Blogs from Phnom Penh, South, Cambodia, Asia - page 230

Jeem rip soah! I am at the school Anisa works at, sitting in the middle of her classroom surrounded by 7th graders. I feel right at home. To my left a student is listening to Vanilla Ice and to the right there's Bob Marley. Anisa teaches computer lab and since school's almost out for summer the students are not really doing any work. They're 7th graders, just like the ones I taught in Boise. This morning after Anisa left for school I took a walk around her neighborhood and stopped by the Russian Market. I still don't know what's Russian about it. Everything seemed distinctly Cambodian to me. I bought some hot-weather clothes and some mangos. Afterwards I wandered around the Wat Toul Tom Poung, very beautiful, and took some photos. Then i went back to ... read more

I hear the sun is shining at home FINALLY! Just so you know, for the past month I've been getting enough for allllllllll of you. My feet are so brown, I thought it was dirt. Okay, so it's partially dirt. Or mostly. But whatever. They're brown. :) I'm now in the capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh... a stark contrast from the town of Siem Reap. Took the 6 hour bus ride through the countryside today. Read an entire book about a 27-year-old girl from the UK who was caught smuggling drugs out of Thailand 10 years ago. (Don't worry, I'm not getting any ideas!) The big air conditioned bus went from main highway to dirt road to regular road and back to dirt road again. Cambodia's roads are not up to snuff, but I'm told ... read more

In the past two days we've vistited two sites linked to the genocidal acts commited by the Khmer Rouge under Pot Pols regime between 1975 and 1979. First we visited the Toul Sleng prison, also known as S21 or Security Station 21, and secondly we visited the killing fields, some of the mass graves where victims from Toul Sleng were executed and buried. S21 was an amazing, and at the same time disgusting place to visit. It was a high school converted into a prison. Some of the class rooms are divided into very very tiny brick or wood cells, while other class rooms are used for torture and interrogation, and other classrooms were group cells, where dozens of prisoners would be forced to lie on the ground, shackled to bars. And the people who were ... read more

We arrived in Phomn Penh yesterday afternoon. We took a bus and had no real idea how long the trip was supposed to take. It turned out to take only about 6 hours with stops. The bus we were on was filled mostly with Cambodian people, and only about 6 tourists. Despite what seat number our bus ticket said, all the tourists were sent to the back of the bus, or over the wheel wells, it was an uncomfortable trip. We arrived in Phomn Penh to insanity. As soon as I got off the bus I was swarmed by dozens of drivers trying to get me to go to their guest house. When Coral got off the bus we couldn't even get close to each other, too many people yelling for our attention. Eventually I just ... read more

"I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet. He was close. He was real close. I couldn't see him yet, but I could feel him. As if the boat were being sucked up the river and the water was flowing back into the jungle. Whatever was going to happen, it wasn't going to be the way they call it back in Nha Trang." Ok, I'm not losing my mind or heavy into opium at the time of this writing. I'm only reciting quotes from a movie. If you don't know this movie, I am sorrowful for you but will give you a hint...it's from Apocolypse Now. So, after taking 5 different boats and 3 different busses over two days, my journey up the Mekong River and crossing ... read more