Cambodian Genocide

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Arriving in Cambodia, its difficult to imagine the hardship that these people have been through. A brief look a history shows that the U.S dropped over 2.7 million tons of bombs during and after the Vietnam war. (totaling a period of only 14 months) Although impossible to make an accurate accounting, the most conservative demographers calculate that 700,000 dead civilians can be finally listed on the Nixon-Kissinger Menu at their banquet of genocide—around 10% of the Cambodian population.

This U.S intervention and tactic against Cambodia then left the door wide open for the Pol-Pot regime to take control of the country with the use of anti government and anti U.S properganda. With in a four year period, the Pol-Pot ideolgy, had seen 1.7 of the countries inhabitants murdered or starved to death at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. In 1998 the country of Cambodia 48% of the population were below the age of 14.

It is unfortunate that this dark history overshadows the fine temples in Siem Reap, where we planned to stay for 4 days.
Ankor Wat geological park is said to be the 8th wonder in the world, and for good reason. Built from sandstone the carvings an these templesare fantastic, with great attention to detail.

VIETNAMESE FLOATING VILLAGE

we hired a driver/guide for 2 days in order to get a local overview of Siem Reap and the surrounding areas.
Our first stop was the floating villlage. We paid for boat driver at a ticket booth, walked down the jeti, and jumped into the very unsdtable wooden boat complete with an old noisey diesel truck engine. We sat down and watched an 8 year old boy untie the ropes that were mooring us to the other 30 or so dangerous looking boats. As we drifted backwards we wondered if his father would jump aboard any minute. To our surprise the little critter joined a bunch of wires together and hot wired it and gave full throttle!

Along the river people bathed and fished in the thick brown water. After about 20min, of scraping past other boats which were stuck on the shallow bed, we arrived at the Tonie Sap lake.
This massive expance of water, the biggest in Asia, is home to several thousand Vietmanease. They spend there time fishing and trading.
Our boat cruised around in between the boat houses. Children chased us, paddling along in a tin bucket, with a python on his lap (beggar in a bucket).
Everybody here is in need of money, and its difficult to go anywhere without children begging for money, but its also difficult not to give them anything as in this country there is no welfare system. Problem is, as soon as you give to one child, a hundred more appear from everywhere and pull on your clothes asking for more. Some were even hanging onto our boat!

However one thing that is clear, is that these people are very hard working, obviously for survival.


ARMS DEALERS?

The next day, our guide took us to a hidden jungle shooting range. We drove down a long bumpy dirt track,. At one point our driver stopped and showed us where a couple of American tourists were shot a few years back by Khmer Rouge simpervisers.
Arriving at an old building in the middle of the jungle and being met by a guy with an AK-47. After that story this is not what you really want to see as a tourist, but thats what awaited us as we rounded the corner. He led us into his store room and showed us his collectiom. We had a choice of firing anything from Uzi 9mm to RPG-7 rocket launcher. all with different prices. The old hardened looking guy was trying to give us the hard sell on the belt fed M60 machine gun (Rambo), however some of these weapons where a little too rusty to gamble with, including a russian made PPSh-41 (from the second world war)
The thought of firing a dud rocket propelled granade and watching the round simply drop out of the end of the launcher and onto the floor in front of us, was not really in our budget.
After looking closely through the collection we decided on picking the most reliable and servicable weapons on show, the M-16 and the chinease version of the AK-47.
I picked up th M16 and went into the range on semi auto. A shot rang out and Immediately the weapon jammed, with a round half in the chamber. The two guys with us looked panicked, one running towards the gun, the other running out towards the exit!!!! Thier strange reaction made us nervous, and the thought of firing the rusty Russian machine gun from world war 2 sent a shiver down my spine.
Anyway, we sent off a couple of magazines off each, on full auto. We do not even want to even think about what these weapons have done, during and after the vietnam war/ civil war. Guns such as these, in a country with a history as Cambodia will have a story or two. Ears ringing we left this area with a strange atmosphere, its weird getting in a car followed by a man trying to sell you a t shirt, while he is holding a kalashnikov in the other hand.

LANDMINE MUSEUM

We then asked our driver to take us to the land mine museum. Landmines play a massive part, and risk, in the Cambodians every day life.
It is impossible to go any where in Cambodis without seeing somebody without missing limbs due to land mines, as these things can stay active for up to and beyond 150 years.

Since 1979 (no statistics are available for the preceding years) there have been 64,000 casualties of landmines in Cambodia: 44,000 amputees and 20,000 dead; 36% of the total were children.

The Ottawa International Treaty to ban landmines, the Americans, Chinese, and Russians are still to sign on to it.





SIEM REAP NIGHT MARKET VIA TUK TUK

After visiting the temples we jumped into a Tuk Tuk, which is a small motorcycle, slightly modified in order to have a carriage on the back. These things are everywhere, but the daft thing is, as soon as you get out of one, another driver will ask you if you want another one........eh? we just got here!!!
Walking around the market was quite surprising, as the quality of the things on sale was very good. The market traders did not really harass us as much as they do in Kuala Lumpur's china town.
We decided to eat here. We decided to eat some traditional food which consisted of Kangaroo, Ostrich, Crocodile and lastly Snake. I would like to add, that most people say "it tastes like chicken" which is complete poppycock. The flavour and texture we would use to explain it is "bicycle tyre"

Cambodia, is changing fast and we are happy that we visited it juat as all the large hotels are starting to spring up everywhere. Our small-ish collonial villa was perfect, and the people in Cambodia are very friendly. We both agree that this place will quickly change as the Lonely planet brigade steam roller in.......

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Comments

[Birgitta]

Snygging!
hej ilo! looking good! saknar dig, men du ser ut att må bra:) stooooor kram

[wil]

Nice photo!
hey the two of you! You look very happy over there :-))) So nice to see you like this in good mood