Still Remember You, Angkor Wat

Our tour guide warned us: “It’s going to take five hours to arrive and the unfortunate thing is that you may have a headache because the land isn’t covered by concrete and there are many holes caused by bombs.”Then the intensity of the bus’s shake increased and we all got a headache.

Suddenly we hit a bump, and the curtain was holding when I fell asleep fell down. I rolled down from the chair with curtain and everyone woke up.

“What, what happened?” my mom surprisingly asked and rubbed her eyes.

“It seems your daughter fell down from the chair with the curtain,” with a low and sleepy voice, one of the fellow travelers answered.

At her last word, everyone laughed so hard and I regretted why I went there and suffered from this shake. But many lotus flowers on ponds were beautiful as Cambodian children’s smile. I thought Cambodian children were lucky to see them every time. Our tour guide’s words came back to me: “the ponds are made by the holes caused by the bombs in the wars”, he said. I had been completely moved to tears about the remnant of the wars. But soon I was relieved because the lotus flower of the bomb craters caused by the wars represents the peace of Cambodia.

Even though the bus arrived, we couldn’t see Angkor Wat because the cars weren’t allowed to come near Angkor Wat. Since we started to walk, suddenly children started to appear and I thought they appeared because we were strangers. Gradually more children appeared with the things such as postcards, fans, and guide books. They weren’t just looking at us, but following us to sell what they had. What made children to work? It’s malicious that Cambodian children don’t have school to learn even their language.

Finally I could see a gray, magnificent structure we were looking for, Angkor Wat. I rubbed my eyes again in a surprise. If the Taj Mahal has beauty of the structures, Angkor Wat has a majesty and splendor. It has a long road to get in and is surrounded by many tropical trees. It seemed like a castle of Buddhism with three peaks. Most of the structures were discolored and were in poor preservation. They were divided into many pieces, but it seemed people had put them together after the wars. I thought if there had been no wars or genocide in Cambodia, Angkor Wat would be in better preservation and be loved by more people.

However, the wall carvings inside the structures of Angkor Wat didn’t disappoint the tourists including us. These showed a hierarchical like the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. They were elaborate works as we could understand the history of Cambodia from their lifelike vigor. In addition, many of the structures had a face shaped a like Sphinx, but all had different kinds of shape of face. So whenever we walked around there, I could feel many eyes were looking at us like stalkers.

In hot, humid weather, we were sweaty, exhausted and annoyed because of continuous walking; however, when we arrived to the final structure of Angkor Wat, my heart fluttered with accomplishments that we had finished the trip of Angkor Wat. It took two days from Thailand to come to Angkor Wat and took fourteen years to come to Thailand. Also three years have passed and now I stand here in the United States. Still I can feel the exhilaration that I got when we went up to the final structure of Angkor Wat.