be arriving here in droves. And that’s because Phi Phi Don is the jumping off point for the island of Phi Phi Lay, it’s beautiful sister island whose jagged outline rose out of the turquoise ocean for hundreds of feet as we approached, by now infamous home of the film starring Leonardo di Caprio, The Beach.

As we came ashore the sky flashed a quick but intense rain shower, a foretaste of the coming rainy season, but everything cleared off and dried up in no time. Met on the pier, to get to my hotel I was led through a Thai market which solidified my vaguely forming opinion that in Thailand things are not separated off into neat little packages: it is what it is – they don’t try to beautify what is ugly. Religion, for instance, isn’t something found in the separate location of a church, there are temples and shrines literally everywhere: in the middle of markets (Jesus wept), next door to government buildings and in the major functioning shrines and temples like Wat Pho in Bangkok (home of the fabulously relaxing Buddha) there is no conflict in the Thai mind between being open for the business of tourism and still functioning as a place of worship.

This applies to the realm of food as well, as for every beautiful smell of grilling meats and fondant spices you are likely to sniff in a Thai market there are an equal (if not greater?) number of malodorous stenches arising from the bowels of the earth that in the west could simply not go together. For someone trying to get over a six day bout of Montezuma’s (or the Thai equivalent) revenge, this was really overwhelming, the encroaching heat doesn’t help and soon you wish for the enclosure of your air-conditioned room.

But you can’t stay inside for long. The lure of the tropical Hollywood film set island calls. I thought of trying to avoid the crowds and enquired about renting a long-tailed boat (and driver!) and head out to Phi Phi Lay before sun up but the price as astronomical and so I decided to go with the rest of the ‘audience’ and do a regular snorkeling tour, for which I would valiantly trade a snorkel for my camera. So bright and early next morning I met with my tour group who were already bobbing about in a long-tail and we set off into the bay in the direction of Phi Phi Lay, along with, in various modes of vessel, the supporting cast of Ben Hur and Cleopatra combined.

The ride out there was extraordinary.

Armed with my already-ingested mega-dose of travel sickness pills I was feeling very nice as we tore through the aqua sea, limestone cliffs rising up around us like great sea creatures from journey to the center of the earth.  Once out of the bay the open sea quite intense, my twin concern being for my camera as huge splashes as the boat hit the oncoming waves threatened to soak it completely and also the little girl beside me who was with her father (I think they were Scandinavian) with nary a life jacket in sight. This casualness with child safety with which I have been having a particularly hard time since arriving in Thailand is not something I have witnessed much in the west, there being laws to say what you can and can’t do with children. In Thailand let’s say these laws are notable by their absence and children, babies are piled onto mopeds with both their parents and extended family, and of course any kind of helmets or protection is non-existent.

But here on the ocean I am soon distracted by the extraordinary beauty around me as we pull into the most amazing cove of crystalline water where the water is so clear it seems as if the boats are floating in air.  I am in photographer’s paradise once again.

I am now deeply entrenched in my Buddhist stance of accepting The Now and disassembling any expectations of what Hollywood has built up around the idea of the perfect beach that was captured in that film, the takings from which has probably added substantially to Thailand’s GNP. You remember the first time di Caprio comes out from the jungle onto that pristine beach, the white sand disappearing into the turquoise wash, the perfectly enclosing rim of giant limestone megaliths (surely that makes a lagoon?) strewn with jungle green abutting a perfectly sky-blue sky? When we arrived by boat into Maya bay it was like the day before the shoot with a technical crew of hundreds and a cast of thousands as audience.  People nevertheless did jump overboard and join the hundreds of other snorkelers.

Hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves…

Phi Phi Ley, Long-tailed boat view

Sailing to Paradise





One of the coves on Phi Phi Ley





The Beach, infrared







My legs on The Beach, Phi Phi Lay, Thailand



Long-tail boatman, Maya beaach, aka The Beach



The Dutch girls in the long-tailed boat, on the way to Phi Phi Lay, Thailand



Sheer cliffs of Phi Phi Lay, Thailand





After the swim

Maya Beach, aka 'The Beach', Phi Phi Lay, Thailand











Sending thoughts of help to the Japanese people...

I just heard about the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsumami and the current devastation they are experiencing. Four nuclear reactors are currently in crisis mode. They're predicting thousands dead. Sending positive thoughts to the Japanese people during this dreadful time...

Thai equivalent of Montezuma's Revenge

Stuck in a Bangkok hotel (thank god for air conditioning, it's going to be 34 degrees out there today!!) with the Asian equivalent of Montezuma's Revenge. After mountains of motillium and replacement salts (thanks Alice!) after four days of this now I am still feeling kind of rotten, dizzy, low-energy and the dreaded liquid evacuations are still in full force. I can't deal with the heat feelilng like this so I'll have to stay cocooned in this air-conditioned hotel until it's better. Hopefully all will be well by Monday for my flight to Cambodia (Siem Reap). Hopefully before then as I have software and other orders to fulfil before leaving Bangkok...

The Sailor from Gibraltar

Long-tailed boat in the Thai style, Pataya Beach, Koh Lipe

Bedraggled, dazed, confused and exhausted after travelling on every mode of transport know to man from Koh Phangan across Thailand south and westwards (close to the Malaysian border) I arrived on the beach in Koh Lipe twenty four hours after setting off. Magic-hour sun drenched the beach and tinged everything with gold, intensifying the colours. The beach seemed so alive with people, colours, laughter floating towards me from the volley ball game going on a bit further along, and the murmur of voices from the myriad bars and restaurants that stretched the length of the strand. I still couldn’t find the Paradise Cottage resort and I was lugging my huge suitcase up the beach. At one point I stopped, not able to go on with exhaustion and that exasperation that takes over when, after such keen effort over a prolonged period, you seem to be empty of all reserves. It happens. I saw a girl in a vibrant bikini and asked her if she knew where this paradise place was. Another person stopped and between them they tried to work out the location of the particular paradise I was looking for. Neither of them seemed to have a clue where it was, then I noticed a man running down to us with a big grin saying, Welcome, welcome, can I help? He reached us, breathless, and seemed a bit intoxicated, but pleasantly so. As it turned out he didn’t know where it was either, was acting purely on alcoholic exuberance (but as I found out later this was layered over a basically very friendly nature) he rushed back to his friends to ask. Some very brown German started gesticulating down the beach and my friend rushed back asking to help me with my bag. I didn’t say no. I was surprised and relieved.

Finally we found it and I thanked him, said I could manage from here. He invited me down for a beer when I was settled. I had a quick shower in my little bungalow (which was outside in a beautiful tiles bathroom that reminded me of Greece, the rest of this ‘paradise’ consisted of a basic bamboo hut with an oversize bed and a fan). Refreshed I headed over to where I’d seen them sitting and he effusively asked me if I’d like a beer and invited me to sit down on a big communal lounge facing the ocean. A few beers later it was like we had known each other for a very long time indeed. I asked where he was saying and he pointed out to the ocean, See that light? What I thought was a star turned out to be the light on the top of the mast of his sailing ship, Spirit. They had arrived a few hours earlier, anchored off-shore and came in on a little dingy moored a bit down the beach and they’d been sitting there since, drinking beer and watching stray humans arrive from different parts of the world onto a little beach with the whitest softest sand I have ever experienced.

We talked about everything, children, Montessori education, life, the universe. The way he talked about children was a revolution to me. He had taken the Montessori training years before in a class full of women because he wanted the very best education for his two children. We talked about chance meetings, ships in the night and the wonderful people we’d both been meeting on our travels. At this stage he was more than a little drunk, but still very sharp and articulate, his English absolutely perfect with only the vaguest sense of a German accent softening the edges. I shared food with him and his friends and later watched the fire thrower who performed in front of us, brilliantly and adroitly spinning a wand with fire burning on both ends. The beach had lit up with the on-coming night, the beautiful temperature, the fantastically warm company. My friend Michael was more than a little drunk and more than a little affectionate. It was nice the way we hit it off, but because he was more than a little drunk our chance meeting and friendly ease with each other was unbalancing what I could see was a very balanced mind. He started telling me about his dream, that he had two choices, to go back to his life (and his children, who at ten and fourteen lived with him while their mother, from whom he was separated, lived in Germany while they lived in Austria) or to just take off with the sailboat wherever the wind took him. He said this with such a glint of far longing in his eyes it made me smile. He said he’d like to do this with me.

I could see it was the drink talking, although he could possibly feel the same way when not drunk. I said it wasn’t a choice at all, seeing as how he was the current carer of his obviously beloved children. He couldn’t just walk away from them. He reluctantly agreed but kept coming back to this proposition. I had already told him how I’d always wanted to learn to sail. He said he thought, no, at this point he knew he could teach me the ropes in three days. Crash course in crewing. In spite of the alcohol I felt this offer was not just the raving of a drunken mind and could definitely become my new reality. I think if I’d have said yes I would at this moment be on board that ship sailing first to Langkawi and then on, who knows where…

I said I would like to see the boat though and he said he’d show it to me in the morning at 8am. Perhaps we both knew this would never happen but we arranged it anyway, and I was indeed there at that time but in the morning light with a much clearer head and a bit of distance he obviously thought it wouldn’t be the best idea and so no dingy made its way from The Spirit over to the shore this morning while I waited there.

There were two sailboats out there and I didn’t know which was his. At one point, while I watched, one of them started sailing away towards the horizon. With my lens I zoomed into the name on the other boat, it was called The Wildflower.

All day I’ve been reminded of a story by Marguerite Duras called, The Sailor from Gibraltar. It’s about a woman who has a brief intense love affair with a sailor she meets in Gibraltar but they separate with no contact details for each other. After coming into money years later she learns to sail a boat, gets a crew and heads off ostensibly in search of this elusive person whom they never quite find. They come into ports and hear rumours of how they have just missed him, his boat just left for Aruba, or possible Rio de Janeiro. So they up sails and head off after the rumour. The crew speculate that there is no sailor at all, that this searching dream of the woman is how she has chosen to live, that the search is better than the actual finding. I can’t help feeling incredibly sad today…

Possibly I’ll meet up with him again…

The Wildflower, anchored off Pataya beach, after Spirit had sailed away...

Supplemental: What I’ve learned so far…

·         There’s a bit of a gap between the Thai use of words like ‘Paradise’ and ‘Palace’ and my own understanding of those terms

·         I am distressed by the way the Thai people treat animals. The number of miserable-looking cats and dogs (the latter always seem to have just birthed a litter and are dragging around two rows of ridiculously swollen teats under their bodies). The dogs, miserable with mange and fleas and lethargic with hunger roam wild, sleeping in any shade they can find, begging food from restaurant tables and being kicked away. A common sound is the yelping of some poor cur who’s received the narrow end of human kindness. 

Pataya beach, Koh Lipe

      Monday, March 07, 2011

      My last day on Koh Lipe, which as it turns out, I’m quite happy about. This island is a tropical paradise with all the prerequisites: turquoise seas, bowing palm trees and the whitest softest sand I have ever walked on (feels like walking through talcum powder), but if you are not interested in frying in the wilting 100 degree sun (believe me, many are) or equally burning up in the magnification of water while snorkeling, and once you’ve taken all the photos of Thai high-prowed long-tailed boats you will need for a lifetime then you quickly realize this is a pretty boring place. It is full of regular tourists, not travelers and I would definitely associate myself with the latter at this stage. After the incredible friendliness and openness of the people at the Sanctuary, the quickly-established intimacies, I can’t help but feel let down to be back to normality and people who barely grunt if you say hello to them, after they’ve gotten over the shock of such forwardness.

    
       And it’s so much more developed and touristy than I’d imagined, or read in any of the descriptions, my impressions were that it was still an undiscovered jewel in the crown of exquisite islands that make up the Tarutao islands that form part of the Tarutao National Marine park and you can’t get much further south in Thailand than Koh Lipe, situated almost on the Malaysian border. I travelled twenty four hours from the other side of the country and much further north to get here and I’m glad I came but also looking forward to heading north tomorrow to the Krabi area, to Koh Lanta and  then on to Phi Phi. I have a feeling now I should have stopped at Tarutao island, where the boat stopped on the way here. It’s an actual park, but with camping sites and cabins, and it looked so much more wild and remote. After Tarutao the speedboat to Koh Lipe stopped for a photo opportunity (really!) on Koh Khai, a little gem with a beautiful rock formation showing the azure sea through a cave like gap in the rock. Everyone piled off and got the requisite photos in front of this unusual thing and then on to Lipe where the bay awas chocka with what seemed like hundreds of taxi boats plying their way across the clear waters to the string of hotels and resorts on Pataya beach. I guess I should have chosen the other side of the island with that exceptional cove that is much quieter and picturesque.

Koh Khai, Tarutao National Marine Park, Thailand

Near Sunset Beach, Koh Lipe, my favourite beach on Koh Lipe

Lone Guy on beach, Koh Lipe

'Paradise' Cottage resort, where I stayed, Pattaya Beach, Koh Lipe

Why come to Koh Lipe? The answer's in this picture...

        I’m missing my daily yoga and Thai massage sessions with Wuth and today I secumbed to belly problems from something I ate, lots of fruit, toast and French fries. Some of the inevitable joys of travelling! I hope my next stop has me meeting up with more like-minded people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet on Koh Phangan, travelling here and also my first night here with the Sailor from Gibraltar. It’s been rich but I’m lonely now, surrounded by people…

Big Mama with Wuth in the background, where I went everyday in the Sanctuary for his miraculous 'Lifetime Memory Massage' 




      In the evening a storm blew up, as sudden as anything, darkening the sky to cobalt blue with streaks of ash and vanilla. The light became what photographer's die for, roam the world for, track across deadly wastes and tropical paradises for. The rain suddenly flashed down, the sky blooming pink with the setting sun, then golden with the clarity of polished crystal.