Pedal Red Road by Rita

Rita pedals her New Star bike into Siem Reap for ice java. Cold and delicious.

Men playing chess slap wooden pieces, gesticulate & yell at high decibels.

On the idiot box in a tea house Thai kick boxers pummel each other with knees and gloves and violent fury to the endless delight of millions suffering displaced latent aggression.

WHAMO. KILL HIM. KILL HIM. YES.

Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. features local boys and men screaming at a TV, Kill Him. Kill Him. Kill Him.

Fernando Pessoa

Idle men playing cards sit with their backs to a river in the shade of empty white tourist vans waiting for bodies brushing dust. Looking busy is fun.

She pedals across a bridge over a wide brown river bisecting the town. She goes to a car wash business with a small restaurant. The woman owner is pleasant and happy with high cheekbones. Pregnant with her second child. She employs four kitchen kids and six for the car wash. Her husband is a driver. He sleeps in a green hammock. She plays cards with the workers.

The car wash business has two raised cement bays for cars. Today it is empty.

Rita eats a simple meal of wide egg noodles, carrots, bamboo shoots, pork and eggs.

A car wash boy wears a green sarong towel. He lays his one white shirt on a rusty brown cement platform. He scrubs his shirt with a bar of soap, turns on the high-pressure hose blasting flying soap from the shirt. He rinses it.

He walks over to a metal rack shakes out his best shirt and hangs it up. He adjusts the collar and fixes the top button. He slaps water out of a yellow t-shirt, a small towel, another dark shirt and hangs them.

He owns two pairs of long dark pants. He turns them inside out on hangers to dry in tropical heat. He disappears behind a green plastic screen for a nap. No cars today. Dreaming in dust he hears hysterical males across the river of time yelling, Kill Him. Kill Him. Kill Him.

Culture is what you are. Nature is what you can be.

Down south two French women arrive at the Blissful Guesthouse in Kampot. Kampot is famous for pepper and old decrepit French colonial buildings filled with literary hooks along a river flowing to the sea and packs of vicious starving canines.

It took Iraqi gunmen three months to kill 58,000 stray dogs in Baghdad after the war.

A traveler writing in a bougainvillea garden said to the women, Welcome to Paradise.

Is this paradise, said one woman.

Paradise is wherever you are, said traveler.

One woman with a cloud of white hair smiled, You give us a great power.

You already have the power, said traveler. You are a light warrior.

We can talk about that later.

I am a now not a later.

They went to reception. There were no rooms. They wheeled their bags through sands of time. They discussed life’s vagaries in fluent French while laughing at the absurdity of it all with existential wisdom.

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

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

 

Feel Experience With Camera

How many tourists only see through their camera/cell phone? Millions.

According to Rita, They feel the experience of 8th century Angkor artistic splendor with their cold impersonal little tools. Their experience is defined by camera. Obscura.

It’s not about understanding the Khmer people, culture, food, art, music, and language. It’s about feeling with a camera. They are in a big fat hurry.

They’ve learned through hard fast lessons to trust the machine. It is their weapon against mediocrity and boredom and alienation and shallow emptiness. They don’t comprehend the intricacies outside the machine. They believe the machine will save them.

The machine controls them.

They accept this reality. They give up their consciousness.

They press optical machines tight against their faces, piercing retinas, flickering lids. Point and shoot. They lower the device and stare with hard lost eyes at the image of their transient memory. They judge it. Evaluate. Crimp. DELETE.

Shoot again  ... point  ... shoot  ... delete  ... repeat  ... a snapshot  ... snap a shot  ... preserve this moment forever  ...  Quick  ... they must go  ... to the next great big thing  ... they are in a hurry  ... Death is closer than white on rice.

The tuk-tuk driver is a happy man. He waits as they stuff eggs, watermelon and soft bread into tired bored faces. They eat like starving animals.

They run in, around and out of the temples.

They point shoot and delete.

Hurry. They have no time to see their obscurity. This loss and sense of amnesia envelops them. It accompanies them through electromagnetic radioactive meltdowns. It is a dark cloud of forgetting. They remember to forget.

They are on a Homeric quest of infinite grandeur and infinite magnitude.

Their memory card is full. They attach electrodes to a cerebral cortex and press the DownLoad switch. Memories of Apsara dancers, elephants, monkeys, temples and celestial deities flicker on a screen behind their eyes.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion smiles. 

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