The Big Fish

Although Radek likely had his fill of wats in Thailand, I took him to a few here since the architecture, paintings, and symbols are different in the Khmer Buddhist culture.  Plus, they're not called wats in Cambodia; they are pagodas, therefore, totally different.

Every time I go to Kim's, someone in her family asks if I want to see the "big fish."  Each time I made up some excuse because I seen lots of fish in my life, and I was pretty sure they were going to drag me over to some mosquito-infested bog with a bunch of ugly catfish.  This time, however, I finally relented.

The fish live in a river at the nearby pagoda, and the reason they are so big is that the area is protected, so nobody can catch the fish.  It also helps that there is a lady at the entrance selling bags of fish pellets and bread crumbs to feed them.  Kim's sister, brother-in-law, and their two boys came along. 

The brother-in-law told us, "All foreigner come here to see the big fish."  I'm thinking, "What foreigners?"  It took us a half an hour to get here on a dirt road that should have been closed.  Probably, one time, many years ago, one other white person got lost and accidentally wandered into this place, so now it is considered the hot tourist spot.

Brother-in-law showed us a painting which represented Buddhists' version of hell.  I said, "I thought Buddhists were reincarnated?"  He told me that sometimes, if a person commits a sin that is really terrible, they will go to hell.  I asked, "What if a person does may good deeds in their life and only one very bad sin?"  He was unable to answer that. 

He pointed out the Devil (who has some other Khmer name) and his secretary.  (Naturally, one would need a secretary in hell to record all the sins of the inhabitants.)  Buddhist hell is basically the same as Christian hell.  It's hell, and you do not want to end up there.  Although, in their version, people are punished differently according to their sins.  Instead of everyone suffering fire and brimstone for the rest of eternity, Buddhists endre all manner of tortures.  For instance, if someone is a murderer, he will be killed over and over again.  If someone blames someone else for their sins, he will have his tongue pulled out repeatedly with a pair of pliers.

There are often statues of animals at Cambodian temples, and some of them have symbolic meanings like the tiger.  I asked the meaning of the elephant statue, and brother-in-law shyly smiled and said, "Oh, it is just pretty."