By Saturday (the 6th day of our ticket) we've seen most of the temples we want to see, except for Bantea Srei (sounds like "BAN-tee-uh SRAY") which is about 32 kilometers north-north-west of Siem Reap. At the speeds we normally travel on our rusty steeds, we estimate it would take almost about 2 hours to bike there, and then the same again to get back to town. This would leave little time, and even less energy, to explore the temple so we hire a tuk tuk for the afternoon.
We try giving Nan a call (our driver from Day 83) but don't have any luck getting through so we hire a driver through our guesthouse. Peelee is in his early 20s and drives a Cambodian-style tuk tuk, which consists of a scooter hitched to a canopied trailer. (In Thailand, tuk tuks are all one piece, rather than unhitchable.) On the drive in and out of town we pass the usual street scenes, including these two live pigs being transported from A to B on a scooter rack.
We stop for gas at one of the roadside petrol vendors with their mishmash of Red Label/Cola/whisky bottles reincarnated as gas cans.
The road to Bantea Srei is slightly different than the one we've biked to the other temples. Instead of forest, this road is lined with palm trees and villages:
There's a lot of poverty in Cambodia, much more than what I've seen in any other Asian country, and the houses along this road vary from rickety stilted grass houses to sturdy, painted stilted homes built with 2 x 4s. Regadless of the style of home, many of the yards along this road have water pumps in the front, with signs posted above them that say things like "Angkor Clean Water Project" along with the names of those who donated that particular well.
On the tuk tuk, we travel much faster than usual and we seem to see 3 times more than we do in a regular day. A few bare-bottomed toddlers play in whatever shade they can find, men cycle past with 3 foot high stacks of wood strapped to the wheel rack behind the seat of their bicycles, and a few scooters pass us, covered in baskets for sale:
Before reaching Bantea Srei, we stop in at the Cambodia Land Mine Museum for an hour to check out the exhibits. The museum was established by a Cambodian man who goes by the Japanese name of Akira. He spent most of his childhood as a child soldier for the Khmer Rouge in the 70s, and spent later decades both de-mining and laying landmines for various armies while war continued through his teens, 20s and 30s. Once the fighting was done near the end of the 90s, he began work as a de-miner, usually unpaid and informal, and started this museum which has relocated and evolved several times over the years.
The number of unmarked landmines in Cambodia is staggering - various info boards and books that we read suggest that the figure is somewhere between 3 million and 6 million. They take only a few minutes and a few dollars to create and set and they can last up to 150 years; meanwhile, defusing them requires time, expertise and approximately 1000$ per mine. New mines aren't being laid anymore - that ended at the end of the 90s/early 2000s - but parts of the country are littered with them. Efforts to find and defuse them all are progressing but take time. As a tourist, this means that we colour inside the lines - if there's a path, we walk on it. If there's no path, we don't walk on it. We don't even venture off the shoulder of the highway unless it's to follow a road or trail that clearly been used a lot and recently. Whenever Pierre heads off for a day of solo-templing, I always end with "...and remember to stay on the paths."
The country is littered, too, with landmine victims, especially in western Cambodia where the bulk of the landmines are. Each major temple we visit comes complete with a 6 to 8 person band consisting of landmine victims pursuing music as a career path. Legless booksellers ride handbikes up and down the roads of Siem Reap with signs explaining that they are selling books to avoid begging. At the sidewalk cafes in town and at temple gates, amputee kids stop to ask for change and gum and sell postcards to tourists. There are new amputees every year, when the rainy/dry season unearths landmines and bombs in farmer's fields that were until then safe to work in. Kids play kick the can with mystery objects that turn out to be landmines, or livestock sets off tripwires while walking through the woods.
From what we know, Cambodia doesn't have any safety nets - no disability, no unemployment insurance, no welfare, no free education. Making ends meet is a struggle at a best of times - adding any additional problems to that (hospital fees, trauma, loss of mobility/employability, death of a family member...) just makes things that much more difficult, and unless a nearby aid organization/NGO steps in, people are just out of luck.
The landmine museum now runs on a minimal admission fee (1 US$), donations and most likely some support from outside agencies. According to an information board in the entry building, the grounds of the museum include "a school, an orphanage with living facilities for up to 30 at-risk children, a medical clinic that serves as a rehabilitation center, and a training center for landmine accident prevention and safety."
The orphanage is not so much for parentless children as it is for local children whose families wanted their kids (some amputees, some not) to have the chance to get an education and 3 healthy meals a day. A bulletin board in the first display building has smiling headshots of each of the kids and a short, first-person biography of their lives before they came and why they decided to join. (It sounds as though the decision is made by both the kids and their parents, not just by their parents.) They study the usual mix of school subjects, along with English and Japanese.
(I'm pleased to see a large sign near the playground that lays out, very clearly, their policy about tourists not photographing the kids - doing so leads to an immediate escort off the grounds. There are also signs that say things like: "Please do not give the kids money, or gum or pens. We are giving them a good education. You will teach them to be beggars." )
The display at the museum consists of displays of a selection of landmines and bombs (all de-fused) that Akira has personally cleared during the past decade.
We wander through the displays and read about landmines, like the ones that jump up to eye level before exploding (Bouncing Bettys). We see examples of bombs dropped on Cambodia by several different Western countries over the past few decades (the smaller ones are slightly bigger than juggling pins) and see a diagram of how a booby-trapped cigarette works (nasty).
Videos play in a shaded tent showing his technique for locating the landmines, and his defusing process which was very informal at the time of filming: no mask, no metal detector, no noticeable gear. He's very professional and careful; he just happens to use only those tools that he's always had available, namely his wits, his experience and a long pointed stick. (A sign later notes that as of recently, he now uses internationally approved gear for his work.)
A hand drawn diagram explains his (old) system of working, which amounts to the following:
Safe places to step:
- large rock
- small flexible tree
- dense clump of grass
- tree root
Probe at 30 degree angle with pointed stick.
We take a short break in the shade near some baby chickens in one of the super-duper poultry huts we've been seeing all southeast Asia. (The woven cage holds adult birds in one place while the chicks are able to scoot in and out at will until they grow too big to slip underneath.)
The chicken hut sits next to the final exhibit of the museum, which is a small, fenced-off mock mine-field (deactivated) that Akira has put together to give visitors an idea of what mines and bombs look like out in the field. We wrap up our visit by walking around the perimeter of the mine-field for awhile, pointing out as many of the hidden mines as we can see before heading out to the parking lot to find Peelee.
Bantea Srei is only 6 more kilometers up the road, and the temple grounds are almost dwarfed by the kiosks and roofed market stalls located near it's entrance. The parking lot is on the far side of the market, and it takes us a few minutes to work our way through the crowd of women and kids that follow us as we pass through, scarves for sale draped over their arms and shoulders, books, postcards and drinks in their hands. Beautiful scarf miss. You want buy one. Maybe later you buy from me. Postcards for you mister very beautiful. Ten postcard one dollar.
The temple grounds are quieter, with only a band of musicians (hello mister) and few fruitsellers in the shade (hello lady you buy pineapple mango banana). The book refers to Bantea Srei as a "delicate flower of a temple". The bas reliefs are the most intricate we've seen on this trip, and the place is covered in them from base to peak.
The delicacy comes from more than just the carvings - the temple is also petite compared to the others we've seen. This temple is a kitten next to Angkor's whale and Bayon's reef shark. Pictures of the buildings can be deceiving; the doorways alone are under 5 feet tall but if there's nothing to compare the height to they can look massive. (The tourist in the background who wandered into this shot offers a kind of height reference, but she's so far back that the buildings still look much bigger than they actually are. )
We wander around the buildings for awhile and enjoy the pink stone in the late afternoon light.
Outside the temple we take a few minutes to follow a (well-used) path that leads us out behind the temple grounds and down a country road.
On the way home, Peelee stops so I can take a picture of one of many handpainted road signs I've developed a crush on during this trip. The sign advertises a scooter repair shop and the people working there look confused for a second when I walk up. I mime taking a photo of the sign and ask "OK?", and they laugh and watch the silly foreigner take a bunch of shots of their sign.
As we drive the world wakes up, as it always does around here when the hottest part of the day is done. Dogs sit up, bark more often, more kids play in the dusty front yards, a few people wander out towards the road to see what traffic has come and gone. Peelee drops us off at our guesthouse and we finish of the day with pizza, a walk through the night market and Schwartzenegger's "True Lies" on channel 68.
Photo credits: P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, P, D, D, P, P, P, D, P, D
This spot is popular with tourists for its ambiance - at most other temples the jungle has been drastically trimmed back, and there's little evidence that trees once ruled the grounds. In Thailand, the monkeys have a great sense of entitlement - at Ta Phrohm, we learn that trees, too, can feel entitled. A hundred years or more of growing in a place will do that, I suppose. Their bark is silvery in the midday sun and they drape over crumbling walls and roofs..
...and in other places they seem to hold the structures together. 
The passageway through the gate is narrow and allows only one vehicle (or elephant) through at a time, though it's posssible to carefully squeeze one tuk tuk and an oncoming bicycle through together if you're feeling stubborn.
A little further north along the same road is the Terrace of the Leper King. I'm not sure whether this is the historical name of the site or if this is just what the historians call it - the book suggests that there may have been a king with leprosy but that the site was probably a crematorium. The terrace is surrounded by a high-walled, narrow hallway of carvings:
... and grow upwards into long hallways...
... and a few shadowy places... 
Everywhere you go on the grounds you see several of these faces at once, whether straight on...
...or in profile.
Whenever you look up, there's another...
...and they stare at you through windows:
