Snake In

I swear Evil Twin Sister was not only Cambodian in her past life, but a Cambodian snake at that!  You should have seen her wriggly excitement inching her way into the labyrinthian ruins of Beng Melea!

"Sir, are there rats around here?  Because that's the only thing I can't stand in the world!", asked ETS from our ruins guide before she went in.  He is an old local guy who had the privilege to have seen Beng Melea's old glory.  If I understood it right, it was accidentally bombed to pieces during the American-Vietnam war.  But there are articles that say that it was the conflict during the Khmer Rouge that destroyed it.

"No, there are no rats here.  Or probably there are, but not much.", he said as translated by Sam.

"Oh no!  I'd rather see rats, lots of them, because it means there are no snakes!", I exclaimed.

Nagas

The fact that all Cambodian temples have images of Nagas, five-headed cobras, being used as rope in a tug-o-war between gods and demons, suggests that the people have an awareness of the scaly, scrawly creature.  And it is really bad to encounter one, even the singleheads, while you are yourself crawling your way in and out of the rubbles.

entrance to the temple

Wikipedia: Beng Mealea , its name means "lotus pond") is a temple in the Angkor Wat style located 40 km east of the main group of temples at Angkor, Cambodia, on the ancient royal highway to Preah Khan Kompong Svay.)

It is one of the larger temples and is around 40kms from Siem Reap by road.  In fact, you will have to spend an extra USD5 entrance fee to see it.  Nobody has ascertained when it was built and who commissioned it, but it is believed to have been erected in the 12th century.

Nonetheless, tourists still come especially those who like a little danger, like ETS and I, because unlike the temples in the Angkor Complex, this one requires a lot of sense of balance to explore.  And seeing that most of the beams and pillars are only supported by wooden reinforcements to prevent it from totally collapsing, tips the danger scale!

We were told that there were recent accidents there; one Korean guy broke his leg after falling for goofing around with his friends, and a Chinese girl who slipped and hit her head and went to a coma.  She was airlifted to HK.  I almost suffered the same fate; I was wearing the wrong shoes, thanks to ETS, and she couldn't be stopped from monkeying up and down, in and out and around.  Being each other's photographer, I had to be where she would be.  I was swarmed by giant red ants and almost vaulted off to a tragically unglamorous death.

We were suprised to find out that it was not as easy as it seemed.  It was a complex structure and you'd lose your way without a guide.  We were wondering how grand it was back in the day.

We would have known if it has not been lost courtesy of man's endless stupid conflicts.