My visit to the temple ruins at Wat Chown near Siem Reap in Cambodia was very different from those in the Angkor Park. There were no other tourists, no locals hawking their wares or selling cold drinks. For several school children in white shirts and blue shorts and skirts, the temple was a playground. The girls barely looked at me, too enthralled with their game of kitty in the corner. The smaller boys, as in the way with small boys everywhere, got in the way of the girls when they weren't playing their own game of tag around the main building.
A mentally disabled boy of about ten walks over to us and the monk waves him away. The boy didn't move far and stood watching us.
"It's okay." I said. The monk merely looks at me.
We step into the building facing the large Buddha with candles, portraits, and offerings in front.
"May I take a picture?" I asked, raising my camera.
"A stupa is where ashes are put."
He nods.
I attempt to clarify. "These are teachers that were at this monastery and are now in stupa?"
He nods again. "Great teachers."
I look at the small boy now rolling on the floor. "I work with children like him."
A puzzled look appears on his face.
"They have trouble learning, and I help them."
He smiles and nods once again.
Knowing that many Cambodian men become monks for short periods of time early in their lives I ask him how long he will be a monk.
"One year," he replies. "I study Sanskrit. It helps me learn."
"Sanskrit helps you understand Buddhism?"
"Yes, come this way." We walked towards the back where an older monk was teaching two young ones at the doorstep.
"He teach them Sanskrit."
"Take picture?" I ask, raising the camera again. He nods.
My tour guide continues to some shelves lining the back wall containing objects that vaguely remind me of dirty, overgrown Hershey kisses. "Here are ashes not in stupa."
He moves toward a metal tank on a stand about five feet high. "Here we burn the monk," he says and motions chopping to indicate how they can fit a man into a container approximately three feet long.
I am astonished, but my attention is attracted to the teacher monk chasing away the small boy who has apparently interrupted the lesson.
When I look back, my monk is moving toward the front, passing the figure of an animal about the size of a carousel horse. I stop, "What is this?" He struggles for a word and shrugs. "I don't know English word, in Khmer it is ___."
"It's okay," I assure him, "Your English is very good. Much better than my Khmer. All I can say is sous s'dei (hello), lee-hi (goodbye), awkun (thank you), and kinyom choomah Maureen."
He laughs, "Your Khmer very good." By this point we have reached the front again. "May I give an offering?"
"I cannot take from you."
"Yes, I lay money down and you pick up." (Monk's celibacy is so strict they are not allowed to even take an object that a woman is holding. When passing a monk on the street, a woman respectfully gives a wide berth so he doesn't accidentally brush against her.)
"I will pick up and take to teacher," he says.
As I sit on the front step and put my shoes back on, the young boy comes and sits beside me.
"Sous s'dei," I say to him. He looks at me with blank eyes and slurs "sdei."
"Sous s'dei" I say, emphasizing the first word and he says it more clearly. I smile at him.
Standing, I see that the monk has picked up the money I laid down.
"May-ahn samnaang" he said to me with a smile, "Good luck."
"Say again?" I listen carefully and repeat several times.
"Yes" he says.
I say goodbye to him with a sampheah, a slight bow with hands pressed together as in prayer. (To a monk, the hands are placed at face level.) Then I turn and walk out of his world and back into mine.
