Three Weeks With My Brother(23)
Author: Nicholas Sparks

In the meantime, I began exploring careers, trying to find an area that interested me. Though I was confused, I wasn’t particularly worried, and by the time Cathy moved to Sacramento in August, I’d finally made the decision to try my hand at appraising real estate. Around the same time, Micah and I purchased two small rental houses in a run-down area of town, repaired them, and were renting them out as well. In the little spare time remaining, I wrote a second novel, titled The Royal Murders, an old-fashioned whodunit. I knew, however, it wasn’t good enough to be published.

I began working for a local firm as an appraiser’s apprentice by day while continuing to wait tables and write at night, and eventually saved enough money to buy a small diamond ring. On her birthday, October 12, 1988, I proposed to Cathy on bended knee, and she said yes.

A few days later, I asked Micah to be my best man, thinking that not only had he been by my side throughout our youth, but that he would continue to be by my side, no matter where the future took us.

CHAPTER 12

Three Weeks With My Brother

Angkor, Cambodia

February 4–5

The temples at Angkor, Cambodia—an area encompassing nearly 120 square miles—were built from A.D. 879 to 1191 when the Khmer empire was at its zenith. More than a hundred temples have been discovered, and they were once surrounded by cities, from which the kings of the empire ruled over a domain that covered a vast portion of Southeast Asia, including Burma, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, southern China, and Cambodia. Their rule lasted nearly five hundred years, until 1432, when the Siamese (Thai) sacked Angkor, and the capital was moved south to Phnom Penh. Angkor never regained its former stature, and eventually drifted into obscurity as the jungle continued its never-ending encroachment. In time, Angkor passed into legend—people who saw the ruins claimed they’d been built by the gods—and a few adventurous explorers from Europe circulated stories about the famous ruins among their peers. It wasn’t until 1860 that the French explorer Henri Mouhot brought Angkor back to the world’s attention.

The French were enchanted by the ruins and began an extensive restoration effort. Yet all that remained of Angkor were the temples themselves, which are regarded as one of mankind’s greatest architectural achievements. The cities, whose buildings were constructed of wood, had long since decayed and vanished into the surrounding jungle.

The vast majority of the temples in the Angkor region are Hindu in influence; the remainder are Buddhist. At the time of their construction, both belief systems were prevalent in the empire, and as rulers came and went—Buddhists replaced by Hindus, and vice versa—temples were constructed to reflect the changing times. Still, the architecture varied only slightly; most contained a temple-mountain-like structure in the center, surrounded by square or circular walls or platforms, and enclosed within either a moat or perimeter wall.

Angkor Wat, literally “City Temple,” is not only the largest temple in the Angkor complex, but the largest religious monument in existence. Constructed during the first half of the twelfth century by Suryavaram II, it’s regarded as the high point of Khmer architecture. The carvings on the outer walls depict important scenes from Hindu literature, as well as events from the reign of Suryavarman II, in exacting, intricate detail. To study and fully understand the relief carvings—on walls twelve feet high and spanning over a kilometer in length—would take years. Entire books have been written on the subject of the carvings alone, and it’s far beyond the scope of this volume to even attempt to comment on them.

As they say, you must see it to believe it.

The flight to Cambodia was another seven hours, and I began to grasp what a feat traveling around the world really was. In the end, we would fly 36,000 miles and spend nearly three full days in the air.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I reached Cambodia. Though I’d traveled to Hong Kong and Korea for track competitions, I wasn’t prepared for the city of Phnom Penh when we landed. In a strange way, the land struck me as being both hopeful and tragic. The main thoroughfare bustled like cities around the world, but instead of cars, people drove scooters. Beyond the tenement housing were shiny new high-rises; for every man in a business suit, I saw another who’d lost a leg from the land mines that still dot the countryside. Everywhere I looked, I saw the contradiction of the country; a country struggling to put its past behind it in order to secure a more prosperous future.

Our stop in Phnom Penh was a short one. We would go to the National Museum and the Royal Palace before going straight back to the airport for our flight to Angkor.

The National Museum, I thought, was also representative of Cambodia. Outside the gates were numerous beggars, pleading with tourists for pocket change; inside were other reminders of the war that had raged for decades. Though the museum was filled with collectibles and statues of various Indian gods (Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma), there was no glass in any of the windows. Everything inside was thus exposed to the elements; the windows had been destroyed in the war a quarter of a century earlier and there was no money to replace them. Few, if any, of the items on display were bolted down; instead, objects had simply been set on pedestals. Most of the statues were broken, and bullet holes dotted the crumbling plaster walls. The ceiling was lined with water marks, and stains ran down the walls. The floor was bare concrete.

Yet the guides spoke with pride in their voices about the museum, the culture, and the spirit of their people, and by the time we left, both my brother and I were subdued. Of all the places we’d been to up to that point, Cambodia seemed the most foreign and incomprehensible, and we both felt out of place.

We then toured the Royal Palace, which is actually a series of roughly twenty buildings and temples inside a walled compound the size of a city block. One building is the palace itself, where the king lives; another building is the Welcome Hall, a magnificent structure with high painted ceilings, long red carpet, and soaring columns, where dignitaries are brought when they want an audience with the king. In a nearby temple, still on the palace grounds, we saw the giant Silver Buddha. Unlike many of the cultural artifacts, it hadn’t been destroyed in the war and it seemed to occupy a central place in the heart of Cambodians, surrounded as it was by hundreds of small offerings of flowers.

Our stop in Phnom Penh was less than three hours, though it seemed far longer. With the weight of the past bearing down on us, we set off for the jungles of Angkor, where we would arrive just after sundown.

The main road from the Angkor airport also leads to the temples, and massive hotels sprouted amid what was once jungle. The splendor of some of these establishments was dizzying (in any country in the world, they would be regarded as five-star hotels). Gleaming structures were surrounded by lavishly designed and softly lit landscaping. Towering palms and lush ferns bordered winding entry roads; flowers sprouted everywhere the eye could see. Half a dozen hotels boasted rooms that cost more than the average Cambodian earned in a year; some had health and beauty spas, and all had upscale restaurants that required jackets.

All this, while on the road out front people rode bicycles or scooters.

At our hotel, we were informed that an excursion to Angkor Wat was planned at sunrise. Most people, including Micah, opted out. It was the first and only time on the entire trip that Micah and I weren’t together to see a sight. And aside from only a few moments here and there, it was the first time we hadn’t been together in nearly two weeks.

On the bus ride over, I was asked by one of the members of our tour group how we were getting along.

“Fine,” I said. “Micah’s easy to travel with.”

“Doesn’t it bother you? I mean, that you’re with him all the time?”

I thought about it, finally realizing how odd it must have seemed. “Actually, it doesn’t. We always seem to want to do the same thing—I guess we’re just in sync.”

“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 see, it had four concentric square walls (actually tunnels) surrounding a temple-mountain, and we gradually wove our way through the ruins toward the center. Unlike so many of the sites we’d visited, as soon as we rounded the corner, it was easy to lose sight of the others in our group.

“This is great!” Micah said.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

“It reminds me of the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ride at Disneyland.”

“You’re such a crass American,” I complained.

“Don’t you think it does? Or, it could be a movie set. Like someone had imagined what a ruined temple looked like, then built it. It looks too real to be real.”

“Too real to be real?”

“Exactly,” he nodded. “Like someone planned it.”

Forty minutes later, we were back on the bus; our next stop was the Bayon. There the jungle had been cut back and we made our way through the ruins. Unlike the heat in Australia, the heat in Angkor was intensified by the humidity. Mosquitoes were prevalent, and we slathered on the bug spray.

The Bayon was unremarkable when compared to Ta Prohm. It had the same configuration as the others, though we did see our first examples of the relief carvings for which the temples are famous. In the sandstone, we could make out various images, each of which came with a story.

The stories, however, were hard to follow. Of all the languages in the countries we visited, Cambodian seemed most foreign. The linguistic sounds were so different that simple words were incomprehensible. Thus, whenever the guides spoke, even in English, we had to sift through heavy accents and long pauses as our Cambodian guides stumbled over words. It was not only hard for us to understand what they were saying, but they had an equally difficult time understanding us.

“Why do they call them relief carvings instead of just carvings?” Micah asked.

“These . . . uh . . . are . . . uh . . . relief carvings,” our guide answered with an accommodating smile.

“But why relief?”