The seaside

Following the sombering sights in Phnom Penh, it was time to jump on a bus for 4 hours and head to Sihanoukville (named after King Sihanouk, who is another who seems to have got away with a few things in his time - the current government also seems to fit into that category as it goes about restricting human rights).

The hotel is top notch - rather than having a bar next to the pool, this one has a swim up bar - living the dream (although it remains to be seen whether beer will be treated with the same reverence as it was in a place in Siem Reap where my beer got its own ice bucket).  It also has a 1.5km private beach and lots of fun toys.  Jet skiing today was fabulous.  Scuba diving is lined up for the day after tomorrow (Eve has a pedicure in mind).

New photos

As I type, I am in the process of putting up a new load of photos on flickr, so hopfully they'll be accessible shortly.

The Killing Fields

The Killing Fields do bring home the true horror of the Khmer Rouge regime.

It's hard to conceive of the strength of an ideology which requires the practical enslavement of your entire nation - punishing the slightest hint of dissent (or suspicion of a hint of dissent) with either immediate execution or torture then execution.  Within a day or so of taking power the Khmer Rouge appear to have embarked on one of the most comprehesive societal restructurings the world has seen.  The cities were emptied and the people were sent en masse to the countryside to work in agriculture (for 12-15 hours a day).  The educated (apart from those who had the good fortune to be in the new ruling elite) were disposed of pretty sharpish.  Concerned that their family (including very small children) may seek revenge at some point, they decided they should be got rid of too.  Bullets were a bit precious, so bludgeoning was deemed the way forward.

They have exhumed most of the mass graves, but it wasn't entirely comprehensive.  Because we are coming to the end of the rainy season, some of the remains hidden underground have come to the surface recently - you could see the odd tooth in the soil.

After thinking my our S-21 visit that no-one had taken responsiblity, we discovered at the Killing Fields that there is one exception.  The guy who ran S-21 (called "Duch") converted to Christianity and has since taken full responsibility for everything done by the people he was in charge of.  Sadly, he seems to be the only one who has done so.

S-21

We spent a couple of hours this afternoon at a school which the Khmer Rouge converted into a prison/torture facility.  The horror of such a place is obvious, but there were two striking things in particular from the displays: (i) most of the inmates (all but 7 of the 15,000 were killed) seemed to have been Khmer Rouge members who had become the subject of suspicion; and (ii) no-one appears to have taken responsibility for the atrocities - the guys at the top claim not to have known what the guys on the ground were doing and the guys on the ground say they were young and impressionable and only following orders (oh, and they're very keen that the top brass pay for their crimes).  They've got a war crimes-style tribunal set up, so I guess there's not much incentive to clear the air while that threat is live.  Tomorrow we're off to the Killing Fields.

As we were wondering around, Hillary Clinton's entourage were planning the photo ops on her upcoming visit - all very West Wing.

On the way to Phnom Penh

We left Siem Reap this morning and decided to take the boat to Phnom Penh - a little 5 to 6 hour jaunt down the Tonle Sap.  It had a rather comedy start when a pick up turned up to pick us up and take us to the "port" and it was somewhat lacking in spare space.  The driver was at his innovative best - the first suggestion was that we just jump on.  We countered this with the rather obvious problem that there wasn't any space.  Undeterred, he came up with Plan B - sit on top of the cab.  He couldn't quite fathom why this wasn't that enticing a prospect - but when 10 people told him "no, that's dangerous", he decided that perhaps another vehicle was required.  The one he found was packed to the gills too, but at least we could squeeze inside it, rather than on top of it.

Floating villages

After a busy day of temple hopping and a lie in to reward our early start the day before, we set out for the floating villages.  They do exactly what it says on the tin - they're villages that float.  Well, they're individual houses and shops (we also spotted a basketball court) in villages which float.  During the months of high water (which is around now), they float themselves towards Siem Reap.  When the water recedes, they float off 10-15km into the middle of the lake so they can be near the fish.  They're currently not doing much commercial fishing because the fish are busy laying eggs - seems like their way of avoiding fishing quotas!

The local kids seem to think that the way to entice tourists to give the money is to sail up to your vessel and offer you the opportunity to look at/take a photo of (touch?) a live snake.  Eve was delighted as you can imagine.

Cambodia - Angkor

We got to Siem Reap safe and sound last Sunday evening after a brief stop over in Guangzhou (one of those enormous Chinese cities I mentioned, which I had previously never heard of).  Siem Reap is the the city which funnels tourists into nearby Angkor Wat (and other temples which are about 1,000 years old).  Angkor Wat is the world's biggest religious building - initially a Hindu religious building, but later converted into a Buddhist religious building.  The scale is unbelievable - it's like a small town and even has its own moat to boot.  Add to that the fact that it was built a goodly number of hundreds of years ago and you've got yourself an impressive set up.  We trotted along for sunrise on Tuesday morning, which was great because the place was really quiet when we had a look around (but sadly it was cloudy so the sunrise itself was not so spectacular).  We felt sorry for our tuk tuk driver who had to get up as early as we did (and then ferry us around for the rest of the day).  Turns out that Angkor Wat was built around the same time as Notre Dame - the desire to find God appears to have arisen in different unconnected places.

After a busy day of temple hopping it was back to the hotel was a dip in the pool and cocktails.  A routine which we found so appealing we've now repeated three days running.

The picture menu

After hours of taking photos, tasting food and amateur use of photoshop, the picture menu is almost complete - just 7 dishes to go.  I don't know whether I can bring myself to order the cranberry and chicken pizza though.

Eating

Having spent more time with locals, you get to experience more of their remarkable eating feats (not just what they eat, but how).  For example, the ability to take in in one bite a bone-riddled piece of meat and then strip the meat off and spit out the bones in one simple movement.

People

Some of the guys are friends are working with have had some amazingly fruity backgrounds.  One of the guys we were speaking to was asked what his role was in the gang he used to be a member of.  Essentially, it appears there are two levels: big brothers and little brothers.  He said he was the big brothers' big brother. Pretty senior then I guess.  Another chap used to be a hitman (not that you would know it when you meet him - a friendlier chap you could not hope to meet).  Shortly after he joined the group here he turned up with a rucksack full of cash (much of which were illgotten gains and the fruits of his brother's business - large scale prostitution).  An orphanage in Africa benefitted I'm told.

Volleyball n stuff

Right, what have we been up to since my last post?  We've been with our friends for almost four weeks now and we're off to Cambodia on Sunday for fun, frolics and temples.

Today is volleyball day with the guys coming off drugs (and some of their mates who haven't quite made it that far yet).  Having played over the last few weeks, I have re-discovered that I am above-averagely tall for this part of the world (and I swear the net is lower than at home) - consequently, smashing the ball over the net seems to come much more easily.  A huge bonus.

Tonight also brings along the bi-weekly parenting course.  Oddly, I have been asked to do the talk this evening.  You would have thought that having no kids might disqualify you a little from the task, but apparently not.  Guess I'll have to wing it.

The orphanage

We met some guys who help out at an orphanage on the edge of town and joined them on a visit a couple of days back.  When they first started going (a couple of decades back) they said they started to twig that babies were dying between their visits.  At that stage, they had 600 hundred or so babies and a steady stream coming in.  In reality, it seems that it is not an orphanage (in the sense that the children have no parents), but rather that the parents have abandoned the children (perhaps because it is a girl and, given the one child policy, they'd prefer it to be a boy or because the baby had some form of disability).  We saw one little baby who was blind and another who had an extra finger on each hand.

Conditions have improved markedly over the years, but babies are still being abandoned (the other option appears to be abortion, which we are told is used as a very frequent form of contraception).  The good news is that adopting and fostering is much more prevalent.  Apparently, there is a village a few hours from the city which is predominantly Christian and the people in the church decided to adopt a lot of the kids - there are 200 or so adopted kids there.

As nice as the orphanage now is (made better by the fact that the city has grown, so rather than being out in the middle of nowhere, it is now much more part of the local urban area), it was just so sad to see rooms with cots lined up end to end and each cot having a photo and an info card so they know where each kid belongs.  It's just such a contrast to the nicely painted nurseries people have in their houses at home.  We saw one set of twins and I just hoped they would get to stay together - although it is a bit tricky to see how when the one child policy is so rigorously enforced e.g. a couple who have a child are not permitted to adopt another.

The minority village

Last week, Eve and I went out to the minority village on the edge of town.  An odd experience.  It's supposed to showcase the minority peoples who live in China (China is very diverse in the sense that there are loads of people groups, the majority people group just seems to have tried in the past to suppress them).  Each minority group has its own "village" there, which is supposed to showcase traditional life in some way.  In light of all of this, I was trying to work out if it is more of a zoo than a than a museum/theme park.  It reminded me of the colonial museum just outside Brussels, which tells of how they got some natives over the colonies a century or so ago and made them live in the woods so the Belgians could see how these people lived in their natural habitat.  It beggars belief.

Anyway, it was all good fun - we were with one of the girls from the flat who belongs to one of the minority groups.  Towards the end of the day, we ended up getting drawn into some parade where each of the minorities sent a group in and danced around (Eve and I were obviously natural fits - there's a photo somewhere which I'll stick up on flickr).  After about an hour - sensing the thing would never end - we made an exit.

The abiding memory of the day though was the number of photos Eve got dragged into - by total randoms. We must have got to at least 20 in about 2-3 hours.  It's clearly the done thing to pull a blonde Westerner into your photo and then make the "v for victory" sign.  The Chinese we have come across really do have an extraordinary gift for posing in photos.  The kids particularly are very well trained in the art of adopting slightly pretentious model poses.

The cafe

Between the flats (about 20 mins or so by bike along their very broad cycle lanes - even Eve has done the journey by bike a few times!) there is the cafe where the guys and younger lady work.  We've spent a fair amount of our time at the cafe - Eve has obviously been working her magic in the kitchen and adding some more desserts to an already impressive menu.  My job has been to help with the new marketing drive.  We need to make the menu a little more Chinese - not in terms of the dish selection, but rather having a photo for each dish so that the Chinese customers know what they're ordering (the menu is in Chinese too, but the dishes are pretty unfamiliar to local palettes)!  Although a picture menu makes me immediately suspicious, apparently it's necessary here.  The sheer size of the menu is making the whole thing more protracted than anticipated.  They've got something like 60 dishes on the menu - again, apparently this is necessary in China as your cook can't be very good if he can only do, say, 20 dishes.

We're also trying to make up some new banners for the outside of the cafe - the last lot had to come down after some local officials out of the blue decided (after it had been up for about 3 years) that a "registration fee" was payable.

Update

So, we've been with our friends for almost two weeks now and I realise I have become remiss at blogging. It's been great to stay here - our friends are so hospitable and it's like a home away from home.  They live in a flat on one side of the corridor and we are on the opposite side with some of the people that they are working with.  One lady lives here with her 8 year old son and there is another younger lady too.  The little boy's dad is an addict who can try to get money out of the mother, so they thought it was best for the mother and boy to live here.  He's a lovely little chap, but seems to have a habit of getting into trouble at school!  He and I have bonded over table tennis and frisbee.  Across town there is another flat which has some of the guys (some of whom also have addiction problems) they are working with in it.