032. I step into ruins. Forty dollars. This is the cost for a three day pass. This is financial ruin for millions of people around the world.
I poke my head in the remnants of a meticulously swept room. My fingers trace the laterite supporting the crumbling façade. I walk through a passage. It is dark. I walk through another passage. It is even darker. Wary of the low doors, I duck. My head still smashes into stone. I feel like Indiana Jones……
…if Indiana Jones frequently smashed his head* into crumbling stone doorways while walking through dimly lit, well swept, world famous ruins overrun with tourists. (Tourists are the only imminent danger I observe.)
A government approved guide directs me through the ruins. He likes to talk about things like history, wars, gods, goddesses, architecture, and kings. I pretend to understand everything he says.
I devour the ruins for two days. On the third morning I hike a mountain to watch the sun rise over Angkor’s most famous patchwork of ruins.
Sitting atop crumbling ruins I crack open an Angkor beer** and watch the sun rise. Enlightenment!
* The doors become smaller and smaller so that a person must stoop lower and lower through each new door. This demonstrates respect for the King. And another reason why I despise monarchs and despots.
** I’m lucky. When this World Heritage site was being constructed my lot in life would have been clear – artistic slave number 732,000, give or take a few hundred thousand. It’d be an honor for me to dedicate my life to section 3a-1f of the northeast façade. I’m willing to bet my life would be sacrificed for the sanctity of a well carved stone lingam. Stone hard. Stone cold. Stone cold out of luck. This is the artistry of the human imagination, to be recognized by millions of ignorant tourists from all over the world.
I’m wondering if, as a slave with a rebelious streak, you would have chiseled your name (in other words, your number) into one of the stones. Archaeologists and tour guides would call the entire excavation area the “site of slave #732,000″.