One More Time
I’m writing from Phnom Penh, Cambodia. My life has become quite a bit more complicated since leaving Thailand in July, but it will take a bit to explain. I just left Bangkok – still LOVE that city! – headed for Vietnam to start a kayak trip with Explorer’s Corner on Oct 22. That trip will take us around Halong Bay and then through Laos and Cambodia on the Mekong River ending in Siem Reap for Ankor Wat. Bangkok was quite shocking having just come from Nairobi. I had a smile pasted on my face just traveling from the airport due to the wide highway, flying at 120 kph and no potholes. I’ll need to backup a bit and explain Nairobi in order for you to truly grasp this one. And to think that Nairobi is a high-flying modern location in Africa!
The schedule is as follows… I get done with Southeast Asia on November 8. I then fly back to Nairobi to pick up Pamela. The US Government awarded her a silver star… I mean a tourist visa… so we will then head to America on November 10th! After visiting Vermont, Puerto Rico (wedding), Los Angeles, Northern California, New York City and Vermont again, we will return to Nairobi to pick up regular life as we now know it. I will write some stories about that life soon. There’s a lot to say, but I also owe stories about Borneo, Vietnam, Thailand and (still!!!!!!) Yemen. The end of this adventure is very near, but then again I am working on a whole new adventure that I will let you know about, too. I think I recently found what I was looking for!
The kayak trip ends in Siem Reap and I have to quickly get back to Nairobi so that I can really mess my head up by blasting to America. How many people choose to go to America from Thailand via Kenya? It hurts to think about what I will be like when we get to Vermont. The dissapointment is that I was going to miss Phnom Penh and spend so little time in a country that my friend Rod says is his favorite. After getting my Vietnam and Cambodia visas quickly in Bangkok – 20 minutes for the Cambodia embassy!!! – I decided Phnom Penh is on the way to Saigon so why not spend a couple of says there so I can visit the Killing Fields. Yes, I do choose the unusual and romantic sights! Actually, today is an important day for me. Seeing the worst of humanity tempers the amazement of the best such as Bangkok. It leads to something new although I do not know what today will lead to. I am interested in seeing what happens to a society when the best are all murdered Can thirty years reverse such a calamity? I met a taxi driver yesterday named Sophan. He is 39 so he was a young boy when the Khmer Rouge took this country on a trip to Hell. He will take me to the Killing Fields outside of the city this morning and drive me around the city for the other sights as well. It should be interesting.
Last week Pamela and I rented Sometimes in April about Rwanda’s genocide. Being that these are the two major genocides of my life, my mind was on Cambodia and Rwanda. I wish I had seen Sometimes in April before I went to Rwanda. It certainly explained more about what it is like to be Rwandan than Hotel Rwanda did. I suppose the big difference between these two incidents is that regular people took part in the Rwanda massacre against the other tribe (and their supporters) whereas here is Cambodia it was the government/military killing the educated. Rwanda is still working through its genocide with village trials just ending and Hutu genocidaires still making havoc on the run in neighboring DRC. For Cambodia, Pol Pot is dead, the massacre is more than a generation in the past and the country is doing much better economically. I’m not sure if I will be seeing into Rwanda’s future here in Cambodia, but I know there is a connection in my mind so I will be looking.
I’m not sure when I will get to Vietnam other than by Oct 22. I may stick around in Cambodia a bit. I want to go back to Saigon to see the sights – no more monkey hunting in Vietnam!!! And I want to visit Sapa in the north although they had a lot of flooding recently and I need to find out if travel there is OK. I was in a hurry to get to Vietnam, but now I have found no reason to hurry anywhere. Let’s see what unfolds over the next two weeks before I do one more groupie thing. I promise I will try to empty my head of old stories as well…
Tags: Cambodia
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