Also the set for Raiders of the Lost Ark
This week we are in Angkor Wat, near Siem Reap in central Cambodia.
The first time I was here was in 1992 with David Kennerly. We were shooting one of the very first VJ test stories for Nightline and the place was still under partial Khmer Rouge control.
Later, I came back here with my now ex-wife. Â Equally dangerous, but for other reasons.
Now, Lisa and I are here and it’s been fascinating – and much more enjoyable!
1,000 years ago, Angkor Wat was the biggest city in the world. It had a population of more than 100,000 and it was massive.
This was at a time when the population of London was 20,000 and people were living in huts, for all practical purposes. Angkor was filled with massive stone public buildings – more like Rome.
It was a ‘lost city’ until it was uncovered, completely consumed by the jungle, by the French in the late 16th Century.
Today, it’s a major tourist attraction, like The Pyramids, and absolutely worth the trip.
Standing before ruins like the one above, you can not help but to feel your mortality. That which was is great and powerful today may be nothing tomorrow.
Walking around Angkor, I am reminded of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
Ironically, leaving the ruins of Angkor, on our way back to the hotel, we passed this:
Kodak Express.
Like Angkor, once the biggest film and photo company in the world.
Now, bankrupt.
And soon to be overtaken by the jungle.
Nothing lasts forever.
Meanwhile…
He seems pretty happy with the digital world.
