There was a time in my life that seeing monkeys were as commonplace as seeing raccoons, both rummaging like tiny criminals through sealed bins like a grand heist. But as we walked through the market, weaving in between hotel vans and tut tuts towards the river separating Angkor Wat from the 21st century, they seemed altogether foreign to me. Foreign in the way that they were completely welcomed, unlike in Singapore where man imposed his will (as he usually does) and banished the surilis and the macaques to zoos or nature preserves — remember, look with your eyes and not with your hands — here, they were as integrated into the ecosystem as the chet chien sellers or the mangoes rotting beneath our feet.
“No time for mangos,” Sok Put grinned as he marched ahead, “we must make it for sunset!” The moment it occured to me to ask what we were making it to was the moment the temple chose to reveal itself. An audible *gasp* synchronized itself amongst my family as Sok Put’s smile grew from ear to ear. The first thing to greet us was Vishnu himself, strewn in golden silks with petals, every shade of red, lain at his feet. Even as the years passed and Buddhism started calling Angkor Watt home, the temple’s Hindu roots remain: the gallery halls that modern monks walked through to reach their pilgrimage depict the Ramayana and the Mahabharata epics, the beams supporting the sacred middle tower are lined with sandstone apsara and devata, and the roof overhead the Buddhist place of prayer portray heads of lions and gerunds.
In between the capital temple’s nine century long history lesson, our guide slowly revealed his own. The youngest son. A trilingualist. Marvel super-fan. And in his final year studying the complexities and traumas of his country’s past, Sok Put looks to the wild west with hopes of continuing his education at UC Berkeley.
“We’re from the Bay Area!” my family’s youngest son exclaimed.
As if a smile couldn’t get any bigger! “Maybe one day you’ll be my guide.” he thought aloud. But as we made our way to the heart of the temple and climbed the vertical steps to the middle tower, I thought how disappointing our tour would be. How can one compare the ancient grandness of Cambodia’s jewel with a golden gate, only 82 years old? Or the monks in ceremonial prayer robes with the Bay’s unofficial denim uniform? Or the hum of cicadas with the constant rumble of rubber tires on tar roads?
And then, there it was. Sok Put’s sunset, creeping between the pillars and illuminating the tower above. The monks became statues, the temple became quiet; and while I can’t speak for the world that seemed to fall away past the temple walls, I can assert that at least I was at peace. The final light of the day bouncing off of sandstone reminded me of Singapore’s skyline aflame with dusk somehow, and of the way evening smolders off of Edinburgh’s limestone, and even of the golden shine that closes each day in San Francisco.
There’s almost 8,000 miles between Cambodia and California, although Angkor Wat to the Golden Gate Bridge seems farther somehow. I hope that the world is a small enough place that we meet Sok Put again, that we can walk past the graffitied walls depicting the nation’s revolutionary epic, see the crimson (not golden) beams supporting a state’s icon, and see the fog ceiling of the city by the Bay. I hope he’ll smile like he did when we first met in Siem Reap. Though I can’t help but wonder: when he looks out at the rolling hills of California, will he miss his Cambodian sunset?
