Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [60]
Interesting.
Handing over a wad of bills with the firm expectation that it will be handed back again once the camera's off, and leaving Tasha to explain to her why, and how television works,6 I scale a wooden staircase that leads to the branches of the tree, and from there onto a rickety wooden platform only slightly different from one of those tray tables you eat your dinner off while you're watching Jeopardy!
Here, using some perfunctory acrobatic skills I didn't know I had (hurray, those days at clown college are finally paying off!), I splay my legs over its spine and settle in, faking one of those maharaja poses I've seen a dozen times in old movies: head erect, back straight, limbs loose, allowing my entire body to undulate and sway in sync with the elephant's lumbering gait.
The driver, a young boy—seems no older than twelve—pivots nimbly on the creature's giant head and steers it to left or right by hitting it with a stick and repeatedly kicking its ears. Of course, if elephants had any wit at all, they'd unionize and put a stop to this. But they don't. Like me, they've been knocked down too low to stage a rebellion.
With the first drops of rain from an approaching storm spotting my face, we lollop along at tree height onto an ancient causeway lined with squat, weather-worn statues: fifty-four gods and demons, stretching from one end to the other in long snakes. Beyond them, a crumbling stone arch is set into a wall over twenty-five feet high, the entrance to the temple complex.
Kevin and Mike, his soundman, are up ahead, filming me from a different elephant.
“So what's the next step up on the career ladder as far as elephant-driving goes?” I shout to the boy. “Do you get a faster elephant?”
“Huh?”
I see Mike wince. Oops. Was that the wrong question to ask? A little tactless? Condescending?
As it is, the kid has a poor grasp of English and doesn't understand.
Maybe that's just as well.
A REFRESHINGLY BRIEF HISTORY
OF ANGKOR WAT
In 1100 A.D., the ruler of the Khmer Empire was King Suryavarman II. To honor the Hindu god Vishnu, “creator of all beings, sustainer of the universe,”7 he began construction on a new sandstone temple in Angkor, his capital city. This he called Angkor Wat, an ambitious sprawling layer cake of a thing, epic in scale, with a rectangular moat almost two hundred meters wide, pools inside and out, and all manner of cupolas, statuary, and colonnades to divert and enchant the eye. Estimated completion time: seventy-five years later.
Shortly after it was done, in 1177, the Chams, from neighboring Champa (later South Vietnam), came thundering in to kick the Khmers’ imperial ass, looting homes and temples in Angkor and setting fire to anything that would burn, which was basically everything. Everything but Angkor Wat.
Once the Chams had been chased out, in 1181, a new king, the powerful and audacious Jayavaman VII, found himself with a problem. Many of his people, faced with a decimated city and their homes and livelihoods in ruins, began to question whether the gods they'd put so much faith in all these years, and who were supposed to protect them from harm, were real. Maybe, they argued, the gods were fake: a brilliant ruse concocted by clever minds to keep society in check by instilling fear and superstition in the gullible. Maybe religion was, after all, nothing but a made-up bunch of old hooey.
Uh-oh.
Quickly, Jayavaman gathered his generals. “Damn, they're onto us!” he said.
Then, after a little thought, he did something very clever.
Rather than risk an uprising, which would have cost him his throne, he switched religions. Just like that. Dumped Hinduism, which was very god-driven and quite strict, and adopted Buddhism instead, on the grounds that it was loose and joyful and free, and you got to wear orange all the time.
Well, miraculously, and bizarrely, this simple act was enough to quell the tide of discontent in the city of Angkor and reignite religious fervor.
“Oooh!” the people said. “Orange!”
Without wasting a second, they began building