Page 19 - To Dragma March 1932

34 To DRAGMA
cause of their early departure for France, had to go on to Angkor with-
out me. I had my reward for good behavior, however, in being well
enough to follow them at the end of the ten-day period. I was still far
from rosy in tone, but at least some of the citrous effect had gone, and
so had the pains and nausea.
On the way from Saigon to Angkor I stopped for a day en route
at Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, with its picturesque palace, its
fine museum, and its pagoda with a floor of solid silver and a Buddha of
solid gold weighing more than one hundred and sixty pounds. (I for-
got to tell you that just before leaving Saigon also I had shared in the
big Chinese New Year celebration, with its terrificfirecrackers,its hos-
pitable entertainments and its street dragon dances, and had been for-
tunate in being taken by a wealthy young English-speaking Chinese on
his and his wife's round of New Year calls on the rich Chinese ricemill
owners in Cholon, the Chinese suburb of Saigon—a most interesting ex-
perience. Incidentally, after three Christmas dinners, I have shared in
jour different New Year celebrations this year—our own on the boat
to Hongkong, the Chinese in French Indo-China, the Malay New Year
in Java, and the Hindu New Year in Kashmir! Not a bad record. But I
am getting ahead of my story!
Angkor, with its stupendous ruins, is a chapter in itself which will
have to wait until another time. Suffice it to say here that it was a more
thrilling thing to see than even the most exaggerated accounts gave
promise of. The size and plans of the palace and temple buildings; the
marvel of their carvings (Angkor Vat alone is a temple more than four
times the size of Columbus Circle, according to statistics, and practically
every stone in its miles and miles of corridors and walls is covered with
the most delicate carvings!); the romantic location of the buildings in
their jungle setting, and more than anything else, the mystery of what
happened after the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries to the city and the
more than two million people who lived in it, are indescribable. Yet all
that is known is that the Khmers built the place between the ninth and
the thirteenth centuries; that something happened after that so that the
city was deserted; that the jungle came and completely engulfed it; that
in 1861 a French scientist came on it by the merest chance and reported
finding it; and that in the last fifteen or twenty years the French Gov-
ernment, bit by bit, has been digging out, reclaiming from the jungle
and restoring as it can these thrilling remains of one of the world's
most interesting and baffling mysteries. Word or camera pictures could
never begin to do justice to Angkor's ruins. They must be seen.
We (an American army doctor, his wife and I) spent several days
at Angkor, and then I went to Siam. I had a wonderfully interesting
week in Bangkok, a city of temples (there called "wats") if ever there
was one. But such different temples!—buildings with tall, slim, fairy-
like colored or gilt roofs or spires that, like the palace roofs, rose high over
the low city sky-line in all directions. I never wearied of looking at and
photographing them, or of browsing in the courtyard that houses the
Temple of the Emerald Buddha, in the palace precincts. We had many
MARCH, 1932 35
fascinating trips also through the city's "klongs" (canals), and particu-
larly to the unique floating market, to which all the world comes in tiny
crafts to purchase its wares from boat-mounted shops that vary in size
from large establishments almost like houses, to tiny dugouts in which
merchants glide in and out peddling a few vegetables or chickens or
what-not. The Siamese friends who entertained me, and with whom I
spent many happy hours, were related to the royal family. One day I
even had tea with the King's secretary, whom I met through them!
From Bangkok I went north through Siam almost to the place where
it touches Burma, stopping at Chieng Mai, in an interesting and entirely
different kind of country from the flat, bare lands of central and south-
ern Siam. Chiang Mai stands out in my memory not only as the place
near which that wonderful picture "Chang" (Siamese for "elephant")
was taken years ago, but as the very most friendly and hospitable com-
munity that I have ever been privileged to visit. On the way back to
Bangkok from Chieng Mai I stopped at Lopburi and at Ayuthia, with
their wats and palaces and interesting native life. Siam at present has
four railroad lines. I went to the ends of three of them—and from the
northern tip of the country to its most southern point. On my way to
Singapore, then, I traversed the length of British Malaya also after
leaving Siam, and stopped once more at Penang and Kuala Lumpur be-
fore the five-day train journey from Chieng Mai to Singapore was
completed.
[To be continued]
On one of the stone elephants that
survive tn the ruins at Angkor.
1
£'«''* a "Moi- woman in a native village
, *re"ch Indo-China. The heavy silver
lobr'"°i a r e hansing on the elongated
e s of the woman's ears I