Tuk-tuk by Rita

A Cambodian loudspeaker blasted: Now Here This!

The tuk-tuk leaves in five minutes departing for points unknown. A massive short celestial event known as Your Sweet Life on the tourist conveyor belt departs in five minutes.

You are advised to assemble all necessary documents, certified approval stamps, water, greasy guide books, sunscreen, funny money and so on. You will visit Raw Mind on your short, fast, easy tour.

Bring your life with you and a glossy germane Laughing Co(s)mic Planet guidebook with creased missing pages.

If you attempt to read while moving at the speed of light - 186,000 miles per second - you will discover a new sensation and perspective in another dimension beyond sight and sound.  

You are a vanishing particle in space. You will be surprised or traumatized depending on your sensitivity to realize your experience at Angkor is not about seeing and feeling temple magic and energy.

You will DO Angkor. Check it off your to do list. Less is more. Please conclude all private and group discussions, agreements, disagreements or false reasonable arguments with your fellow travelers. Talking time is finished. 

The tuk-tuk driver has his helmet and vest. His vest has a green four-digit number. If he tries to bring you into Angkor without the vest he faces massive surprises. He will lose his job.

If he loses his job he will return to his village with his ten children sleeping in hammocks. He will plant rice and provoke white cows with Marxist control sticks. He will manipulate plowshares through mud. The biggest dream for many young Cambodian men is to be a tuk-tuk driver.

If he loses his tuk-tuk job his family may starve to death. This is a common problem here - Death by starvation. If you survive you win. Life loves a winner.

If he dies you will be held in escrow. - Old French; a scrap, a roll of parchment.

A tuk-tuk driver has an easy job. He drives you to a temple and crashes out. You feed him. He takes you back where you started. You pay him and he goes home. He gives his wife some money. He spends the rest drinking Angkor Draft with friends.

He makes $15-25 for the day.

The average Cambodian’s daily wage is $3.00.

Woman drivers are rare in Siem Reap. Like clean drinking water, sanitation, quality health care, OK condoms and student talking time in robotic factory schools.

Women work in massage parlors, restaurants and guesthouses. They are the guest and you are the house. Your house has 1,001 symbolic rooms: the basement is where your unconscious demon fears and ocean dreams live-breath-laugh and dance revealing inner visions.

Clean all your rooms. Your word janitor takes out the garbage.

Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff. Atoms make up everything.

You are a housekeeper of perception, sensation, form, symbols, silence & nothing.

A woman doesn’t work as a tuk-tuk driver because:

- it’s too dangerous

- it’s inappropriate

- it’s foolish

- they lack the cash

- they lack education, intelligence, drive, initiative

- they haven’t broken free of ingrained social and cultural oppressive stereotypes. The System believes her place is in the home, producing offspring, nurturing kids, cooking, feeding the dead incense, feeding the dying, feeding the elderly, feeding the kids, feeding hubby, washing, and cleaning. She’s happy.

- her family will kill her with love and affection.

Thirty years ago a Cambodian woman was lucky to finish primary or 9th grade like in Sapa, Vietnam. She married young. She stayed home forever and a day. She produced children in assembly line operations with high quality control standards, modern medicine and umbilical cords.

It will take another generation before women become tuk-tuk drivers.

Your mother was appointed to have you. 

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Bayon

The Bayon is a three-tiered pyramid temple with 49.5 towers and faces. Archeologists theorize the multitude of faces symbolize Buddha looking over the entire country. Eyes are everywhere, angled degrees. Detailed bas-reliefs.

Energy, cunning, silence and exile avoids crowds by discovering solace and serenity in secluded places. Not a single tourist explored Western walls or courtyards.

Playing with rocks Rita and friends created small Mani statues.

You cannot photograph space, said Rita sitting below shaded faces.

You cannot photograph a memory, said Tran.

A photograph has an aura of death, said Z.

Temples are hidden in deep forests, labyrinths with mazes and magical light-shadow play.

This is the day of my dreams, said Devina.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

Hand Luggage by a Nurse

The Australian nurses prepared to return home to family, friends and medical school after three weeks on Ground Zero living short-term personal evolutionary variables of medical, emotional and scientific truths.

Before leaving one arranged her heavy deep real life changing Cambodian experience in her hand luggage. She wondered, How can I get my entire heavy deep real humbling life changing experience into this very tiny bag?

This serious question troubled her for a second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year and remaining sweet existence. It’s her experience. She knows it’s impossible to check it all the way through. She will have to carry it. 

She assembles it on the floor along with fragrant spices, Khmer cotton cloth decorated with elephants and yellow silk scarves.

Her profound experience is a poor slum village near Siem Reap. She loves everyone there because she lived with them. She took care of the people. She held them. She gave children medicine and water. She cried herself to sleep every night. She suffered from nightmares surrounded by dying crying children, Save me Save me.

One woman in the village takes care of sixteen children.

Thirsty, hungry, exhausted sick children, women and men exist.

She puts the survivors of this one little village into her bag. She discards everything else.

She saves weight because there is no clean drinking water. She throws in handfuls of rice and fried bananas for nourishment during the long flight to Sydney.

She doesn’t know how many will survive. She’s ready to carry her experience home.

She knows it will scare the hell out of her friends, family and colleagues.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Bantey Kdei - Ta Phrom by Rita

Evidence of intelligent life on Earth is exaggerated. It’s a rumor and a myth. Sit still long enough and you’ll see/hear some wild, anxiety filled conversations. Filled with interruptions.

Barbarian Voice monkeys interrupt each other. They cancel each other out. It’s an endemic social disease  ... short attention span? No problem. People love to be understood before they understand. This explains their emotional fear, lack of focus and anxiety. Roll your bones. Love my bones, said a t-shirt in Sapa, Vietnam.

Who’s dragging around this bag of bones, said Leo.

We are a bundle of pure sensations, said Zeynep. It is a path of authenticity.

That’s been the problem on the trip, said an American girl on a work-study NGO program in Cambodia, No one’s giving us change. Hahaha.

Change comes from within.

400 Khmer mothers and their children wait outside the Children’s Hospital to get a free pain killer pill. The placebo is blue and free. Orange pain pills cost $1. Few can afford orange. Life is a painkiller.

Sound-symbol-sign-word.

Rita and storytellers explored Banteay Kdei and Ta Phrom.

Kdei is perfect for walking and swallowing dust. A sun yellow butterfly led the way. It explored the perimeter sensing jungle and stone perspectives. Wandering outside temples gives you the feeling of natural space acknowledging deep green forests, said Rita, I do this at every temple, it’s rare to see tourists explore the outside, because intelligence and curiosity and taking risks on Earth is rare.

Tourist sheep are in a disciplined hurry. They march along following other sheep on broken stone paths. They wander around, make a lot of noise, pose for pictures and march out. The bus is leaving for another temple.

They look serious and sad. Unhappy people in a happy world.

They are controlled by unknown unconscious diabolical forces. It’s the silent ticking mechanism on their wrist near a pulse saying faster.

Leo shared a Tibetan truth  ...  

I would rather be a tiger for one day than a sheep for a thousand years.

Rita and friends explored gentle forest winds. It’s a slow walking meditation.

I engaged all my senses, said Leo.

Thick dust is a welcome relief after stones, said Tran.

I am light and shadows dancing through leaves, said Devina.

All nature all the time, said Zeynep.

Butterfly leads me into interior passages and shadow play experiences, said Rita. Butterfly shows me mysterious art and deep unconscious space, it takes one life to reach the center and then you’re back where you started, amazing  ...  Ha-ha.

It’s a long walk, said Devina.

Prohm is where the most famous photographed tree on planet Earth grows, said Rita. It entwines itself around and through soft stones. It’s a zoo as idiots line up to take a photo, pushing and shoving and jostling to have their picture taken with the tree and roots as Italian, French and German tongues wag like mongrels in heat.

Life is a bitch, said a sad tourist focusing their plastic toy.

The Japanese and Chinese are total image addicts. Obsessed with posing in doorways and passages with carvings, plants, ferns and leaves and tall trees, thick brown, green gnarled roots above the surface, scary monster leaves and yellow, black, red, golden butterflies to be overwhelming.

We don’t have this beauty at home they lament. We have cement.

Tourists on their great quest feel the experience with their cameras. They behave like the temples are a Dizzy Land amusement park.

Shatter their illusions with the power of laughter, said Rita.

And silence, whispered Omar.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged

 

Angkor Wat by Rita

All Angkor Wat material is by Rita, fourteen, author of Ice Girl in Banlung. She is a resident tour guide and archaeological expert. Her food, transport and daily salary was paid by Dancing Mouse, a Khmer curator and art historian.

Angkor Wat – The City of Temples - is the largest spiritual building on Earth. It is a peaceful mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism. This makes it unique. It dates from the 9^th - 13th century.

Most tourists dash in, around and through for 2-3 days of their very short existence. They get to Angkor Wat to see the sunrise with hoards. They climb steep stairs to see the sunset with hoards. It’s a human zoo.

They visit the high points: Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, the interior of Bayon and, depending on time and planning, other temples of interest. There are over 1,000 temples at Angkor. Most people hearing the word Angkor imagine only the main temple. There are plenty of cool uncrowded temples to enjoy.

A day pass costs $37, a 3-day pass is $70 and a seven-day pass $100. The longer pass allows visitors the luxury of time - life’s great wealth - to enjoy the diversity of Angkor over a month.

I suggest you visit The National Museum and galleries around town to learn about Angkor history in advance. Be aware that Thailand owns 50% of The National Museum. Khmer do not go to their museum.

For $25 I hired Pat, a tuk-tuk driver with three kids to feed. We left before dawn. A tuk-tuk is a motorcycle pulling a simple covered sofa carriage. The air was chilly and refreshing. We reached the main entrance. It resembled a well-designed airport immigration office with windows and attendants for the 1-3-7 day tickets. I paid for seven, they took my picture and a girl punched my ticket. Buy a ticket and take the ride. The meter began running.

We drove through deep mysterious forests on empty roads past forgotten shadows and villagers stoking cooking fires near wooden stilt homes. The road skirted a long deep reflecting pool at Sras Srang.

We stopped for a noodle breakfast. A brilliant orange ball of flaming gas rose over flat brown fields. I salute the sun!

We headed for Banteay Srei, 37 km from town. Objective: get there for early light with peace and quiet before buses of sheep.

Srei was built in 987 AD and never a royal temple. Small intimate and designed by women with delicate hands. The carvings of pink sandstone cover the temple. Reliefs are deep and beautiful, the most incredible at Angkor. Covered by forest and earth for centuries, it was discovered by a lost French madman.

After Srei we continued north to Kbal Spean. We climbed through forests for 1.5 km. This is the source of waters for Angkor and the Siem Reap River. Water flows over 100m of carved sacred lingams and Hindu deities, Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma.

The Sanskrit name is Sahasralinga, or “River of a Thousand Lingas.”

We headed southeast of Siem Reap to the Roluos Group, a series of three temples: Bakong, Preah Ko and Lolei, dating from the 8th-9th century.

Roluos is a pre-Angkor site.

Bakong was consecrated in 881 AD. The layout follows Mount Meru, with five ascending levels, moats, and ten surrounding temples. It was reconstructed from 1936-1942 under the direction of Maurice Glaize, the conservator of Angkor.

Preah Ko, or Parameswara, “The Supreme God,” or Shiva was built in 880 AD. It contains a stele in Sanskrit with an inscription about war, fearsome action in battle, flashing swords and invincibility - a eulogy to Indra Varman I.

Lolei, 893 AD. Four brick buildings in poor condition sit on an island above a former reservoir. The lintels, doors and inscriptions explaining the construction and divisions of tasks are well preserved.

Book of Amnesia Unabridged