On 17th June, I was almost getting to the point where I’d seen enough temples but my guide insisted that we head out to Preah Khan, which was a small temple – I could relate to it because it was around the size of a mansion and looked “livable in”.

The door was guarded by a youngster with a Kalashnikov, taking his job seriously, and looking not too dissimilar to the nearby statue, except that he had a head.

I’m not interested in guns, but having never seen an AK47 close up I was somewhat curious, and this guard explained how his worked. He showed me how to change the iconic curved magazine, and how to operate the long lever on the right that changes it from semi-automatic to automatic. No shots were fired during this instruction, and I really hope I’m never in the position of suddenly wanting to remember what he taught me…

The indoor carvings are even better preserved. It’s so hard to believe they are 1000 years old.

From there we went again to Angkor Thom, to see a couple of things that we didn’t have time for on the first day.

After the Elephant Terrace, we headed for Baphuon Hill, at the end of another causeway, which is believed to hide a temple underneath.

Being a hill I had to climb it, to get the view.

Near the base of the hill was a mortar, for reasons that weren’t particularly obvious. I didn’t feel inclined to stick around to investigate.

That concluded the services of my guide. I wished him well, and gave him a nice tip. I headed for the same restaurant as before, and found that another wedding reception was taking place. I felt that things can’t be too bad when people have wedding receptions.

After an afternoon of postcard and letter writing, I found Charlie again and we went for food and beer. I had my radio with me and he was keen to listen to the BBC News. I asked if he normally got the news from Voice of America, and he just laughed – “No. I need to know the important stuff that’s happening, and likely to happen. BBC is always the best for that.”.

I asked Charlie if he knew anything about the continuing fighting in the hills. He wasn’t sure, but said he thought he’d seen 2 men in the distance today, walking together arm in arm – one of whom was dressed in the government military garb and the other looked a Khmer Rouge fighter. He thought they could have been brothers secretly meeting, and that families often ended up with members on both sides.

Listening to him talking about the Khmer Rouge inevitably reminded me of the portrayal of Sidney Schanberg, the American reporter, in The Killing Fields. Charlie seemed to be in the same mold, not afraid to take risks and go where the action is. He said Khmer Rouge are recognizable by the fact that they use the Krama – the traditional red scarf of Cambodia – round the neck, and also by the fact that they use American M16 automatic rifles rather than AK47’s. I made a mental note of this, so I’ll know when I’m the wrong place…

It later came out in the conversation that Charlie was in Beijing during the Tianenmen Square student protests 2 years ago, and witnessed the violent end, along with a few other reporters who remained.

“Wow”, I said, thinking of the impact that the reporting of the Tiananmen Square massacre had had on world news, the naïve bravery of the students, and the iconic photo of a line of tanks being temporarily stopped by one man holding a shopping bag. “So,” I asked, “..did you meet whoever it was who took the famous ‘tank man’ picture, that won ‘press photo of the year’ or something..?”

“Oh… that photo..” drawled Charlie, looking a bit embarrassed. “…well… actually it was me who took that one…”.

He took another swig of beer, and went on to describe to me how the film roll containing his iconic photo had almost been confiscated by the Chinese police, when they saw reporters taking photos of the tanks, and came storming in to the hotel. However he took the precaution of hiding that roll in the bathroom, sacrificing the rest of the day’s photos when the police broke in and assaulted him, and then managed to recover it later and smuggle it out. It was quite a story, but Charlie then went on to tell me that Tienenmen Square wasn’t the closest he came to losing his life while reporting for Newsweek!

[At this point in the blog I may have to say farewell to any readers in China. The mere mention of “tank man”, “Charlie”, and “Tiananmen” in one web page means that mjgimaging.com will soon be automatically blocked by the Great Fire Wall. China still wants to hide from its citizens the fact that what happened did happen…]