Phnom Pen and onwards.

Siam Reap was pretty bleak, despite the amazing temples of Angkor Wat. Although perhaps it was less Siam Reap and more the traveling three weeks straight that did me in. Nevertheless, I was glad to get out of there and head to Phnom Pen.

As most of you know Cambodia has a rather interesting history. (Civil war to depose the monachy resulting in a socialist lead genocide to restore the country into an agrarian state...brutally torturing and killing nearly three million out of the seven million who lived here, specifically the professionals, students and anyone who displayed knowledge or intelligence that was not about farming. Oh, and this took place between 1975-1979, so basically within all of our lifetimes.) Phnom Pen has been an excercise in understanding this history. There was the visit to the detention/torture prison S-21 and the Killing Fields to explain the history, and then there is everything else that you encounter that expands on how a country deals with such atrocity.

Today, I got a massage from a blind person. Heaps of stores sell products made by cripples and restaurants donate portions of their proceeds to local communities in need. There has been an influx in humanitarian care and sentiment since the 1980s, but it visibly competes with an aggression that to me, is still palpable. Just in the ways that the boys will play fight with each other, or the beggars confront, the way that they carry and treat their animals, or how the children who are hawking their goods will yell at you and chase you down the street because you bought something from someone else.

I'm trying to approach the situation and the people that I meet and this whole country with compassion. But it is hard, and my guest house is comfortable and it is easy to hide behind the constantly playing tv-dvd and pretend like the world with its problems has stopped for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or paused so that the 40 Year Old Virgen can take care of that problem...

It's hard to understand the ways in which we are all so capable of what happened here. That it has happened over and over, in so many parts of the world. I'd love to think that there are men and that there are monsters. I'd love to, but I can't.

We're off tomorrow, back to Thailand. We're not sure we will be able to see the elephants, apparently they are very popular and might not be able to pencil us in. If thats the case, then to the crystal clear beaches we go, to make some more room for some more compassion for what will inevitably be a more confrontational journey to India.

much love and blind back rubs,
maya