Cambodia

Cambodia is like a good movie plot. As my mother would quote, it's a 'celebration of the triumph of the human spirit". ;) Hard to believe that in my own lifetime this place saw the wholesale slaughter of one-fourth of its population under the Khmer Rouge. The people here are warm and kind, resilient, and quick to return a smile. We spent only a week in Cambodia; it's not a very large country, and one can (and we nearly did) drive from one border to another in a single day. But in that week we experienced among the most interesting scenery and amazing sights of our trip.

We spent our first two nights in Phnom Penh, the capital city. Arriving late our first night, we were dropped off in one of the more touristed areas of the city, which didn't bother us so much as it afforded us a rare opportunity to savor a tidy pair of gin-and-tonics and a close approximation of Mexican food. Fear not, a "close approximation" is the closest we've come in our travels to a real-deal mexi-meal, and we both think daily about our very first Gordo's burrito, which, as it happens, we will have at approximately 1:00pm on our day of arrival, at the Gordo's taqueria on 9th Avenue, between Irving and Lincoln streets in San Francisco. Tatyana will have the grilled chicken quesadilla ("unarinarinaaaaa!!!"), and I, the regular carnitas burrito with cheese on a spinach tortilla. Black beans, not pinto.

The next morning we took a motorbike to the Toul Sleng Genocide museum, which once housed Security Prison 21 (S21). Before the Khmer Rouge seized Phnom Penh, this location was a public high school. During their four year reign of terror, the school was converted to a prison and played host to the systematic torture, disfigurement and murder of around 20,000 Cambodian men, women and children. Very little of the complex has been changed from the moment Vietnamese liberation soldiers discovered it; even now, the instruments of torture lay where they were found -only the 14 mutilated bodies that had been hastily slain in the Khmer Rouge retreat have since been removed, and are now buried in the courtyard. It was a very moving, and slightly sickening experience to walk the grounds, through classrooms converted to torture chambers and cramped cell wards.

later that day we hired a tuk-tuk to take us about 15km outside the city to visit the tranquil sight now known as "the killing fields", where in 1980, 9,000 bodies where discovered in 86 mass graves. An additional 43 mass graves have been identified on the site, but remain untouched, the bodies uncounted and unmoved. The men, women and children who were brought to this place by the truckload were killed unceremoniously, one after another, through the use of hammers, hoes, shovels, axes, swords and other archaic tools. The slaughter continued, day and night, for years, with up to 300 murders a day in its prime.  The victims were struck once, maybe twice, and pushed forward into the mass graves, and farming chemicals poured over the lot to cover the smell. Infants were bashed against trees and thrown in the air to be skewered by bayonets. Most were still alive when their graves were filled in with dirt. Today, this site is quite peaceful, the reach of the city slowly closing around it -we very much enjoyed the sounds of children playing in the yard at the primary school next door. It will be years before these children learn the significance of the quiet, grassy field they chase their balls into. When they do, many will wonder if this is the place where their own grandparents, aunts and uncles were killed, for there are many graves, just like these, throughout Cambodia.

Sobered, we left Phnom Penh for the seaside town of Kep, in the south near the border with Vietnam. Kep is a fishing village, renowned for its cheap and tasty crab, and we have been dreaming about that crab for well over a year. We decided to celebrate Tatyana's birthday early, as she does love crab so very much, and treated ourselves to a huge feast of Kampot-pepper crab and a nice bottle of wine. Well worth the side-trip.

The next day we caught a series of buses back through Phnom Penh and onward to Siem Reap, home of the famous Wats. As this was Tatyana's birthday week, she was granted a number of wishes from the itinerary genie, so our first day was spent donating blood at the local children's hospital, shopping for schoolbooks and pencils at local school supply wholesalers, and visiting an orphanage and language school in a small village outside the city. The school was really impressive; they are trying very hard to be self-sustaining, and have a number of projects underway to get there. They have a small pig farm that yields 50% at the market. They just purchased five hectares of land, on which they will plant various orchards -the manager of the school expects that they will be able to cover their monthly operating costs ($3500) once the orchard reaches full production. I was most interested in his plans for microfinance operations in his local community. So, for those of you who have helped Tatyana raise money for various charities in the past, you are not nearly off the hook. She'll have new projects for charities in Cambodia and Nepal up and running in the new year.

Our guesthouse had really good food and in-room TV, so we took the rare opportunity to spend the next day loafing about and watching HBO movies. It was a really nice break, but we were both itching to move by the end of the day. Perfect, as we spent the next day cycling around the Angkor temples . Angkor Wat is the most famous of these, because of its sheer size and state of preservation, but there are so many more temples in the area worth a look, and we did our best to see as many as possible. What an amazing thing to see. I wish I could take a trip back in time to see these sites when they were first constructed. 

The detail and volume of intricate stone carvings leaves one stupefied. These structures are made completely of stone, and each stone face is intricately carved. I can't conceive of the amount of labor that went into constructing the temples. This will surely forever rank as one of the most amazing places I have ever seen.

From Siem Reap, we caught a bus across the border, and back to Bangkok, where we have spent the last few days loading up on Pad Thai and Thai iced tea. At this point, we have visited all the countries on our itinerary, except Hong Kong (where we will fly home from in December), and we still have just over a month to go. So tomorrow morning we are going to submit visa applications at the Burmese Embassy. If they don't let us in, we'll try to get into Bangladesh. If that fails, we'll have to get creative. Stay tuned! -TB

Cambodia Pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035980&id=1081248185&l=aed0a7379e

Lao Pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2035976&id=1081248185&l=ccfc3fb692