The afternoon (part II)

If you haven't read my first post about Cambodia, you might want to scroll down and do that. Or at least look at the pictures.

Lunch was free (prepaid) and delicious. Any complaints are inexcusable.

After lunch we met with the director of EFEO (École française d’Extrême-Orient), an institution left over from French colonialism that directs most of the archaeological work at Angkor Wat. He spoke about subtle particulars of Angkorean history in a thick French accent that put everyone except me to sleep. I enjoyed his his information, but not as much as I enjoyed his rudely cynical view of everything not-French (he specifically criticized the British, the Cambodians, the Indians "their work was just shit," the Japanese "practically a return to imperialism," and the Germans). He seemed as much of a remnant of French imperialism as his institution, resigned after many years to the inferior working conditions, domestic politics, and native colleagues of his host country; yet kept in Cambodia by some combination of his past love of its archeology (long since corroded away by his cynicism) and a stubborn realization that he couldn't survive anywhere else. It was perfect.

Looking at this picture, it is very obvious to me that my professor (left) is also an archaeologist. They could be brothers.

We had an intermission from Frenchmen with a visit to Angkor Thom, most noted for the 216 faces of the reigning king who built the temple.

I bought the scarf from a little kid. It's traditional Khemer clothing, called a krama.

How many faces can you see in this picture?




I talked with a couple of guys (monks, I assume) from Siem Reap. The one on the left is studying English Literature at the University there. He noted correctly that for the $15,000 I pay a year to go to U of O, 30 students could afford the $500 annual fee for Siem Reap University (like his friend on the right, who cannot afford it). We talked for a half hour, and exchanged emails. They seemed like nice guys. Later the tour guide for my group told me that all monks should have been at the monastery working (because it was such and such a day) and that the guys I talked to were slackers who just hang out at the temple and like the attention from the tourists. Guess I'm a sucker.

I'd say the saffron and the gold are better color choices for the temple than my canary.


The final engagement of the day was a meeting with another French expatriate. This time, it was with an architect working to rebuild a temple.


But this was no ordinary rebuilding of a temple. The project started in the '50s, before Cambodian independence from the French. Temples like this one were originally built by erecting a box of walls for the first level, filling the box with sand, and building the higher levels upon the sand foundation of the lower levels. In the particular temple, the walls built to contain the sand were not strong enough, and over the years collapsed outwards. The French solution was to build cement walls inside the original walls, making the box strong enough to hold the sand. Simple enough, except that to build cement walls inside the original walls required dismantling the entire temple, stone by stone.

Note that Angkorean temples are built without mortar - each stone is carved to fit perfectly with its neighbors, giving structural stability but also allowing only one possible placement of each stone. But this was not problem for the French, who took the whole thing apart while meticulously documented the entire deconstruction process with hundreds of photographs and notes. When you run an worldwide empire, apparently problems like that don't phase you.

Trouble happened with the start of the civil war in 1965. The French abandoned the project, the temple entirely taken apart except for the first level of the west wall. The notes were transferred to Phnom Penh for safekeeping. But that didn't work because the Khmer Rogue (1975-1979) destroyed the entire country, including the notes, and scattered the stones.

So when our French Archetect came to Cambodia in 1993, he had 300,000 stones spread over 10 hectacres, and no instructions. Local guides referred to the temple as "the one the French took apart." Over the next 12 years, that architect put together the world's biggest jigsaw puzzle. He knew what the completed puzzle looked like, because some 900 slides had been found in Paris, but had nothing more. He had to survey and document the scattered stones, somehow remember where they all were, so that he could find the single stone (out of 300,000) that fit any other stone. Now, the temple looks quite good (an image somewhat tarnished by knowledge of its recent reconstruction) and he guarantees 100% that every stone is in its original position. The project will finish in 2009.

I'm impressed.


He rebuilt all of this. The white stones are modern day replacements of stones lost ages ago.



We went back to the hotel. Unexpectedly, on both sides of the hotel were crocodile farms. This is what a crocodile farm looks like:

Picture from my window.

A final note: Matt Hoffman got back today from 10 days in Myanmar, the place that erupted with protests before the military cracked down and declared martial law and killed many people. Matt appears unfazed.


More Cambodia to follow.