My plane landed just before midnight. After 24 hours of travel, including changing planes in Seoul, I walked with travel-stiffened knees down the portable stairs that had been wheeled up to the plane and descended into the muggy, still-hot-at-midnight air of Siem Reap, Cambodia in June 2010. An old, battered bus pulled up to take the passengers to the terminal. I was coming to Cambodia for a work conference, but I had arranged to arrive four days early to leave time to tour Angkor Wat. I had wanted to see Angkor Wat for the past 40 years, ever since living in Bangkok in the 1970s and learning about the architecture and iconography of Buddhist Temples, including their Hindu influences, but political developments prevented travel to Cambodia at that earlier time. This conference was my chance.

The conference would be a gathering of people from non-governmental organizations working on issues of poverty throughout the world. Cambodia had been chosen for the venue because it is welcoming to visitors; it does not exclude people from any country, and it issues visas on arrival at the airport.

I knew that I would be tired and not happy about standing in a line for a visa when I arrived, so I had gotten a visa put into my passport from the Cambodian consulate in Washington, DC where I lived. I was able to walk straight toward the exit of the arrivals area, where I spotted a man holding a placard with my name and the name of my hotel on it. I walked with renewed energy toward him, smiling at the thought of a room with a bed after the long journey, and got into a hotel car.

Walking into the Apsara hotel, a strange scene greeted me. Several young men dressed in the hotel’s uniform were seemingly batting the air at random with what looked like tennis rackets.  I wondered if I was imagining things in my sleepy state. Walking to the reception desk to check in, I asked the English-speaking clerk what the men were doing. The clerk replied that they were killing mosquitos with battery powered rackets that attracted and killed the bugs. A graceful but strange ballet came to mind.

The hotel Apsara was built in traditional Khmer style, with tiled, pointed roofs, spires, gables, and roof ornaments, but had many modern conveniences such as air conditioning and high-speed Internet. An interesting combination. I was ushered into my room by a staff person, managed to unpack my clothes and toiletries, took a quick shower, and immediately fell asleep.

I had scheduled a free day for jet-lag recovery before I was to meet with the guide I had arranged for touring Angkor Wat and its environs. But that first morning, after I had breakfast in the hotel dining room, I paced around my room, not able to rest and not sure what to do with myself. I pulled up my two days’ worth of unread email on my laptop, and found an unwelcome surprise. A note from my nephew said that my sister in Chicago was scheduled for breast cancer surgery, to take place three days from now. I had known that my sister had been having tests, but I’d hoped for the best.  I was 9,000 miles and 12 time zones away! None of my colleagues who would be coming to the conference had yet arrived, so I didn’t even have anyone with whom I could share my grief. I allowed myself to cry quietly for a few minutes, reflecting on how important my big sister, really a second mother to me since she was 13 years old when I was born, had been to me throughout my life. She had gotten me through all the rough spots I had encountered over the years, especially when I was a teenager. I then stood up and gathered necessities into my day pack – Kleenex that could double as toilet paper, a granola bar from the stash with which I always travel, a bottle of water that the hotel had left in my room, sun screen, and a hat. I felt that I urgently had to get out of the room and go somewhere, before I lost it completely.

At the hotel desk, I asked whether there was a traditional market in Siem Reap. I was familiar with various traditional markets in Thailand and other Southeast Asian cities, some in the Middle East, and in a few countries in Africa, and I liked to visit them wherever I travelled. There were a lot of commonalities among them, but each had its unique features.

Armed with some local cash and the words to instruct a driver, I walked out of the hotel to where there was a line of motorcycle taxis waiting for fares. They looked like regular motorcycles to which a bench seat with a canopy was attached to be pulled behind it. Getting into one, I managed to tell the driver where I wanted to go. I was a woman alone, and wasn’t sure how I was going to get back from the market, but I presumed I would be safe and trusted myself to figure it out.

The market was a wooden building with a roof and partial walls on the side and a classic red peaked roof. Unlike markets in many places that put tempting looking fruit or perhaps clothing up front, I confronted the smelly stuff as I walked in. All manner of fish and seafood were displayed, most of them still swimming in tanks or buckets.  There were crabs, squid, prawns, small fish fresh and dried, the latter of which gave off a pungent odor, sea cucumbers, and other aquatic things I could not recognize. Behind the fish, there were live chickens in cages, and slabs of meat hanging from hooks. Moving through quickly, the fruits and vegetables appeared. There were melons, rambutan, durian, mangosteen, bananas, guava, coconut, and jack fruit. I couldn’t resist buying some rambutan, a favorite of mine, although I was unsure exactly how I could clean the outside sufficiently in my hotel bathroom to avoid germs before opening them. Cutting open fruit without cleaning the outside is a sure way to get sick in strange countries, I reminded myself, and I definitely did not want my plans to see Angkor Wat undermined.

I wandered back toward the clothing. One of my sons liked to wear the type of button-down white shirt with embroidery that men in South-East Asia often wear to work or for other dress-up occasions. Most of the clothing in the market was not of top quality, but I was able to find a few shirts my son would like.

My jet lag began to catch up with me, so I walked out of the market into a nearby street and went into what looked like a casual restaurant that displayed a menu translated into English on its window. I ordered some small vegetarian fried egg rolls, thinking that the hot oil in which they were fried would kill all the potential germs, and hot tea to revive my energy.

Leaving the restaurant, five different motorcycle taxi drivers suddenly appeared and jostled with each other to ask me where I wanted to go – each mentioning approximately the same price when they heard my hotel name. Although my instinct in Asia is always to bargain, they wanted so little that I just picked the guy closest to me. He dropped me at the entrance to my hotel without any problems, and gave me a deep bow with his hands together near his forehead when I gave him a tip in addition to the fare.

Exhausted, I took another nap, ate a vegetarian stir fry with peanut sauce and rice – nicely spicy with chilies – for dinner at the hotel restaurant. Going to my room, I checked my email for anything urgent, remembered to set an alarm to be ready for my next-day private tour, and quickly fell asleep for the night.

The guide arrived promptly at 7 am and waited for me in the hotel lobby. It is worth touring before the heat of midday there, which typically was over 90 degrees Fahrenheit with 70 percent humidity. He was a trim, athletic-looking Cambodian man about 5’5” tall, wearing a tour guide uniform shirt with a badge indicating that he worked for the nonprofit organization About Asia and was a legal guide.  He led me to a comfortable air-conditioned car with a driver and we were off.

Our first stop was Ta Prohm, a very large and originally ornate Buddhist temple built by King Jayavarman VII in the mid- 12^th to early-13^th century. It is outside of the Angkor compound, which was built in the early 12^th century by King Suryavarman and dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu. In its history, the area was at times ruled by Buddhist and at times by Hindu kings.

Angkor Wat and the other temples in the area were never forgotten, but they were neglected after the 16^th century – allowing the jungle to encroach on the grounds and buildings.  It wasn’t until the 20^th century that major restoration took place. Ta Prohm, however, was left in an unrestored state. Giant fig, kapok, and banyan trees strangled the stonework, an awe-inspiring contrast between the strength of nature and a huge, complex, and intricately designed human-made structure. The complex in its time included 260 statues of gods, 39 towers with pinnacles and 566 groups of residences. My guide said that it required 80,000 people working there to support and maintain it. We spent hours just walking through the labyrinthian inner passages.  The stone bas-reliefs in the inner galleries depict various scenes from the life of the Buddha, including the one where he sneaks out of his father’s house to leave his life of luxury to become a monk and alleviate poverty and sickness in the world. Angels held the hoofs of his horse so his departure wouldn’t be heard. This is one of my favorite stories; we have a Burmese lacquerware painting of the scene that we bought in a small village outside of Pagan hanging on our wall at home.

Arriving back to the hotel that evening reeling from everything I had seen, the modern hotel seemed discordant.  When I opened my computer and checked my email, the contrast was even stronger. What world was I in? Then I saw another email from my nephew. My sister’s surgery would be the following day, which would be the next night in Cambodia. I squirmed in my chair, feeling helpless and guilty. I had to come to Cambodia for my work, but did I have to go early to tour? Why wasn’t I in Chicago holding my sister’s hand?

There was nothing to do but to continue with my plans.  The next morning I went with my guide to Angkor Wat itself.  The approach to Angkor Wat – a long stone-paved bridge that crosses over a moat – seems to be designed to enhance one’s anticipation   Even though I had seen many pictures of Angkor Wat, I gasped at the cone-shaped, decorated stone towers that loomed ahead and at the symmetry and beauty of the scene, transporting the viewer to a complex world created eight centuries ago.  I have had a few similar experiences of falling into antiquity – in the Old City of Jerusalem, at Petra in Jordan, and at the Taj Mahal for example – but nothing I have seen matches the grandeur and scope of Angkor Wat.

As we entered the gate to the complex, we were greeted by a band of somewhat aggressive macaques – coming close to check on whether I might be carrying any food they could steal.  I had been warned so I knew better than to carry food, but I did see one jump up and snatch a protein bar from a woman walking ahead of us, just as she was putting it in her mouth.  I was told that there were several bands of macaques that apparently thought they owned the place.

Angor Wat is huge. My guide said that there were 1200 square meters (13,000 square feet) of exquisite bas relief carvings. They depict several Hindu stories. The most important of them, he said, was the story of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk which depicts the beginning of time, the creation of the universe, and an epic battle between the gods and demons. The gods and demons work together to churn the ocean of milk to release the elixir of life and immortality, but then they fight over which of them will control it. There is a tug of war between the two, using a serpent as the rope. The gods ultimately win, of course. These stone carvings in the walls of the temple are fully visible and clear, despite their age.

Back at the hotel again that evening, I looked around the hotel restaurant to see if any of my colleagues from Washington or other countries around the world had yet arrived for the conference, which would begin the day after next. I said hello to a few people I knew slightly from Brazil and the Philippines, but no one was yet there with whom I could share my angst about my big sister, my only sibling.

The surgery was scheduled for 2 pm Chicago time, which was 2 am in Siem Reap. Although I am intellectually interested in Buddhism and Hinduism and have respect for those religions, I myself am a traditional Jew. I dipped into our tradition and decided that I would stay up during the night reciting Psalms and praying. I had not thought to bring a bible on the trip, but I was able to find Psalms in Hebrew and English on the Internet and choose appropriate ones to recite that would be traditional for the situation, such as Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I call you, O Lord, O Lord listen to my cry.”  Despite my intentions to stay up the whole night, I fell asleep toward morning. I’d hoped to receive an email before I fell asleep from my nephew saying that all went well, but there was not yet any news.

This time when I went down to breakfast, I found some of my close colleagues. I was able to tell them about my sister, and felt a bit better after I was able to share my feelings and worries with them.

My tour package included one more day of touring before the conference began. I realized that I was too tired to do another day of climbing up and down the towers and buildings sweating in the heat at Angkor Wat, so I asked the tour guide to take me to see some of the life in Siem Reap, and also to take me to a store to buy local handicrafts – something in which I always am interested. The handicrafts were a bit disappointing. I learned that just about all the artisans in the country had been killed during the Khmer Rouge genocide from 1975 to 1979 that wiped out nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population, either through direct execution, forced labor, starvation or disease. Young people who survived were trying to resurrect the craft traditions, but the teachers were not there for them. I had bought an exquisitely carved soapstone box depicting Angkor Wat from a Cambodian artist refugee in Washington, DC in the early 1980s that we display to this day on our coffee table; what I saw in the government handicraft store in 2010 was – unfortunately – far inferior.

Arriving back at the hotel, I went to my room. The email I so wanted to see was there. The surgery had occurred later in the day than planned, but all went well and the doctors thought all the cancer was removed. My sister was resting and recovering.  I lay down on the bed and took a nap in preparation for the opening dinner of the conference that evening, relieved and grateful for the good news.  Now I would be able to concentrate on the conference sessions I was scheduled to lead, while looking forward to returning to the U.S. and seeing my sister.