Where was I...

SoI turns out that internet access has much to be desired here in Phenom Penh. The city is so dusty that the computers get incredibly dirty and are almost imposible to use. Right now th keyboard i am attempting to use wll only register if I pound on the keys, so here i am reverted to using to index fingers to type.

So we found ourslves travelling with two lively English couples, whom we met on the bus into Sihanoukville, Paul and Mandy, and Amy and Adam. And of course Damien is still with us as well, continuously changing his flight home. Cambodia is so different from Thailand. I have never seen skinnier cows in my life, with their ribs protruding, grazing barren land, where as we are approaching the hottest month of the year, and waiting for the rain, there is not much growing.

The people here are very nice, but there are so many it is overwhelming. Whenever you get off the bus, or boat there are dozend waiting to get you into their guesthouse or tuktuk. And the children are so overwhelming. They are everywhere and once you speak to one, they begin to come out of the wood work, with their gorgeous eyes and wonderful banter, selling paintings and bracelets.

We spent 4 days touring Phenom Penh. Staying Lakeside off a skinny gravle road which is the backpaker district. We visited S-21 prison, which was a girls school before te Khmer Rouge takeover on April 17th 1975. When the city was evacuated of all the people, young, old and ill, were sent into the filds to grow rice to trade China for guns. People were starved to death in camps. All intelectuals, former government workers and anyone who was suspected to be working against Pol Pot, were sent to S-21 and tortured, and forced to confess before being taken to the killing feilds and being bludgeoned to death.

The former prison, which is now a museum holds the mugshots of all the prisoners held there, over 3,000 of which only 3 survived. Children as young as 3 were held and killed. The museum still hold the torture equipment and barbed wire, as well as the many tinyholing cells and blood on the floor, which reminds us of the horors of people killing their own. When the Vietnamese liberated PP, they found prisoners starved to death still straped to beds in the prison left for dead, as the Khmer Rouge fled for the mountains. Their bodies are burried in unmarked graves as the last victim of the Khmer Rouge on the schools site. When prisoners were to be executed they were driven blindfolded to the killing fields 8 km outside of Phenom Penh. We visited there as well and witnessed a pagoda housing the sculls of 9oo Khemers. Much of the area is still not unearthed and every rainy season brings more bones and clothing to the surface of the earth,for tourists and Cambodians alike to tread upon.

There are many fields and rivers such as this in Cambodia. It is amazing too to see the people living and farming in the area, as our guide explained, much of thegraves are unearthed because the gov't has not claimed the property away to dig it.

The sadness in this country is amazing, yet the people are so strong and so able to cary on. There is so much hope here as the tourism industry grows and people struggle to create sustainable industries.

I hope you all can get here someday to see for yourselves, there is so much to say. I will post pictures soon, and that will bring some perspective.

-R