The Killing Fields

This post will make little to no sense (and have little to no emotional impact) if you don't know what the killing fields are. The movie gives you a place to start from, but honestly, Wikipedia covers the basics pretty well.

We had the opportunity to visit the killing fields on June 23rd. We were also lucky enough to be the only people there. For some reason, I think that in a large crowd, the significance and reverence would've been lessened for me. Walking up, you come to a large, ornate commemorative stupa.

It's the only real building on the grounds, and it is certainly the tallest building in the area. Walking up the stairs of the stupa, you read "Would you please kindly show your respect to many million people who were killed under the genocidal Pol Pot regime." I remember specifically needing to sit down for a minute there, and read that a few times as it hit me. I had read a decent amount about Cambodian history during the Pol Pot regime, and reading this wasn't anything new, but I remember reading the words "many million" and realizing that that was something I couldn't really comprehend. The inside of the stupa is filled entirely with skulls of the victims that were discovered on site at the killing fields.

Those of you who know me fairly well know that I was a TA in the anatomy lab, and I took Advanced Anatomy focused on the nervous systems of the body. Skulls don't startle me, I know every little detail of the human skull, and I've held plenty of them. This was the first time, for me, that skulls were people. I wasn't learning neuroanatomy, I was beginning to really, actually wrap my brain around the meaning of genocide.
We walked around the grounds reading all of the signs, and looking at the pits of the mass graves. Each description seemed a bit more gruesome than the last. I'm not going to bog this down with each detail that we read about, but there were two particular signs that brought me to tears.

This tree was called "The Magic Tree", and it was used to hang a loudspeaker from, to drown out the sound of the victims as they were being executed. I don't think that I had ever thought through something so dehumanizing, and I hope I will never have to again. The other was the tree against which they would beat the child victims. I knew that millions had been killed, but I had avoided the inevitability that children were included in these numbers. It took my breath away seeing the thousands of bracelets that were left on and around this tree to commemorate the children that had lost their lives.

As we walked through the site, we all kind of spread out, and took things at our own pace. This was something that I needed to process on my own. On our way out, it began to lightly rain (which is unusual for Cambodia... it never rains lightly). I stopped, just in front of one of the mass graves, and watched as teeth, small bones, and fragments of the victims' clothing were slowly uncovered. Until then, I had (relatively) kept my composure, but this was the single most reverent and moving experience I have had. Intellectually, I knew what had happened here. But when I was standing there actually seeing it, I realized that I couldn't understand this intellectually at all. It needed to be felt.

The Cambodian People

Some of my very favorite parts about Cambodia were the people there. Not just the people that I met, but also the people that I saw. I love people watching, and I especially love people watching in places where the people do interesting things. Cambodia was certainly one of those places.

One of the most interesting things about people watching in Cambodia, is the number of people that are selling things everywhere you go. There are street vendors on every street, selling almost anything you can imagine. There are, of course, food vendors, but there are also people selling brooms, plastic balls, badminton sets, stepping stools, and all sorts of random stuff that didn't make much sense. Some of the food from the street vendors ended up being my favorite treats (Milo... fruit shakes... fried bananas...). Some of the food from the street vendors did not end up being my favorite (grasshoppers... millipedes... tarantulas...).
Along with all of the people that I just watched and interacted with briefly, I met some of the most fantastic people I've ever met. Most of them didn't speak any English, but as it turns out, language isn't all that important.

Pretty much every night was spent hanging out in the hair salon next door, playing in the street with the kids, or visiting the night market. The kids were fantastic. So funny, so weird, so crazy, and so happy. The family that owns the hair salon ended up being some of our very best friends there. It started when I got addicted to getting my hair washed, and eventually we spent almost every night hanging out there. We also got invited to a family picnic/birthday party. The cake was ok... the pig intestines and frogs were not my favorite.

The hairdressing family (and yes... that is what we called them since we had no idea how to ask their last name) was one of my very favorite memories from Cambodia. They were always fun (often drunk), always kind, always funny, and they absolutely made us feel like we were part of the family. Not only was I lucky enough to have the greatest host family in the world, I kind of had two host families... and that was pretty great.

Angkor Wat

If you don't know about Angkor Wat, stop reading this right now and start doing your research. Short version, Angkor Wat is the largest Hindu temple complex in the world, it's dedicated to the god Vishnu, and it has been under both Hindu and Buddhist control at various points. There's the short version. While we were in Siem Reap, we were able to explore Angkor Wat, and the other temples in the Angkor region for a few days. This was, by far, my favorite thing in Cambodia.

The first night that we were there, we hiked up Phnom Bakheng to watch the sunset. The hike was lovely, the ruins at the top of the hill were incredible, the sunset was beautiful, and I got to spend the evening with about a million Asian tourists. I probably took more pictures that evening than Melanie and Tessa have the entire summer... and that's not an exaggeration. The next morning we woke up at 4 (yikes) to go watch the sunrise over Angkor Wat. The sunrise was not particularly striking that day, but getting there before the crowds and the heat was the best decision so far this summer.

I don't really know how to describe everything that we saw. I may have taken more pictures that day than I took for the rest of the summer combined. We spent the first few hours at Angkor Wat, exploring the main temple there. The main temple was huge, and it was interesting to see everything, but it was way more crowded and regulated than the other temples that we visited. After visiting the main temple we went to The Bayon, which is another temple in the Angkor complex. This temple is famous for the many faces carved into the stone towers of the temple.

While walking through the temple, it kind of felt like I was in line for the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland (I hope that isn't too blasphemous or anything), but it was incredible. Of all of the temples that we visited, the Bayon was my favorite. The faces that were carved there were absolutely beautiful, and so wonderfully preserved. We also got there before the crowds, so it was nice to explore a bit without being swarmed. After the Bayon, we visited Baphuon, which was another temple close to the Bayon. We walked through the Terrace of the Elephants before heading to Ta Prohm, which was the temple they used when filming Tomb Raider.

Having never seen that movie, I have no idea how prominent it is or how often it is used, but it is quite famous for that reason. They even sell pirated copies of Tomb Raider near the entrance and exit. That was one of the most uniquely Cambodian moments for me. On the one hand I was standing at the entrance to a thousand year old Angkor temple, and on the other, I was being bombarded by bargaining street vendors. All of this in the heat and humidity pretty much rounded out the entire Cambodian experience in a single moment.

Besides being famous for Tomb Raider (which then made Angelina Jolie fall in love with Cambodia, buy a ton of land in Cambodia, and adopt a Cambodian baby, all of which was highly publicized), Ta Prohm is also really famous and popular because of the trees (mostly silk-cotton trees) that grow up through and on top of the ruins. The trees are enormous, and the roots completely cover parts of the temple.
After our long day of walking, climbing, and photographing, we went back to the hotel for a nap, food, and swim. Siem Reap has a fun area (basically one street) called Pub Street, and we ate all of our meals there while in Siem Reap. There was good food, a fun atmosphere, and a lot of entertainment.

The nights that we spent in Siem Reap were all spent at the Night Market. Phnom Penh also has a sizable night market, but the one in Siem Reap is a little more organized, and had more interesting things. At the night market we also found a guy with the best fresh fruit shakes, a place to have your feet nibbled on by fish, and wonderful inexpensive massages from blind people.

The next morning we woke up early again, and went to one of the temples (Banteay Srei) that is a bit further away. Banteay Srei is the temple of the Hindu God Shiva, and it was built in 967 A.D. We were lucky to be some of the first people there, so we were literally the only people walking through it when we got there. It's a beautiful red sandstone temple, with very intricate carvings on pretty much every surface. Apparently they don't let people walk right up to the temple walks anymore, you are supposed to just walk on a roped off path around the outside of the temple. Luckily, it only takes a one dollar bill to convince the guards to take down the rope, and give you a pretty decent guided tour in addition to being your personal photographer.

Next we went on a hike in the jungle fairly close to the Thai border, to see ancient carvings (Kbal Spean) in a river bed and waterfall. More commonly, it is known as the "river of a thousand lingas", or basically it is famous for being covered in phallic symbols. For being the "river of a thousand phallic symbols", I certainly didn't notice a thousand phallic symbols.The scenery during the hike was absolutely spectacular though, and the river and waterfall at the end were pretty spectacular as well.

It was also nice to be a bit off of the beaten path of tourism. Unfortunately, it was not the ideal activity for a torn ACL, but it went better than I thought it would. On our way back into Siem Reap, we stopped at the landmine museum. It was small, but it was pretty interesting. It was especially interesting to hear things from a point of view that was not only not American, but was very often UN-American. It was really humbling and informative. After visiting the night market one last time that night, we took the 7 hour bus ride back to Phnom Penh the next day. I found Siem Reap and Angkor Wat to be absolutely enchanting. I easily could have spent another week there, and I easily could've filled a few more memory cards.

The Floating Villages

Siem Reap, in northwestern Cambodia, was probably the highlight of my time so far in Cambodia. We were there June 14th-18th, but it'll take me more than one blog post to get through everything that we saw and did there. Sorry I'm so slow at this, but I do actually try to do SOME work while I'm here working.

On Friday, June 15th, we were able to visit Tonlé Sap, which is a large, freshwater lake near Siem Reap that empties into the Mekong River as it travels toward Phnom Penh. When we got to the lake, we loaded onto a fairly small wooden (but luckily motorized) boat.
It was over an hour across a big part of the lake, until we got to the floating villages. Even though the name "floating village" pretty clearly outlines what you're going to see, it still can't really prepare you for everything out there.

The first thing that we went to out on the lake was the water treatment facility that is run by RACHA, and was paid for by the LDS church. The facility itself was about 50 feet by 30 feet (I'm really bad at estimating things like that... so I could be off by a lot), so it felt pretty small, but they do incredible things there. They are able to take water from the lake and purify it to drinking water and sell it at a remarkably discounted rate. Also, to add a little perspective, all water in Cambodia is not safe to drink so everyone always drinks bottled water. It isn't simply a luxury to have bottled water, it is a necessity.

It was really interesting to learn about how they are able to distribute water to people on the lake, and how they are able to advertise their service. It was also incredible and mind blowing to see how people go about their daily lives while living on a lake.

This was certainly not the land of comfy houseboats that you see at Lake Powell, but they certainly made it work. Children take small wooden boats to school, there are little food boats that roam around selling food just like the carts do in the streets of Phnom Penh, they have floating cell phone shops, and when the water levels change, they can tow their houses behind a boat and move to a more favorable location. It's kind of ingenious actually. I have a ton of pictures of everything we saw out there, but I don't have room to put them all on here.

After we had visited the two RACHA water treatment facilities, we visited a floating restaurant/shop for a little bit. I had to (got to?) walk across a crocodile pit, see a mom put a Burmese Python around her infant's neck, and play with children who lived on the lake in pots and pans from the kitchen.

This was probably definitely the furthest I have felt from home.

Prey Veng and the Cambodian Countryside

A few days after we got back from Koh Tonsay, we had the chance to travel to Prey Veng to do a field visit of the RACHA provincial office and the partnering health clinics/referral hospital there. Prey Veng is the province just east of Phnom Penh, on the east bank of the Mekong river.
The visible poverty in Prey Veng was absolutely astonishing. Visiting the health clinics took my breath away, and not really in a good way. I knew to expect poor sanitation, but I guess it had never felt real until I was seeing it first hand. Even more than that, seeing patients actually suffering in these conditions made me realize just how thankful I am to have clean hospitals.

On the first afternoon we attended a "Community Scorecard" health center self evaluation. Community Scorecard is a program run by RACHA to help the communities and health centers communicate with one another more efficiently to improve the quality of care on the local level. This self evaluation meeting was only the health center staff (3 people) evaluating themselves on things like cleanliness, availability, communication etc... The next day we visited a few more health centers, and then the referral hospital for the province. The referral hospital was even more crowded, dirty, and heart wrenching than the health centers had been. That afternoon, we went to the second half of the Community Scorecard meeting. It was held at a school out in an even more rural area, and it was a meeting for the health center staff and the representatives from the villages.

I'm sure it would've been interesting to listen to, but since my Khmer is pretty minimal, it was mostly a really long (5 hours) meeting in a hot room with lots of bugs. Driving back from that meeting, we got caught on a "road" that had been dirt, but had turned to mud that was a few feet deep. Some cars were stuck, and the ones that weren't, were sliding off the road into the ditches on the side of the road. By the time we had arrived to the muddiest spot, there were a fair amount of men there to help push cars through.

Long story short, it took about an hour and a half to get the car through maybe a quarter mile of the road, our driver was incredible, and without those men we would've ended up in an overturned car in a ditch. It was kind of like being on the Indiana Jones ride, but without the fire, loud music, and assurance that Disney would keep you safe. Later that night, I had one of the weirdest nights I've had in Cambodia. We decided to stay in Prey Veng for another night, to see another RACHA program, "Comedy for Health". Basically, the idea is that they have these large trucks that fold out into a stage and sound system. They park them on the side of the road out in the province, and hundreds of people come to watch a play to teach them about a health concern. The one we watched happened to be about pregnancy.

Again, my handle on the Khmer language is extremely poor (I know some phrases, but I can't really understand people speaking at a normal pace) so I had no idea what was being said in the play, but gesturing and movement definitely crosses language and cultural lines. In fact, while the play was meant to be funny, I believe it was at least six times funnier not being able to understand a single word. The play was about 3 hours long, and was extremely over the top. By the end of it I was confused, and my sides hurt from laughing. After the comedy, they do a question and answer session with the audience and the actors (who are trained in the health area that they are acting about), which is probably the most helpful part of the event. Then, they put on a short drama at the end that has nothing to do with health. It was seriously one of the weirdest, funniest, most confusing nights of my life. Our friend Pee Room (I'm quite sure that that is not how you actually spell it, but that is as close as I can get phonetically) was trying to translate at first, but he wasn't spectacular with his English speaking quickly and, like I said, it was pretty hilarious without knowing what was actually happening.

Island in the Sun

The first weekend in June was one of those surreal, "pinch me" types of experiences. We took a bus down to Kep, one of the southern provinces in Cambodia, and took a small wooden boat out to an island (Koh Tonsay) in the Gulf of Thailand.
The ride out there was pretty rough, and we got totally drenched. There were at least 3 or 4 times that I was sure we would get flipped, but we didn't, and we made it safely to the island. Pulling up to the island felt like a scene from Jurassic Park (I had literally JUST finished reading The Lost World while we were on the bus down there). It was a super dense jungle on a relatively small island. We took a quick hike to a different part of the island, and we got settled in our huts.
The huts were super primitive, but they were right on the beach, and it felt great to live somewhere that simple (for a few days). They only have electricity on the island from 6(ish) to 10(ish)PM, and no outlets. We spent pretty much all day every day playing in the ocean, getting coconut oil massages, hiking on the island, reading, eating at our favorite little restaurant, drinking from coconuts, and napping.

Also, fun fact about the island, it was used as a hideout for the Khmer Rouge for a while, even after the Vietnamese army had driven them out of power. There are still old bunker-like things up at the top of the hill in the middle of the island. It's crazy to see these places and realize that this all happened relatively recently. Also, it's bizarre in Cambodia how you can just visit these places without really any rules. You can climb on everything, see everything, and there aren't fences and barriers to keep you safe/keep the sites intact. It's a little strange compared to how controlled everything is in the U.S.


All in all it was a pretty fantastic weekend. It was exactly what you would expect spending a weekend on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. Although beaches aren't really my favorite thing, this was pretty close to paradise.

Where the Wild Things Are...

The zoo in Cambodia was an entirely different experience than any zoo I've been to in the US. First difference? They let you into some of the cages. Obviously we were not mauled by tigers or anything like that, but we did get to wander around playing with/feeding monkeys for a while, and got chased around by hungry, pregnant deer.
The deer would sneak up behind you and try to eat the potatoes out of your bag while you fed bananas to the monkeys. They were quite needy. We had an Ecuadorian friend with us at the zoo, and she screamed and jumped away every time the deer got anywhere near her, so it turned into a pretty chaotic mess of deer, potatoes, Cambodian women, American college students, monkeys, screaming Ecuadorians, bananas, and a ton of red ants.
The animals that actually were "caged", we pretty much just behind chain link fences that you can walk right up to. It would be easy to lose a finger/arm if you so chose. I chose not to.

Slightly less intimidating than the large cats were the long armed monkeys (which I'm quite sure is their scientific name). Although the seemed less intimidating at the start, they provided the only scare (or two, or six) of the day (besides the red ants, and that hurt... a lot).
You can walk right up to the caged monkeys and shake their hands/feed them. Or, you can reach out to hand them a banana and have them stick out their foot to grab it, which you of course think is just so cute and funny until they quickly snatch your shirt with their hand and pull you against the cage. You can also be standing next to the cage while not paying attention and have them reach out and grab your shirt sleeve and tear it. *Disclaimer* I was not the one grabbed by the monkey in either of these stories, I was just a witness.
My favorite little guy at the zoo was an orphaned elephant that they found in the wild. He had a broken leg, and was wearing a cast when we saw him. First of all, I was sympathetic to his cause. I felt a bit of camaraderie, seeing as my leg is also not at its finest this summer. Luckily for me though, when we figured out I need surgery, we scheduled a surgery rather than shooting me. The elephants were all eating coconuts while we were there, and this little fella had a huge advantage. The bottom of his cast had a tire on the bottom, and he would step on it just enough to crack the coconut and then use his trunk to take pieces to his mouth. The other elephants seemed to struggle a bit with the "whole coconut" concept. I loved this little guy. If I could have an elephant as a pet, I totally would. Most of all, I'd really like an elephant to stay about size of a small-ish horse, and be my pet. Small enough to keep as a pet, big enough to ride. If anyone finds one of these, please let me know. ASAP.

Weekends

So my weeks here are not super exciting, or worth writing much about. I work from 7:30-Noon, go home for lunch, then work again from 2-5:30. Every weekday. Luckily, the organization I'm working for has air conditioning, so I'm pretty happy whenever I'm there. The organization I'm here working for is the Reproductive and Child Health Alliance. They have more projects than I'm even aware of, but most of them have to do with maternal and child health/nutrition, as well as infectious disease control in Cambodia.
That's about everything there is to say about work. It's work, it's air conditioned, and it's every day. The weekends are full of "field trips" and weekend getaways, so they're a little more exciting. Last weekend (May 19th), we went on a tour of the Royal Palace complex and the National Museum. The Royal Palace(s) are some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. Also, it didn't rain that day, so we got some good pictures. Unfortunately (for us), that also meant it was scorchingly hot (and of course, way humid). I'm going to be honest and say that I'm not really sure how to do this whole blog thing, so I'll try to post pictures, but it may fail.

There were a lot of really cool things inside of the palace too, but you aren't allowed to take pictures inside. So oh well. But in the Silver Pagoda, the entire floor is made of pure silver. Each square tile is an entire kilogram of silver. There are also a lot of really cool Buddhas. The most famous/valuable of which is the Emerald Buddha, which was fairly large. We also learned about the different positions of Buddha, hand positions of Buddha, and origins of the Buddhas in the Royal Palace. The Buddhas are gifts from different countries to the King of Cambodia.

The gardens were also really beautiful, and there were a lot of smaller structures out around the gardens as well. The complex is pretty big, but the buildings aren't very large, so the gardens and statues fill up a lot of the space. It's amazing how much ornamentation there is everywhere, both on the buildings and in the gardens. There are a ton of statues around as well, and they all have unique and individual meanings. I'm not sure how our guide kept them all straight. Or maybe he made them all up, who knows.

After we went to the Royal Palace, we went to the National Museum, which is right next to the Palace. It was pretty small, and a bit underwhelming, but the stuff that they did have was pretty neat. They had some interesting statues and ruins in the museum, but most of the labels were only in Khmer, so I really have no idea what they were. The building of the National Museum, and the gardens in the center of the building were probably the most impressive part. There were 4 large ponds in the courtyard area that were full of beautiful fish, and the ponds were surrounded by so many huge plants. In the center of the courtyard, there was a large sitting Buddha statue as well.

We had one of my favorite meals so far after visiting the National Museum. It was at a restaurant called "Friends" (I know, I know... Friends is already my favorite), but the restaurant has a really cool story. They employ only Cambodian teens who had been living on the streets, and they train them in the restaurant business. It was a really cute restaurant, with free unlimited ICE water, really good food, and a good story behind it. We also visited the central market after, and I'm sure we'll go back there. It's a HUGE market, which was a bit overwhelming, but we'll go back sometime to get some stuff. We then visited a big mall close to the market. Malls here are amazing. Simply because they have air conditioning. They also always have stores that sell DVDs. Cheap, COUGHillegallymadeCOUGH, movies and seasons of TV shows. This has been one of my weaknesses here. So far I have purchased Seasons 1-6 of How I Met Your Mother (8$), all 10 Seasons of FRIENDS (8$), and Seasons 1-5 of Scrubs ($4). Next up? Filling up my collection of Grey's Anatomy.

I can't even express how much I love canceled flights...

So... That was long. I flew from Salt Lake to LAX, and from LAX to Tokyo Japan with no problems. Then our flight from Tokyo to Bangkok was delayed 4 times. They put us on the plane, closed the door, taxied us out, taxied us back in, and told us that our flight was canceled. Apparently the plane had been struck by lightning before we boarded. So I spent the night at a hotel, went back to the airport in the morning, and got in a line to check in. They had moved us to a Thai Airways flight, but the Thai airways counter only had 3 people, and there were probably 300 of us in line. I got to the airport 3 hours early, but I probably wouldn't have made it to check in on time, if it hadn't been for the nicest man alive. He had been on my flight before, and he came and found me in the line. Apparently he was a gold card holder for Thai Airways. He had already checked in at the 1st class desk, and had asked if they would allow him to bring one friend through their line. They agreed, and I even got to choose my seat (which they weren't letting people do). They offered to let me upgrade to 1st class, but I'm not made of money. Anyway, this guy was great.
Then, I flew to Bangkok, and by this time, I had already missed my flight to Phnom Penh, so my dad was great and contacted Bangkok Air to reschedule me for a later flight to Phnom Penh. He sent all of that information to my email, and then there wasn't really WiFi at the Bangkok Airport. I had to go through customs, pick up my bag, re-check in and made it to my flight in time. Of course on my flight from Bangkok to Phnom Penh, there were 11 people, which meant I got my own row. So out of all of my flights, I got my own row on the shortest flight (50 minutes)... Oh well.
Beau and Rosemary and Ang (the stake president here) came to pick me up from the airport and take me to my host family. I'll upload pictures once I get around to it, but the "apartment" here is certainly 3rd worldly. I live on a little side street next to a market, and up a tiny, steep, metal spiral staircase. The "shower" is basically a hose I can hang on a hook. I've already seen a few large (and I mean large) roach like things. I can't wait for the other girls to get here... it's a bit weird living in there alone for now.
Observations:
1. A 13 hour flight gives you some pretty epic cankles.
2. People in Asia really love surgical masks. It's probably smart.
3. Airplane food is way better on Thai Airways.
4. I am not meant to live somewhere hot and humid.
5. It is impossible to sleep here without dousing your clothes in water and pointing a fan at yourself.
6. Air conditioning is the best thing that has ever graced the planet.
7. My dad would DIE here. Not just because of the heat, but because of the CRAZY people on their motorcycles, the lack of traffic rules, and people carrying their entire families on one motorcycle that was probably made in the 60s.
8. I appreciate stop lights, stop signs, and lane lines.
9. I rely on having WiFi.
10. The amount of money that has been spent on Jackson's food/bed/toys etc... is more than many of these people will see in a lifetime.
*** Disclaimer: Jackson is my dog, and he is spoiled rotten.***