Phnom Banan

Angkor and its entourage of tombs and temples are far grander. But the sweetest moments in that land of fertile plains and faraway hills were probably in the hamlet of Battambang, half a day from Siem Reap on the flat top of a boat made for slow cruising. Hugging the northwestern shores of the Tonlé Sap, we floated over a lake that quivers still with life above and below, despite recent ravages by two horsemen of the apocalypse. Storks, cormorants, gulls, herons, eagles and drongos soared and swooped from the forest of reeds by the fringes, where the lake narrowed its gape to receive the tribute of the Sangkaé. Up this river, the boat chugged, passing countless villages afloat on rafts and blue pagodas that rise on stilts.

The town of Battambang awaits after eight hours of shadeless banking through a sunken channel mired in seasonal lack. After an evening in dim streets, we hired a makeshift tricycle of two strokes. At a pace easily outrun by wheels in twos and fours, the road welcomed us with showers of dust and the wide glances of waysiders at play. Five and twenty kilometres hence, the southward trunk brought us to the foot of an outcrop where the mountains of Rumsay Sok begin. These hills are named after a maiden "who let down her hair" to release a magic pin that saves her betrothed from a vengeful crocodile, having failed to appease the leviathan with a cageful of ducks.

I declined to sample the local lavatories, for all their natural beauty, and found my duck making small talk at the refreshment stalls with a gaunt man with a felt hat and lone tooth. He claimed to have visited Singapore in the 1960s and now humours visitors to these grounds with tall tales and short guffaws. We then climbed a flight of stone carved on the bodies of guardian naga by craftsmen a century before the Mongols conquered China. At the peak, the gopura is flanked by the stark boughs of frangipani trees. The creamy blooms temper the hazy fields below that stretch to the horizon in an undisturbed patchwork of brown and green.   

Assembled from sandstone and dolomite, the temples of Wat Phnom Banan saw light in the dark ages of the West and claim precedence over many in Angkor, including Vishnu's vast monument to eternity. Five towers still stand amidst crumbled terraces and the spreading crowns of trees that form living frames around these resting shrines. The founding fathers have all taken flight with rescuers of grave intent, but in the centre, a newer deity still reigns, who gladly receives our tribute in incense and the clasped palms of hopeful prayers.

A path one level below the ruins is lined with thorny bushes and sparse woods that light up in dry gold and pale green to the mid-day sun. The way led to a cave of sacred secrets but there was no monk on the plateau that day to bless the passage into this cavern of knowledge. There was only the rustling of a bed of brown blades under my boots and the song of hidden cicadas to hail a quiet descent back to the world of men.

Comments

[Camemberu]

These ruins look remarkably like the ones in Prambanan, Jawa. Even the name...so alike.

[budak]

i think the ancient Indochinese and Indo-malayan Hindu/Buddhist civilisations shared similar roots. There's an interesting exhibition at the Asian Civilisation Museum now tracing these links between SEA and India.