Coming home late from the temple trip described recently in this space, I ended up with a leg injury that will leave me hobbled for a few weeks. (A motorcycle was involved. I’ll spare you the details. If you come visit, we can go out to the sidewalk in front of our place for a re-enactment of the whole uninteresting tale.)
What is interesting to me is the reaction of Thai friends and colleagues when they see me limping around. Almost to a person, they say the same thing after they hear what happened: “faad khraw.” This phrase, which translates literally as “to beat fate,” goes beyond the meaning of “I’m glad it wasn’t worse,” to suggest that paying a small price today will prevent future, bigger misfortunes. It’s a fairly common saying in Thailand, and seems to be especially appropriate around the time of a milestone, such as a new year. In this case people were telling me that because of this setback, 2011 will likely be lucky for me. Hope they’re right.
Talking with one Thai well-wisher about this event and his use of “faad khraw” in reply, I began to get a little goofy, wondering aloud about fate and karma and the possibility of some weird connection to the leg injury sustained by the guy I met on the road near the border two decades ago. My friend cut me off with another classic Thai reply: “yaa khid maak!”—“You’re thinking too much!”
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Road Taken
Back in the refugee camp days, it wasn’t safe to go tromping off on your own to the actual Thai-Cambodian border. The closer you got to the dividing line between the two countries, the higher the chances that you’d meet somebody with a weapon. Lots of land mines got laid there too.
I still recall a lazy Sunday afternoon, sitting around playing music with a few other camp workers in the little border town where many of us lived. A frantic Khmer man drove up and asked for our help in getting his friend admitted to a nearby hospital. Not really thinking what we were getting ourselves into, two of us foreigners hopped in his truck and drove toward Cambodia for a few kilometers along a road we had never traveled before. We stopped in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, only to see a couple of men emerge from the forest carrying a make-do stretcher.
When they came closer we realized that the guy they were carrying had stepped on a mine. They hung the stretcher, hammock-style, from the inside corners of the shell on the back of the pickup. I sat back there with the guy to keep him steady while we drove to the hospital. He was really suffering and the two of us didn’t have much common language. All I could think to do was to hold his hand and sing to him. Luckily we were able to get him cared for. It wasn’t until the driver dropped us back in town that my friend and I realized we had taken a big risk in going along on that ride.
Two days ago, twenty-plus years after that incident, I got a chance to travel again on that road. Cambodia is no longer off limits; that part of the border is safe. (Tragically, the mines don’t know the war is over, and they continue to claim victims in areas that haven’t been cleared). I journeyed there for a look at a 1,000-year-old Khmer temple I’d read about called Sdok Kok Thom.
The Thai Fine Arts Council’s restoration looks great, as you can see in these before and after pictures. I had the place to myself, except for a school group whose impressive leader taught with questions rather than by lecture: “how are you each going to tell the story of this temple when you get home today?”
Indeed, Sdok Kok Thom’s story is unique. A pillar once stood at the corner of the grounds, inscribed with details about the why’s and the who’s of the temple’s construction. Scholars who have studied the inscription (now in Bangkok for safekeeping) say that it explains more about the context of those times than any similar Angkor-era “cornerstone.”
Perhaps in the future more tourists will also discover the magic of this site. For now, the road remains just as empty as it was the first time I took it. At that time, of course, I hadn’t known where I was going, nor that a temple was hiding in the forest. I hadn’t realized then that just three years earlier, some of my refugee students had stayed in a camp just a stone’s throw from the temple—until that camp was destroyed by shelling from the Cambodian side of the border. I never considered that the area was mined.
A sign at the edge of the site today commemorates the collaborative mine removal effort, which finished in 2004. A total of 76 explosive devices were found buried around the temple.
I still recall a lazy Sunday afternoon, sitting around playing music with a few other camp workers in the little border town where many of us lived. A frantic Khmer man drove up and asked for our help in getting his friend admitted to a nearby hospital. Not really thinking what we were getting ourselves into, two of us foreigners hopped in his truck and drove toward Cambodia for a few kilometers along a road we had never traveled before. We stopped in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, only to see a couple of men emerge from the forest carrying a make-do stretcher.
When they came closer we realized that the guy they were carrying had stepped on a mine. They hung the stretcher, hammock-style, from the inside corners of the shell on the back of the pickup. I sat back there with the guy to keep him steady while we drove to the hospital. He was really suffering and the two of us didn’t have much common language. All I could think to do was to hold his hand and sing to him. Luckily we were able to get him cared for. It wasn’t until the driver dropped us back in town that my friend and I realized we had taken a big risk in going along on that ride.
Two days ago, twenty-plus years after that incident, I got a chance to travel again on that road. Cambodia is no longer off limits; that part of the border is safe. (Tragically, the mines don’t know the war is over, and they continue to claim victims in areas that haven’t been cleared). I journeyed there for a look at a 1,000-year-old Khmer temple I’d read about called Sdok Kok Thom.The Thai Fine Arts Council’s restoration looks great, as you can see in these before and after pictures. I had the place to myself, except for a school group whose impressive leader taught with questions rather than by lecture: “how are you each going to tell the story of this temple when you get home today?”
Indeed, Sdok Kok Thom’s story is unique. A pillar once stood at the corner of the grounds, inscribed with details about the why’s and the who’s of the temple’s construction. Scholars who have studied the inscription (now in Bangkok for safekeeping) say that it explains more about the context of those times than any similar Angkor-era “cornerstone.”
Perhaps in the future more tourists will also discover the magic of this site. For now, the road remains just as empty as it was the first time I took it. At that time, of course, I hadn’t known where I was going, nor that a temple was hiding in the forest. I hadn’t realized then that just three years earlier, some of my refugee students had stayed in a camp just a stone’s throw from the temple—until that camp was destroyed by shelling from the Cambodian side of the border. I never considered that the area was mined.
A sign at the edge of the site today commemorates the collaborative mine removal effort, which finished in 2004. A total of 76 explosive devices were found buried around the temple.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Who Says Never the Twain Shall East Meet West?
Muffin flavor of the month at a Bangkok bakery: Banana cheddar.
You make the call…
- Sign that the apocalypse is upon us?
- Proof that Thailand now sets trends for global cuisine?
- Tragic consequence of somebody in the kitchen misreading the Thai-English dictionary?
- Indication that I need to get out more?
You make the call…
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Ploughing Through
I know about racism and sexism—but what’s the word for when people ridicule or romanticize rural life? Rusticism? Idealization? Whatever you call it, I sometimes do it. Lots of city folks do.
Here’s a cure: a Thai documentary called "Agrarian Utopia," directed by Uruphong Raksasad. It’s about the hardships of growing rice here.
Rakasad made arrangements to film two families working a small plot of land for a year. There was no script, only suggestions to the farmers about what they might talk about on camera. The
“actors” struggle with all kinds of weather, a stubborn buffalo, and spiraling debts. At various points they have to forage for food, taking honey from beehives and eating ants.
Whether or not this striking movie really captures what it’s like to plug away at this increasingly unsustainable way of life, I can’t really say. But I doubt I’ll look at gorgeous green rice fields in quite the same way from now on. Here’s the trailer. Check it out at a film festival near you.
Here’s a cure: a Thai documentary called "Agrarian Utopia," directed by Uruphong Raksasad. It’s about the hardships of growing rice here.
Rakasad made arrangements to film two families working a small plot of land for a year. There was no script, only suggestions to the farmers about what they might talk about on camera. The
“actors” struggle with all kinds of weather, a stubborn buffalo, and spiraling debts. At various points they have to forage for food, taking honey from beehives and eating ants.Whether or not this striking movie really captures what it’s like to plug away at this increasingly unsustainable way of life, I can’t really say. But I doubt I’ll look at gorgeous green rice fields in quite the same way from now on. Here’s the trailer. Check it out at a film festival near you.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Franklin's Angkor
To the list of time-honored traditions that go with this time of year, right alongside floating candles, yams with rosemary, and pictures with Santa, I’m now officially adding a 21-kilometer roadrace amidst Cambodian temples. For the fourth consecutive first Sunday in December, a few friends and I lined up at the start line in front of Angkor Wat to do a lovely early morning circuit of my favorite monuments on the planet.
The annual trot has become a comforting ritual. For some reason an old Grateful Dead lyric comes to mind:
In another time’s forgotten space
Your eyes looked from your mother's face
Wallflower seed on the sand and stone
May the four winds blow you safely home
Roll away the dew
Whatever that means. I’ve sung that tune countless times to myself, never really caring what it means, but somehow today it seems a fine description of the route taken by this magnificent race course.
We start out protected by a canopy of big trees lining the road that winds through the gigantic archeological park. Leaves drop around us as we settle in to our pace. The first five kilometers include a short out-and-back leg that makes the entire loop come out to be the right distance, which means we get a quick look at the leaders as they sprint by us on their way to finishing in under 90 minutes.
Not long after we leave behind the 200-meter-wide moat that surrounds Angkor Wat, we’re encountering kids by the side of the course. Most are hugging their moms’ legs out of shyness, or staring quizzically, as if to say, “It can ring like fire if you lose your way.” Soon a few have gotten brave enough to wave, and by the third or fourth water station, lots of the volunteers picking up the water bottles that runners cast aside are kids.
Every year I particularly look forward to a certain corner, just about at the halfway point in the race. The running route goes left, but if you were to turn right and go a few hundred meters a lovely reservoir known as Srah Srang (“Royal Bath”) would emerge from the forest. Perhaps this place lies just outside the formal boundaries of the park? or maybe the water source remains important to the locals, just as it was when they dug it out 800 years ago? Whatever the reason, the intersection marks a village, and so is busier with spectators than any place along the way other than the finish. A long receiving line of waving, smiling Cambodians awaits us there, extending their hands to be slapped, cheering in a mixture of Khmer and English. I can’t help grinning as I run past. The energy we take from that corner sticks with us for weeks.
And the temples just stay as great as ever. As I’ve said several times, you just can’t ruin these ruins. God knows people have tried. First we run by Prasat Kravan, the Cardamom Sanctuary, whose five brick towers have been restored to their original height but are missing what were once some impressive innards, likely carted off by thieves long ago. Further along is Ta Prohm, traditionally the coolest of Angkor’s untouched temples… until this past year, when the Indian archeologists began “improvements” to protect it from being loved to death. Then there’s Ta Keo, and the Victory Gate, and the Terrace of the Elephants, all of which have a few warts when seen in harsh sunlight, but at that hour—we’re passing by at around 7:30 in the morning—are just about the finest combination of sand and stone anywhere.
Finally the four winds blow us safely home. The race ends where it began, but of course we’re not the same people we were when we started. Another year has gone by. We’ve had a spiritual journey: answered the call, rung the bell, chanted the mantra, emerged from the whale’s belly, rolled away the dew. In the endlessly interpretable words of the Dead:
Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
If you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind
The annual trot has become a comforting ritual. For some reason an old Grateful Dead lyric comes to mind:
In another time’s forgotten space
Your eyes looked from your mother's face
Wallflower seed on the sand and stone
May the four winds blow you safely home
Roll away the dew
Whatever that means. I’ve sung that tune countless times to myself, never really caring what it means, but somehow today it seems a fine description of the route taken by this magnificent race course.
We start out protected by a canopy of big trees lining the road that winds through the gigantic archeological park. Leaves drop around us as we settle in to our pace. The first five kilometers include a short out-and-back leg that makes the entire loop come out to be the right distance, which means we get a quick look at the leaders as they sprint by us on their way to finishing in under 90 minutes.
Not long after we leave behind the 200-meter-wide moat that surrounds Angkor Wat, we’re encountering kids by the side of the course. Most are hugging their moms’ legs out of shyness, or staring quizzically, as if to say, “It can ring like fire if you lose your way.” Soon a few have gotten brave enough to wave, and by the third or fourth water station, lots of the volunteers picking up the water bottles that runners cast aside are kids.
Every year I particularly look forward to a certain corner, just about at the halfway point in the race. The running route goes left, but if you were to turn right and go a few hundred meters a lovely reservoir known as Srah Srang (“Royal Bath”) would emerge from the forest. Perhaps this place lies just outside the formal boundaries of the park? or maybe the water source remains important to the locals, just as it was when they dug it out 800 years ago? Whatever the reason, the intersection marks a village, and so is busier with spectators than any place along the way other than the finish. A long receiving line of waving, smiling Cambodians awaits us there, extending their hands to be slapped, cheering in a mixture of Khmer and English. I can’t help grinning as I run past. The energy we take from that corner sticks with us for weeks.
And the temples just stay as great as ever. As I’ve said several times, you just can’t ruin these ruins. God knows people have tried. First we run by Prasat Kravan, the Cardamom Sanctuary, whose five brick towers have been restored to their original height but are missing what were once some impressive innards, likely carted off by thieves long ago. Further along is Ta Prohm, traditionally the coolest of Angkor’s untouched temples… until this past year, when the Indian archeologists began “improvements” to protect it from being loved to death. Then there’s Ta Keo, and the Victory Gate, and the Terrace of the Elephants, all of which have a few warts when seen in harsh sunlight, but at that hour—we’re passing by at around 7:30 in the morning—are just about the finest combination of sand and stone anywhere.
Finally the four winds blow us safely home. The race ends where it began, but of course we’re not the same people we were when we started. Another year has gone by. We’ve had a spiritual journey: answered the call, rung the bell, chanted the mantra, emerged from the whale’s belly, rolled away the dew. In the endlessly interpretable words of the Dead:
Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
If you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind
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