Bloody Temples

Couldn't make our map match the reality on the ground. After a whole morning of frustration we realised we weren't where we thought we were but in one of the most famous and recognisable tourist sites in the world - Angkor Wat

Hired a tut-tut driver for three days to drive around what was a massive city full of temples. Hot, exhausting but strangely engaging  

'' Back and to your left a bit''

There are some 6 million land mines and unexploded bombs in Cambodia that are still maiming and killing people every day. Many on them left over from the days when America was 'helping the Cambodian people help themselves' (Richard Nixon) by bombing the hell out of there villages and creating the perfect conditions for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. You would think that the richest nation in the world, after invading one country and then dropping bombs on its neighbour could at least go and collect its unexploded shit when it had finished!

Eating Cambodia

Eat my feet - massage by skin eating fish

I'll have mine with flies please

Spiders and frogs

Sticky rice and stuff

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The Garbage kids

Met an ex-pat Brit, David, in Phnom Penh. He divides his time between his bar, his beautiful young Cambodian girlfriend and feeding the children who eek out an existence on the city dump.



He wasn't taking food that day but he took us to the dump to see for ourselves. The pollution in Phnom Penh is pretty bad but as soon as you got to the end of the road full of recycling businesses it was like entering an earthly hell. There was smoke everywhere, it stung your eyes and throat, the smell was indescribable. Dave threw a Stone into what looked like a muddy field with a few patches of grass. The stone immediately disappeared. It was a pit, some 2 metres deep full of toxic waste



When David takes tourists to feed the 2000 people who work live and feed in this place. He asks for a 15$ donation from each person. They go to market, buy the food and take it in an old lorry where they distribute the food to the woman and children. Any money left over is used to buy school uniforms for the children. School is free but they cant go if they don''t have a uniform.

There is a lot of poverty in Cambodia but Phnom Penh is full of brand new Lexus and Toyota land cruisers. All belonging to the Government, NGOs or major charities. It is so ostentatious and such a waste of money its quite sickening. Particularly against the direct and effective work David is doing



Cambodian fact. There is a law that bans the use of headlights during the day. There is no law stating you must use them at night



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We are genocide tourists now

The tourists approach the genocide memorial in an excited, expectant state. This after all is an important 'must do' in their whirlwind tour of the country's top sites. Their mood quickly changes as they realise the scale and the mechanics of massacre.

Tears don't come at this stage because you cant have much empathy with thousands or even millions of dead people. The tears come later when they read the individual stories. The 5 year old Rwandan child, a picture of her at a birthday party, who had her head split in two by a machete. The hundreds of babies who where swung by their legs and smashed against as 'special' tree in the Cambodian killing fields



Finally, for the tourists, there is anger and the thirst for revenge or at least justice. The Western need for a nice neat ending that will never come.

Rwanda has begun the process of reconciliation and justice. Formal trials of some of the Hutu leaders are taking place in Zanzibar. Local courts are enabling people to tell their stories and to confess. Rwanda has ditched the French language because of Frances actions around the massacre. The people refer to themselves as Rwandan now, instead of Hutu or Tutsi. 800,000 Tutsi where killed.

Cambodia is now starting trials of a few Khmer Rouge leaders, far too late most of the leaders including Pol Pot have died of old age. Its not easy to investigate these things when your current leader is ex-Khmer Rouge. 1-3 million died out of a population of 8 million



Both massacres demonstrate the impotence and moral cowardice of the UN. In Rwanda a few armed peace keepers could have stopped the killing. The UN continued to recognise the Khmer Rouge Government years after they where ousted by Vietnamese forces. Both France and the US, amongst others, played shameful roles in these decisions

As for the tourists? They end the tour chastened and maybe a little change. Most importantly their presence helps ensure the stories are told and not forgotten






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