Wat Atwea: the old, the new and the just plain funny!

Sunday has lately become wat day in my world, and last Sunday was no exception. And, first off, I need to modify a comment I made in a previous blog, about Wat Preah Enkosei being the only place to see Angkor-era temples for free – at Wat Atwea I discovered another (though I have heard some tourists have been asked to pay to look around).

I tuktuked, as Wat Atwea is about 4 kilometres from the city centre, along the riverside road towards Tonle Sap and then perhaps another kilometre down a dirt side road, straight in to rural Cambodia. The transition from city to country can be very rapid here.

The wat covers a large area, with the new living wat sitting within the boundaries of the ancient complex, whose boundary was once a moat that is currently mostly dry. You can’t see the ancient ruins at first approach, as they are tucked in behind the modern temple and its burial stupas.

I decided to have my tuktuk driver, Bunsoth, wait for me and was glad I did, as he was able to share some fascinating details with me, though he hadn’t been to this wat before or known there were Angkor ruins here. He came with me into the modern temple, knelt and made the appropriate obeisance, then walked around taking photos with his cellphone.

I was immediately struck by the large size of the main Buddha, especially considering how out of the way this wat is; and by the large number of colourful hangings dangling from the ceiling; and by the colourful bead hanging that was draped around all four corners of the Buddha’s enclosure, almost like the curtains around a four-poster bed.

Behind the Buddha were more surprises: two four-foot high lions – not dragons as I often think of them (Bunsoth pointed to their manes) – painted in the gaudy bright colours Buddhists seem to prefer. Against the rear wall was a large open-fronted cabinet, like a large set of bookshelves, on which sat an impressive number of small Buddha statues – gifts to the temple in exchange for favours from the deity, apparently.

On the lower three shelves were small cloth bundles, shaped a little like brown pumpkins, but much covered in dust. I was a little shocked when Bunsoth explained these were dead people, the ashes and pieces of bone that remain after cremations. 

For those well-off enough to afford it, these bundles would normally be placed in a family stupa but, for the poor who didn’t want to keep their bundles of ancestors in their homes or bury them in unmarked graves in their fields, they could deposit the bundles in the pagoda. Bunsoth said he was happy not to be in the building at night-time when the ghosts were about and, yes, he was serious. Most Khmer, especially those who live in the countryside, believe in ghosts.

There was one very large stupa in the surrounding grounds. It was bright white and obviously new, and had a small open-sided marquee in front of it. It was unadorned except for the ornately framed photos of three monks. Bunsoth said this would be the burial place of all the wat’s monks and had only recently been inaugurated, perhaps during the recent Khmer New Year celebrations.

Bunsoth escaped to his tuktuk, away from the draining heat, while I continued exploring, through the other burial stupas, around the ancient ruins and amongst the other wat buildings, chatting to a rather bored official who said he didn’t get many visitors and to a couple of monks who also seemed pleased to have a visitor to speak English with.

The ancient ruins are in relatively good condition. They look rather similar to those at Angkor Wat and, by examining the style and remaining decoration - though there is a general lack of carving, there are a couple of apsara dancers, some script, and some sculptural reliefs - experts have deduced that the ruins date to the late 11th century and were left unfinished. There has been some restoration, as the numbers written on some limestone blocks and the newness of other stones testify, and the scattering of masonry to the west of the temple is thought to be the gate to a second enclosure that was also not completed.

After the solemnity of the modern temple and the solitude of the ruins, my morning finished with a charming surprise. A small family – husband, wife and young son – were sitting on the steps of one of the wat buildings and, as I watched, a monk approached and began to drench them with water, a cleansing ceremony, usually to wash away bad luck and evil spirits. The husband and wife were quite serious at first, with hands held in an attitude of prayer but after a couple of bowls the man started to clean the dirt off his legs and the young boy, struggling to contain his joy, began to giggle hysterically. I couldn’t help but laugh with him and I don’t think it was disrespectful – after all, laughter is meant to be the best medicine, especially for chasing away unhappy spirits. I left smiling after another wonderful morning.

Wat Polangka

Meet Seth, the lovely young monk who approached me today while I was exploring the grounds of his monastery. I am going to do a series of blogs on the wats around Siem Reap, so I was very lucky that Seth approached and started talking to me.

Monks are usually very reserved and there are all sorts of rules of etiquette surrounding encounters with them. These include not speaking to them first, not approaching them, not touching them – to the extent where, if you need to hand something to a monk, you should place the object on a surface near them (a table, bench, chair, etc.) for them to pick up rather than hand it to them directly. This prevents an accidental touch of the hands.

Seth may have been less restrained than most monks as he has only been a monk for a year, though he has lived at the monastery for a very long time; he didn’t know what age he had been when he arrived but indicated the height of a small child.

He has a family – in fact, a large one, of mother and father, two sisters and six brothers – but they live in the countryside about 50kms from Siem Reap. He didn’t elaborate on why they had placed him in the monastery – it may have been that they couldn’t afford to keep him, or it may have been to educate him, as monks usually receive a better standard of education and many, especially the younger ones, learn English, or Seth’s family may have been following the local tradition of sending at least one son to the monastery.

My first impression of Wat Polangka was how unkempt and uncared for it appeared. Weeds grew around the edges of the main pagoda platform, the building’s paint and plaster were chipped and peeling, and large areas of black mould stained the underside of the roof overhang. From Seth I learnt that the pagoda had been built in the 1940s, though it had been renovated since then. It was obviously in need of another renovation but I presume that would be dependent on the generosity of benefactors as monasteries usually have no fixed sources of income.

The meeting hall / dining hall is much newer than the pagoda, having been built in the 1970s, and had recently been reroofed. The climate here is harsh on buildings so frequent maintenance is necessary. The hall consists of one large open space, with a ceiling supported by two rows of columns, and both the ceiling and walls are covered with brightly painted scenes from Buddha’s life. One wall also has charts with the names and photos of former monks. There are currently 37 monks living at Wat Polangka but the monastery is home to about 100 people in total – the others are nuns and an assemblage of lay people. This is quite normal for Cambodia. If local people have nowhere to live and are prepared to do some work around the monastery, they are permitted to live there, subject to available space, of course.

At one end of the meeting hall, there is a shrine, with a large Buddha statue and, nearby, a monk was giving a blessing to a young couple. On the other side of the hall, lunch was being set out on low tables. It was then about 10.30 and lunch would be at 11am. It was prepared by the nuns – mostly old widows, who come to live at the monastery when their husbands die. As Seth and I talked, monks were returning from their morning walk around the houses and businesses that surround the wat with the alms and food that had been donated. They passed the food dishes over to the nuns, presumably to augment whatever else had been prepared for lunch.

Outside again, Seth showed me the cremation area, explaining where the body is placed and where the fire is lit, though recent ashes made that fairly obvious! Nearby is a small three-sided building where the body is placed prior to cremation while the monks perform the necessary rituals. I thought the body would lay there for three days (the usual time for Cambodian funeral rituals – more on that in a future blog) but Seth said the bereaved families sometimes keep the body at home for one or two days before moving it to the wat for the final rituals. We also wandered through the burial area, with its magnificent and rather ornate stupas, painted in shades of gold, green and red.

Seth and I talked for a time in the very welcome shade of a huge tree that was fenced off and had a ring of seated Buddha statues around its circumference. It is a banyon tree and so is sacred to Buddha. Next, Seth showed me the small wooden hut he calls home. He even invited me inside but I felt that would have been an intrusion. It has only one room, though there is a tiny porch at the front where he has a small desk and chair for his studies. I took some photos of him in front of his house and have since emailed them to him. He wants us to be friends and invited me to visit (and perhaps help at) the Cambodian Buddhism Association for Vulnerable Children, where he works as a teacher. Their school is only open during the week, so volunteering there will not be possible for me, but he tells me they are doing good work there, teaching the local children.

Seth is a very personable young man. I really enjoyed the time I spent talking to him and am very grateful for his willingness to tell me about himself, his life and his home. 

Mariannie’s Martini Tour: shaken, not stirred

Marianne and I enlisted Mr T as our tuk-tuk driver and headed out of town on the road to Tonle Sap, the biggest fresh-water lake in South East Asia … but that wasn’t our destination. We were headed for Phnom Krom, the small hill near the entrance to the Tonle Sap boat tours and a significant local landmark, being the only hill for miles around.

We stopped at the bottom of a stairway leading up the hill and left Mr T to wait for us there. The steps were steep but my Peruvian-high-altitude lungs are still easing my climbing ability and, in an area with no other hills, it was nice to have views. The handrail was lined with engravings in Khmer and English text, with dollar figures next to them, as if people had donated money to fund the steps.

At the top we came out on a roadway leading to the top of the hill, still some way off. We hadn’t gone far before we came to a group of men, talking and playing cards in the shelter of a small open-sided hut. One, in a blue uniform, approached us, asking to see our temple passes (passes for the Angkor Park complex). We hadn’t been sure if we would need them or not, so pleaded ignorance and showed our volunteer IDs. The man agreed to let us in if we paid him a small bribe of $5. Though we were ethically opposed to this, it was better than paying $20 each for the temple pass and we didn’t want to waste our journey, so we paid.

We carried on up the road and were soon sweating copiously, while the man was probably gambling away our $5. At the top of the phnom (hill) there’s a modern pagoda complex and a remnant from the days of Angkor civilisation. The ancient complex was dedicated to the Hindu religion and constructed in the late 9th – early 10th century by King Yasovarman I in the Bakheng style. The three towers, dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma, are now in very poor condition, the stone is much weathered and any sculptural details barely visible. Yet, as we wandered around them, we found ourselves surrounded by butterflies and able to enjoy the stunning views, difficult to capture on camera because of the hazy atmosphere.

The modern pagoda was interesting, too. There were statues of various characters from Buddhist myths, two huge white bulls guarding the entrance on one side, and human-like creatures with claw feet on another. The temple itself was full of the usual multitude of Buddhas large and small, small flags of recycled fabric strung across the ceiling from one side to the other, and brightly painted scenes from Buddha’s life covered the walls and ceiling. Outside there was a larger-than-life character dressed a bit like an ancient Superman, as well as statues of monks kneeling in a square around a shrine.

We were barked at quite loudly by a vicious-sounding dog, then, soon after, hailed by one of the monks and summoned to the building where he was. I now wonder if the dog had been trained to announce visitors! Monks don’t usually speak to women so we should have been suspicious of his motives. After the preliminary greetings and exchange of names, it turned out that the monk was soliciting donations and, in return for a small sum, we would have our names painted on the wall with the donation amount alongside. We succumbed and paid $5 each. One day I’ll need to return to see if our names really are on that wall!

After perhaps an hour, we headed back down to our patient tuk-tuk driver and were soon off to our next stop, Wat Chedei. Our route took us on to a dirt road, past rice fields, through a cattle and then a water buffalo traffic jam, alongside pools of water lilies and lotuses, past small farms and the occasional larger house painted in some garish colour, then on to another dirt road. This one was in very poor condition, with huge potholes, ruts and puddles – they call these dancing roads in Cambodia. It had rained the previous night which had helped to settle the dust but fuelled the puddles. “Mango rain’ one of our guesthouse security guards called it – rain to help fatten the mangos which are now fattening on the trees, ready to be harvested in April. Luckily we didn’t get stuck in the mud.

Eventually, after much dancing and shaking about, we reached Wat Chedei, in the middle of nowhere. Again there was a collection of buildings old and new. One, a former pagoda, was an almost total wreck – no roof, no windows or doors, grass growing on the floor, and a corrugated iron, makeshift roof over the Buddhas that looked incongruous in that setting. Things we saw: Aunty Betty’s red and pink café curtains hanging in the windows of the new temple; a gaggle of geese squawking at and chasing one of the flock; three long dragon-boats in a shed – bizarre when the only nearby water was a large lily-choked baray (reservoir); two lots of two kittens with very large ears and plaintive cries; two painted elephants guarding the main entrance, and red-and-green-painted temple dogs guarding another; a horrific mural that looked like the Buddhist version of hell; and no monks!

I posed on Mr T.’s tuk tuk before we left and, as we jiggled violently about on the road back to town, we decided we could open a tour company with me as driver – hence, Mariannie’s Martini Tours: shaken not stirred! The real martinis came later!