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Published: July 13th 2008
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Sunday 13th
Today we travelled in a minibus to the river Kwai. First of all we visited the war cemetry where many Australian, New Zealand and British servicemen are buried as well as a lot of Dutch civilians. We walked on the reconstructed bridge, built under the Japanese by the prisoners of war and destroyed by allied bombing.
There was a "museum", vaguely reminiscent of countless rural museums in Australia. The hotch potch assemblage mover Eva to say ( as an earnest student of the World wars) that she, when she retire!!! will volunteer to go round and help improve such places at significant historical sites. I said that since she hasn't even started working yet that it might be too long a wait and that perhaps she should offer her services to the Australian War Memorial as an intern and get started sooner.
One intriguing example was a series of statues of key figures in the war . Winston Churchill was unrecognisable. MacArthur was easy, with his pipe. Beside each, painted on the wall was a summary of each person's participation. The writing , for the most part resembled that of many of my students. Written without referencing, lots
Rosemary, Connie and me
Reconstructed bridge on the River Kwai of emotive words and then translated into English roughly. The good old Italians had been along and , concerned about the information concerning Mussolini had gone away, corrected the content and the language and returned the corrections with a line by line error analysis, complete with official seal, all of which was mounted alongside.
Next we went way out into the countryside in our minibus to join a train in a remote village and ride through the gorge country. They are obviously trying hard to respond to the very great interest in the location but need some assistance in realising how to represent such a significant part of the war. There were lots of buses, most of them luxury, and many train trips. So much more could be done.
After that we had opted to include a visit to a temple whch has become a sanctuary of animals, but most especially tigers. The tigers seem to be very fit and well, most of them being orphaned cubs which have grown up being cared for by humans. Thus we were able to line up, according to strict guidelines and pat them. They are actually chained at the time of patting, during their afternoon nap. We must have patted about six each. Quite amazing. Apparently they are only chained on a leash during the specific hour or so for meeting the public. ( See photo)
Yet another very varied day. Most enjoyable, especially the 21/2 hour journey out into the countryside in the western part of Thailand.
On reflection, Cambodia makes me feel that the former Australian governemnt policy of giving scholarships to bring professionals from other countries to study was a magnificent idea. I truly think that the best solution for Cambodia is to have lots of promising leaders of the future, from all different disciplines be given international experience so that they can get a concept of reasonable government and efficient procedures. I think that young ones should be targetted as they are more impressionable.
In addition, I can see that the teaching of English is a key factor. It enables people yo get a better job, and facilitate development in a range of occupations. For example, a tuk tuk driver , speaking English can take tourists around and make $20 a day. Of course many of them have to pay off the vehicle owner,. But they are so much better off than say a teacher or government worker who earns about $30 a month. And of course, if the driver gets a tip, it is all his own.
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