Cambodia Day 6, Part 1: The Enchantment of Exploring Beng Mealea

That night I had a vivid dream of little Cambodian beggar children in front of the temples, only they were doing magic to get alms. I awoke and jotted down notes for a short story. On the plane ride over I had read Stephen King's On Writing, which is the only book of his I've read thus far. I disagreed with him on several points, but I thought some of his advice was quite useful, such as treating writing as a full time job that should be done every day whether you feel inspired or not. While in Cambodia I resolved to take a year off of paid work to just write, and I took many notes for short stories that eventually grew into the partially completed book I wrote that year.

Despite my midnight scribbling, I still awoke before my 4:30 a.m. alarm. I left the guesthouse at 5:00, again sitting on a motorcycle behind the young man from the guesthouse who had taken me on my previous out of town excursion. Most of the long ride was during the  pitch black pre-dawn. We saw the sunrise just before we reach Beng Mealea, my favorite part of the entire trip.

The temple is near the border with Thailand, and so it was good to see a sign stating that the area had been cleared of the landmine legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. Cambodia may be about the last place in the world I would ever decide to sleep out on my own. Between the landmines, the myriad of poisonous jungle animals, the disease-bearing mosquitoes, and the dirt cheap real accommodations, it would be absolutely insane to sleep hobo style beneath the stars. 

I was greeted by the now-familiar Naga balustrades.  

Beng Mealea has the same floor-plan as Angkor Wat, but is totally ruined. I'm quite glad that the modern world has both: one for the sake of historical knowledge and one to give the feel of true exploration.

Several children walked with me as I started down the path around the tumbled, overgrown stones.

At first I was annoyed because I wanted to explore the ruin by myself, but then a little boy beckoned me off trail. I followed him and the little girls, scrambling over piles of stones. They pointed out carvings and particularly impressive trees growing from ruins.

I only hesitated for a moment before ignoring my rule-following impulses and following them onto the rooftops and through dark passageways. I was giddy to be climbing over the ruins, just as I'd always imagined my toys doing as a child when they were being explorers.

 Striding atop partially collapsed stone rooftops felt as magical as the levitation that my dream-self had experienced a few hours earlier. Exploring the ruin wasn't quite enough to feel like I was Indiana Jones, but for a few hours I felt as if I inhabited his world.

 The children and I only rejoin the boardwalk at the end of the tour. I hardly saw any other people at all except a few tourists just entering the temple as my tour ended. Most of the time I just heard bird calls and our own footfalls. 

As I exited Beng Mealea, I saw cattle being herded past the naga balustrades. Whenever I saw Cambodian people going about their everyday lives in the midst of these world wonders, I was reminded of the strange fact that people can get used to anything. It is hard to appreciate the beautiful and fantastic elements of places that are so utterly familiar to us. As I write this three years later in my home town of Colorado Springs, I have a greater appreciation for the mountains visible out my parents' back windows after having seen people in Iceland mystified as to why I thought the volcanic landscapes around them were incredible, and after watching Cambodian people not even look up from the mundane tasks at hand to appreciate a temple that to me was pure magic.