cambodia :: day four :: part one :: boo from bokor
the man took center stage in the crumbling palace and proceeded to pantomime. he bent his legs and faked a strong grip on a big imaginary machine gun. and then he started shooting, fueling his fire with the cops-and-robbers sounds that kids make, shaking his body and turning from side to side, spraying his made-up bullets through large windowless openings, flying them over the thick jungle and in to the distant waters of the gulf of thailand.
then the man brushed his hands clean and laughed. without speaking a word, he had said what he wanted to say: not too long ago, the guns and the bullets were real. not too long ago — as recently as the late 1990s — the vast jungles of preah monivong national park were home to the last remnants of the khmer rouge.
12.16.2003, 9:34 PM · Cambodia
cambodia :: photos :: the faces of cambodia
for all of dan’s cambodia photos, click here.
cambodia :: day three :: monks taxi, too
“are you going to kampot?”
“yes.”
“me too.”
and that’s how i learned i would be sharing a three-hour taxi ride with a buddhist monk. well, a buddhist monk and five other people. in cambodia, that taxi stays parked until it’s packed.
11.26.2003, 7:27 PM · Cambodia · Comments (1)
cambodia :: day two :: keep smiling
cambodia’s political history is confusing as hell. it twists and turns like the murky mekong river, which cuts a mysterious path right through the heart of the country. cambodia goes through regimes, its leaders go through shifts of allegiance, like rural khmers go through kramas.
this much is clear, however. cambodia was home to the most murderous revolution of the 20th century. between 1975 and 1979, nearly 20 percent of the population was killed, either by execution, starvation, malnutrition or lack of medical care. these were the most lethal years of the khmer rouge’s bloody reign. led by the hitler-esque pol pot, the “revolutionists” eliminated nearly 2 million cambodians in a radical social experiment aimed at restructuring the country into a maoist, peasant-driven collective.
11.24.2003, 10:52 PM · Cambodia · Comments (2)
cambodia :: day one :: hello moto
prostitutes. drugs. guns.
i learned all i needed to know about cambodia during the short ride from the phnom penh airport to the last home guesthouse. well, this was all my moto driver bunyong thought i needed to know. don’t think he’ll be getting hired by the cambodia travel bureau anytime soon.
11.20.2003, 10:56 PM · Cambodia · Comments (4)
my uncle olaf used to say …
… whenever you finish four mind-numbing days spent grading 400 final exams (which require students, among other things, to “write two examples of a swear word”) …
… go to cambodia.
well, i’m taking ol’ ollie’s advice. i’ll be in cambodia until nov. 28.
how do you say “happy thanksgiving” in cambodi … um … cambodianese? (i really should have read up on this place a little more. cambodiahua? cambodinglish?)
[olaf also used to tell me never to mention stories i have promised to readers, but, for whatever reason, haven’t written yet. so i won’t mention the xinjiang stories that i owe you, among others. i won’t apologize. i won’t blame the the fact that they’re not written on 400 final exams … but i could.]
see you in 10 days!
(by the way, i got my camera fixed. so expect some pics.)
