Cambodia
Population: 13,636,398
Population Density: 65.87 per sq/km
Life Expectancy: 56.5 years
Average Income: $300/yr
Fact: Cambodia, Thailand and Laos are building a 27-hole golf course on the border between the three countries, with nine holes in each country. Much of the area proposed for the golf course is currently a minefield.
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Cambodia
Cambodia - October 03, 2006
A very young victim at S21.The past week in Cambodia was a heavy dose of reality of the turmoil and pain that the people have faced since the late 1970s. The Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, in which approximately 1.7 million people lost their lives (21% of the country's population), was one of the worst human tragedies of the last century. The Khmer Rouge, headed by Pol Pot, combined extremist ideology, ethnic animosity, and a disregard for human life to produce murder on a massive scale.
As hundreds of thousands of people slowly starved in the rice fields, a select number met their fate inside Khmer Rouge interrogation centers. The most famous of these centers, codenamed S-21, was located in an abandoned suburban high school in Phnom Penh. Over 17,000 prisoners were interrogated, tortured, and executed there - only a handful survived. We had a chance to visit both S-21 and the Killing Fields, a chilling reminder of this very recent past.
On a lighter side, we also had a chance to visit the largest Angkor Wat, the largest religious monument in the world. The temples at Angkor are spread out over nearly 40 miles around the village of Siem Reap. Visiting a few of the sites was somewhat like being vaulted directly on the set of an Indiana Jones movie.
One our way home, we noticed a large group of wild monkeys playing along side of the road. We asked our tuk tuk driver if he would pull over for a few minutes in order for us to capture a few pictures. Within a few minutes, a couple of the younger more curious monkeys decided to check out who the new strangers were on their territory. I stooped down to see if they were tame enough to touch, and a monkey reached out and grabbed my finger, as if a little baby would do (seen in the photo). It was definitely a memorable moment, and I'm grateful Patrick happened to be there at the perfect time with the camera! We'll head to Vietnam and then to Beijing, China all within the next week.
Written Sept. 25th, 2006
