A wat or six

I think I am rapidly gaining a reputation as the Mad Wat Woman of Siem Reap, at least in the opinion of my friendly neighbourhood tuktuk drivers and their associates. I doubt if any white person ever in the history of tourism in this city has visited as many of the wats as I have. It’s a very good thing I’m leaving Cambodia soon as this could turn into an addiction.

I can’t help myself. These places have the most incredible architecture, and are often extremely colourful. They are almost invariably empty of tourists. They’re inhabited by friendly monks who are only too happy to practise their English by answering my questions and who seem to appreciate my interest in their sacred places. And, although these are all living monasteries where poorer members of the public can seek shelter in times of crisis and so are never entirely deserted, they are invariably tranquil places to wander around. They offer a fascinating insight into many aspects of the local culture, not just religion. And I love the tuktuk rides I have to take to get to most of them.

So, here are some photos of my recent explorations. All six wats are within 15 kilometres of the city centre, and situated close to the main road than runs from Siem Reap city to Tonle Sap, the largest lake in southeast Asia. I’ve drawn a rough map for anyone visiting the area who also wants to check these out.

Wat Svay

I walked to this wat, a hot sweaty walk there and back alongside the river with no shade. But it was worth every bead of perspiration. There are two temples here, an old one that is in a very sorry state of repair and, judging by the amount of bird poop all around it, is now more of an aviary than a place of worship.

In comparison, the new temple is a shining light of Buddhism, all golds and oranges, with the bright blue highlights of the garudas, the ornamental roof supporters. There are many other buildings, including an old meeting hall built on high stilts, perhaps an indication of how high the river waters can rise and threaten this place.

Wat Kong Mouch

Not much further down the river, this place is quite a contrast to Wat Svay. It looks much older and the grounds are quite unkempt, but the temple itself is no less elaborately decorated, with particularly beautiful windows and doors, and a ton of burial stupas lined up around it in neat, repetitive rows.

Wat Atwea

The next wat down the road is Wat Atwea but I’ll say little about that here so I’ve already blogged about my visit to this place. It has the added attraction of ancient Angkorian temples in its backyard so is worth a visit for those alone.

Wat Po Banteaychey

This wat was a wonderful surprise. The main temple is a colourful many-splendoured construction but there is so much more: an equally splendid meeting hall and lovely office buildings, many vibrantly coloured statues, a large pond with its own small temple sitting in it, and behind the main complex, an extra revelation – a square structure with peaked towers at each of the four corners and a huge tower in the centre.

Wat Aragn Sakor

The architecture of this temple is remarkably different from any other I’ve seen in Cambodia. Although its wooden window shutters are painted in bright reds, blues and golds, the rest of the temple is quite plain and painted a simple dirty white. And its columns are most unusual, with spiral fluting more reminiscent of an ancient Greek temple than something found in southeast Asia.

The rear of the wat backs on to farm land, and that was also like stepping back in time, as I watched a farmer ploughing his rice paddies with an old wooden plough and two large white cows.

Wat in Phnom Krom village

Last but by no means least in this little jaunt along Tonle Sap Road is the wat in the village at the bottom of Phnom Krom (phnom means hill in Khmer), where I had my very own little group of local girls as tour guides. This temple is a very tall structure, with wonderful multi-coloured bands around its base, garuda statues and mint-green-painted nagas guarding its entrance stairways, and an abundance of burial stupas filling its grounds. From the cremation chamber at the rear of the enclosure, you can look out across the fields or back towards the hilltop, where yet another pagoda sits, beckoning the explorer. But that, as they say, is another story.

Wat Damnak

I first started exploring Wat Damnak, just across the river from downtown Siem Reap, back in February, when I was taking part in the Giant Puppet Parade workshops and I have visited at least once a week ever since.

Not only is it on a slightly circuitous route to town from where I live, but its Buddhist pagoda, shrines and stupas, its gnarled frangipani trees and beautiful waterlilies, its delightful frogs and darting lizards all make good subjects for my photo-a-day project. 

I also find it a tranquil place to wander and sit – this despite the primary school incorporated inside its extensive grounds, the occasional young man asking for a donation to support some good cause or other, and the constant comings and goings of monks and laypeople.

The central pagoda is currently undergoing internal renovation

This is a living Buddhist monastery with an interesting past. It was a royal palace in the days of King Sisowatch, ruler of Cambodia from 1904 to 1927, hence its name: dam nak is Khmer for palace, and it also served as a Khmer Rouge military depot in the dark days of Cambodia’s recent civil conflict.

Now its biggest claim to fame is its Centre of Khmer Studies, an international NGO whose primary aim is to facilitate global understanding of Cambodia, its history and its culture. The adjacent CKS library is the second biggest public library in the country and its 11,000 publications draw scholars from around the world seeking to research Cambodia’s intriguing past.

The Centre of Khmer Studies

Though I am a book lover through and through, for me the library holds a very different fascination. Running along the front of the building is a long narrow water feature, filled with the most gorgeous varieties of waterlilies and the biggest population of green paddy frogs I have ever seen. The markings on the waterlily blooms, which come in subtle shades of white and cream, pink, blue and lilac, seem infinitely varied, and I return often to photograph them. I am also drawn to the cute little frogs – they actually make be laugh out loud at their frantic panicked leaps, and the comical way they sit and stare goggle-eyed at me. So funny!

The monastery grounds are also home to the Kossamak Nearyroath Institute of Buddhist Studies, a facility to educate monks and the general public in the ways of Buddha, and to a second NGO, the Life and Hope Association Sewing School, which has the wonderfully practical aim of providing young Khmer women with a vocation and a future.

Wat Damnak sits in large park-like grounds, which are well filled with buildings and meeting halls, temples and stupas, as well as a large deep pond, in which sits a bright yellow shrine. The air is sweetly scented with frangipani, the large trees provide welcome shade, and the Khmer architecture mesmerises with its intricate detail. I think you can see why I return again and again to this charming location.

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 Preah Enkosei and its Angkor temples

On the first day of the Khmer New Year – year 2557 by their calendar – I set out to explore yet another of Siem Reap’s wats. This was the one I had intended to visit the previous day before I got sidetracked.

Although it is an easy two-kilometre walk from the central city, on the east bank of the Siem Reap River along River Road, I grabbed one of my local tuktuks, knowing I could enjoy the pleasant walk back a little later. This time we went further than Wat Preah Enkosa to the wat with the oh-so-similar name, Preah Enkosei.

This is a living wat, currently home to 35 Buddhist monks, but this is also the only place I know in Siem Reap where you can see Angkor temples, albeit small ones, for free. (I later found another freebie - see here.) Behind the modern temple sit two brick towers, the bases of two other structures, and the remains of the east gate of a complex dating from the mid- to late-10th century. It is possible that there were originally three towers but the third has now disappeared. As the platform base of the modern temple is made of laterite blocks, it seems likely that the building blocks of the ancient structure were used to help construct the more modern one.

The site was originally contained within a moat, though much of this has now been filled in and what remains has become something of a tipping place for garden and other rubbish. The towers, too, are now mostly ruins, though the larger of the two has a lintel with surprisingly well preserved sculptural reliefs. The broader lower panel shows a central elephant head flanked by dragons and other characters, while the narrow top panel features an interesting depiction of the Churning of the Sea of Milk. (This refers to a story from Hindu cosmology where the gods and demons toiled together for a thousand years to release from the sea of milk the nectar of immortal life.)

Gnarled old frangipani trees grew around the temples, filling the air with their sweet perfume and providing welcome shade on another of April’s over-40-degree days, and there was a pleasant breeze, so I sat a while in the shade of one tower, soaking up the peaceful atmosphere. I had expected the wat to be humming with New Year’s celebrations – and there were some (see my New Year’s blog) – but they were contained in two particular areas so didn’t encroach on the overall feeling of tranquillity.

The decoration on the modern building was relatively subdued for a Buddhist temple, but no less impressive. The reliefs above the doors and windows, the roof-edge ornamentation and the roof pediment decoration all gleamed with their gold and yellow paint.

Elsewhere in the wat, an ancient banyon tree was surrounded by more than the usual number of small shrines, and two stone Buddhas soaked up the sunshine, despite their golden umbrellas. All in all, it was rather a splendid start to 2557!

The burial stupas and a little monk washing

Wat Preah Enkosa

I spent another couple of hours exploring a new wat last Saturday morning and I have to admit I came away slightly disappointed as I had read that it had some old Angkor remains, as well as the modern temple … but, no! And it wasn’t just that I didn’t find them, as I asked the two different monks I talked to and they both said there were no old temples to be found there.

I tuktuked along to the wat as it looked from the map to be quite a long way along River Road, though, in the end, it wasn’t as far as I thought, and it was a pleasant stroll back afterwards.

When I arrived, monks and men were preparing the pagoda for the following day’s Khmer New Year celebrations, placing flags in the pole stands on either side of the long tree-shaded driveway. One of the monks said hello and ‘where are you from?’, the universal greeting here, and our conversation continued as he gave me a tour of the temple building, unlocking it for me to see the two huge Buddhas inside, one seated and one reclining – as well as assorted smaller ones.

The monk’s name was Somurt and he is almost 23. He has been a monk for 8 years. He told me the temple is 99 years old and the interior paintings (of the ubiquitous scenes from Buddha’s life) are between 30 and 35 years old. This information may or may not be true but, certainly, the temple ceiling was showing much water damage, whereas the paintings still looked quite fresh and vibrant.

Somurt’s English was quite good but he wanted to practise so we sat a while and chatted. Eventually, he went back to his flags and I wandered a little further, though didn’t get far before I was waylaid by another young monk, Sopheap, who invited me to sit with him on a bench amongst the burial stupas. Our conversation was almost an exact repeat of the previous one but I was happy to sit and help a little with his pronunciation. Bizarrely, he had been listening to an Australian sports commentary on his phone radio. I’m not sure how helpful that was to his English learning and he admitted he couldn’t understand most of it – ‘too fast and a funny accent’ – his words, not mine.

I wandered some more, taking photos of stupas and temple buildings, a beautiful open-sided building full of golden seated Buddhas and, finally, what looked like an office building – or, perhaps, with offices downstairs and monk accommodation upstairs, as the building was mostly unfinished.

In front of its main entrance was an elaborately carved archway, under which sat another group of Buddhas and a set of glass boxes for donations for building restoration or monk education or feeding the monks or just general blessings. An elderly nun sat to one side, giving out blessings, so I tossed a buck in her basket and knelt to receive her good wishes for the New Year. She then agreed to be photographed, moving over to sit elegantly in front of the Buddhas, arranging her clothing to look her best. I showed her the photos I took and I gather from what she said next (in Khmer) that she wanted a copy of the pictures, so I’ll get some done and take back to her next week.

Postscript: I discovered, when I got back to my room, that I had gone to the wrong wat. My tuktuk driver had been going to drive past the entrance and I stopped him, thinking he hadn’t understood where I wanted to go. My mistake! There are, in fact, two wats quite close together and, turns out, their names are also quite similar: Enkosa and Enkosei. When I checked Google maps again, I discovered the first was hidden under cloudy skies – at least, that’s my excuse!

Sousdey chnam thmey! Happy Khmer New Year 2013!

For the third time in four months, Siem Reapers are celebrating the New Year: the first was the western one on 1 January, then came Chinese New Year on 10 February, and now we have Khmer New Year here in Cambodia, from 14 to 15 April.

I wasn’t actually out and about last night, and was asleep by midnight, so I’m not sure if there were any ‘stroke of midnight’ celebrations. I’m sure young tourists and expats used the date as an excuse for the usual Pub Street drunkenness but most Khmers live by the sun, waking at dawn and heading to bed soon after sun down, so I don’t imagine I missed any fireworks.

In last week’s build-up to the big event, schools had end-of-year parties, buildings were adorned with tinsel decorations and large cellophane stars, and many businesses (including my hotel) placed small tables loaded with offerings in front of their premises.

Today, the city seems relatively quiet, which is undoubtedly because most locals take this opportunity to return to their homelands for catch-ups and celebrations with their families. Schools, NGO projects and many businesses are closed for at least a week to allow people to do this.

Many of those who remain in the city or who come from Siem Reap will be visiting their local pagodas today, to pay homage to deceased loved ones and make offerings to the local monks. At the rear of the wat I visited this morning, amongst the burial stupas, two monks were chanting prayers, while a group of locals sat in attitudes of prayer on mats before them. A few people were also saying more personal prayers and making offerings at individual stupas, presumably where they had a more personal connection.

Towards the front of the wat there was another type of celebration going on. A series of stupas had been made out of sand – I’d seen these at another wat earlier in the week and not understood their significance. This group had been decorated sparingly with frangipani flowers – the trees grew around the temple there – and enclosed with a makeshift pailing fence. The fence had gateways on four sides, perhaps marking the cardinal points, with large decorated panels above the gateways, and flags and pot plants had been used to decorate the little enclosure.

There was a queue of people, mostly dressed in white, waiting to enter. The procedure seemed to be to make an obeisance and say a brief prayer at each stupa before exiting. I thought perhaps the stupas had a symbolic function, representing the stupas of the deceased for those people who hadn’t been able to return to their homelands or whose ancestors’ ashes had no specific burial place but, in fact, they are part of the Buddhist Songkran Festival. Devotees are simply worshipping Buddha, and the sand is later used for construction purposes.

I’ve heard that venturing into the countryside can be a hazardous activity at Khmer New Year – local kids apparently set up barricades to slow passing traffic which is then bombarded with water bombs and white powder. This is a rather boisterous corruption of other traditional Songkran Festival activities: bathing the Buddha and the hands of your elders with scented water and splashing other people “in a polite manner” have been taken to more youthful extremes. Luckily, I don’t intend heading out in to the countryside any time soon! A more sedate and rather charming version of this custom is shown in the image below.