Dispatch is a new series of first-person stories from the road. Readers can share their experiences, from the sublime to the strange.
When I look at my photos from Cambodia, I can feel the heat, the quietness, the feel of the red stone to my touch, the sense of awe at the temple carvings.
At the time, I kind of didn’t want to go, I just wanted to crawl under the covers and not surface for three weeks. Recently separated after a 13-year marriage, my life had lost its mooring. What I thought was firmament was not. I had had to relinquish control over so much that, to survive, I knew I would need to embrace the liquidity of things and the impermanence of life.
I also had to use or lose travel vouchers that the kids and I had acquired. I wanted to go as far as we could to take them, to discover someplace very, very different. Thailand and Cambodia (to visit the temples at Angkor Wat) became that very, very different.
Two weeks before we were to leave I was reading a magazine in a doctor’s office about artist Patricia Gagic, who had helped create a new school and library for young monks in Angkor Wat. I thought maybe we could help, or visit at least, and so I contacted Patricia who was welcoming and effusive that we should, nay, had, to visit.
Once I made contact with Patricia, the trip took on its own energy. It felt important to give over to this, to not fight it, so we packed our bags and in early March, we travelled for 25 hours on three flights to arrive in Bangkok, Thailand.
After a couple of days in the gentle care of good friends, we boarded another plane for Siem Reap, Cambodia, and Angkor Wat. At the airport we met our translator, Thany, and had our first ride in a tuk-tuk, driven by Thuo. We grew to love the tuk-tuk rides; they cooled us in the stifling heat and took us to many incredible temples. Thany and Thuo became our family during that time. On our first day, as the cicadas began their symphony in the dark, Thuo drove us into the forest to visit his wife and their little girl and their two-day-old son, born in the tuk-tuk when they could not get to the hospital in time.
To avoid the crowds and the heat, the three of us would rise predawn each day to sleepily greet Thany and Thuo and climb into the tuk-tuk. Owen, 13, and Finn, 11, are excellent travellers; we’ve learned to navigate complexities together and become richer for the experience.
Visiting the Angkor Wat School, Owen and Finn noted the differences (an outdoor school, saffron robes, all ages in one room) and similarities (doodling in the pages of their notebooks, curiosity in us and us with them). The visit left us humbled and honoured to have been guests.
But it was the temples of Cambodia that entranced me, pulled me in and never quite left me. Ta Prohm, Phnom Bakheng, Banteay Srei, Preah Khan: the names of the temples are like a mantra. Each temple is distinct from the others; each whispered of a time gone. And each spoke to us in slightly different voices. Bayon with its many carved faces of gentleness. Ta Prohm slowly being reclaimed by nature, as the trees intertwined with the 12th-century buildings. Banteay Srei, oh Banteay Srei: Like a miniature set of the most intricately carved sandstone, it spoke of dreams, of fairy tales.
Preah Khan was our last temple to visit. We walked through the forest to its stone entrance in the late afternoon. It was enveloped by trees, unfolding to us, letting us in. Trees hugged buildings in a grasp that sucked all the air out. I felt as if it got quieter; we were virtually alone among the buildings. There were the bones of libraries in many of the temples. Thany, who had trained to be a monk years ago, talked of Buddhism as we walked. He took us to one place where we would walk through a long echoing series of doorways. He told us to walk slowly, contemplatively, through each one, letting the moments sink in. Visiting monks, he said, would do this walk over and over.
Finn began, we followed later. At midpoint, when we thought we’d see Finn waiting for us, we saw no one. Calling for her was useless with all the stone walls absorbing our voices. Owen ran ahead to the end, Thany ran to the entrance. I ran around the middle. I could feel panic mounting; losing a child in a strange land was one of my worst pre-trip fears. Then came a call from Owen. Finn was with him. We all breathed again. It wasn’t the mindful walk I had hoped for, but that seems to be how life unfolds sometimes. I was learning, at last, to embrace the fragility of life.
Send in your first-person story from the road to travel@globeandmail.com.