I know you've been holding your breath in anticipation

I have sat down to write a blog post, unsuccessfully, no fewer than 2 or 3 times in the past week. To catch you up on the last 9 days would take too long. I'll try and be brief, use bullet points, and, if there is still space, write a rant against the American school system and history lessons. - I spent 3ish days in Phnom Penh. I was surprised by the of Priuses and Lexuses (Priui? Lexi?). Enter requisite comments about seeing drastic differences in wealth in a 3rd world country with no middle class. There is plenty of wealth on display in Phnom Penh. - taking a moto or a tuk tuk is both great for a few moments of "air-conditioning" and lessens the chances of dying trying to cross the street (picture the early computer version of frogger only the mixture of motorcycles, tuk tuks (a moto with a 2 wheeled carriage on back), aforementioned Priuses and Lexuses, plus bicycles don't stay in anything resembling lanes. I found that I would focus on the traffic that was coming one direction and start crossing without having noticed the traffic coming the other direction. Also, taking a moto/tuk tuk in P.P. can be entertaining when your driver doesn't actually understand where you want to go this can result in - spent a day visiting the killing field of cheung ek and he Tuol Sleng genocide museum, memorials to Pol Pot's brutal reign where an estimated 2 million Cambodians died (mainly via execution or starvation) in 3 years, 8 months, and I don't remember how many days (1975-1979). Shocking. Sad. Numbing. I'll write more about this below the bullet points. - fellow Trek leader met up with me and we moved onto Kep, which is a Cambodian seaside town. Not much in the way of a beach, but lots of Cambodians on vacation. Plus a GiANT crab hanging out in the ocean welcoming you to town. The area is famous for crab and pepper. Visited pepper plantation, ate raw pepper, ate crab for $6 at a restaurant with an even mixture of Cambodian and foreign tourists while watching the sunset over the water. Spent a morning in a hammock, drinking beer, and staring at the ocean. Felt content and happy - moved on to the much more touristy, tranquil otres beach, just outside of sihanoukville. Other than a trip out to islands yesterday for some snorkeling I've pretty much been lounging, reading, playing backgammon, or walking on white sandy beaches for 5 days. It's hard to leave. Note to future travelers: wear sunscreen! Especially your first day on a beach. Cambodians have been very friendly and kind thus far. You get the sense that tourism hasn't progressed into the "screw the foreigners" stage. You have to negotiate but they aren't pushy. You may not be able to step foot on the street without someone calling out "tuk tuk?!" at you, but a simple smile and "no" is respected. Ditto to most of the people pushing their wares on the beach. Now, if you are still interested in reading be prepared for a Leah style rant/musings brought on by my visits to cheung ek and Tuol Sleng. Ever since I visited the killing field and the high school in Phnom Penh that served as an interrogation center and prison during the khmer rouges short but bloody rule I look at every cambodian over the age of 40 and think "you lived through that. What is your story?" I am astounded that Cambodia appears to be as functional of a country as it is. Because although I had heard the names Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge, though I knew there had been a genocide and millions of Cambodians had died I had had no idea just how awful it had been, how recent it was, how the international community had responded (or more accurately didn't respond). Short(ish) history lesson (I apologize for any inaccuracies, this is written from memory sans sources): early 1970s, the Vietnam war is raging and the USA is petrified of communists taking over SE Asia. We carpetbomb the shit out of Laos and eastern Cambodia in an attempt to disrupt the viet cong's supply line, the Ho Chi Minh trail. I apologize, but "bomb the shit out of" is the best way to describe this. More American bombs were dropped on Cambodia than all of Europe during WWII. The resulting disruption, along with growing discontent towards the corruption and ineptness of the CIA supported government (which had earlier overthrown the king who'd brought Cambodia independence from the French) gave Pol Pot the rural support he needed to win a civil war. Khmer Rouge forces marched in Phnom Penh in April of 1975. Pol Pot had become a communist while studying in France but his version of communism was extreme compared to all the countries around him. To satisfy his vision of a true peasant, agrarian society his forces emptied cambodia's cities, literally marching millions of people into the countryside. Base camps were established and the entire population was out to work growing rice. Because rice was needed to buy guns from China people were often not fed more than a bowl or two of rice gruel, despite doing backbreaking labor for 12+ hours a day in tropical heat. Starvation was rampant. Children were often separated from their families and sent to youth work camps. In some base camps families were separated and forced to sleep in communal men and women's dorms. The punishment for nearly every transgression was death. Intellectuals were killed. Often their entire families were killed with them to "stamp out the root of the weed." The same went for anyone who had worked for the previous government, even if your role had merely been that of a civil servant or a traffic guard. Because bullets were expensive most of these executions were performed by beating people with axes, shovels, hoes, etc. "re education camp" was an euphemism for a death sentence. There were no physical re-education camps. There were prisons set up around the country for interrogation. Nearly everyone who ended up at one of these prisons was executed. At Tuol Sleng you walk through classrooms, with the classic 1950s black and white checked floors. There are photographs of corpses manacled to a metal bed frame with no mattress, bludgeoned to death. Other rooms have been partitioned off with small cells of brick and wood, barely the size of human lying down. An estimated over 12,000 Cambodians passed through these cells, tortured for days, weeks, months before being loaded into a truck and driven to the killing fields. There their brains were bashed in and their bodies were dumped into a mass grave while a radio playing patriotic music muffled the sounds of their final minutes. I knew Cambodia had experienced genocide. I hadn't realized how awful it had been. Considering the thousands of times I heard the phrase "remember so it never happens again" while learning about the holocaust I wish that I learned this genocide ended because of international intervention, but that would be wishing too much. Pol Pot's genocide ended because he stupidly tried to invade Vietnam. It didn't take long for the Vietnamese to drive his small army into the hills on the Thail border in 1979. Then, the world could see that the murmurings of atrocities they had heard about were in fact true. Then, did the world denounce the Khmer Rouge and come to the aid of the millions of surviving Cambodians who were starving? Not really. Food aid came, but in the Cold War atmosphere the west didn't want to give control of said food to the Vietnamese so most western food aid entered Cambodia via Thailand, meaning it had to pass through land that was (a) heavily land mined and (b) controlled by the Khmer Rouge. In return for allowing refugee camps on their soil Thailand insisted some of this food aid go to the khmer rouge. His helped the guerilla forces survive and, in fact, gain strenth in the jungle. The UN recognized the Khmer Rouge as the official government of Cambodia rather than the Vietnamese constructed government. It was until the late 1980s, when Vietnam said it could no longer afford to be in Cambodia that the UN took over. When Cambodia had its first democratic elections (controlled by the UN) in the early 90s the Khmer Rouge, the same people who had slaughtered maybe 2 million of their own people, were allowed to participate (they ended up boycotting them, but still). Pol Pol died in 1998 at the ripe ole age of 82. That same year the Khmer Rouge were finally defeated. Nearly 20 years after Vietnam defeated them and found fetid mass graves dotting the countryside. I learned none of this in school. Now that I know it I put it in the context of my own life: my sister would've been a baby when Phnom Penh fell. My brother born half way through the Khmer Rouge reign. My mom would've been in her 30s, trying to keep two babies alive. Anyone over the age of about 40 will have a memory of this. The tuk tuk driver who took me out to the killing field, who in his family did he lose? What did the old woman who sold me food on the beach in Kep experience? These are the thoughts that are following me through Cambodia. And I haven't even gone to the places that are full of landmines and thus, sadly, a high percentage of amputees. I cannot count the number of times I learned about the horror of the holocaust in school. It seems like we had a lesson on it every year from 5th grade on. If we truly are "never to forget" perhaps we should start by acknowledging that the holocaust was not unique in its display of humanity's ability to commit atrocities, or of humanity's propensity to turn a blind eye to such atrocities. It's scale may diminish most the atrocities before or since but, tragically, it isn't unique.

You ask, I blog

I, to be perfectly honest, am not entirely confident that travel blogs get read much. I know that I've been excited when friends depart on an adventure and eagerly await their first few posts, then life intervenes and the next thing I know they are back and those first posts are the only ones I've read. But, I was specifically requested by some friends to blog about my upcoming trip so I at least will put in a good faith effort to write, as long as you put in a good faith effort to actually read it. I leave tomorrow for Cambodia. This is my first trip to Asia (Crossing the Bosphorus Strait on my 21st birthday doesn't really count. Neither does going to Central Turkey). I don't really know what to expect. I have a general itinerary in my head for the first few days. I do not have a ticket back home yet. I bought my ticket about 10 days ago. I would claim that this is the most unprepared I've been for a trip, but then Holly reminded me that we cracked open the guidebook for the first time in the airport when we went to Central America. I at least have cracked open the guidebook. I even made a reservation for my first two nights! I've never done that before. Ideas for a more original blog title will gladly be accepted. Stay tuned for more interesting news once I'm actually out of the USA.