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Published: August 6th 2007
A Brief announcement to you all...
First of all, let us just tell you what has gone on with this website.
Apparently on the 1st of the month the server crashed and because the guy who runs the website obviously can't manage it properly, he deleted
"by accident" all of our blog entries.
It's ok though, because he understands that we're annoyed and that a lot of work has gone into our blogs. He also said
I hope that there will be some way I can make up for this sorry event.
At this present time I am seething with frustration and anger at this ridiculous farce of a problem; if you can't manage a website, don't set one up!
I have no idea what he plans to do or how he plans to compensate anyone, he conveniently left that bit out.
So I guess the bottom line is, we swallow this annoyance and hope it doesn't happen again because you are all familiar with this site now and it makes sense to keep it that way, but we are very very annoyed about it, much much more than Mr Website 'Enthusiast' can possibly comprehend...
Hello Everybody!
Well we've been quite busy seeing Cambodia in all 
Why are you reading this?
It's a Dragonfly, what do you expect me to write?its Glory, but we start where we pretty much left off, looking at dead people...
The Tuol Sleng Torture Prison Museum (S21) was quite a horrible place, to actually imagine 3000 people squeezed into an area no bigger than a small supermarket could be distressing, especially knowing that they weren't just there on a budget holiday...
However, the next day brought about a trip to the infamous "Killing Fields" of Phnom Penh, now called the Phnom Penh Genocide Centre, the basics of it were this.
When Pol Pot came to power, he decided he wanted to start at "Year Zero", which meant everyone was now to be a farmer and work in agriculture. The monetary system was abolished and everything anyone had was "issued" by the government.
Unfortunately, this left no room for the Doctors, Nurses, Teachers and pretty much anyone who could be classed as an intellectual (this is mainly because Pol Pot saw them as a threat to his oppressive brutal regime).
After torturing all those opposed to the Pol Pot regime at Tuol Sleng Prison (including the intellectuals) the prisoners were taken by truck to a set of fields 16km south of Phnom
A Raw Reminder!
Bits of clothing in the ground illustrate that it's not so long ago people we being bludgeoned to death here. Penh where they were put into a holding area (it's worth noting at this stage that the purpose of torture was to extract more names of intellectuals ad opponents, fifty names was the price to escape torture. They'd then be released from S21 Prison to be
"processed")
When hearing the words Killing Fields, I imagined areas the size of Football pitches, hectares of space for killing and mass burial. I was wrong.
After a few days of trucks arriving and dropping off between 30 and 60 people at a time, the prisoners were gathered together and taken about 60 yards away to a pit. Lined up side by side the prisoners could hear only the sound of a loud hailer bellowing out propaganda messages 24/7. (later this would be named the 'Magic Tree' used to drown out the groans and whimpers of the dying and wounded)
Lined up quietly, the prisoners were then systematically clubbed, hacked and slashed with farming equipment, in order to save bullets, until they fell into the pit in front of them. The children were dealt with differently, typical executions included, being held by the ankles & clubbed against a tree and being thrown
into the air and shot.
A mass grave measured something like 10 feet by 8 feet by 8 feet and generally contained about 500 bodies although up to 1000 have been found in some...
9000 skulls fill a memorial ten stories high in the middle of the Genocide Centre and with more than half the area used for the act of Genocide still left unexcavated it's estimated around 20,000 people lost their live there.
The Cambodian Government stopped excavation programmes in the early '80's deeming them a waste of valuable resources. Although it sounds insensitive, for a country with a annual income less than Kenya, it's hard to not agree with the fact that whilst it may not be a waste, Cambodia is a country that can well do the funds spent elsewhere.
After that Lesley and I could hardly stomach our Giant Banana Gut split Ice Creams and our Brain Smasher Cocktails at the local hangout, but we managed, just about! Ha Ha!
I thought I'd be serious for once, don't expect it again, I prefer being facetious and outrageous! Ha!
So we decided to do a bit of More bones uncovered by the rain.
Check your back garden, see if Mum and Dad have had any secret genocides on the go! a detour from Phnom Penh, we had heard good things about Siam Reap and that the Angkor Wat (temples) was the highlight of everyones trip. We have learnt not to listen too much to these hippy travellers that admire dirty smelly streets thinking its such a life changing experience being in such disgusting cities! Truly baffling! ???
Anyway we took the bus North West taking about 6 hours to get there and it was a slight improvement to where we had come from. It didn't smell and it was a bit more civilised and it even had grass!
We stayed in a nice guesthouse with hot water and clean towels everyday.....yes everyday these things are a huge bonus in our world now.
So After our
Free trip
to our guest house we got collared into booking the tuk tuk for the following day to visit the temples.
The area around the temples is huge people actually buy seven day passes to get in as there is sooo much to see, as well as them being incredibley sad! We decided that one day of temples would be more than enough, explained as sacrilege by the lonely planet...that book
really needs to be binned!
So we had our own guide for the temples and to be honest the temples were impressive. It was like a big town and inside the town was lots of different temples that were huge. It was an extremely hot day and there would have been no way we could have walked around it in one day so we were thankful for our tuk tuk.
Behind each pillar of each temple there would be someone wanting us to buy something from them, children just jumped out of nowhere and followed us to get our money. We were trying to dodge them as much as possible but they are extremely persistent!!!!!! We stopped for lunch and we were dive bombed by children trying to sell us bracelets and fans they knew about 15 languages...well just enough to get peoples money from them. I thought we had made a lucky escape until Andi paid them to sing a nursery rhyme in Cambodian.......
The main feature "the Angkor Wat" was huge but it was the last temple of the day it was impressive but we had just seen so many temples and I think our
(well mine at least) temple tantrums were almost about to kick off.
There is no way I could do two days let alone seven...these people are mad.
I'm glad we went to see them as it lived up to and above our expectations but for 20 dollars each which is a lot of money here it should be. A complete rip off but once again because the tourists pay it the price just keeps going up!
It was a long day starting at nine and finishing around half past five and that was us doing the short loop!!!
We had a few more days to kill here and to be honest there was not a lot else to do apart from visiting the miniature Angkor Wat..........not a chance! We decided to avoid the floating village as apparently its another place full of children begging so we opted for the silk farm.
Lesley
Yep... That's right, a silk farm...
I hope this is the only time in my life where a Silk farm in the best option for a day out!
So, here we go. A Day at the Silk Farm
Ooooo, aaaaa!
Silk worms you say? How fascinating! It's one of the only things in Cambodia that's completely free, they must make their money from the $65 T-shirts they were trying to flog us in the way out, Yeah cheers you con artists!
And to top it all, not one annoying shabby little street urchin in sight, bonus!
The Silk Farm was pretty interesting as much as I hate to admit it.
They basically grow a field of Mulberry trees and take them into a hut, feed them to a load of silk worms, and get them fat! The hut protects them from birds and the little moats around each of the posts holding the ingenius hut up, keeps the ants out!
Once the unsuspecting worms scoff loads of delicious Mulberry Leaf, they create a "protective" cocoon around them, made of silk!
Then, very carefully, a highly skilled man gently picks up around 80%!o(MISSING)f the delicate little cocoons and.......... Shoves'em in boiling water to kill the worms... Ha, bet you didn't see that one coming!
The other 20%!a(MISSING)re used for breeding, which they do as Moths, then die. What a life!
So then these women act like robots in this little warehouse and weave the silk into one long string... After it's spun and dried out, it gets coloured with natural dyes. The Guide said they were colour-fast, I said
Oh, right, cool
like a good little tourist, armed with the knowledge that they were not and he had just blatently lied to me! We'd read that the colour even runs out when you wear the clothing let alone wash it! Shabby merchandise, ey?!
Anyway, it was so so very interesting and we'll whack in some pictures!
I'm going to leave it there as I'm starting to go giddy with excitement...
Please tell us what you think by either messaging us or leaving comments, we just want to take stock of who is actually reading these Blogs.
We're off to Vietnam tommorrow (7th) and so our next Blog will probably be in about a week or so!
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the Silk Farm story!
Lot's of Love and snuggles
ANDI
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Craig Thompson
non-member comment
Long Time Old Boy
Well hello Mr White, it sure has been a long time. Every time these blogs come through I get insanely jealous and start snarling really loudly at the screen, only to be taken off for yet another disciplinary... Looks as though you're having a fantastic time travelling mate, the only travelling i'm doing at the mo is the enthralling journey from Snaresbrook to Edgeware Road and back on the Tube every day...I tell you, it's life-changing! I presume that Tony, Chris, Erica and Kimberley will read this so hello to you all too! I'm liking the witty comments too.....they're really errrm....witty! Keep the blogs on coming, it's nice to see the world without moving! Hope you're both doing well and having a great time. Muchos Love, Craig