Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [77]
“That’s amazing,” he said, shaking his head. “You guys get along better than most husbands and wives. If you watch closely, you can tell that some couples are already starting to get a little tired of each other.”
I was anxious to see Angkor Wat. The structure itself—square with a towering temple-mountain in the center, three concentric quadrangular enclosures, and surrounding walls approximately 275 yards in length, all surrounded by a giant moat—is reached via a long causeway, and we made our way toward the outer walls. Just beyond them, our guide told us to stop. In the darkness, we could see nothing at all.
In time, the sky behind the temple began glowing red, then fanned out in vivid orange, then finally yellow. Against the changing sky, the temple was outlined by shadows, the features invisible. Yet I couldn’t look away. Even from a distance and despite reading about it, the size of Angkor Wat nonetheless gave me pause. Had it been built recently, it would be considered massive. When it was built eight hundred years ago, it must have defied comprehension.
We stayed long enough to watch the sky turn from yellow to blue, and then climbed back onto the bus. As we drove, the countryside of Angkor began springing to life. The roads became crowded with scooters, zipping nimbly around the lumbering bus. There seemed to be no driving regulations; people drove on either side, wove in and out of traffic, and veered at the last second, but somehow it seemed to work.
The scooter riders were, in their own way, as impressive as Angkor Wat. We learned that most of the scooters had been manufactured in China and cost around six hundred dollars. No bigger than a moped, they were Cambodia’s version of a Chevy Suburban.
“There’s four people on that scooter!” one person said, and everyone on the bus would pile toward the window to see it.
“Over here, there’s five!” another would shout, and we’d all move to the windows on the other side of the bus.
“I see six!”
“No way!
“Back there! Look!”
We did. I blinked at the sight of a scooter with six people on it; it was moving slowly, but moving nonetheless, veering like everyone else.
“You’re not going to believe this,” someone finally said. “Up ahead of us. Take a look.”
“What?”
He pointed. “I count seven on that one.”
And there were. A man was seated in the middle; on the scooter were what seemed to be his kids. Two little girls were seated behind the father, three more little kids were in front of him. And riding on his shoulders was his son, the youngest of the bunch, a child who looked to be about five. All were dressed in uniforms; it seemed obvious that dad was bringing the kids to school.
While we continued on toward the hotel, everyone on the bus looked unsuccessfully for a scooter carrying eight people. As if, in this remarkable environment, seven weren’t enough.
Because of the heat and humidity in Cambodia, our day was divided into two segments. In the morning, we’d visit the other temples and sights—Ta Prohm, the Bayon, and the Elephant Terrace. After lunch, we’d spend a few hours at the hotel. Later in the afternoon, we’d visit Angkor Wat.
Our first stop was Ta Prohm, and despite the grandiosity of Angkor Wat, it would be our favorite temple to visit. It wasn’t large and lay pretty much in ruins, but the jungle growth intrigued us. Shrouded in shade, the giant roots of strangler figs and silk cotton wove around doorways and crept over walls as if the roots had been poured from the trunk. It seemed as if the jungle was in the act of devouring the temple, as it had once swallowed all the others.
The roots were unstoppable. Though the giant ones caught our attention first, closer inspection revealed the finer roots forcing their way between blocks; in time, the block would eventually be loosened. In a couple of decades, those blocks would be found on the ground with the countless others that were piled around us.
The temple, though in a terrible state of disrepair, had somehow maintained its original shape. Like all of the temples we would