LFL AT SEA

Sunday 15 February 2015

Tucson, AZ

I have been home almost a week and fully recovered from the 32 hours of travel time from Singapore to Tucson--35 hours if you add in the time from wake-up call in Singapore to arriving at the house in Tucson. There are still several days I need to write about--another day and a half in Siem Reap and an overnight in Singapore--before the finale.

Saturday 7 February 2105
Siem Reap, Cambodia

Before describing the butt-breaking, ball-busting, spine-crushing tuk-tuk ride on my Saturday morning excursion to Tonle Sap Lake, I promised to make some comments about life in Cambodia under Pol Pot. I haven't re-seen the film The Killing Fields for a long time, but if memory serves it gives a good idea of what those times were like.

The guide who took our group round Angkor yesterday was a boy when the Khmer Rouge came to Siem Reap and forced the entire population out of the city to work in rice fields—everyone, that is, except the millions (all over Cambodia) they killed for the merest suggestion of not towing their extreme Communist line. Our guide's father was killed because he spoke some French, a remnant of Cambodia’s colonial days. Although older Cambodians remember the intensive American bombing of their county during the Vietnam War (known as The American War over here), his experience really begins after that war is over and the communists have united north and south Vietnam. As a boy, the guide’s first job for Pol Pot's cadres was as a “scarecrow”—standing in the paddies all day to keep birds and animals away. There was never enough to eat, no education, no family ties for support. Cambodia has always had the second largest rice production in the world (after Vietnam), but it was all being sent to the communists in China, while the workers at home were starved to death.

When he was a little older, he joined the communist army as a means of survival. Two and a half years later, when the Vietnamese “liberated” (that word has to be used cautiously in this part of the world, where liberation for some is slavery and death for others) Cambodia from the Khmer Rouge, he changed uniforms and joined the Vietnamese army.

Like others I have met here, he recites this history with calm and equanimity (his word); their forgiving nature has helped them heal. After the Vietnamese withdrew, their legacy was to leave the country littered with millions (not an exaggerated number) of unexploded and lethal land mines. The finding and dis-arming of the mines is an arduous, dangerous, and slow process that can only be done by individuals; machines can't do the work. You see the continuing costs of this work in the very slow rehabilitation of the countryside, but even more in the maimed and wounded bodies of so many Cambodians.

Our guide was able to finish high school after the withdrawal of the Vietnamese, and has worked for the tourist industry since then. Although he admits to getting a bit pudgy, his wife encourages him to eat as much as he wants now, since he was so-often near starvation when he was growing up. Siem Reap has made much progress with the opening of the Angkor temples to Western tourists, but there is still much work that needs to be done outside the city centers here and in the capital, Phnom Penh. But in spite of the hardships, the Cambodians I meet are kind and generous; the children amiably posing for photographs without asking for anything in return.

Now that I am home and have the leisure of unlimited wifi, I will stop here and save the adventures of the tuk-tuk ride for the next posting.