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September 2005 Along the dusty road, you pass ancient two-wheeled carts, pulled by large cows. Half wild herds of buffalo make their lazy way through lush dense jungle, driven by barefoot boys wearing krama. Rice farmers squat in their flooded fields, their heads protected from the intense Cambodian sun by pointed wide-brimmed straw hats. Children play, casing pigs and chickens under the houses on stilts, whose thatched walls are made of woven palm leaves or shredded bamboo. Many of the front doors are adorned with a plastic bag of red liquid to ward off the vampires believed to drink the blood of young girls. Women, wearing traditional dress, their heads wrapped in krama, walk or ride bicycles along the side of the road. Merchants on bicycles, over-loaded with colourful plastic kitchenware, ride from house to house, selling their goods, the original pedlars.

Koh Ker near Siem Reap

In the ancient times of the Jen La period (6th to 9th Century) and the Angkor period (9th to 12th Century), stone was considered sacred, reserved only for the construction of religious buildings. Even the king lived in a wooden structure, demonstrating his subservience to the Hindu gods, in the days before Buddhism swept through Indochina. Chau Da Guan confirms that while the people lived in homes made of thatch, the king and other royals lived in grand homes made of precious teak wood. Almost as proof of the enduring power of the deity, the jungle consumed the dwellings of the kings and common folk, erasing their existence, with only the ancient Chinese text left to remind us that they once lived. But the stone temples, places of worship, still stand, in an eternal battle of the elements, as the sheer faith of stone grapples with the never-ending advance of the primordial jungle.

The well mapped, historic tourist sites of other countries have been institutionalised and commercialised, until the dignity of the ancients has been reduced to a sterile Disney World exhibition complete with a T-shirt and mouse ears. But, in Cambodia history, like the landscape, is still wild. The past is still being written, as archaeologists fight to reclaim countless temples from hundreds of years of jungle growth.

Cambodia is an exciting country, full of change and movement. Even the ancient temples, many nearly one thousand years old, are in constant metamorphosis, as they are rediscovered and preserved. This is not Europe, where history is a stagnant fact, belonging to the past. Cambodia is a country of vibrant active culture. People don’t come to Cambodia looking for a boring story of extinct civilizations. They come to Cambodia looking for adventure. And, they find it!

Watching from the window of an air-conditioned minibus, the Cambodian countryside is just more TV. But, on a motorcycle you experience everything about the world around you. You notice the changes in temperature as you pass by a flooded rice field or lake. You smell the dusty earth, the green fields, and the herds of animals, which you have to dodge on the road. You hear the song of the farmers as they toil, and of the women as they walk. You taste the sweet waters of the afternoon rain. You feel like a time traveller, as eighty kilometres of traditional Khmer village life flies by you. The constant hum and vibration of your motorcycle engine lull you into a strange hypnosis, where nothing is real.

By the time you reach the Koh Ker temple complex, with its more than one hundred stone structures, you are ready for anything. Stepping off your bike and into the jungle, you feel like Laura Kroft or Indian Jones. No tour guides here, no guardrails, and no Yellow brick Road to follow, nothing separates you from the ancient monoliths except the limits of your own imagination.

You pick a direction and just go. The park is yours. Eventually, jungle overgrowth gives way to a path strewn with massive stones, like the toys of some giant child at play. The smell of wood fires drifts across the open field adding another dimension to your experience.

Monoliths begin to appear, tremendous stone sculptures bearing the tool marks of artisans from centuries gone. Stony constructs poke their way through the dense jungle, which has been trying to claim them. Defiantly, these stone-works, crafted by the ancient Khmer ancestors to honour the Hindu gods in a time before Buddhism spread through Indochina, push their way through the viny nets, towering over the earth.

The temples, built between 920 and 940 AD, are architechtural wonders, featuring peaked entranceways, supported by square columns. The perfectly square windows are ornately decorated with balustrades, demonstrating both the craftsmanship and the undying faith of the ancients. Over centuries, the 114 temples have fallen into various stages of disrepair, leaving a priceless litter of collapsed stone and statuary covering nearly every inch of the complex grounds. If you stoop, and push away the vines, you will see among the broken statues, massive lions, which once supported the rooves of the covered passage ways. You will also see fallen Hindu gods, Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma, almost like a metaphor for the ascension of Buddhism, in place of Hinduism.

Many of the temples feature linga, the Hindu statue of the falic symbol. The linga are often displayed attached to yoni, the symbol of female fertility. In ancient Hindu ceremonies, the monks would wash the linga with milk and water. Drains at the bottom of the yoni would direct the holy runoff to a spout, on the side of the temple, where the believers would come, and wash away their sadness. Although the annual Hindu ceremony is no longer practiced in Cambodia, locals still engage monks to ritualisticly wash them with the runoff, when they are sad. Once again demonstrating that these ancient temples are not just tourist attractions, but a living part of modern Khmer culture.

You are free explore the park uncovering temples for yourself. Some are completely overgrown, and require a keen I to be “discovered.” You could spend weeks in Koh Ker and still have weeks of new adventures ahead of you. Presat Tom was one of the most exciting adventures. This was a tall, castle like temple rising way up above the tree tops. Originally, there was a stone staircase leading all of the way to the top, but the lower third of the stairs were removed by French treasure hunters. Today, there is a wooden ladder, which leads to a nearly vertical climb up the stone steps. The view from the top is breath taking, particularly if you are able to summon up your time travel abilities and see the complex below, as it must have stood, a thousand years before.

In a number of locations, one could see where the statues of the Hindu gods were actually removed, after the coming of Buddhism. Several of the temples were scared by a huge hole in the floor, where robbers, following up oral legends, dug up the earth, looking for buried treasure. Sadly, all of the small details and sculptures have been carried off and sold. Many of the remaining sculptures bear the scars of thieves, thwarted in their attempts to steel the national antiquities.

My guide, Mr. Samban from Phnom Penh Tours, was explaining the ancient inscriptions found on the temple walls. “The writing system is called ancient Khmer.” I could see that it bore some similarity to modern Khmer. In trying to read one section, I was certain that it said “no smoking.”

Samban laughed. “That might be what it said if it were modern Khmer.” But, Samban went on to explain that the two languages used in ancient Hindu were Sanskrit and Pali. Both language remain a part of modern Khmer Buddhism, almost as Latin remains a part of Catholicism. “But the problem in doing translation.” Began Samban, “is that the writing system is ancient khmer, but the words are ancient Sanskrit or Pali, which almost none of us can speak today.” He went on to say that the ancient languages were taught at the Buddhist University in Phnom Penh, but that a shortage of translators has left many ancient texts untranslated.

As a trained linguist, I wanted to help out my Khmer hosts any way I could. So, drawing on all of my years of education and experience, I pieced together one of the inscriptions. “This text seems to be written in a primitive dialect of English.” I said. “It predicts the arrival of Amy and Thomas from Sydney in 2002.”

Samban shook his head. “That’s not an inscription. That’s graffiti. Amy and Thomas probably visited here in 2002.”

“So, the prediction did come true!” I marvelled.

The beauty of the park is that you are free to roam and experience, rather than merely look at history. One of the most amazing feelings is to not only touch the ancient stone structures, but to press your cheek up against the massive stone monoliths and feel the coldness and the centuries old power that lay inside. But, be respectful! The temples are still a holy site and must be preserved. Do not deface the temples, and do not steel anything. The bad karma you would get for robbing a temple could never be washed away.

To find out more about Koh Ker, or any of the historic sites in Cambodia, contact Mr. Long Leng at leng@abercrombiekent.com.kh
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To Buy Antonio's book Click Here Book Review of Antonio Graceffo's The Monk from Brooklyn Antonio Graceffo is an interesting author. Italian-American from Brooklyn, a former investment banker, martial arts expert and writer, The Monk from Brooklyn (ISBN 1-932966-10-2, Gom Press, 2004) chronicles his life in the Shaolin Temple in China, which is apparently the birthplace of Kung Fu. In essence, the book is a diary that revolves around Graceffo’s time spent at the famed Shaolin temple in China, to learn their secrets in martial arts. These are the Shaolin monks that have amazed the outside world with their super-athletic feats displayed by their Kung Fu abilities, and to study there was Graceffo’s ambition. Graceffo writes in a fairly laconic ‘hip’ style, with twists at the tail. “The novice and I hit it off right away. He is 25 years old and a good guy. Also, in the couple of hours I have been there, he hasn’t tried to steal from me.” Author Graceffo is good at observing the Chinese culture as seen in the Shaolin temple (and as exhibited by visiting Chinese families) and examination of the reasons behind the apparent differences between that culture and his own. For example, the Chinese produced no trash, whilst Graceffo did. ”Everything they eat comes out of the ground. There is no waste at all. I have a pile of trash next to my bed and don’t know what to do with it. There is no mechanism for disposal of trash here.” . Very early in his training, Graceffo looks at the Chinese students with him and writes, “I keep wondering what is the point of all this. For me it is a diversion. I am here to lose weight, improve my health, and learn some kung fu. This program will add to who I am. But for the regular students this program is who they are.” During this time of self-exploration for Graceffo he deduces one of the cornerstones of capitalism. “We Westerners derive much of our personal power from material wealth. In fact, we confuse purchasing power with personal power.” And a few pages later, “The power of money is amazing. But in the end, it is just a talisman. It is not real, though widely believed to be so.” However, by half way through his three months training, Graceffo begins to see the realities of living in this Chinese enclave, the tawdriness, the dirt, the intrigue and the deliberate lies. The onset of the SARS epidemic is the final blow, as truths and half truths are manipulated to attempt to exonerate Beijing. For me it was a very telling book, not so much explaining the intricacies of Kung Fu, but one that showed the chasm that exists between Eastern and Western philosophies. Whilst Antonio Graceffo did eat, sleep and work with the Chinese in the Shaolin temple, in the end, he was just a Chinese-speaking foreigner, as he points out in the epilogue. There are many lessons to be learned from Graceffo’s immersion in Chinese culture that can be applied to us here in Thailand, but not to the extremes, as experienced by this author. This is certainly no Lonely Planet travelogue! The following review was written by Lang Reid and appeared in the Chiangmai Mail, Issue 19, 2005 To buy The Monk From Brooklyn Click Here

The following are the previous articles that Antonio wrote for the magazine:

The Monk From Brooklyn ~ An American At The Shaolin Temple
Taklamakan Desert By Rickshaw ~ Venturing Through Western China
A Fresh Trek On The Roof Of Taiwan ~ Adventure In Taiwan
Paddling The Maekok River - In Indochina
Cambodian Director Preserving Khmer Culture, Through Martial Arts Movies ~ Preserving Cambodian Khmer Culture
Tracing A New River  - Doi Saket, Thailand
Caves And Crossbows ~ Spelunking And Archery With The Hill Tribes
Elephant Polo ~ The Biggest, Weirdest, Slowest, And Most Expensive Game In Thailand
The People Of Mekong Island ~ On The Tone Lesap River 
The Coronation Of A Cambodian King ~ King Norodom Sihamoni

To contact Antonio Click Here
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