Tales from sunny Sihanoukville....

Hello all,

Lots to write about today, but not much of it centres around my work, as I have been on holiday for the past week! Woop woop! Last Tuesday morning (3/6) we got a bus to Phnom Penh and then another one on to Sihanoukville, the only thing in Cambodia that vaguely resembles a beach resort. Total journey time was about 14 hours, and would have been very comfortable, were it not for the fact that there was constant Khmer Karaoke video cds playing at the front. The stories of the music videos all go some thing like this:

Slow Gentle music playing in 6/8, pictures of pleasant Asian countryside. Man starts singing to his girlfriend, who is suitably dressed, with no exposed shoulders or legs. Girls mother comes in and is angry to find her with a man. They split up. Pictures of Girl and Boy separated, crying and lamenting their love, seemingly lost for ever. Mother comes round to her Daughter's point of view. Boy and Girl get married. More gentle music in 6/8. The end. Repeat over 21(!) identical but different songs, all the way to Phnom Penh.

Neway, Sihanoukville was loverly, with spotless tropical beaches, which were surprisingly empty given the quality of the location. What was lovely about it was the fact that you had the lovely beaches, but given Thailand's proximity and Cambodia's lack of development, it hadn't turned into a high rise tacky beach resort. It was just a sleepy seaside town, with a few backpackers there to keep the watering holes well funded. We had two days on the beach, one day on a boat doing island hopping, and one day visiting some nearby waterfalls (they were cool, but once you've been to Iguazu, you are abit spoilt when it comes to waterfalls!) It was a definite chill out holiday, which couldn't have come at a better time, as it has really energised me for the last four weeks of work at the building site.

From Sihanoukville we went for two days in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capitol, and by far its largest and most westernised place. The bumpy roads and naked children of Poipet were swapped for paved boulevards and shopping malls. Our time in Phnom Penh wasn't exactly enjoyable, given the content of our visits, but it was extremely worthwhile.

We first of all visited the Choeung Ek killing fields, about 10 miles outside of Phnom Penh. There was surprisingly little to see here, bar a large monument filled with the skulls of roughly 1000 of the 17000 total victims of this site. There were signs showing you the trees against which infants had their heads dashed before being thrown into mass graves with their parents, and signs showing you trees where loudhailers had been set up to broadcast white noise in order to hide the screams of victims as they were bludgeoned to death. (The Cambodian genocide is unique among modern genocides in that there were no mass killings in gas chambers or with machine guns. The vast majority of the 1.7 million victims were killed with hand tools, such as shovels or hoes.) There were also signs about the s about the Khmer Rouge,some of them surprisingly angry, referring to the leaders as having 'human shells, but hearts of demons'. You could see how open the wounds on the Cambodian Psyche still remain. It's hardly surprising, given that 1/4 - 1/3 of the population was wiped out, and every Cambodian over the age of 40 has vivid memories of the events.

From the killing fields, we then went to the Toul Sleng genocide museum. This is in the same building as the notorious S-21 prison, in which thousands of Khmer people met torture and death. The Khmer Rouge took control of a high school and converted it into a prison. It only receives roughly 30 - 40 visitors a day, which makes it an eerily deserted place. The museum leaves the prison in much the same layout and state as it was the day it was liberated by Vietnamese forces in 1979. There are rooms where there are metal bed frames used for tying victims to for torture, as well as the actual implements themselves. On top of this there was rooms and rooms full of mugshots of victims, as well as pictures of maimed and deformed corpses tied to the torture beds, taken by Vietnamese soldiers upon the liberation of the prison. (There was also and excellent room detailing the full history of the Khmer Rouge, which took about an hour of careful reading to pass through.) It was a draining day, spiritually, emotionally and physically, but I feel that I can understand the modern Cambodian nation and Psyche far better as a result of it.

Outside of the museum, there was a beggar which an extremely deformed face, which makes you blanch with shock the first time you see it. Seeing This beggar is a man who has had to grow used to every single person who sees him being horrified by the look of his face. Due to Buddhist philosophy, people with physical ailments are looked down upon. They are often shunned by society. What kind of existence is that? Seeing him has affected me deeply, and has him really made me think how incredibly fortunate I am with the health of my body, the comfort of my upbringing, and the benefits of living in a first world country. I have no right to complain, and nothing to complain about.

On a similar but less extreme note, over the past few weeks I have been developing a friendship with a deaf man at Church. His name is Tai, and he is from Vietnam. We have been to lunch, and we somehow manage to communicate through a mixture of sign language, and broken English written down for the other to read.

I am sorry for the unhappy nature of the bulk of the content of this post. It has been a very difficult few days for me, and it has helped me in some measure to get it all written out here. I would very much appreciate your continued prayers for me.

God Bless
Greg