travelswithalice

January 09, 2007

ANGKOR WAT

Six o’clock in the morning and Stuart and I had been up for an hour and a half. We had found a vacant spot in what seemed like the right place to be and sat in companionable silence with a host of like-minded pilgrims, waiting for the sun to rise over Angkor Wat.

I sat uneasily on a slab of stone; it felt cold and damp. I dreaded to think how it would look in the light. Or what might be crawling underneath. I had no idea where we were exactly. I was in the dark literally and figuratively.

We had squeezed through and climbed over a tightly packed crowd of shadowy figures stationed in a staircase to get to this vacant spot. I could just make out the ground below- not much of a drop but still, I didn’t dare get up to go around the corner of the ledge for a better vantage point. I had seen a big group of people there earlier as we followed the beam of somebody’s flashlight.

I was so excited. Thrilled to be there. Everyone around me seemed just as excited. I imagined a low-level charge of electricity crackling in the cool pre-dawn air. There was a hushed reverence even in the way people picked their way in the dark. We spoke in whispers and flinched when someone used a flash.

Then a voice brashly called out: “Coffee!” An embarrassed round of giggles, then, "How much?" someone ventured.

The spell was broken. It was a tourist thing after all.

Meanwhile, the horizon was lightening and people started to find their voices. Flashbulbs began to pierce holes in the dark. Somebody argued with the coffee vendor. Time to move on.

Stuart and I climbed down from our perch and walked towards a crowd of people standing a short distance away. It wasn't until we got closer that I saw the pond that was half ringed by a crush of expectant photographers armed with a range of equipment in varying levels of sophistication: from the impressive, serious cameras with really useful view finders, all the way to the casually reliable cell phones.

The perfectly still surface of the pond repeated in reverse format the drama playing before us. Morning had etched a silhouette of the spires of Angkor Wat. A virtual paper cutout pinned on a softly colored dawn sky.

What a beautiful way to start the day. Stuart's birthday.

Perfect.

Labels: Angkor Wat, birthday holiday, Cambodia

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # January 09, 2007

Bangkok- bombed on New Year's Eve, literally!

BANGKOK
Bombed on New Year's Eve. Literally!

That was December 28, our first full day in Siem Reap. This was our Holiday holiday. We had been in Bangkok for Christmas, came to Cambodia for Stuart’s birthday, and were to return to Bangkok for New Year’s. It all worked out very well, despite the bombs in Bangkok.

I’ll tell you about the night the bombs went off in Bangkok before I tell you about magical Angkor.

Actually, there isn’t much to tell.

We were on our first round of hotel bubbly- Stuart had refused to call it champagne after seeing the label. Nonetheless, it was free and it tasted good so we were not complaining. We had four more hours to kill before midnight.

Two of the guest relations ladies were out of uniform and looked festive in their cocktail dresses. The lounge buzzed with holiday chatter. CNN was on mute.

The Breaking News banner appeared on screen and the bottom ticker said something about bombs in Bangkok. Before my mind could begin to register what it all meant, people started to congregate around the TV, drinks in hand.

I walked over too, almost in slow motion. There were sketchy reports about bombs going off in several parts of Bangkok, one in the market area.

I said softly to no one in particular, “Oh my goodness, we were just there.”

Or very near there anyway. We had gone for a massage somewhere and passed the market on our way back to the hotel earlier that afternoon. I wanted to go to the night market for the countdown but we had already booked at the hotel club. So we thought we’d just freshen up and have a drink at the lounge, then go back out to the night market while waiting for party time at the hotel.

I wish I had more dramatic events to report- eyewitness stories and all that. The fact is, at 87+- that’s the club at the Conrad Hotel- it was business as usual. Apart from us canceling our pre-midnight sortie to the market, our party plans were hardly dented by the bombs that shocked the rest of the world.

Labels: Bangkok, bombs, CNN, night market

posted by Alice Dimalanta Jones # January 09, 2007

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