Translation of scratch in Spanish

In the early morning, before going to the airport we went to the travel office of the Vietnamese airline company to avoid about possible problems with the entry. They assured us that everything was fine.
It must have taken them years and ten's of thousands of workers to accomplish the tasks of constructing such spectacular compounds. We took many pictures and walked back to the taxi.
I guess it is a very interesting book, but I did not entirely understand it. What did the author try to say, what message did he want to deliver? Do you want that I recommend another book?