ATLAS KINZEL
This is from the journal I kept while traveling in Cambodia, April 8–17, 2011.
Key terms:
PEPY: the tour group that took us around Cambodia. Part of the money we paid them goes to supporting schools in Cambodia.
KHMER: meaning “Cambodian” language or people
KHMER ROUGE: The followers of the Cambodian Communist Party under Pol Pot, 1975–79, a time of terrible violence and genocide in the country.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Forty minutes till I land in Korea. I have no sense of time or direction. I think it’s roughly 4:20 P.M. here. But in Asheville it’s 3:00 A.M.(!) I got little sleep because there was a baby nearby that screamed so loudly whenever I had just started to drift off. It felt like an eternity on the plane. I watched two movies, read all of I Am Number Four, but mainly just tried to sleep. When I thought we would be there soon, we were halfway there. . . . .
Day 1 in Cambodia: Phnom Penh
We started the day with a breakfast at a restaurant near Smiley’s, our hotel. We took a short ride by tuk-tuk to S-21 Prison [main prison during the Khmer Rouge era]. I wasn’t strongly affected by what I saw until I saw the ways they would torture their victims. Not only was it awful, it was also very disgusting.
After we visited the prison, we visited the “Killing Fields” [area where Khmer Rouge killed and buried many victims]. There isn’t much to show nowadays. A giant monument has been built; it’s filled to the top with human skulls, bones, and the clothes of victims. They were made to build the graves that they were then buried in! In the biggest pit, more than 450 people were buried. We looked at photographs of people who had died there.
We learned Khmer for the numbers 1 to 20:
1 moy
2 pee
3 buy
4 boon
5 bram
6 bram moy
10 dop
20 my pie(!)
After lunch—as Miles calls them—“Elefantes!” We rode an elephant! Down the road. Through traffic. SERIOUSLY. And it was awesome!
Next we went on a boat across the Mekong River. Apparently, some of the Vietnamese boat kids living on the Mekong don’t even speak Khmer because they don’t have to. Very poor.
Our PEPY guides are Chor (Khmer), Yut (Khmer), and Clair (English), who’s a friend of Kathy’s from her last trip.
After the boat ride, we were off to dinner, but first--water beetles (I ate three . . . I thought I was going to die!)
We travel everywhere by tuk-tuk or walking. The traffic is so cool. There are no lines down the middle of the roads, so traffic going different ways crisscrosses each other all the time. It’s even a little scary.
About Cambodians/Khmer: polite, shy (toward us), friendly, and very poor—but generally happy with their lives.
Day 2: Leaving Phnom Penh
We start the day with a nice breakfast and COFFEE that tastes like chocolate. After that, we started driving. We were in a van that was air-conditioned, so the heat wasn’t too too bad.
We drove to the city of Siem Reap. I learned that Siem Reap means “Defeat of the Siamese [or Thai].” (Note: if I ever meet a Thai person, I shouldn’t mention “Siem Reap.”) We made several stops along the way, our first and longest being a stop at a called RDI that treats water among other things. They treat the water by making pots out of clay that have extremely good filtering systems and then selling them to villagers for a mere $10.
Next we ate lunch (rice and fried “dumplings”), and then we really got driving. At first we were very energized and played “BS” and Scrabble on Aidan’s iPad, but soon we were s l o w i n g down in the not-so-comfortable seats.
Our next stop was for fried tarantulas. I ate a whole TARANTULA! I wasn’t prepared for their huge size. I could barely cram one into my mouth. Also, you could still see the eyes, teeth, and hair of the thing (ugh!). And to all people who are wondering: it did not taste like chicken. It tasted more like . . . tarantula.
Day 3: School Day
We started the day on an open truck—no breakfast. Instead, we had breakfast on the truck, and either I was really hungry or I just liked it, but the food was delicious. It’s from a place called the Blue Pumpkin that does a lot of American food.
We played games for the rest of the hour-long ride where you had to figure out the rule, e.g.
Yes
Bee
Fly
Goo
Goop
No
Sleeping bag
The answer to life
Horse
Dog
(Answer: the letters have to go in alphabetical order from left to right.)
Then we arrived at Chanlais Dai Primary School. But we didn’t stay there for long. We walked over to the Chanlais Dai (Junior?) High School and met a group of kids. Some are 18 but I’m still much taller than them! First they taught us about Khmer New Year, food, school, their school, seasons, and many other things with English that had few flaws.
Then we presented to them about America. We did a horrible job! First, we tried to give a sense of scale so we showed them a map of North Carolina vs. Cambodia. Next, we threw down a whole lot of cards that mean “America” and answered any questions they had about them.
Then we had a delicious family-style lunch with what seemed like the entire village of Chanlais Dai, which is a very rural town even for Cambodia, where 80 percent of the population is rural.
Afterward we headed back to the school, which has more stuff than I expected. This time, we played games—Duck Duck Goose and a game they play called “Squirrel Cage.” Then we each got a partner and drew a picture of “Cambodia-USA friendship.”
But then, the fun really started. As we were finishing up our pictures, I noticed the sky was completely gray. It was about to rain, and it was going to rain hard. As it started to come down, there was trouble for several reasons, one being that it’s a sign of global warming (this is supposed to be the dry season so it really shouldn’t be raining at all).And two being that there were holes the roof of the school. Everyone started clearing the building where there were holes. We had taken our shoes off to enter the school, so everyone was barefoot anyway. This made way for some of the greatest water-slipping I have ever taken part in. I slid at least five feet form a slight running start. I slid on my back, feet, knees, hands, and other people. One of the Khmer New Year celebrations is Tug of War, and we had a lot of fun playing that on the slippery floor.
After visiting the school, we headed back to Siem Reap in the rain, in our open truck. Yut, one of our guides, joked that we had “seen 6 months of Cambodia in 4 days”—referring to the rain.
This is from the journal I kept while traveling in Cambodia, April 8–17, 2011.
Key terms:
PEPY: the tour group that took us around Cambodia. Part of the money we paid them goes to supporting schools in Cambodia.
KHMER: meaning “Cambodian” language or people
KHMER ROUGE: The followers of the Cambodian Communist Party under Pol Pot, 1975–79, a time of terrible violence and genocide in the country.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Forty minutes till I land in Korea. I have no sense of time or direction. I think it’s roughly 4:20 P.M. here. But in Asheville it’s 3:00 A.M.(!) I got little sleep because there was a baby nearby that screamed so loudly whenever I had just started to drift off. It felt like an eternity on the plane. I watched two movies, read all of I Am Number Four, but mainly just tried to sleep. When I thought we would be there soon, we were halfway there. . . . .
Day 1 in Cambodia: Phnom Penh
We started the day with a breakfast at a restaurant near Smiley’s, our hotel. We took a short ride by tuk-tuk to S-21 Prison [main prison during the Khmer Rouge era]. I wasn’t strongly affected by what I saw until I saw the ways they would torture their victims. Not only was it awful, it was also very disgusting.
After we visited the prison, we visited the “Killing Fields” [area where Khmer Rouge killed and buried many victims]. There isn’t much to show nowadays. A giant monument has been built; it’s filled to the top with human skulls, bones, and the clothes of victims. They were made to build the graves that they were then buried in! In the biggest pit, more than 450 people were buried. We looked at photographs of people who had died there.
We learned Khmer for the numbers 1 to 20:
1 moy
2 pee
3 buy
4 boon
5 bram
6 bram moy
10 dop
20 my pie(!)
After lunch—as Miles calls them—“Elefantes!” We rode an elephant! Down the road. Through traffic. SERIOUSLY. And it was awesome!
Next we went on a boat across the Mekong River. Apparently, some of the Vietnamese boat kids living on the Mekong don’t even speak Khmer because they don’t have to. Very poor.
Our PEPY guides are Chor (Khmer), Yut (Khmer), and Clair (English), who’s a friend of Kathy’s from her last trip.
After the boat ride, we were off to dinner, but first--water beetles (I ate three . . . I thought I was going to die!)
We travel everywhere by tuk-tuk or walking. The traffic is so cool. There are no lines down the middle of the roads, so traffic going different ways crisscrosses each other all the time. It’s even a little scary.
About Cambodians/Khmer: polite, shy (toward us), friendly, and very poor—but generally happy with their lives.
Day 2: Leaving Phnom Penh
We start the day with a nice breakfast and COFFEE that tastes like chocolate. After that, we started driving. We were in a van that was air-conditioned, so the heat wasn’t too too bad.
We drove to the city of Siem Reap. I learned that Siem Reap means “Defeat of the Siamese [or Thai].” (Note: if I ever meet a Thai person, I shouldn’t mention “Siem Reap.”) We made several stops along the way, our first and longest being a stop at a called RDI that treats water among other things. They treat the water by making pots out of clay that have extremely good filtering systems and then selling them to villagers for a mere $10.
Next we ate lunch (rice and fried “dumplings”), and then we really got driving. At first we were very energized and played “BS” and Scrabble on Aidan’s iPad, but soon we were s l o w i n g down in the not-so-comfortable seats.
Our next stop was for fried tarantulas. I ate a whole TARANTULA! I wasn’t prepared for their huge size. I could barely cram one into my mouth. Also, you could still see the eyes, teeth, and hair of the thing (ugh!). And to all people who are wondering: it did not taste like chicken. It tasted more like . . . tarantula.
Day 3: School Day
We started the day on an open truck—no breakfast. Instead, we had breakfast on the truck, and either I was really hungry or I just liked it, but the food was delicious. It’s from a place called the Blue Pumpkin that does a lot of American food.
We played games for the rest of the hour-long ride where you had to figure out the rule, e.g.
Yes
Bee
Fly
Goo
Goop
No
Sleeping bag
The answer to life
Horse
Dog
(Answer: the letters have to go in alphabetical order from left to right.)
Then we arrived at Chanlais Dai Primary School. But we didn’t stay there for long. We walked over to the Chanlais Dai (Junior?) High School and met a group of kids. Some are 18 but I’m still much taller than them! First they taught us about Khmer New Year, food, school, their school, seasons, and many other things with English that had few flaws.
Then we presented to them about America. We did a horrible job! First, we tried to give a sense of scale so we showed them a map of North Carolina vs. Cambodia. Next, we threw down a whole lot of cards that mean “America” and answered any questions they had about them.
Then we had a delicious family-style lunch with what seemed like the entire village of Chanlais Dai, which is a very rural town even for Cambodia, where 80 percent of the population is rural.
Afterward we headed back to the school, which has more stuff than I expected. This time, we played games—Duck Duck Goose and a game they play called “Squirrel Cage.” Then we each got a partner and drew a picture of “Cambodia-USA friendship.”
But then, the fun really started. As we were finishing up our pictures, I noticed the sky was completely gray. It was about to rain, and it was going to rain hard. As it started to come down, there was trouble for several reasons, one being that it’s a sign of global warming (this is supposed to be the dry season so it really shouldn’t be raining at all).And two being that there were holes the roof of the school. Everyone started clearing the building where there were holes. We had taken our shoes off to enter the school, so everyone was barefoot anyway. This made way for some of the greatest water-slipping I have ever taken part in. I slid at least five feet form a slight running start. I slid on my back, feet, knees, hands, and other people. One of the Khmer New Year celebrations is Tug of War, and we had a lot of fun playing that on the slippery floor.
After visiting the school, we headed back to Siem Reap in the rain, in our open truck. Yut, one of our guides, joked that we had “seen 6 months of Cambodia in 4 days”—referring to the rain.