The Killing Fields

The drab building is a former secondary school that was converted to a Khmer Rouge torture chamber one stop away from a killing field. Why is it necessary to post a sign telling visitors not to laugh? The nearest killing field (for there were many) is easy to miss--the sign identifying it is not quite on the roadway, and the street leading to it  passes what seem to be houses and small businesses. It's a former Chinese cemetary in what might be called suburbs of Phnom Penh.

The sign to the killing field competes with other signs for the driver's attention.

Forgive me, but it's almost just another roadside attraction, a "must see" location if you are in town. It is surreal -- as emotionally remote as the human sacrifice pyramids of the Mayans in Mexico. We know it happened, but it seems so long ago....

The government fisheries employee who accompanied us to the cemetary, Lieng Sopha, lost three siblings, but survived the Khmer Rouge because his aunt was able to steal morsels for him to eat, at great risk to her life. He  disclosed to Jay, pictured at left, below, that he has had trouble convincing his children that his personal stories are true. The fact that the children can't imagine what their father went through is a testimony to his perserverence in transcending what he endured, becoming a good father and provider. But the happiness of his children comes at some cost--their difficulty in imagining the genocide.

Lieng Sopha, director of Department of Community Fishery Development, with Jay at genocide site

As Jay and I walked through the killing fields, the unreality of the genocide brought back words from Shakespear's Julius Caesar. The words are spoken by Mark Anthony, who addresses Caesar's body following his assassination. They seem most appropriate here:

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial. (Act 3, scene 1)

 

Scenes from the Choeung Ek Killing Field (Chinese cemetary)

 

 

 

 

Chao Ponhea Yat High School: Code Name, S-21

Arms tied behind them, prisoners were hoisted by their arms on this gallows.

 

 

The precursor to all of this:

It was United States President Richard Nixon who ordered the carpet bombing of Cambodia to deprive North Vietnam of sanctuaries. This drove Cambodians into the cities. Within a year of Nixon's resignation as a result  of the Watergate Scandal, the Khmer Rouge arrived at Phnom Penh, forcing its total evacuation within three days. President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Untold numbers of Cambodians suffered and died. And now their memorial is another roadside attraction. Cambodians are  not showing resentment against the United States, as far as I can see, but I think we owe these people.

And so, for Mr. Nixon, this line from Shakespeare:

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

 (Macbeth, Act Act 2, Scene 2.)

This post is dedicated to the survivors--people like Lieng Sopha, shown below with his children.

 

Love,

Robert

Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer. 

Coin of the Realm

Standing outside a restaurant after breakfast one morning, I saw something that puzzled me. Next to the road was a shop that sold what were, for lack of a better term, knick-knacks, including what appeared to be ceramic elephant "piggy banks," complete with the little coin slot on their backs. What's THAT about?

How are you going to save your coins in Cambodia, when there are no coins?

There is only paper money here. The Riel, the official currency of the country, is worth about 0.02501910 cents.

Norodom Sihanouk, "King-Father of Cambodia": 5000 Riel =  $1.25 USD

The 500 Riel bank note. Value: 12.5 cents

The practical currency in Cambodia carries the photos of dead presidents. Our dead presidents. George Washington, who defeated our colonizers, fetches about 4,000 Riel. Lincoln, who saved the union, is worth 20,000 Riel. Grant, who  licked the South, commands 200,000 Riel -- but not if his skirts are frayed.

Cambodians don't like bills with little tears along the edges, or which are pretty worn.

The Web site for Angkor Tours explain: "there is no central bank to clear out old (U.S.) bills, so as they become excessively worn, they eventually become worthless." If you are planning a trip to Cambodia, you might want to visit their Web site.

Angkor Tours also gives this advice regarding ATMs: "Knowing that residents will hand back questionable bills, banks often put their dodgiest money in the ATMs thereby dumping them on tourists who might not know any better."

Love,
Robert


Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer.

Cambodia River Days

I'm starting this late on Wednesday, March 26, (and finishing it Friday morning, Phnom Penh time). It's my second day on the Tonlé Sap River, and probably going to be my most memorable. This was the second time I almost lost my passport, only this time, instead of being in my pants, it ended up in the river. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Somehow they don't fall off the took. this one has a deck.

We went up river again today to visit three communities, using a fast motorized took.  A took is similar to canoes, and just about as stable when you're stepping into one. My companions would carry my laptop and backpack as I struggled to walk the centerline and maintain my balance, with considerable trepidation. The Tonlé Sap doesn't have landings; it has riverbanks, and they can be abrupt.  Getting into a took is difficult enough. But in addition, the ride is a pain. I had to sit tailor fashion on life preservers to cush my tush. It doesn't take long to get saddle sore. It causes my knees to lose their flexibility and my hips to hurt.

Vuthy

The took is low to the water. You don't get much spray, but you do get a close look at the murkiness of the Tonlé Sap, whose color palette is  a marvelos shade of mauve. The silt that creates this color is what makes this land so rich for agriculture. This endless purple-gray flow brims with earth that is nutritious for farm crops. It's hot on the river, and our translator, Vuthy, a fisheries department employee, wore a head scarf to stay cool.

Our first meeting of the day was amid pilings in the underside of a home that was still under construction. As Jay asked questions about how the loan program was working and Vuthy translated, men were mixing cement which was hoisted up to the next story to extend the house. Outside children ran in the sun, oblivious to the heat, which was fairly tolerable. Two days later it would reach more than 98 degrees and 47 percent humidity. Jay had a surprise at this community -- they fished in a nearby lake, but not the river,which wasn't part of their alloted fishing area. As he learned this, poachers were working the river in plain sight.

Above the meeting, workmen extended cement beams on the stilted house.

Stick in hand, she shows bossy who's boss.

At our next community, there were a lot of youngsters around. One little girl made it clear to a bovine that she was in charge. Others sang a song in unison to practice their multiplication tables in what appeared to be a classroom in a stilted building. And some just stood off to the side and watched as Jay, Vuthy and their adults discussed the loan program.

The meeting was facilitated by the shade of a kind old tree.

Vuthy climbs the palm.

 When it was time to leave, our multi-talented translator, Vuthy, demonstrates another skill: climbing a palm tree, using a ladder made of a bamboo stalk with its limbs cut short. The stubs are just long enough to be used like rungs in a ladder.
During Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge revolution, Vuthy's family was always hungry. But after the Vietnamese drove out the Khmer Rouge, life got better, and Vuthy learned to climb palm trees to collect liquid, which he said was turned to sugar and traded for gold. That's hard to imagine, but there are a lot of things that are hard to imagine in the recent sad history of this old country.

Picnic at the Banyan Tree Restaurant

Following the meeting, we headed to the "Banyan" restaurant, climbing a steep bank to sit on the eroded roots of a large banyan tree for a picnic lunch. Then we descended the steep bank, with my friends holding my laptop and backpack while I rested on one hand or grabbed roots. Then they helped me step into that tippy took, and off we went to the next meeting

When we arrived, it was the same routine: hand my laptop to one of my friends and my backpack to another, so that I could focus on maintaining balance walking on that rocking took. The end of the took rises, and  I stepped boldly forwared and then inclined slightly left when I noticed my body heading in an unintended direction...

The Tonlé Sap and the Nile

Back at Frances Willard Grade School in Spokane, WA, Jay and I were in Miss McDermott's  6th grade social studies class. She was a cranky old battleaxe who insisted on arm movement, not finger movement, when we wrote with our fountain pens. Some lessons from childhood are unforgettable -- like the film she showed about Egypt and the flooding of the Nile every year. I still faintly remember a hand pulling up a fistful of mud and squeezing--it oozed out between the fingers; The Tonlé Sap has mud like that. And very shortly after I tried to leave the took, so did I. I had it on my new Nikes, on my pantleg, on my shirt and sleeve. I even managed to smear some onto my pants. As my butt parted the waters and dove to a  gooshing arrest on the bottom of the shallow bank of the river, I also managed to scoop some into my trousers.

 At that moment, I was particularly grateful that I was in a country where certain English words and phrases were unknown, because I'm certain I may have shared them with anyone in earshot. Fifteen minutes later, after a walk up the bank in a fruitless effort to find a place to scrape and wash off the very adhesive river mud, I was back at the bank of the Tonlé Sap, shoes firmly planted in the muck to obtain purchase, and rinsing and/or scraping almost every stitch I had on. Well, OK, so I didn't have them on any more.

It was at this point that I realized I had soiled myself -- literally -- with some of the most nutritious earth on earth. The scooping had deposited an ample amount inside my Ex Officios and on my backside, giving any onlooker reason to speculate on whether that was me or the river that placed that sludge there. The only way to properly remove it was to slightly lower the last thing I was wearing -- my Ex Officios, and hope the children in the classroom up the hill wouldn't be scandalized. I will forever remember this moment as the laundromat at Half Moon Beach.

Vuthy helped me clean up, then noticed my passport pouch floating in the water. I had taken off my belt, forgetting my Rich Steves money pouch was hanging from it. The pouch fell in the river next to the took as I stripped. The money and passport were only slightly damp in that water-resistant pouch. Thank you, Rick Steves!

Jay held his final meeting of the day up the bank while I worked to dry my cell phone, a voice recorder and my lucky traveling harmonica, as well as squeezing water out of my new Nikes. Then I put my partially dry socks back on and squished my way down the bank to the took for the ride home.

There is an  the adage that if you eat a frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to you all day. Not only did that turn out to be true, but we had a bright moment on the ride back: we passed some poachers who were having a conversation with an enforcement officer.

When we returned to our embarkation point, we passed a floating village and pulled up at a beach so cluttered with trash that it beggars description. In Cambodia, Jay explained, there is no infrastructure to clean up the mess. And floating villages don't have any place to recycle styrofoam, plastic bags, food containers, or anything else, except in the river. (they also don't have holding tanks--that stuff goes in the river, too.)

A floating community

A small sampling of trash near the floating community. There is no infrastructure to protect the environment.

It seemed that, no matter how many times I rinsed my clothes in the room that night at the Raksmey Sokha New York Hotel, the water never ran clear.

Love,

Robert

Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer.

On the road again. . .

ON HIGHWAY 5, NORTH OF PHNOM PENH--
This blog is about a day behind, and it's going to be brief. We've been on the road, visiting some fishing and/or farming villages . It's hot, and there are some roads with potholes so deep that we're bouncing vigorously in Vuthy's pickup. (Vuthy (pronounced "voo-tee) is a government employee of Cambodian Fisheries Administration, and I'll explain his role in this expedition in future posts.)

We got on the road early, navigating Phnom Penh traffic before it got crazy, passing trucks packed with people, buses, lots of cycles and some exotic vehicles whose photos may show up here in future posts. Vuthy makes ample use of the horn to warn the bicyclists he's overtaking them, and moving into the on-coming lane with plenty of time to signal to the oncoming drivers that he's passing, and they need to move over to the opposite shoulder.

Fisher woman discusses the market

Near the village of Kampong Tralach Leu, my traveling companion,  Jay Hastings, wanted to stop and talk to a woman selling fish by the side of the road. He wanted to get a sense of what the market is like for fishers. Vuthy translated for him.

Then it was on to Kampong Tralach Leu, where we met with community representatives to discuss how they are managing and using the loans that Jay's program is providing,  and any details that need to be clarified. During the meeting Jay tried to get a GPS bearing, so that he can explain to any interested people just where these remote villages are located. And, with the coordinates, we can post a photo viewable in the future  on Google Earth when you zero in on the locale.

Jay and Vuthy learn how community is managing and using the loan.

Members of the community who manage the loan

 While we visited a family to ask them about how the loan program was working for them, I had a thrilling surprise. In one of the homes I saw a young man dip into a container and pour himself a glass of water; I wondered what that water must be like. I had a hunch, and glanced around, spotting an old friend: a plastic bucket with a spigot at the bottom. I knew what that was! Sure enough, hanging within the bucket was a  ceramic water filter -- the very same design I had learned about in Peru three years ago. The filter was designed by an organizagtion that didn't patent it, so that it could be shared royalty-free around the world. And here it was, on the other side of the Pacific. The woman of the house explained that this filtered out 99 percent of the pathogens. And she knew they were good for three years. (A day or so later we saw children lugging containers of river water for drinking. Did they have a filter? Did anyone in this particular community know about the filters?)

Let's all gather at the river...

Tonlé Sap River in Dry Season

As you might guess, this is the Tonlé Sap River shown above. Right now, it is low.This photo shows some boats along the bank.

Home designed to endure flooding

In a few months that river will begin climbing that bank and go over the top. At times  it has reached almost to the floorboards of this house on stilts.

The couple in the next photo live in that house; they are sitting on a platform where they can observe the river--and potential poachers.

A fisher couple at their lookout over Tonlé Sap River

After lunch in a local fisheries office, we headed off to Kanlaeng Phe, a community I have a special interest in.

But it wasn't easy getting there. In Kampong Prasat, where the narrow road makes a left turn, the road was blocked because there was a celebration for somebody's mother. No pickup traffic through town on this day. So we walked past the people and their tables and found a ferry boat down the road that conveyed us across the Tonlé Sap for a whopping 500 Baht (25 cents). Once across, we met with another community before heading upriver in one of those little canoe thingies they call a "took" (emphasize the long "u" sound) for a half hour or so.

Example of a took. We used a fiberglass took to go up river.

Think of me as Mr. Deep Pockets, a venture capitalist of immense global influence I flew off to Cambodia so I could fatten my investment portfolio by making a loan to this community of 300 adults (total population, 911). The $250 loan is channeled through Sustainable Communities International. Jay is secretary-treasurer of SCI. Jay has been coming to Cambodia for several years to see whether investment in these fishing communities through a no-interest loan program can help them manage their community-based fishery resources for their subsistance and economic well being. OK, so my contribution isn't going to fatten my portfolio because I'll never see it again. But it's for a good cause and I don't do a whole lot of this sort of thing. That's me, the tall guy, in the photo below with government officials and members of a new community to receive a loan with my contribution through Sustainable Communities International.

Me with government officials and Kanlaeng Phe community members.

Panic attack.
As I'm writing this, I have a great sense of relief. This morning I couldn't find my passport. I looked through my luggage, my fanny pack, my laptop case -- it wasn't anywhere. What was I going to tell my companions? Then I realized it wasn't just the passport -- the document also carried my exit visa for Cambodia and my transit pass for Thailand How was I going to get home? I knew there was time to recover from  this, so early in my trip, but how could I be so careless? After taking a deep breath and figuring out my next move, I discovered it right where any pickpocket would look -- if they had the nerve. It was right next to my undies, in my Rick Steves money belt, which hangs inside my pants, looped to my belt. Well, DUH! I put it there so I would't lose it. But that's why you have those money belts--so they are secure and the things you count on don't walk off when you are half a world from home.

Before today (Wednesday, my time) was over, I would almost lose that money belt again and a few other things. But that's a story for later. Time to upload this post and then crash for the night. Tomorrow comes quickly.

Love,

Robert
Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer.

Hold the presses! Hold the presses!

I was going to tell you all sorts of good stuff about today's adventures, when something great happened that put all that on the back burner. And it's relevant to this trip: I heard from the Kiddo today.

He came into this world 39 years ago and  and BANG! my life was never the same. And he was so observant, right from the start. Here's a photo of him paying rapt attention to his mother at only three or four months old:

Well, I would draw for him and I had a guitar, so he naturally took up music and developed an interest in illustration. Then he grew older, went off to college, was working in New York, flying back occasionally to be lead guitarist in a Seattle band.  From there, he began designing shoes for a Redmond-based golf shoe company, called Bite. (The company's  marketing director just happened to be a childhood chum who was base guitarist for the band.) Croc bought Bite and Tracy ended up being head of children's shoe design for Croc. Then he got recruited by Puma, and for the last couple of years he's been working in Nuremberg, Germany.

But he was making fashion statements a long time before that. Check out this photo of him, and how that homely baby in the background was jealously intent on his stocking cap. Even then my kid had style.
 

What does this have to do with the blog? Well, Tracy's on the mailing list, and today I get the following e-mail:

Hi Dad,

I was in the Bangkok airport this morning, now I'm in Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City). We're relatively close!

-Tracy

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

That's the frosting on the cake for what was a long, productive, exhausting and gratifying day. I'll tell you about it as soon as I can. Meanwhile, there's another photo of the Kiddo, below.

Love,
Robert

Cambodia!

Phnom Penh pedestrians can safely be said
To fall in two classes--the quick,  and the dead.

It would be natural to think that the traffic in Phnom Penh, Cambodia's Capital, is chaotic, but it can also be seen as mankind's underlying commitment to social cohesion. Jay Hastings, my traveling companion, has been coming here for seven years and is used to it. As we rode in from the airport to the Ratanak Phnom Penh Hotel, and seeing it  for the first time, what was interesting to me was the genteel calm  in the storm of vehicles.

On an American freeway, thousands of people ride down three or four lanes of traffic at high speed and most manage to make it from embarkation to destination without a scratch. We think that's because they more or less honor the lanes and head in the same direction. Break those rules—or any rules laid out by the state for how to drive, and chances are great that some other driver will scream at you with his horn.

In Phnom Penh, a city of 1.5 million, I didn't see any lanes. There are very few traffic lights. Motorcyclists are inclined to cut across  traffic diagonally and  drive contrary to traffic. They don't stop at interesctions; they merely cautiously continue on through, avoiding eye contact with anyone they encounter at right angles. And they make it!  So far I haven't heard a horn blare; what I've heard are gentle little beeps that seem to convey the message, "oh, by the way, I'm over here, and I'm cutting in front of you, just so you'll know."

They are like pedestrians who happen to be attached to wheels. They seem so much more civilized – as if they have learned how to negotiate the river of traffic in a kinder, gentler way than we do.

As I rode in a tuk-tuk through the streets, I watched our driver do many a right-and-left-grand with cycles, pedestrians and on-coming vehicles, easing his way through a left-hand turn before a backed-up curent of cycles and autos. This maneuver relied on tacit signals that acknowledged other drivers--and their patience, or resignation or something. One school of fish passing past or through another while touching nary a fin.

A lady relaxes while her tuk-tuk tailgates a truck.

Forget all about signaling. With several lines of motorcycles heading toward the intersection, our driver eased left in front of them, and they all adjusted to the maneuver and made it through without even a raised eyebrow.

So civilized – and effective.

The Khmer—which is what most Cambodians are—seem to be a very warm people. When I commented to Jay about the toddler who stared at me from behind the motorcycle's handlebars and sitting on his father's lap, my just advised me to smile—they always smile back, he said.

On they came, all those Khmer negotiating the streets like  ants on a mission, reminiscent of Carl Sandburg's "Chicago" poem, in which he descrbibd the Windy City's people:

Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
 Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
     white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
     man laughs...
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
     and under his ribs the heart of the people....

Think of a motorcycle as just a small pickup.

It's easy to recognize the limits facing the people of one of Asia's poorest countries.I got a glimpse of that when I tried to use the wi-fi at the Ratanak Hotel. While I could log on, it wouldn't connect me with the Internet, so I had to wait most of a day to get reconnected. How backward!

Of course, in the Boeing 747 to Tokyo, the channel changer in my seat's armrest stopped working, so I didn't get to watch the end of The Book Thief on the screen in the headrest of the seat in front of me. And then on the leg from Tokyo to Bangkok, the sound was so low in the earbuds that I couldn't hear the movie dialog above the jet noise. So I still didn't get to see the end of The Book Thief.

In the Tokyo Delta Sky Club lounge, it took 45 minutes to log out of my e-mail account because of the configuration of the Apple computer application I was using. Every time I shut down the computer and rebooted it, the browsing window would display my Google e-mail accounts for the next Delta Airlines customer to tap into. I finally figured out how to log off with just minutes to spare for my connecting flight to Bangkok.

So which is more backward—not being able to log onto the Internet, or not  being able to log off? And which is more civilized and intelligent, racing like Indi 500 drivers or swimming the roadways like the fishes?

Love,
Robert
Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer.

Bangkok

This hose seems to be for cleaning commode.

The spacious commode  at the Silver Gold Garden Hotel in Bangkok comes with a special feature: It has a gooseneck shower head. No, wait. I got it wrong. The shower comes with its own commode and a wash basin.

Let me try again. There's this room, 57 by 65 inches, with a slightly sunken tile floor that has a drain in one corner, and you do your business there: shave, poop and shower. Just remember to close the door.   Also remove the toilet paper; the squares tend to stick together after they get sprayed. Oh, and put the bath mat and towels outside the room so they stay dry, too. The round mirror is on hinges and tilts—short or tall, one size fits all.

Mirror, and shower system

Jay and I reached Bangkok from Seattle at midnight, Sunday morning, itching for some sleep after about 18 hours of flight time including a Tokyo  layover. I was at that part of the cycle where I couldn't sleep, so I ate the Pink Lady apple that had made it through Japan and Thai customs (Japan was a layover and Thailand didn't care) while I studied the accommodations. For 790 Thai Baht (about $24) I got a bedroom that was fairly pristine. There was only one mosquito, and it ended up smushed against the tile in the bathroom. From about five feet down, the entire bathroom was tile and in almost perfect condition. The bedroom floor was also tile and very clean. I laid down a large bath towel to do my back exercises the next morning and got a good close look at how clean the floor was while I was working my core muscles.

A remote operates the air conditioning. The bed is firm. The fridge is a Mitsubishi, 20 x 22 x 47"—much  larger  than those tiny beverage fridges you frequently see in stateside hotels.

There was a bookshelf that held the TV; a small writing table, and a armoire with a locking drawer that keeps honest people honest. The bed rolls and is comfortably firm. The TV shows are in French, English and Thai. I got glimpses of Toy Story, Aliens vs Predator; dancing girls—the kind of stuff you can find anywhere on late-night TV.

While I was figuring all this  out, it was 2 p.m. your time, ten hours earlier.

I rinsed my well-sweated safari shirt in the sink; wrung it out, finished my Tom Clancy mindless formula novel and went to bed. When I woke up the shirt was almost dry. My compression socks dried even faster. They had done yeoman service, leaving compression marks that showed they had kept my legs from swelling on the long trip. (But they didn't prevent the early-morning charlie horse a few hours later.)



The $24 fee included breakfast in a detached restaurant. They served a nice meal of toasted white bread (probably a holdover of French colonialism) with strawberry jam, a something-poached egg, salad, ham and some kind of ham wiener carved to look like a flower, mango juice and Lipton tea. (I came to Thailand for Lipton tea?!)

 I  had ambled over there after several hours sleep  and met a Danish couple who told me that they had been walking by the river, less than 100 feet away, and spotted a crocodile several feet long that also was looking for a meal. Well, it's Thailand. What would you expect?

Next to the restaurant was some lush vegetation that included a colorful orchid and a tree that dropped some fruit with a thunk right as I was walking under it. Lots of places for a croc to lay in wait for the cat  that was rolling lazily in front of the restaurant.

I went looking for the crocodile, but only found a woman kneeling by the river on a platform just above the water, where she was hand-washing her laundry.

It was time to amble back for the airport shuttle. Next stop: Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Love,
Robert

 Author’s note: This blog is produced independently of Sustainable Communities International. Observations, opinions, errors and omissions are solely the responsibility of the writer.

No croc in sight