Recounting this story for a friend recently made me want to write it down, simply because I never expected to see something like this, something this horrible.

*Warning: This story is not for the weak of heart*

While I was leaving Cambodia on my way back to Thailand, I was walking through the intense and potentially dangerous border city of Poi Pet. This is a harsh town, full of deteriorating shacks, filthy dogs and people, and trash everywhere. So much trash it was embedded in and had become part of the dirt roads. I was there in the dry season, and everything was covered with a thin coat of dirt, giving the area a dusty dirty haze. Nothing can stay clean long in such a dry and dusty climate. Close to the border is the most volatile area, where most of the pick-pockets and beggars wait, targeting the masses of people who flow in and out of the two countries in a constant stream all day.

While I was walking towards the border, many amputees were slumped up against a fence, begging. In Cambodia, I found out that if you step on a land mine and become an amputee, most times you would be considered worthless to your family, and not worth supporting. Since around half of all Cambodians are at risk for stepping on a land mind, and with a rate of three deaths per day, not even including maulings which lead to amputation, there are unfortunately many amputees. Thus these countless poor people resort to begging on the street as their only form of survival.

As I was passing all these people, I came up to one man who was slumped over and so motionless, I did not even know if he was alive. Where his eyeballs had been there now existed only sockets. Open, oozing, bleeding, sockets. It looked fresh- the blood was dripping out of his sockets and down his face. It did not look surgical at all; it looked like they had been ripped violently out of his head. Not only that, but his whole face looked like it was melting off his head. That is the best way I can describe it. His skin was in pieces, bloody, somewhat drooping off his head, and all his features seemed to be sliding off, like his face has been somehow melted off. He half lay there, slumped over, and for all I know, dead. No bandages, no nothing. None of the other beggars seemed to notice, or at least not particularly care. Everyone had their problems.

I do not write this because I want to gross people out. I walked by, and stopped for just a second in shock at what lay before me, but that image will remain in my brain forever. I have no idea what caused this man to be in such hideous shape, but I will always wonder what had happened to him. I never imagined that i would see something like that, or be in a place where something like that would go so unnoticed, would seem so . . . normal. It shocked and disgusted and horrified me. It was by far the most disturbing thing I have ever seen.