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Published: January 25th 2007
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Dallas and Soso
At Aimee's house--a Bible study for local believers It's inevitable. You visit a country, you meet the people, you endure the rustic living conditions and you fall in love with the place. Cambodia has a way about it that I'm not sure how to describe. It hit me the other day that I really want you to experience this with me...to really understand the tastes, the smells, the sights, the sounds. There have been times on my travels where I find myself in the strangest situations and I wish there was a way to bottle those moments and open them later over a cup of coffee. Like in Siem Reap during our visit to Angkor Wat, I sat at the highest point of the main temple during sun rise and somehow at was a rare couple of minutes where there were no other tourists around. Sitting in an ancient window sill, I watched the sun rise over the forests of Cambodia. Behind me a monk burnt incense to Buddha and the sun warmed the crisp morning air around me. It was such a beautiful moment.
A few days later I was sitting on the crowded beach at Sihanoukville in the southern tip of Cambodia and in a matter
Randy and Rin
Randy is a missionary from Fallbrook, CA and Rin is a kmer who was once an orphan and then the Lord saved him. I told him I was going to London and he said, "Oh my hometown! See everywhere is my hometown because my Father made them all." of minutes I was surrounded by khmer middle schoolers who wanted me to buy their bracelets/fruit/lobster, but wanted more to sit with me on my towel and hear about America. I talked for literally hours with a 14 year old named Tah who wants to be a tour guide some day. Every few minutes her cousin, sister, auntie or neighbor would walk by and join us there on the beach. It was one of those moments where you realize that people are just people even though they live in Asia and eat fish paste. They want to laugh and hang out and lay on the beach just like the rest of us.
Leaving the crowded beaches on the mainland, we took a boat to Bamboo Island and I would love to open up this moment on those cold days in Frazier Park when you just can't get warm. With glass pepsi bottle in hand and a stomach full of barbecued baracuda, we followed a path through the jungle across the island and were greeted on the other side by an endless white beach and a quiet blue ocean. Honestly, amazing. I ditched the pepsi on the sand and hung
Randy and Ra
Ra is the brother of a local pastor my towel on a nearby tree and swam out into the vast blue.
In Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia) we visited the Killing Fields--a blunt reminder of the massive genocide that took place in Cambodia just thirty years ago. Surrounded by mass grave sites and a tower of human skulls, I was reminded of how rampant sin is and how far people will go to receive the worship that only God deserves. Pol Pot (who started the Khmer Rouge and instituted the mass killings) was driven so deeply by a love for himself that he killed all but seven doctors in the entire country and destroyed the lives of educated people so that all who were left would be easily persuaded to worship him only and to cease thinking for themselves. Millions of people were killed in a matter of just a few years. Randy (one of the missionaries we stayed with) said that anywhere you go in Cambodia, if you start digging chances are you will dig up human bones. When they built their orphanage they came across skulls. We visited S-21, an old high school turned torture camp, and walked through the rooms in silence because
what do you say when you are looking at photos of innocent people who were tortured and some even forced to kill their own family members?
In Siem Reap we visited the children's hospital to make a blood donation and we were escorted in behind a father holdhing his daughter who was in shock because of TB. At one time we had kids follow us down the street for blocks asking for milk, hanging off of our hands and arms. I helped the missionaries in Phnom Penh with a medical clinic after church on Sunday and a woman came in and shared that she faints a few times a day and often drops her baby when that happens. The brutal truth is that they don't have the money to go to the doctor to receive the help they need. All we could do was give her tylenol. In Phnom Penh some parents will not hesitate to trade their children for a loaf of bread, fully understanding that their son or daughter is about to enter a whole network of sex slavery funded by the Cambodian government...what! These are the moments that I only want to revisit to remind myself
that I am SO blessed. I have so much.
In the midst of all that suffering, we were greeted again and again by loving and generous Khmers. Our time in Phnom Penh was a weekend full of those moments where I step outside of myself and just praise God for how faithful He is to His people. He is doing some amazing things in Cambodia through the missionaries there and it was so encouraging to hear the testimony of orphans and villagers who have seen the Lord provide for them again and again. We spent time with Rah, a 23 year old student who loves to sing and play the guitar. His sister Sakun, a 25 year old student who is trying desperately to get a visa to study at a Bible college in California. And their nephew Tuna, a 16 year old boy who loves basketball and graciously took the bad news when Dallas told him that he was too short to ever play for the NBA. After church on Sunday Sakun and I hopped on her motor bike to get back to Aimee's house and she asked me, "Are you scared?" I said, "No, you drive here
all the time, I trust you." She said, "Oh, usually the Americans scream the whole way." I can definitely understand why. Not only did we have cars coming at us driving down the wrong side of the road, but we did our fair share of driving down the wrong side of the road as well. Basically there are few rules in Cambodia and even fewer people to enforce them.
Dallas and I both were sad to leave Cambodia. It's always sad to leave a country when you really don't know if you'll ever go back again. I think of all the countries we visited so far, I would be most likely to go back to Cambodia. There is just such a need for help of all kinds in that place. Of course, each country I've visited so far I say the same thing, "I could live here some day." For a girl who has been so homesick, I sound awfully willing to pick up and leave again.
We had one quick stop over in Bangkok where we were greeted off the bus in Koh San Road once again by a river of backpackers and tourists. We had our
Room in S-21
A bed that once held up a tortured and starving prisoner last few plates of fried rice, pad tai and mangoes with sticky rice. We got or last glimpse of His Majesty the King's picture. Our last view of the sea of yellow polos that the Thais wear to honor the king and our last tuk tuk ride. Goodbye Thailand. I'm really going to miss you.
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JT
non-member comment
We'll see you soon Thailand.
Okay, maybe I'm just saying that we'll see Thailand soon and I don't really know if that's a fact or not. But you never know. I hope to talk to you soon Rebextar.