Food Feature: A lost city, found
Exploring the temples of Angkor
What if everyone was to abandon Atlanta tomorrow, leaving the city — its skyscrapers, roads, hospitals and homes — untended for, say, 600 years? Would nature rule again, with brick and steel towers serving as her cane? Would civilization as we know it disappear? Probably — at least until a group of explorers hunting visions of lost cities and wonders of the world stumbled upon her.
That’s pretty much what happened in Cambodia, at the temples of Angkor. Offer up any cliche you want, you can’t overstate Angkor’s splendor. It took me 30 hours to get there — traversing 12 time zones in five plane rides — and what I found was worth every miserable travel second. People who’ve seen the temples often describe them in phrases like “the most beautiful thing ever” and “sorta like being on the set of Indiana Jones.” I must concur.
With a footprint bigger than Washington, D.C., and a main temple climbing 20 stories into the sky, the temples of Angkor are best traveled by motorbike (which rent in a nearby town for around $7 per day) and captured by a wide-angle lens (which was woefully absent from my travel bag). In my opinion, a guide is superfluous. Buy a book.
Following that advice, I approached Angkor Wat, the main temple and centerpiece of the compound, on motorbike. I first saw a perfectly square moat, lined by perfectly chiseled blocks. Set back from the moat’s western face there stretched a wall bearing three structures. They were enough to make me choke, and they were mere watchtowers. A few football fields behind them, five minarets filled the sky — four rising from the corners of a square and a huge one planted in the middle — standing in perfect symmetry over the sprawling temple below.
Imagine the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. This is way better. Just wait until you muster the courage to climb the precipitous staircase to the temple’s top.
A close second to Angkor Wat’s beauty, the ancient Buddhist monastery Preah Kahn was eerily empty when I visited. An unassuming facade the width of an average house fronts a maze of chambers so vast it’s easy to confuse the place with a house of mirrors. Then there’s Ta Prohm, one of the few temples left untouched by archaeologists. The forest has literally grown into it, with trees rising through the structures like unintended 100-foot columns. With the temples trapped in the grip of their roots, the end result looks much like muscles and sinews holding together an ancient skeleton.
Part of the temples’ charm — a part that’s fast eroding — is that they’ve been open to the public for only 12 years and became a hot spot for Western tourists just five years ago. It’s starting to get touristy, but because the site is protected by the United Nations, it’s managed to skirt the Disneyland vibe.
And it’s more satisfying than any Epcot illusion that would have you believe you’ve found a lost city, a wonder of the world.