February 8, 2015
After being rudely awakened by our 4:15 AM wake-up call, we departed for Angkor Wat to watch the sunrise over the temple. Angkor Wat is a UNESCO World Heritage Center. It is a 19 square-mile temple complex and the world’s largest religious monument. The main complex pictured below is the center piece and is symbolic of the co-existence of Buddhism and Hinduism. It took more than 30,000 workers, 7,000 elephants, and 7,000 artists to complete this structure. It includes five towers plus the bas-reliefs along the 2,500 foot wall which surrounds the towers. The tall, central tower is dedicated to the Hindu god, while the four towers around it represent the Buddhist religion. As our guide Samnop explained, Hindus believe in a ‘god’ [one of which is Shiva] that is all-powerful and resides in the heavens. Followers pray to this god, not dissimilar to Christianity, for protection, guidance, and help. In contrast, Buddhism may best be described as a way of life with a belief that all power rests inside each one of us. The four towers represent the 4 cornerstones of Buddhism: Charity, Compassion, Sympathy, and Equality. For example, a Hindu may pray and ask god for help in passing a test in school. In contrast, a Buddhist who asks Buddha for help in passing the test, would be told that the power to pass the test rests with individual, so go and study hard to pass. Buddhism is the main religion of Cambodia, most people also practice parts of Hinduism and Animism. I’ve discovered that Buddhism is very philosophical, enlightening, and nurturing….something I’m going to investigate further.
Sunrise over Angkor Wat
Some of the artwork on the walls around the five towers of Angkor Wat
Sue, Andre, and a few friends watching the sunrise
The Cambodian vendor with her new, best friends
The sunrise was beautiful. Instead of just a few people venturing out at this time of day, we found a large crowd as well as the always-accompanying vendors trying to sell scarfs, bags, books, etc. One of them attached herself to Barbara and kept following her until Barbara bought 8 scarfs, bags, etc. We believe Barbara had ‘I want to buy’ sign pinned to her back. There was spillover of course – as Sue, Roselie, Donna, and Carolyn joined the buying frenzy – great fun.
One of the recurring pictures you get as you travel throughout Cambodia, is the extreme, pervasive poverty. Twenty percent of the population lives below the poverty level of $125 per month. The absence of any infrastructure and minimal education causes abuse of the environment on a scale we couldn’t imagine. The air is thick with pollution. Many people wear masks. Trash is merely thrown around into to what seems like an ever-expanding sea of plastic bottles, bags, paper, and other trash. Combine that with dust from the unpaved or partially paved roads, the dry season, and you get a situation we’ve not seen anywhere else in the world we’ve traveled – even the townships of South Africa.
Sam [aka Samnop] is from a very poor family and village. Now that he is making a reasonable living from his guide work, he continues to help the ten families in his village. He and his wife use their own money to periodically buy food and clothing for them. He invited us to visit his village so we could get a better sense of how they live. We pooled our money [$100] so Samnop could buy two large [50 Kg] bags of rice plus a few treats, notebooks, and pens for the children. You can’t imagine how delighted and appreciative they were. They distributed the rice among the families. It will feed them for five days. When it was the children’s turn to receive their treats, they lined up neatly, by size to receive their share. If we tried to give one of them a second piece of candy, they signaled that they had already received one and pointed us to another child who had not received any. Everything was about sharing and caring for each other.
Buying bags of rice for the family in Samnop’s village
Members of the family ready to receive rice and treats.
Kids waiting in line to receive their treats
Some of the children
She is now responsible for raising her two sisters on her own
One of the young girls, in the red top above, is 13 years old. She has two younger siblings. Their father abandoned the family several years ago and their mother died of cancer last month. So now she is taking responsibility for raising her sisters. Following this experience, all of us decided that we would send Samnop $100 each quarter to buy and distribute rice and other necessities. Unlike charitable contributions that go into some dark hole, we can now give to people with faces we’ve seen. We know what we’re giving and to whom.
Our guide Samnop and Barbara
Given the inspiration earlier today about Buddhism, we stopped at an art distributor on our way back to the hotel. We bought a sitting Buddha statue, and Barbara and Mel bought two statues – a standing and a sitting Buddha. They instructed us to provide a flower and burn incense in front of the statue, at every full moon.
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