Cambodia Day 4, Part 2: Kbal Spean

The next stop on my moto tour was Kbal Spean, the river of 1000 lingas. Lingas are symbols of Shiva as an infinite pillar, and also possibly a phallic symbol. 

The stop looked like an anonymous stretch of jungle, except for the parking lot full of tourists.

I followed the tourists and the trail up a stream.

Along the way, we noticed a spider about the size of my palm that had lost a leg.

At the top of the trail, carvings lined the stream bed. I was surprised they hadn't eroded away more, having been carved in the Angkor era. 

I tagged along with a tour group and eavesdropped and noticed where the guides pointed so that I could notice other carvings in the stream and along the path.

A typical Cambodian linga is a circle (or disk) that is inside a square inside an octagon.

At Kbal Spean there were many variations on that traditional symbol, and an abundance of the disks by themselves. To me they looked more like the tops of Lego than phali or pillars.

The jungle itself was also fascinating. Trees grew atop each other in the crowded ecosystem.

It was only early afternoon when I met back up with my driver.  On way back, we stopped at restaurant for some okay curry. There was a long wait for the food, during which I watched a Cambodian dubbing of The Gods Must Be Crazy. My driver spent the time watching stone carvings. He seemed honestly fascinated by the meticulous carving of tiny lines. I think he was glad to be away from the city and his duties at the guesthouse. I liked him because his smile seemed genuine and he looked half apologetic and sympathetic whenever he asked if I want to buy something, and he never asked twice.

Back in Siem Reap, I had most of the afternoon free. I bought some ice cream, which was amazing in the heat, and sat in the shade to write the notes that have made it possible to write these entries three years late. I sat on a bench in a row of far-spaced single white men, mostly reading guidebooks. We loners seemed to have similar habits. Later, I sat in Royal gardens park trying to write but I kept being interrupted by men running schools for orphans, who were only in town one day a month to buy books and supplies. I had been warned by travel guides that this was a common scam, and judging by the frequency of people who were only in town one day a month, that seems likely. Wandering around town, I was amused by this billboard: 

I presume it depends on the use of "okay" meaning "alright, without concern", though it is far funnier to think of it as "okay" meaning "of middling quality".  As I meandered towards dinner, I saw this sign and noticed that the Korean Hangul letters were just a transliteration of the English: 

 I arrived early and so had to wait until the kitchen was ready before ordering roast eel and chicken with a spicy thick soup. The eel was in a delicious spicy sauce, but so messy I later used the meal as the background for part of a short story. Here's an excerpt: "Grilled marinated eel, like spaghetti, can easily be categorized as food that should not be ordered on a first date. It’s hard to figure out how to attack it. The only options I thought of were to pop pieces into my mouth and spit out the bones, poke and scrape at them with chopsticks and hope to pry off enough meat to be worth grabbing, or to use my hands to pry out the spinal cords. None of these methods is pretty or dignified, and I opted for the last one since spitting seemed the least desirable and since I hate wasting food." Other exotic foods in Cambodia include fried tarantulas, and Lonely Planet asks that travelers not eat the endangered animals available, so I limited my culinary adventurousness to the eels.