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By : Ann Creevey. |
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Once upon
a time, there was a place called the Forest of the
Giants.
One day, an impoverished man abandoned his 12 infant
daughters in the forest because he could not support
them. A giantess called Neang Santemea found them
there and took them to her daughter Neang Kong Rei
to be her servants.
The little girls' lives were hard and eventually
they managed to escape to a neighboring kingdom
where the king saw them and declared he would marry
all 12 at once.
But Neang Santemea found out where the girls had
fled and how happy they were in their newfound wealth.
She disguised herself and used her charm to make
Rothasith fall in love with her and make her his
thirteenth wife.
Meanwhile, all twelve sisters fell pregnant. |
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Legend has it that Kong Rei
Mountain in Kampong Chhnang province is the body
of a grief-stricken giantess turned to stone.
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But Neang Santemea
was not to be beaten. She feigned a deadly illness none
of the king's physicians could cure. Her grief-stricken
husband fell under her spell and listened when she told
him the only cure for her illness.
"Only a potion made from 23 eyeballs of pregnant
women will cure me," she wept.
The king ordered the eyes of his 12 first wives removed
to save his last wife. Only one, the youngest sister Neang
Peov, was allowed to keep one eye.
Then the mutilated women were confined to a cave and forced
to eat their newborn children one by one.
Only Neang Peov managed to save her son Puthisen. In Khmer,
the boy's name means "very knowledgeable".
The miraculously cured Neang Santemea grew more and more
nervous as Puthisen grew into a young man. She feared
he would become king.
She wrote him a letter and asked him to take his horse
and ride into the neighboring kingdom.
"This is a letter of passage through the Forest of
Giants," she told him.
In fact, it was a message to the guard giants telling
them to kill and eat the young man as soon as he arrived.
Puthisen rode off to the Forest of Giants.
On the way he met a hermit who told him what the letter
said.
"But I can change it. Here, now you will be safe,"
the hermit told Puthisen.
When Puthisen arrived the giants greeted him and read
the note.
"Ah, Neang Santemea says you must be married to her
daughter," they cried. So Puthisen married Neang
Kong Rei.
Neang Kong-Rei fell deeply in love with him on sight,
not knowing he was her mother's mortal enemy.
As soon as Puthisen could, he found out where the giants
were keeping the eyes they had taken from the 12 sisters
and stole them back, then leapt back on his horse to ride
home and return them.
Neang Kong-Rei knew she could not live without him and
tried to stop him, but he used a magic potion to turn
the land between them into water so she could not follow.
Neang Kong-Rei cried herself to death, and her body turned
into the mountain of Kong Rei, which lies across the river
in Kampong Chhnang and still resembles the body of a prone
woman.
And that is the story of Neang Kong-Rei Mountain. |
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Suite
B8, Regency Square, InterContinental Hotel, 294 Mao Tse Toung
Boulevard,
Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia.
Tel: (855) 23 213 133 Fax: (855) 23 213 033
E-mail:
editor@leisurecambodia.com |
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