Flight to Angkor Wat

 

At the end of the 1980s, my mother started a non-profit initiative that involved sending sewing machines to Vietnam. After WW2, Japanese women had worked with sewing machines to help their families. But, subsequently, the Japanese economy had recovered and few people had continued to use sewing machines. So it came about that there were too many sewing machines in Japan. At the same time, it happened that people needed sewing machines in Vietnam. Hence, my mother sent over 1200 sewing machines to Vietnam.

I took part in the initiative and travelled to Vietnam. At one point, we decided to go Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which was next to Vietnam. We were advised to take an airplane to Cambodia. So we did just that.

When we arrived the airport, I was surprised. It was very small: a small one-story house. My local town’s railway station was bigger than that airport! There was no airplane, but many people had gathered at the airport. Perhaps there were about 100 people.

After a few minutes, a small, outdated airplane arrived. I told my Japanese colleagues a joke: “If all of these passengers take that airplane, most of us will have to fly standing up.” All of my colleagues cracked up.

Unfortunately, the humorous situation I had envisioned came to pass. Over 100 people needed to take the small airplane. Fortunately, I was able to find a seat, but most of the passengers had to fly standing up. It was almost like rush hour on the subway in Japan. The airplane was jam-packed.

Even scarier than that was the fact that there was plenty of packing tape taped to the wall on the inside of the airplane. I joked again: “Apparently there are many cracks in this airplane.” We cracked up again.

It was summer, and it was very hot. But there was no air conditioning on the airplane. When we took off, the airplane made noises I had never heard before. It shook violently before finally stabilizing. At that point, I felt at ease. Then a cool wind reached us from somewhere. I thought to myself, “Oh! They have an air conditioner. They probably didn’t use it when the plane was on the ground for some environmental reasons.”

But I was wrong. That was cold air from the outside. As the airplane rose to a higher altitude, the cold air gushed in between the strips of packing tape. It turned out that the airplane actually had cracks. Once more, a humorous situation I had imagined had come to pass. The cold air looked white, and the inside of the airplane was filled with white fog. Eventually, I couldn’t even see the face of the person next to me.

In those days, Vietnam and Cambodia had problems. So it was difficult to go to Angkor Wat. Three years later, Angkor Wat became a World Heritage site. So we gained a great and valuable opportunity to visit it.

However I can’t remember anything but the outdated airplane. I was nineteen years old then. Later, upon joining graduate school, I would start to develop an interest in history. But in those days, Angkor Wat was just an odd house to me.

I want to visit Angkor Wat again!

Picture by freehandz