The Adventure Continues

*Above find a crudely-made map of where my travels may take me over the next month. This map excludes the places I've been so far and the entire route will be overland travel by train, boat, or bus. Keep in mind that the chance of me sticking to this exact route is roughly the same as the chance that I will go for one meal without eating rice, so I'll try to post another more accurate one at the end of July when I'm finished.*

The past week has been yet another blur. Over the weekend, three of my Khmer friends here in Phnom Penh traveled to Sihanoukville on business, and I accompanied them. Our road trip through the stunningly beautiful Cambodian countryside was a blast, punctuated by more pit stops than necessary at roadside markets, where we filled ourselves with Khmer noodles and loaded up on snacks for the drive.

After wolfing down a seafood lunch and completing their business in Sihanoukville, we swam in the ocean and hung out on the beach for the evening, before gorging ourselves on yet another seafood feast. Before bed, we took a walk along the beach, where courageous entertainers juggled torches for the benefit of travelers lounging about at seaside bars. In the morning we woke for an early swim, where we witnessed a spectacular sunrise, various hues clashing in the sky over miles of pristine coastline. On the road back to Phnom Penh, a wicked rainy-season downpour and a wild goose chase for fresh Cambodian oysters kept us entertained on the drive.

Warning: Those with a weak stomach should stick to the next paragraph. Since over the past month I have been attempting to sample anything and everything from Cambodian cuisine, I thought now would be a good opportunity to list the unique things I've eaten here in Phnom Penh: fried crickets, cow stomach, dog, fried ants, fried grasshoppers, snake, fried cockroaches, scorpion, fried worms, fried beetles, and fried tarantulas. Now that I've reclaimed your attention, I shall continue.

Over the past few days, I have been busy with last-minute meetings with students, as I wrap up my work here in Phnom Penh. I find it hard to believe that the curtain is descending on my official BN International Summer of Service, but fear not faithful blog reader, for the adventures will continue unabated.

For the next three and a half weeks, I’ll be working my way through a clockwise route around mainland Southeast Asia, passing through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia on my odyssey. Although Internet opportunities may be few and far between, I’ll do my best to keep my blog posted on my whereabouts and experiences, so stay tuned.

Disclaimer: Depressing

As a history major, I am naturally fascinated with the 1975-1979 period in Cambodia, and after devouring First They Killed My Father and other resources about the Khmer Rouge (KR), I yearned to know more about this blight on human history. After closely following the trials of Duch, taking place as I write this here in Phnom Penh, and visiting the Killing Fields at Choeung Ek and Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, my curiosity was peaking. After speaking to a handful of older Khmers, both formally and informally, about their experiences during that trying time, I settled on Dr. Ker Sovuthy to interview because of his candor and amiability. I recently sat down for two hours with Dr. Ker in Phnom Penh to discuss his personal experiences during the brutal Pol Pot regime.

Dr. Ker was born in 1960 into a relatively wealthy family in Phnom Penh, and his father held the title of district chief, a position within the Lon Nol regime. When the KR began a forced evacuation of Phnom Penh on 17 April 1975, the Ker family remained behind, but when the KR dropped bombs on their house the following day, they had no choice but to join the hundreds of thousands of others fleeing the suddenly dangerous city.

After enduring a forced march that stretched on for over a month, during which KR soldiers frequently shot or bludgeoned those walking too slowly before fifteen-year-old Dr. Ker’s wide eyes, on 20 May he witnessed his father being dragged away by soldiers to a ‘reeducation camp.’ Young Dr. Ker and his family of ten knew all too well the fate of those hauled off to these camps, and sadly enough, as a former official within the Lon Nol regime, it was almost certain that Dr. Ker’s father was mercilessly executed merely hours later.

After diverting course to prevent soldiers from recognizing them as the family of a Lon Nol official, Dr. Ker’s family endured another month of forced marching, after which they were settled in a work camp where everyone worked in the fields from dawn to dusk. Just three months later, his entire family was forced to transfer across Cambodia to Banteay Meanchey province, and during the entire journey Dr. Ker and his family were convinced they were being taken to one of the notorious killing fields or torture houses where they would meet their end. Fortunately, they were moved to another work camp in the dense forest, but unfortunately, the entire family was forced to split up.

Dr. Ker (now sixteen years old) spent the next four years working here, often carrying 120kg bags of rice (the imperial equivalent is 264lbs) through the fields and digging mysterious 16 square-meter holes, which he much later discovered would become mass graves for those who died of exhaustion/malnutrition or execution. In 1976 two of his brothers died from exhaustion-induced sickness, and after months of two meals a day of salt and rice the weight of Dr. Ker’s lanky frame dwindled to dangerous levels, but he says he was sustained by a remarkable desire to live. This zeal served him well when he barely escaped being axed to death by a soldier who disapproved of his pace of digging.

Upon hearing that the Vietnamese had liberated Phnom Penh from the KR, Dr. Ker and his brother located each other and escaped the work camp, along with a group of like-minded others. KR troops pursued them day and night, killing all they could, and Dr. Ker barely escaped a few close encounters where others in his group were executed only a meter away from his hastily-chosen hiding spot in the bushes. After escaping similar situations and being separated from his brother, Dr. Ker walked to Phnom Penh (this is a remarkable distance to traverse on foot), where he waited hopefully for his family, sleeping in the streets and foraging for food in the deserted capital city. Fortunately, after enduring this four-year-long hellish nightmare, topped off by months of anxiously waiting to learn the plight of his remaining family, Dr. Ker was reunited with his family, and together they endeavored to piece together a new life in Phnom Penh.

What struck me most about my interview with Dr. Ker was the matter-of-fact nature with which he related accounts of horrendous crimes perpetrated by KR soldiers. Hearing him describe in vivid detail the last time he saw his father, the death of his two brothers, and myriad near-death situations, I was struck by the calmness and composure with which he recounted his tortured past. When I asked him about what sort of emotions he was experiencing during these traumatic times, Dr. Ker said merely that the overwhelming desire to live superseded all other emotions, and this drive to live helped him stave off numerous encounters with death.

Although redeeming features of this era of Cambodian history elude me, Dr. Ker hopes that Duch will be brought to justice, in the first of several genocide trials by the ECCC in Phnom Penh. The imperative lesson from these dark days is the ease with which ‘civilized’ society can slide into such murderous chaos with no international intervention. For now, the Cambodian government must not run from the ghosts of its past, and as the younger generation of Cambodians tends towards apathy and disbelief (yes, there actually is a substantial contingent of Khmer youth that selectively accepts or outright rejects conventional knowledge on the KR period), schools must focus on educating students in order to ensure that similarly atrocious actions are never perpetrated again.

Risky Business

Last Thursday all the students and I went to the only water park in Cambodia, located just south of Phnom Penh. To say the park was unsafe would be an understatement; this was one of the most hazardous operations I’ve ever seen. Kids piled down water slides ten at a time as ‘lifeguards’ (actually young kids who looked like they’d been pulled off the street the day before) stood by unconcerned. I was shocked that the day netted no casualties. And to top it off, one of our motos got a flat tire, so we had the privilege of walking it down the dusty dirt path towards civilization. All in a day’s work.

On Sunday, I joined a group that meets to run in rural areas outside of Phnom Penh, after hearing about the group from a friend. I was not quite prepared for the adventure that awaited me. About fifteen of us stood in the back of a truck that ferried us about 40 km south of Phnom Penh, and when we got out, the landscape made it far from evident that we were anywhere near the city. We proceeded to take a 13 km run through rice paddies and past straw huts, all the while drawing the attention of local kids, who goggled at us in a manner that suggested that some of them might have never seen a foreigner before. Because our course took us through water obstacles like streams and rice paddies, I left my camera behind, but as I emerged onto a particular rice paddy, I cursed my earlier decision. A stunning rainbow, smeared across the black expanse of sky, framed a lone farmer (fully decked out in the stereotypical conical hat that I know you’re envisioning as you read this) crouched among endless stretches of rice stalks, harvesting his bounty. So much for my one chance at photographic fame.

Cambodia is said to be the most heavily mined nation on the planet, and as I bounded over the terrain, at many points in the run I was fairly confident that I was about to step on a land mine, despite the assurances to the contrary by my new Khmer friend who claimed to be familiar with the area. As evening drew near, we reached Saang Phnom, a Buddhist temple and pagoda perched on a hill and towering over the surrounding countryside. The vantage point offered a spectacular view of the scenic landscape we had just traversed and validated our efforts throughout the lengthy run.

Besides risking my life at water parks and in rice paddies, I have continued to teach English, computer skills, and leadership skills classes. I am in the process of meeting individually with each of the scholarship students with whom I am working most closely, disseminating materials developed in partnership with the Center for Creative Leadership, and my interactions with these students continue to be fascinating and thought-provoking.

Temples, Temples, and More... Temples?

This past weekend I took four days to make the mandatory trek to explore the temples of Angkor, located near Siem Reap, tucked away in the northwest corner of Cambodia. I met a Canadian friend, who was in Phnom Penh for the week and was also interested in seeing the temples, and we caught the early bus to Siem Reap on Thursday morning. Over the next few days we spent most of our time at Angkor, walking through and clambering over the countless temples that dot the landscape there. Unfortunately, rampant tourism has already left a discernible imprint on this cultural and architectural treasure left behind by the Angkor empire, so we made an effort to explore the more far-flung temples.

Attempting to describe these magnificent temples in words would undoubtedly be fruitless, so instead I will post some pictures (you can browse more here) that will do relatively more justice to these masterpieces, although I often found my camera insufficient for capturing the enormity and grandeur of these structures. In addition to visiting loads of temples and an interesting landmine museum, our tuk tuk driver also took us far off the beaten path to witness life on a Cambodia rice paddy, which local kid eagely showed us.

Besides visiting Siem Reap, I have been conducting one-on-one sessions with the seven scholarship students here in Phnom Penh, evaluating their progress according to three-month plans that they routinely complete. It has been fascinating to observe how culturally-bound our perceptions (both the students' and mine) of leadership are, and navigating how best to overcome these cultural differences promises to be a worthy challenge for the remainder of my time here. For instance, in Cambodian society, parents and older people rarely (if ever) show affection for their kids, and this feeds into what I perceive as a general lack of self-confidence among Cambodian youth. The impacts of this phenomenon on leadership are multitudinous and complicated, and certainly comprise a subject too wide in scope and nuanced in substance to dissect in a single blog entry (or many, for that matter), but they are shaping up to be an interesting case study in cross-cultural leadership training. More to come.

Greetings From Phnom Penh

After a flurry of goodbyes in Thailand and a quick layover in Bangkok, I touched down at Phnom Penh International airport to find a fleet of motos, all of them accompanied by a staff member or student or the organization for which I am working, eagerly awaiting my arrival. After many greetings and introductions, I was swept onto the streets of Phnom Penh on the back of a Honda moto, dust swirling around my face and insane levels of traffic in every direction as far as the eye could see.

Phnom Penh is an assault on the senses; this is the most appropriate way to sum up the sprawling metropolis. Nowhere was this more evident than at the open-air market where some of my students and I browsed for ingredients for dinner on my first morning there. Bright and early at 7:00AM, I found myself perched on a stool and crammed into a stall, huddled over a plate of rice, pork, and eggs, a truly traditional Khmer breakfast. The heat from steaming bowls rice and noodles, the constant din of merchants and patrons bargaining in Khmer, the eternal thwack of a cleaver against the neck of a squawking chicken (accompanied by appropriate levels of blood, of course), the smell of crickets and cockroaches frying in oil before being choked down by customers, and ever-present smell of Asia's treasured durian fruit all bombarded my senses.

During my first few days here, while still getting acclimated and enjoying the luxury of a few days with no work, I made jaunts to many of the tourist hotspots. The Royal Palace, the official residence of the current king, was puncuated by lush gardens, beautiful architecture, and appropriate amounts of gold and silver statures to match. And the National Museum showcased the extraordinary cultural and architectural achievements of Angkor empire.

Then it was on to the more depressing sights. At the Killing Fields, where thousands were taken to be executed and buried during the brutal Khmer Rouge period, I walked among the endless holes in the ground, in which bones and skulls still lay scattered. Once I had thoroughly seen the Killing Fields, I figured that I might as well check all the heavy-hitting Khmer Rouge history off my list, so I motoed back into town to check out Tuol Sleng. Formerly a high school in the heart of Phnom Penh, Tuol Sleng (also referred to as S-21) was turned by Pol Pot's security forces into a center for holding, interrogating, beating, torturing, and executing essentially anyone considered an enemy of the Khmer Rouge. I browsed the sobering prison cells and torture mechanisms, pausing periodically to read accounts of ordinary Cambodians who lost their lives here. The legacy of the Khmer Rouge continues to visibly haunt the country, manifest in the litany of forced marriages and family members lost forever.

On a less somber note (am I allowed to transition like this?), on Monday I began work, teaching some computer skills and conversational English to high school students. I've also begun my primary task of working closely with seven university students who are recipients of a scholarship that recognizes leadership potential and seeks to nurture that potential for Cambodia's emerging leaders. I can't elaborate too much, as I've only just started, but I will be sure to include more about my work with these students in future posts.

A Brief History of Cambodia

Fortuitously positioned on the storied trade route between China and India, from the first to the sixth centuries present-day Cambodia was a prosperous part of the kingdom of Funan, which was later fragmented and then unified as the Chenla empire. Following unification, the Chenla empire gave rise to the well-known Khmer empire, founded in 802 under Jayavarman II. Although the Khmer empire boasted stunning architectural and engineering achievements on the scale of ancient Rome, it soon fell prey to the same forces, overstretched boundaries and excessive ambition, as the Roman empire, and in 1432 the Thais sacked Angkor.

Battered by unceasing Thai and Vietnamese occupations, by the 19th century Cambodia threatened to recede into oblivion. In the most ironic twist in Cambodian history, in 1864 the French ruled the country as a proctectorate until 1953, effectively administering a vital life breath to a stuggling country teetering on the verge of collapse. Unfortunately, seduced by the extraordinary economic potential of neighboring Vietnam, France largely neglected Cambodia. Capitalizing on the anti-colonial currents left in the wake of WWII, King Norodom Sihanouk led the fight for independence, which France granted in 1953.

While its Southeast Asian neighbors struggled with various domestic problems, following its victorious struggle for independence Cambodia enjoyed remarkable prosperity. By the late 1960s, however, the Cambodia people had become increasingly alienated by the incoherent policies of Sihanouk, who had dominated Cambodian politics in the postwar period, and he was ousted by the military. Shortly thereafter the Vietnam conflagration enveloped the entire region, and only weeks before Saigon fell to the Viet Cong, the Khmer Rouge (French for 'Red Khmer') took Phnom Penh.

Under the leadership of Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge oversaw the implementation of a brutal experiment designed to transform Cambodia into a communist, agrarian cooperative. Khmer Rouge soldiers systematically tortured and executed doctors, lawyers, teachers, those who spoke a foreign language or wore glasses, and any others who exhibited the slightest inclination towards intellectualism. Under the Khmer Rouge government, between 1975 and 1979, nearly two million of Cambodia's eight million people were exterminated, either directly or indirectly from famine and malnutrition. Vietnam invaded in 1978, and by 1979 had successfully overthrown the Khmer Rouge, although guerilla warfare, largely financed by China and Thailand, continued unabated throughout the 1980s.

The Cambodian government, despite experiencing some obstacles and pitfalls, has recently made significant progress down the road towards peace. Both warring parties signed a peace accord in Paris in 1991, and Cambodia has exerted commendable effort in laying the ghosts of the Khmer rule to rest. Currently, a Phnom Penh tribunal backed by the United Nations is trying five high profile Khmer Rouge figures, and I am interested to see how these trials progress.

On a related note, I recently read the book First They Killed My Father, a gripping account of a young girl separated from her family and forced to work in miserable conditions. I am generally unaffected by even the most emotional of stories, but a times during this book, I was downright depressed. The capacity for evil routinely displayed by Khmer Rough soldiers, who maliciously hacked helpless Cambodians to death with agricultural tools to save precious ammunition, was particularly disturbing. Despite, or perhaps because of, the enormity of the suffering that occurred at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, I am eager to confront Cambodian history head on, with visits to Tuol Sleng (Cambodia's Auschwitz) and the killing fields.

Goodbye Thailand, Hello Cambodia

As I wrap up my time here in Thailand and prepare to head to Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Friday, I am reflecting on the wonderful experiences I have had here. I am constantly awed by the extraordinary kindness of the Thai people. They have truly validated Thailand's moniker as "The Land of Smiles."

The general level of friendliness and hospitality, especially for a Westerner peering in on Thai culture, is simply stunning. Last week at a petrol station, I noticed an attendant snacking on something wrapped in banana leaves, and being the culturally curious person that I am, I asked our driver what type of food he was eating. He called the attendant over, and after thirty seconds of unintelligible exchanges in Thai, the driver informed me that it was shrimp and sticky rice. Before he had finished his explanation, I glanced up in time to see the attendant returning with one of his mysterious morsels, shrouded in banana leaves, which he presented to me with a smile the size of Thailand.

And just yesterday I stopped to watch a soccer match on the side of the road. I took a seat on the side of the field next to one team's bench and one of the coaches rushed over to me with a cup of cold water to drink. I downed the water, thanked him in Thai, and he promptly refilled my cup. These are merely trivial examples, but they represent a broader phenomenon of hospitality typical to Asian countries, and one that visibly permeates every arena of Thai life.

To all the people here in Thailand who helped make my experience an incredible one, I offer a heartfelt thanks. It really has been an experience of a lifetime, and because of the incredible time I've had, you don't have to ask twice for me to return. In fact, you don't even have to ask once.