Sunday, May 29, 2011

Matteo e il Tempio Maledetto (Matteo and the Temple of Doom)

Imagine you are a university professor, an archaeologist. And imagine you are on a work trip, in Indochina, let’s say to attend a conference.


Imagine now that while you are on a tuk-tuk stuck in the traffic, the tuk-tuk driver - a young guy with a New York Yankee hat who speaks with an impossible Southeast-Asian accent - gets all excited once he discovers you are an archaeologist, and insists to bring you to a place where his grandfather used to bring him when he was a kid. You are hesitant, but he insists so much that you finally give up and accept to go.


And after about one hour drive on a tiny and bumpy road that penetrates the jungle, accompanied by the unceasing creaking of the crickets, the deafening croak of the frogs, and by dozens of monkeys that jump from a tree to another above you - suddenly the jungle opens up a bit, everything becomes silent, the monkeys disappear, and you find yourself in front of the ruins of a gigantic temple of an unknown sect of an unknown civilization.


You jump out of the tuk-tuk excited by the discovery and run through the massive stones in search of a piece of evidence that could help you to understand which civilization could have lived there. But when you turn to call the tuk-tuk driver and ask for his help, the only thing you see is the abandoned tuk-tuk and the New York Yankee hat on the ground a few meters from the tuk-tuk.


An icy shudder runs through your back, and you suddenly feel the unpleasant feeling of being observed…


Welcome to Angkor…

No comments:

Post a Comment