Sometimes, embracing the unexpected can result in uniquely memorable discoveries
By Bill Quick of Olympia, Washington, 7-time traveler & Overseas Adventurers’ Club member
My wife, Ann, and I recently returned from a nearly three week trip with OAT to Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar. There are many stories I could tell, but the following may have been the most memorable experience of the trip.
Angkor Wat is actually an incredible complex of over 1,000 temples that is spread across something like four hundred square miles. It was the religious center of the Khmer empire. What most people think of as Angkor Wat is actually just the central temple. This temple is 3,360 feet by 2,600 feet and soars to about 300 feet at its highest point. It is surrounded by a grassy apron about 100 feet wide, a wall, a moat that is two hundred yards wide, and an outer wall. The temple is entered by walking on a broad causeway of great sandstone blocks that crosses these moats. From the gate to the center of the temple is almost a half mile. The temple was built by the Khmer people about eight to nine hundred years ago. Its once-colorful rock, a light yellow to tan sandstone and red igneous laterite, has weathered to a pretty uniform gray. It was built as a temple to the Hindu God Shiva, the destroyer of worlds. Later, as what is now Cambodia became Buddhist, the temple honored Buddha. Some of the decoration reflects both religious traditions.
Ann and I, two women, and our young Cambodian guide entered Angkor Wat on a sunny afternoon. We spent some time exploring the long carved galleries that are open on one side to admit light. One eight hundred-yard-long wall is intricately and beautifully carved with the history of the Khmer people. There are many open courtyards and smaller temples within the greater temple. There were only small numbers of tourists because we were visiting in the off season. As the afternoon progressed, big dark clouds began to form on the horizon. At first we weren’t too concerned because they seemed so distant. As often happens in the tropics, though, the storm developed rapidly and we were soon engulfed in those dark clouds. It began to rain; torrents of rain, sheets of rain, it was a deluge of biblical (though temporary) proportions. Water cascaded down the stairwells and came off the roof lines in streams. Strong wind swirled the rain about the buildings and into every corner. Lightning and thunder flashed and crashed around us.
One could find some shelter against interior walls, but you could not escape the mist. Groups of tourists huddled together behind pillars and in corners, but we were all gradually getting wet. No one wanted to venture out. We waited and darkness began to gather around us. Darkness comes rapidly in the tropics. The temple had turned into a vast, gray, darkening, tomb-like structure. With the lightning and thunder, the roaring rain, cascading water in the temple, and the vast grey structure around us, it was awesome and scary. While the overall temple design is symmetrical and orderly, the interior of the temple is a maze of colonnaded walkways, open rooms, stairways going in all directions, temples, towers, and many levels. We were 500 yards deep into the core of the temple and we needed to get out of there before it was too dark to find our way.
I carried a daypack that contained an umbrella. In the wind and torrents of rain it was useless. I also had a hip-length Gore-Tex parka. We decided to give it to our diminutive guide for whom it was almost knee-length and decided to walk out. This huge temple complex does not have painted stripes to show the route, there are no signs, no lights, and no helpful park rangers to show the way. Thank heaven the rain was almost warm. Although it was like walking under a hose and soon we were all totally wet, at least it wasn’t cold. We fled the great gray temple in torrents of rain and a world overwhelmed by thunder and lightning. Keep in mind that this was Southeast Asia at the end of their rainy season. The temperature was in the mid nineties with the humidity approaching 100 percent before the rain even started. Our guide was soon about as wet inside the Gore-Tex shell as we were—and less pleasantly so. The twenty- to twenty-five-minute walk back to our vehicle was long!
It may sound awful, but it was the adventure of the trip!
You can visit Angkor Wat—hopefully in better weather—during OAT’s Ancient Kingdoms: Thailand, Laos, Vietnam & Cambodia adventure, or on optional extensions of our adventure, or on optional extensions of our Discover Thailand and Inside Vietnam trips.