It's a Crunchy Beetle

              Heyoooo =). Klaus and I have spent the past week in Cambodia. Fabulous country, great people, colorful culture. So far I’m loving it and I am learning a lot. I’ll try to do a quick recap of the past week’s adventures.

Looking out into Cambodia from Vietnam

            We crossed into Cambodia via a five hour boat ride up the Mekong River. We stopped at Phnom Penh for a couple days. I met our Cambodian student interpreters and had a blast learning traditional Khmer dancing/Korean modern dancing out in the city park…interesting combo. 

Cambodian Students =)

While here I also visited the killing fields – a mass grave site from the Khmer Rouge genocide. The site includes a tower made of 8,000 skulls dug up as evidence for trials that ended in 2010 actually. 

Memorial Tower Filled with Skulls

There was also field of mass graves with bones and clothes sticking out as the rain eroded away the soil. Really morbid/disturbing place. I also visited the school the rouge converted to a prison. The site now is all open and you can just walk around through the cells. In some of the rooms if you look at the ceiling you can still see spattered blood from those tortured in the rooms. It is a weird feeling to just freely walk through a place with such a dark history knowing that not so long ago someone else was standing in that very cell dying. The genocide killed about 2 mil people and ended in 1979. Those targeted included anyone who was not uneducated. As a result the country was in an extreme state of poverty and still struggles economically today. Wew…sorry for the depressing content. It is an important context for understanding Cambodia today. The rest of the blog is not so sad I promise!!

            From the capitol we took a bus to Siem Reap and visited Angkor. These are ruins from an empire that collapsed in about the 16^th century. It was awesome climbing around and exploring.

Looking up a Tower

Getting Crazy 

Story of life in Angkor carved into stone - amazing how it was still in such great condition

Towers 

=P

Monks and temple ruins

Angkor Wat - The largest of the temples

Ok, now for the nerdy part (you can skip to the next paragraph if you are bored) From an environmental science perspective Angkor was also very interesting. There was a recent study on why Angkor had collapsed. At first people thought it was just an invasion by Thai forces. However, upon further examination it is now thought the deforestation of the watershed may have also contributed. As the empire grew it created a large canal network to move water and irrigate agriculture. This allowed Angkor to become the largest low-density civilization of its time with a pop of about 1 million people. However, the as more forest was cut down the erosion rate sped up and the canals began to fill in. Dredging the extensive network took a lot of manpower. With this manpower tied up fighting the Thai forces the canal maintenance became overwhelming. Without the canals operation the movement of goods and the growing of crops would have been limited. Ok, that is it for the nerdiness.

         

   The day after Angkor exploration we took a trip to Tonle Sap Lake, one of the large freshwater lakes in the world and the only lake to experience reverse flow. Due to a fault (GEOLOGY =) the water from the Mekong flows in to the river during the rainy season. During the dry season the water flows out of the lake. We spent the night on a floating village and learned about the ecology/life here. Tonle Sap Lake is a very productive freshwater fishery because during the rainy season the lake floods the surrounding forest. Here the fish can access the nutrient rich detritus from the trees. Many fish spend a part of their life in the flooded forest and then migrate up the Mekong. As a result of this pattern the lakes shores have been divided up into several huge fishing lots that get auctioned off for millions of dollars. For the open fishing season the winners of the auctions set up fences around the whole lot and trap the fish moving out of the forest. Now the village we stayed at was on the edge of one of these massive lots. For class we paddled around and interviewed the villagers about their livelihoods. What I found was that most depended on fishing as a source of income. Over the past five years the numbers of fish have been declining (likely due to the fish lots). Most of these families are so poor they cannot afford to buy land and therefore are stuck in this village. With declining catches their livelihoods are at risk. To make matters worse the government won’t recognize this village as an official village because vice-governor of the neighboring district who would authorize this also owns the fishing lot the village borders. He doesn’t want the village to be official take away from his fishing profits (they would move into the mouth of a river where many of his fish come from) or report his illegal activities (using nets with holes smaller than allowed). Because the village isn’t official they get no government help. This means no education for the kids. There is a school built by UNICEF but they have no steady teacher. Also, there is little medical help with a doctor coming once every two months. Sanitation conditions are poor with most families drinking the water their house is floating on. This is the same water their toilet directly empties into. Some boil the water but, many don’t even do that. As a result disease is not uncommon and death rates are especially high among children. Overall, the trip was interesting and sad. It is a very different way of life. I couldn’t imagine never walking more than 20 ft… 

Rowing Boats in the Village

Kids at One of the Houses We Interviewed

Life in the Village

Kids at the House I Spent the Night in

            Upon arriving back from Tonle Sap Lake after a crazy boat ride (the boat kept breaking, was leaking water and pitching so bad we almost capsized multiple times -always an adventure) we moved on to Stung Trang (a 7 hour drive turned into with 12 with 11 people in a minivan…good times) in search of river dolphins…more to come on that later.

            Food update: Added crispy beetles, crickets, snails and something else I cannot remember. Overall though Khmer food is fabulous. I have been enjoying some amazing curries, barbeque, etc.

Blueberry Shake

=)   

Other Random Shots: 

Klaus at the Royal Palace 

Met a Monk in a Pagoda

Visited an Artisan Community Built to Help Preserve Khmer Arts. In This Room All the Women Were Deaf.

And I found a rock....=)