Waiting in the front driveway were my tuk-tuk driver, Thama, and my guide.
Thama by Caroline
“Bong, Caroline — this is Yoko, your guide,” someone said.
Yoko stepped forward and bowed. His smile was so big, I couldn’t help but smile even bigger.
Yoko by Caroline
“Ready to go?” Yoko asked.
“Ready to go!” I responded.
“Alright — let’s go!”
We climbed into the tuk-tuk and Thama started pedaling. The heat was still thick and unforgiving.
“It gets better around four o’clock,” Yoko said, reading my mind. “Morning tours are best. You will see when we go in the morning — much better, you will love it,” he said.
I settled into that same stillness from my drive earlier as we made our way toward the temple gates, which would take “only twenty minutes or so,” according to Yoko.
I was in awe of everything, really.
I saw my first monk in person — “baby monk, very young. It wasn’t this way before the war,” Yoko explained.
I saw my first “water-buffalo over there, look —” Yoko pointed.
I somehow forgot about the heat because it didn’t matter — not when I was on a tuk-tuk in Siem Reap about to visit some of the most ancient temples in the world.
Our first stop was Angkor Thom.
I’d only ever seen it in movies or in pictures. It was the image that had convinced me to come here in the first place, actually.
Angkor Thom by Caroline
Yoko explained that the four faces carved into the temple stood for:
“Loving kindness, sympathy, compassion, and equanimity.”
We met Thama back on the main road and drove to Bayon Temple — “like Times Square,” Yoko said with a grin. It was built in the 12th century and had “many smiling faces.”
“See the lip?” he said and pointed to one of the smiling faces.
“Like mine. We are the same. Smiling faces means Buddhist temple.”
