The people of Angkor -- March 21-22, 2007

As I left my Siem Reap guesthouse at 5 a.m. and headed out to see the sun rise over Angkor Wat, my expectations were mixed. I had heard from many people that the world's largest religious monument and its surrounding temples were stunning. But I also knew, with 1 million visitors annually, they can be a bit of a zoo. Boy was I right! Shortly after I arrived, buses filled with Japanese and German tourists pulled up and hordes of people swept through the front entrance. Yikes -- a sunrise at Angkor Wat isn't exactly an original idea!

Yet when I managed to squeeze my way through the crowds and stepped through the gateway, the sheer size and majestic beauty of the five perfectly shaped lotus towers sent shivers down my spine. I only then began to appreciate just how powerful the ancient Khmer empire must have been -- and to think Angkor Wat was built by hand!


The surrounding temples were equally impressive - the 200 smiling faces carved into 50 stone towers at the Bayon; the beautifully preserved bas reliefs at the Terrace of the Leper King; the trees swallowing the stones of Ta Prohm. The Angkor temples embody the creativity, intelligence and spirituality of the Khmer people.



But while the architecture and artistic beauty were certainly spectacular, I found myself spending just as much time watching the Cambodians around the temples -- the monks in their brilliant orange robes, the white clothed women gazing out at the foreigners, the adorable yet savvy children peddling jewelry, postcards and drinks, the elderly man with the beaming smile. These were the descendants of Angkor!

Rice planter for a day - March 19, 2007

After almost two weeks in Phnom Penh, I decided to escape the noise and chaotic traffic and head to Battambang, about four hours north of the capital city. Often referred to as the "rice bowl of Cambodia," this small town is surrounded by rice fields, sugar palm trees, lotus plantations and ponds filled with hundreds of ducks (their eggs are collected daily and sold in the market). Nearby are also temples, caves and lakes, so I decided to take a tour of the countryside on the back of a moto.

What a great way to see the real Cambodia! As we bumped along narrow dirt roads through tiny villages, children would run up to wave and say hello. Herds of cattle or chickens would suddenly cross our path so the moto driver had to carefully weave through the animals. We passed through vibrantly green rice fields where workers toiled under the blazing sun. Stark reminders of the Khmer Rouge are everywhere - from the killing caves where they executed and buried thousands of victims to the temples and walls damaged by their mortar fire.

My moto driver was a great guide - he would stop along the way and point out different plants and trees to explain how they were harvested and cooked. He very kindly stopped to buy me a face mask as the roads in rural Cambodia can be quite dusty. And when he suggested that we help plant rice, I jumped at the chance to try my hand at Cambodia's most important occupation!

The workers were very sweet and laughed kindly at my poor attempts to copy their planting technique. I was about three times as slow as they were and more often than not, I had to keep going back to fix my plants as they would float apart instead of standing straight! I had a great time, but I doubt I was actually "helping" as I'm sure as soon as I left, they had to repair my damage!

A sobering day - March 12, 2007

I woke up this morning knowing that it was time to pay a visit to two of the more popular tourist destinations in Phnom Penh: the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. I had spent the last week wandering the streets of Phnom Penh, trying to get myself into the right frame of mind -- I had to see for myself the evil of the Khmer Rouge and I knew it would be an ugly day. But I was unprepared by how emotional the experience would be.

Prior to 1975, Tuol Sleng was a high school. When the Khmer Rouge took over Phnom Penh, they turned it into a prison (S21), where over three years, some 20,000 men, women and children were imprisoned and tortured at Tuol Sleng, before being transported to the Choeung Ek to be executed. When the prison was liberated by the Vietnamese in 1979, there were only seven survivors.

As I pulled up alongside the wall of Tuol Sleng and saw the top of the buildings, a lump formed in my throat and my stomach began to churn. I entered through the front gates and had to immediately sit down to compose myself. The small courtyard was eerily quiet and the three blocks of former classrooms looked like ordinary school buildings. But the air felt heavy with the memories of the 20,000 Cambodians who suffered within these walls.



I watched the Cambodians who worked at the museum and wondered how they could look so calm, almost blase about what this place represented. Later in the day, as I chatted with my tuk tuk driver about the Khmer Rouge, I realized that the atrocities of these evil regime are never really that far from the surface.

The exhibits within the museum were gutrenching. Interrogation rooms fill one floor of a building and have pretty much been left as they were found with metal beds and shackles still standing in the middle of the room. Photos on the wall depict in graphic detail the corpses that the Vietnamese found in each room.



The instruments of torture are still there -- knives, hoes, hammers, wooden beams that they used to pull people's arms out of their sockets, the dunking chamber where they half-drowned the prisoners -- as well as several graphic paintings illustrating how these instruments were used on the victims.

Another section of the museum houses hundreds of prisoner photos - the Khmer Rouge were meticulous in their record keeping and have names, numbers, biographies and "crimes" documented for each person they executed. Row after row, men, women and children stare back at you. Some are visibly frightened, others are defiant, while some just look numb, resigned to the horrific fate awaiting them. Especially heartbreaking were the photos of the children -- how twisted do you have to be to hate this little boy, to view him as an enemy of the Khmer Rouge?



As I looked at each of the hundreds of photos, I stopped to examine the young boys and teenage girls wondering if they could possibly be the siblings that we left behind. I looked for a physical resemblence, a reflection of me when I was 14 (the approximate age of my sister), but thankfully, I didn't see anything that jumped out at me.

There were also exhibits that showed old photos and suriving family members recounting the stories of the victims in Tuol Seng. Their stories were achingly similar to ours -- missing parents, dead brothers and sisters, pleas for news about loved ones. I had never thought of ourselves as victims of the Khmer Rouge because Noelle and I left before they came into Phnom Penh and we had such an idyllic childhood in Canada. But it suddenly occurred to me that just like the families depicted in this exhibit, the Khmer Rouge were responsible for tearing our Cambodian family apart.

I left the museum with a heavy heart and headed to the Killing Fields, 16 km outside of Phnom Penh. This was an extermination camp - prisoners from Tuol Sleng prison were transported here to be executed. Throughout this former orchard, you can still see vivid reminders of the atrocities committed here -- mass graves where the corpses were unearthed in the 80s, bits of clothing and bone lay undisturbed on the grounds and as this sign aptly describes, this tree was used to kill babies.



Right in the centre of the Killing Fields is a memorial stupa with 8,000 skulls set on rows of shelves. A sign on the stupa asks visitors "Would you please kindly show your respect to many million people who were killed under the genocidal Pol Pot regime".... so I decided to light some incense. As I knelt to place the incense in the pot, I was overwhelmed with emotion -- I felt like I had finally come home to honour my Cambodian family.



Later, I sat down to have lunch with my tuk-tuk driver -- he was also born in 1975 in the countryside. "Pol Pot regime was very bad" he said, shaking his head "Cambodians killing Cambodians." I felt from him a sense of national shame that Cambodians were capable of doing this to themselves. "You were very lucky you left when you did," he said, "You survived."

"You did too," I replied. We smiled at eah other and by the end of the day, my tuk tuk driver (Polo) and I had became friends. (We've exchanged e-mail addresses!)

My first Cambodian impressions -- March 9, 2007

I landed in Phnom Penh late Monday night, and as the taxi took me to my hotel, I stared out the window at the streets, the people, the crumbling buildings trying to imagine the city as it was 30 years ago. Coming from the sparkling new Bangkok airport, the contrast between Thailand and Cambodia was starkly clear - I had indeed entered a third world country.

I chatted with the driver who was interested to learn that I had been born in Phnom Penh in 1975 -- he would have been old enough to remember April 17, 1975, and it struck me that the memories of the Khmer Rouge must still be so raw for so many Cambodians. I didn't have the nerve to ask him about what he experienced ... I'm not yet sure if people are open to talking about it.

After four days of walking through Phnom Penh, four things have stood out for me..

-- The traffic is crazy! I thought Bangkok was chaotic but at least they have lights and rules. Here, the cars, motos, bikes all follow their own laws - motos often zip down the wrong side of the street and there are no traffic lights or right of way at intersections. I sat at one corner for 10 minutes and watched the vehicles converge from all four sides and somehow move their way around each other to get across to the other side. There are very few crosswalks so if you have to cross a road as a pedestrian, you have to calmly step out in front of the oncoming traffic and trust they can see you! They generally will just move around you so you must keep a steady pace and not surprise the drivers or you will get hit! That said, accidents - espeically for motos -- are very common.

-- Phnom Penh is a poor city but there is a certain charm that slowly creeps into you. There is a pretty promenade with trees and flapping flags right along the bank of the Tonle Sap river where many tourists and Cambodians alike spend their evening. The wide boulevards are lined with trees and there are stretches of park with sculptures and monuments. Best of all is the colonial architecture, which is everywhere in the city - the French certainly left their mark on Phnom Penh. For many years, the buildings were left to rot but recently there has been a resurgence of restoration by the government, which sees the tourist value of beautifying the city. The following photos are typical - they stand side by side, with one falling into disrepair and the other painted the typical cream yellow.

-- Cambodians are a very attractive people -- both the men and women -- and I'm not just saying that cause I'm Cambodian! There is something quite distinctive in their look, certainly different than the Thais. I'm not sure if there is a mix in the history of the Khmer people that has resulted in a more defined bone structure and beautiful eyes.

-- The poverty in the city is striking and depressing -- many young children begging in the streets, often leading a blind parent or a grandparent with amputated limbs. As you leave the restaurants or museums, they approach you with their hands out and with the saddest expressions on their faces. There are a lot of NGOs (non-governmental agencies) in Cambodia - and I wonder if they are making a difference?

An elephant paradise - February 26-March 4, 2007

For my final week in Thailand, I decided to volunteer at the Elephant Nature Park, near Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. This unique sanctuary rescues abused domestic elephants from all over the country and brings them to park where they can roam freely, interact with other elephants and just be elephants - no trekking, no begging food from tourists, no circus tricks. What a week - I'm not even sure how to put this wonderful experience into words.

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When we first arrived at the park, I knew this was indeed an elephant's paradise. There were elephants everywhere! Some were wandering leisurely through the grass, others were hanging out near the platform waiting anxiously for their food while nearby three baby elephants played with a tire swing.

It was an eyeopening first day - we learned about the horrific abuse domestic elephants in Thailand suffer, the history and work of the Elephant Nature Park, and its mission to change the way Thailand treats what is supposed to be a revered Buddhist icon and national symbol. Elephant tourism is huge in Thailand, but unfortunately, most of the elephants in trekking camps and begging in city streets are malnourished, mistreated and overworked.

Many of the elephants at the park had suffered agonizing treatment from their former owners and mahouts (trainers) before they were rescued - "Jokia" was blinded with arrows and sticks, "Lilly" was fed aphetamines and forced to work as a trekking elephant during the day and illegal logging at night. This particular elephant ("Mae") was forced to breed at too young an age and her back was broken by the aggressive male elephant.

All domestic elephants go through a brutal training regiment at a very young age - they are taken away from their mothers for the first time, enclosed in a tiny cage, deprived of food, sleep and water for 36 hours or more and beaten with hooks and sticks with nails. 40 per cent die from the training, while 50 per cent of those who survive go insane. It was a sobering first day.

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And yes... in case you're wondering, as a volunteer, I picked up elephant poo. Lots of it! We also prepared their food, fed them and bathed them in the river. There was also a lot of grunt work and very hard physical tasks -- hacking down banana trees with machetes, repairing a damaged roof, carrying heavy loads of bamboo.

But I enjoyed every moment - even though my body ached, my knees creaked and I've never been so stinky and dirty in my life! We had a great group of volunteers who made even the mundane job fun. But more importantly, it was great to see the elephants enjoy the fruits of our labour. For example, we had to dig out a huge mud pit with shovels and buckets - standing knee deep in a pool of muddy water, it was backbreaking work in the blazing sun. But seeing these baby elephants and even some of the adults sliding around and playing in the pit was worth every aching muscle!

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Of course, the best part of the week was getting close with the elephants, learning their different personalities and watching how they behave with each other. Every day, we got to handfeed the elephants and feel the strength of their trunks as they reached for the yummy bananas or watermelon.

In the river, we threw buckets of water on the elephants and used brushes to scrub their tough skin. On one magical overnight trip, we walked with one of the families (a baby, mother, aunt and a couple of males) up a mountain and into the jungle where they were released to wander and forage. But it was the unexpected moments that I will always remember -- like walking down from the volunteer huts to the main area and having the baby and mother walk nonchalantly across my path. Or hearing the sound of an elephant trumpet reverberating through the park and bouncing back from the surrounding mountains, which sent shivers down my spine.

I especially loved watching the passion and devotion with which the mothers and aunts protected their babies. I will never forget the image of one mother who heard her baby squeal and immediately thundered across the meadow at an incredible speed to get to him - with ears flaring, the dust rising around her feet, it was an awesome and somewhat scary sight - especially since we were in her direct path. We quickly moved out of the way of course!

All in all, it was an unforgettable experience... and if you would like to enjoy elephants in Thailand, I would encourage you to skip the hundreds of trekking camps throughout the country and head to the Elephant Nature Park instead.

Here's one of my favourite photos... the smaller elephant on the left is "Hope" - orphaned as a baby and rescued early on by the Park, he is now a healthy six year old boy. Like many youngsters, he enjoys bugging the older elephants in his family until they've had enough. They then usually turn around and give Hope a good thwacking.