detail3

detail3
Originally uploaded by honeybeealtman.

Ankhor Wat is a vast palace and temple complex surrounded by a moat created by the mining of massive amounts of sandstone used to build the structures within. Bill says that taking so many pictures, he is, to a certain extent, distanced from the experience, so that he is freed up for some leitmotif interruption. This time it was a young man Jin, with whom I had struck up a conversation.

He had a narrow, almost fox-like face with the remains of a complexion problem, and the warmest, liveliest eyes. He was dressed in layers with a felt hat atop his head that he said once belonged to his grandfather, now in heaven. He said he lives with his mother, who has been suffering through bouts of malaria for some time, just outside the temple complex. His father had died in the war, from a land mine before ever laying eyes on him. At twenty-one, Jin looked sixteen and when he spoke of his father, his voice faltered slightly. Jin had easy, excellent English, though he said that his Khmer was a little slurred–not as pure as that of those from within the countryside. He told us that people from Phnom Penh laughed to hear him speak. When asked if this was because his accent betrayed some class distinction, he acknowledged that it might.

He knew a great deal about the bas reliefs carved upon the vast passages of the temples, as well as various methods of construction and preservation of the complex. He was open and honest to a fault. All the exuberance of that battle art, the action and the elephants, the generals and the kings, all vying for their rung on a descending ladder of power.