Unholy Ghosts

How Many Heavens Are There?

When I was a kid I thought there was only one, and if I behaved myself I might get to go there when I died. If I was lucky.

But since then I’ve discovered that there’s actually an infinite number of them, and they’re all right here amongst us.

I mean, we all know that I guess.

So again, through no particular effort of my own, I currently find myself in yet another Paradise.

I’m in a beautiful spacious light and airy room in a guesthouse called Karma Traders, in the southwestern Cambodian town of Kampot.

While it was no effort to find this very well-named and beautifully situated place, it was a complete shitshow getting here.

The first half of my ride today was on the worst consistently bad road that I’ve cycled on for a really long time. Italics def intended.

The “road,” between the town of Prey Nob, where I stayed last night, and Changhaon, a village about halfway to here, is a complete rocky muddy bumpy potholey bloody mess.

And not only that, but it’s the main road between Sihanoukville, a small city on the coast, and here, so it’s full of trucks, minibuses, 4WDs, rickshaws, tractors, vans, cars, little motorised food stalls, you-bloody-name-it, and, of course, a gazillion motorbikes, or motos, as they’re called here.

And just to add more flavour to the mix, it was pissing down with rain a lot of the time, red mud splashing all over the Buddhaforsaken place, including into my face.

And because of my status on the very bottom of the traffic pecking order (besides pedestrians and non-human animals), I was relegated to as far to the side of the track as I could get, which meant I had to dodge, skirt, or ride through massive puddles all morning, navigate erosion ditches full of water pouring from the road, slide into muddy sediment, and corrugate my way forward at a snail’s pace.

Sometimes I’d slam into large deep potholes hidden by the brown water.

Sometimes the road would just turn to mud, and I’d start to slide around, and have to stop and walk my way through it.

The rain meant very few pics, but I took a few. The worst parts of the road will remain within my own memory, in the hell compartment.

Luckily, the land was flat. And it was cool-ish, temperature wise.

So all I had to do was slow down, sometimes to a crawl. It wasn’t dangerous, because all the vehicles were crawling, except a few 4WDs that would occasionally race past, smashing their own vehicles up whilst splashing mud all over me.

The riding was painful at times though, all that jolting on my wonky left shoulder, and the consistent arm effort required to keep myself and my loaded bike upright as best I could.

And then, suddenly, without warning, the bitumen started. In shock, I was suddenly cycling on the best road I’ve been on since I entered the country, over a week ago.

Wow, from rags-to-riches, suddenly my muddy drudgery was transformed into cycling bliss, the red rocky goat track becoming a smooth fast velodrome, for me to win gold on.

I got here in no time after that, and am waiting for the medal presentation.

The velodrome

I’m glad the road went around these hills, and not over them

Beautiful wats on the outskirts of Kampot.

And now I’m sitting at a little wooden table by my window, freshly scrubbed, enjoying a well-earned rest. I had to make a big effort to get all that red mud down the shower drain.

Yeah, it never ceases to amaze me.

How quickly things can change.

Heaven never seems to be very far from hell.

Where to, pray tell?

To Prey Nob.

I left the little expat village of Nesat yesterday late morning, headed back out on that beautiful red road, and made it to the main through road within an hour or so.

Playing chicken, village style. Everybody wins.

Temporary stupa for a celebration

This sign reminded me of the embarrassing diagrams they gave out in sex education at school. I plan to eventually go to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh, but not this way.

Not long after this intersection the road suddenly improved, but it got way worse at exactly the same time. If you were in any other vehicle besides a bicycle, the road was suddenly really good - flat bitumen with relatively few potholes, and not too bumpy.

But that meant that everyone picked up speed, and, with no shoulder whatsoever (road shoulder that is), I had to get off the road completely, to avoid being totally cleaned up by speeding trucks and other vehicles, as the lanes were too narrow for them to avoid me.

So for the last 30kms I rode on the gravel, dodging puddles, rocks and potholes, and kept out of the way of all that speeding traffic.

Now there’s 2 dodgy shoulders.

My classy lane

My rather ostentatious guesthouse.

It’s so weird. Pretty much every building in the countryside is just a little rusty-roofed shack, and then you get to a larger town and some of these types of buildings suddenly appear, as if they've just dropped out of the sky from another planet.

My bright hallway.

And the view from that window, overlooking the school.

The view from the upstairs balcony, in the other direction.

I guess it’s self explanatory. Actually, I thought the bottom pic meant no prostitution, but the Cambodian text above it actually says: No Sex Trafficking. Sin.

Unfortunately, sex trafficking is rife in this country. It’s a huge problem.

More about that later.

Kampot

This is the absolutely best place ever for me to rest.

It’s the sorta town I love, small enough to feel chilled, but big enough to be able to indulge in a few things I’ve really been missing.

Like felafel, for example!, which was yesterday's treat.

The pita was a bit floury, sorta not baked properly, but still, everything was delicious, to my not-very-fussy palate.

Falafel. Big deal, you’re thinking.

But I can’t believe how good it tasted. There’s an amazing veg cafe here with the sort of foods I’ve craved for months.

In fact I’m back there right now.

There’s actually more than one veg place in Kampot, but this place, Simple Things, is the best I’ve found.

When you get away from home, out of your comfort zone, and aren’t always able to get the things you love, you really totally appreciate them when you do.

Especially after riding through the hicksville backblocks of Cambodia.

Fresh salads. Hummus. Tahini. Olives. Olive oil. I can’t believe how good it tastes.

So, I’m seriously lapping it up while I’m here.

And jamming too. There’s a few bars here that have open mike nights, one of which is upstairs in the main building of my guest house.

Last night was great, we jammed for hours up there. It felt so good to do that again, all miked up and plugged in, for the first time in a few weeks, since Pai, in Thailand.

There’s another jam in the Funky Durian bar tomorrow night.

Spirit things

The Cambodian People’s Party has ruled Cambodia since 1979, after the overthrow of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge by a local resistance party and the Vietnamese armed forces. There’s been a number of elections since then, but the CPP has always won. Since 2018, when the CPP got the judges they’d appointed to the Supreme Court to ban the main opposition party, the CPP has occupied every single seat in the Cambodian parliament. Hmmmm.

My little rest station

Rainy days

Cambodia seems even more relaxed than Thailand with weed. At least in terms of smoking in public. People seem to smoke openly in many bars, and, as long as you just grow a few plants for your personal use, apparently the cops will leave you alone.

Expats told me they’re expecting the country to follow Thailand and legalise pot. One of these days.

Sufferin’ succotash, no secateurs

Watered down town

Decorated roundabouts and monuments abound

Dedicated to the salt workers at the nearby salt farm

My fave. Durian Roundabout, a local landmark. It commemorates the many local durian growers in the area.

Kiddie spot at the markets. It sorta feels like going back in time.

Well, rarely. Krud is another local beer.

Creative street names

Wow, maybe I can meet one in there

Or maybe a sweetheart? More like a sweet hard, in a place like this.

The rail line between Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh. There’s only two rail lines in the whole country.

There’s a bear in there

Lunchtime place mat

Furniture delivery

Finely balanced. This furniture is so bloody heavy, I'm amazed the bike even moves, let alone stays upright.

The first floating market I’ve ever seen that has absolutely no water in it

I agree

Kep Beach

It’s really so nice here. Such a sweet scene.

I’m sitting close to the seafront, in a very locals eatery, it’s late morning, and it’s Sunday, so everyone’s out and about. The place is packed full of extended families, all seated around low tables, eating copious amounts of food, which independent food sellers have brought in and sold to them. It’s mainly seafood, big bags of shellfish, snacks, fruits, etc. I guess the eatery makes its money mainly by selling drinks.

But they also serve food here. I’m waiting for my brunch.

There’s hammocks scattered around the tables, people are chilling out, doing the quintessential Southeast Asian thing - relaxing.

People know how to do that here, it’s a strong part of the culture.

I love it.

There’s loads of kids around, some eating multicoloured fairy floss, some drinking sweet drinks, and pretty much all of them playing, squealing and laughing. You know, the usual.

It was hot riding here, it was about 25kms, from my guest house in Kampot. The clouds had parted this morning, to allow in that burning sun. But they’re back now, maybe I’ll get dumped on when I ride back, who knows.

I don’t mind the rain, but the mud isn’t my fave.

From where I’m sitting, it’s only about 20kms to the Vietnamese border, as the cormorant flies. Vietnamese and Cambodian citizens don’t need visas to cross the border, so the beach and eating places here host Vietnamese families as well as local ones.

I’ve also noticed lots of car number plates from Phnom Penh around here as well, this is a great weekend getaway from the capital.

The name Kep Saep means saddle. Kep is named after a local legend about a beloved leader who fled from his enemies on a white horse.

Nearby beach

Local durian market

Seafood restaurants line part of the waterfront

Beautiful coastal views. Notice the floodwaters in the ocean.

Kep beach.

Expatriated

As I was riding here I was thinking about a number of expats I’ve met since I’ve been in this country.

Cambodia’s an easy place to hang out as a foreigner. It’s relatively easy to do business here, the visa situation is straightforward and quite cheap, and the prices are so low here that if you’re getting any dollar income from investments or a pension from the West, you can live pretty comfortably here.

In fact, you’ll generally have a much higher standard of living here than you would in the West, albeit with Cambodian quality control standards.

If you don’t have a Western income, you can make a little money here, and have quite a simple lifestyle.

So I’ve met a bunch of expats here, almost all of them men, who came to Cambodia for a holiday once upon a time, decided they’d had enough of the rat race back in their home countries, and never really went back.

Yeah sure, some of them met Cambodian women, and that was a big part of their decision to stay. But others are just tired of the Western lifestyle, tired of having to struggle to make ends meet over there, and so live here, getting much more of what they need and want, at a fraction of the cost.

Some are escaping from the West, and never want to go back.

The locals appear to embrace Westerners, they’ve become an important part of the local economy, and domestic businesses definitely benefit from the cash injections they encourage.

The expats often open bars and restaurants, which, in turn, bring in more Western tourists, and local businesses such as guesthouses, tour companies and shops generally benefit.

But it’s a different type of expat that decides to come here as opposed to Thailand or Bali, because it’s a different type of country. It’s poorer and a bit wilder here, there’s less infrastructure and services. So you need to be a bit more of the rough-and-ready type.

Which is what most of them appear to be.

They’re all ages too, some in their 30s, right through to retirees. Not many retirees though, not like in parts of Thailand. Lots of expats I’ve met here are in their 30s and 40s.

There's hardly any Russians around here either, although apparently there’s Russian enclaves in Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), Sihanoukville and Phnom Penh.

Personally, I can imagine myself living in a place like this, at least for awhile.

Well, the rain eventually did come down, but I still happily semi-sheltered in my eating spot, and I just got a bit of spray, nothing major. I let it all dry up and headed back to Kampot.

Chinese tombstone maker.

And this is what Chinese graves look like in cemeteries.

I spent a couple of evenings with a really interesting English woman, Maddie, at the end of my time in Kampot. She’s from Manchester, has a Biology Masters, and is environmentally and socially riding in the same bike lane as me. We had some amazing conversations, and loads of fun.

One night she ripped into a few old school rock classics, singing at one of the open mike sessions, with me accompanying her. Carole King. Amy Winehouse. She was really good.

She told me about the huge psychological stress that her and many of her fellow students felt at Uni in Oxford, due to the high workload, and the high expectations of academic staff. She told me all about the class distinctions there, and the outlandish wealth of many of the students.

Her world was in a completely different realm, a young woman from a lower middle class suburb of Manchester, without the huge financial resources of most of her fellow students.

Maddie has a burning desire to help others, it’s really inspiring. She got a job in Oxford as a mentor for new students from disadvantaged areas, and relished in the chance to make a difference. She did make a difference. She's been spending time volunteering at a shelter for stray dogs whilst here in Kampot.

One day she told me that she was considering actually moving to Cambodia, to live in Kampot. She said “I know this sounds incredibly hippy, but I feel like when I'm here I can be the best version of myself.”

Yeah it’s bloody hippy alright.

Which is, of course, a great thing.

Capitalising

I originally considered putting my bike on the train for the 150km run to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, because of the traffic going in, but decided to ride instead, as the train arrived at an ungodly hour at night, which is not a particularly fun time to arrive on a bicycle in a new city.

I couldn’t have made a better choice.

I’m happy to report that the road from Kampot to Phnom Penh is amazing! Good quality bitumen all the way, and a super wide-ish shoulder. Safe and fast.

And not only that, but I had a brisk tail wind for a good chunk of the ride.

Riding into Phnom Penh had its moments, however. There were a few dodgy manoeuvres by moto and rickshaw riders that nearly ended in tears. Mine. And a car almost hit me, at slow speed. But I’m still in one piece.

The smooth flat dream road to Phnom Penh.

Wall art. What a relief.

I skipped on the pork. Sometimes I specifically ask not to have something, but wires get crossed, or people think that a meal is not a meal without at least a bit of meat. Bless their little nylon socks that they never wear.

I spent the night at Angk Ta Saom, there was a little night market/festival going on. It was super interesting, as these things are in off-the-beaten-goat-track places.

Flied lice. Well, not lice as such, but cockroaches, crickets, grubs, and pigeon eggs.

The impaled pigeons, after they donated their eggs.

Rad Vlad

Speaking of impaling, and just to change the subject for a minute, I learnt about the famous Vlad the Impaler the other day.

If you’re queasy, the next bit’s probably not for you. If you don’t want to hear about some of the horrid violent depths of brutality to which humans can steep, maybe skip to the next section.

Vlad, or Vlad Dracula (full name), used to be the Voivode (sort of a king) of Wallachia in the 1400s, a kingdom occupying much of present day Romania, where Vlad is still regarded as a hero.

The Impaler part comes from his penchant for impaling his enemies, as a warning to others not to cross him.

Impaling involved inserting a long sharp greased thick pole up your victim’s anus, and then hammering it in with a mallet, along the spine, making sure you don’t rupture any vital organs along the way, until the stake comes out of the breast or shoulder.

You then raise the stake with the person attached, and set it in the ground, so your victim can hang there in unthinkable agony until they die. This can take days.

It was regarded as a great skill to impale your victim without killing them, the longer they lived and suffered, the better.

Isn’t that amazing? Aren’t humans grand?

Such innovation!

Vlad wasn’t the only dude to use that method btw. It was used all over the world, including by Dutch colonisers in Indonesia.

Sorry if you were eating.

Vlad himself. Maybe he was so angry because a rogue chunk of his curly hair kept flapping across his face.

Unfortunately, history is littered with unthinkably brutal people like Vlad. Often the wrong people make it to the pinnacle of power. One of the worst of modern times, Pol Pot, used to rule this country.

But more about that later.

Fun night market

Cute kiddie zone

Rather impressive jumping castle

Pop-py concert, the singers sang over recorded music.

Phnom Penh

As I approached the capital, the main road got crazier and crazier. It was really packed full of traffic, motos and rickshaws zipping in and out everywhere, pretty dodgy.

And that’s not just people going in the direction I was going.

Often there’s impassable railings in the middle of the main road, so motorbikes, bicycles, and sometimes rickshaws and cars will drive on the wrong side of the road to get to where they need to go, rather than go further up the road and do a U-turn. Or they might wanna park somewhere on this side of the road.

So sometimes I’d be checking my mirror, making sure I’m safe, and then look ahead to see a vehicle careering towards me in the opposite direction.

Sometimes they’re coming at you from everywhere. It really keeps you on your toes, I can tell ya.

Roadside butchering

Wat paraphernalia

The main road in, through the burbs, getting busier and busier. Notice the snails on the back of the bike. They’re super common around here. Loads of people sell all sorts of shellfish and snails etc, as snacks.

And so I’ve made it to the capital! It’s actually exciting. Coming to a new city, especially a capital city, always sparks my curiosity-pleasure.

I found a room right in the burbs, in Sangkat Olympic (named because the Olympic stadium’s in the district), it’s a poorer neighbourhood, the room’s a little dingy, and it’s cheap. It’s fine for me. Because I have transport wherever I go, my accommodation doesn’t need to be in the more pricey parts of town.

Off I went exploring immediately, as usual.

There’s a lot of shoemakers around my place.

I think they mean shoes.

So risqué, so kicky!

Kiddy marketing to kiddy

Modernity’s coming

Beautiful tree

Wat Botum, near the Royal Palace

Oh my Buddha! This cat has a tail! It’s the first tailed cat I’ve seen in Cambodia. They’re almost all born with none here, just a little stump, it’s a genetic thing. At least this one’s still got a kink, or should I say, a kick, where the tailstump should’ve finished.

Ummm, ok, so that exists? I actually looked it up, they’re a UN backed NGO, committed to improving hygienic conditions for the 50% of the global population whose water supply is affected by human faeces.

Great mission.

Shitty name.

And then, finally, I hit the Mekong, the great Mother river, which runs all the way from Tibet in the Himalaya, down to its delta in southern Vietnam. The Mekong is the 3rd longest river in Asia, and the 12th longest in the world. It’s 5000km length runs from Tibet, through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

I’m gonna be spending a lot of time along this river off and on over the next few months, insha’Allah.

Captured sparrows. For good karma, you pay the birdkeeper money, and they release some birds. Then they go and catch them again. Ho hum.

Phnom Penh has a big and active redlight district, and a huge and very problematic sex industry. No surprises there. Nothing much is happening at this time of day, late arvo, except for Happy Hours here and there, which will eventually graduate into Happy Endings later in the evening.

Unbelievably, I spotted 2 giant hornbills in a tree. They’re magnificent, huge birds. What a treat to watch them for awhile.

Wat Ounalom monastery

Fresh sugar cane, hot off their stumps

Fresh seafood, peeled frogs, bugs and animal bits

Dried seafood and cured meats

Fallen fowl of the authorities

Nuts traffic

The amazing jewellery market

Crazily overloaded vans. They’re actually loading new freezers up there.

I’m not sure if you can see the perspective, but these guys are loading trucks more than twice as high as the truck tray’s side barrier, it’s absolutely crazy. Though rather skilful.

Since when should footpaths get in the way of traffic flow? I almost got cleaned up a few times. I’ve learnt now.

Yet another market

3 little pigs. And a big one.

Cycle rickshaws are still common around here.

Tangled up in black

Before

After

Round, the corner

My little laneway. My little front door is on the near right, hidden in the pic, you need to step between the palm fronds and the old corrugated walls to get there.

Dark Days

As we all know, history books are littered with black and bloodstained pages, but what happened in Cambodia in the 70s ranks as one of the darkest and most brutal chapters of modern times.

The seeds of that unthinkable tragedy were sown many decades before.

In the 1860s France colonised Vietnam and Cambodia, and then seized Laos in 1899. They even annexed a part of southeastern China for good measure, Guangzhouwan.

The French merged these states, and formed what they called the Union Indochinoise. The capital was in Hanoi, north Vietnam, and also, for a period, in Saigon in the south (now known as Ho Chi Minh City).

The motivations of the French were monetary, of course, as usual, and rice and rubber were their big cash cows in the region.

Resistance to French rule existed right from the beginning, particularly in Vietnam, and there were many uprisings, which were brutally suppressed.

During World War I the French recruited many Indochinese men to fight for Allied forces (the UK, France, Russia, Australia, Japan, the US, etc), to man the trenches in Europe, against troops from what were then known as the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire).

The war was brutal, of course. 8.5 million soldiers died, and another 13 million civilians. Incredible, but true.

What the Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian men found in Europe, however, surprised them. They could intermingle with whites in France. They had relationships with local women. The inherent racism that was clearly evident in their home countries didn’t exist in the same way in France.

They also learnt about different political ideologies, like communism for example, and, of course, they were trained in weaponry and military strategy by their French masters.

When they returned to their home countries, resistance to French colonial rule intensified, and became more organised.

When World War II broke out, the Japanese occupied French territory in Indochina, and massive famine ensued, as the Japanese confiscated rice stocks without paying for them, leaving around a million people to starve to death.

Fighters from the Viet Minh, a military and political group headed by Ho Chi Minh in the north, fought the Japanese, and at the end of the war they proclaimed independence for Vietnam.

But the French weren’t having any of that, no way René, and returned to power, paving the way for a bunch of brutal wars that were to last for over 30 years.

The Viet Minh were inspired by communist movements in Europe, and eventually garnered military and financial support from China and the Soviet Union in their fight against the French, while the French were backed by the US.

The Vietnamese fought an efficient and unconventional war in the jungles, and in 1954 the French were finally defeated, and Vietnam was split into two separate states, north and south. Ho Chi Minh became leader of the communist north, and the Ngo Dinh Diem military regime controlled the south, with US support.

The Cold War was in full swing at that time, so the West was paranoid that the communists were taking over the world, and needed to be stopped.

The Viet Cong (VC), a military group in the south under the direction of North Vietnam, began a guerilla campaign in South Vietnam. The US responded, first with military advisers, and later with troops.

North Vietnam invaded Laos in 1958, to establish supply lines to the VC, and also established supply routes through Cambodia.

It all escalated, as wars do.

A key plank of US strategy was mass bombing, which they’d also used extensively in Japan in WWII, leaving many cities completely annihilated, even before they dropped the nukes.

The US completely decimated Hanoi, and bombed huge swathes of Laos and Cambodia, to try to interrupt Viet Minh supply lines, and kill VC troops moving through.

If pilots were on a mission to Hanoi and they couldn’t see their targets due to cloud cover, the US B52 bombers would just drop their bombs anywhere, because it was dangerous for them to land with them still on board. Laos and Cambodia were on their way home to Thailand, and were decimated.

Civil war broke out in both Laos and Cambodia. Communist backed guerilla forces began fighting the US supported governments in both countries. The US, in turn, sent arms, more bombs, and even sent in troops to destroy VC bases. Not that the US public knew anything about that at the time.

In the end, the communists won the war in all three countries. The US withdrew. Vietnam was reunified, under Ho Chi Minh. The Pathet Lao, a Laotian communist group, took control in Laos. The Khmer Rouge took over in Cambodia.

3.5 million people were killed during those years of war in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Also unbelievable, but true.

When Death Comes To Town

But that was just the beginning of the horrors for Cambodia.

Already, around 300,000 Cambodians had been killed in the civil war.

The intense mass bombings by the US in the country had led many locals to support the Khmer Rouge, even if they weren’t particularly politically aligned with them. For the Khmer Rouge, the bombing was the perfect recruitment tool to massively boost their military ranks.

The widespread brutality of the civil war had also radicalised many of the traumatised Khmer Rouge leaders, who came to believe that organised and intense violence was the only way to obtain, and maintain, power.

When the Khmer Rouge marched into the capital in April 1975, they were greeted by many as liberators, victors over the powerful US.

But within 3 hours of entering Phnom Penh, the troops announced that the whole city of 2.5m people was to be evacuated, as it was the target of US bombing, and wasn’t safe. All residents were ordered to leave, including patients in hospitals, many of whom were seriously injured.

People were told they could return in 3 days.

But it was all a lie. Many of them never did.

Within days, the city was completely emptied, as were all others in the country.

The Khmer Rouge strategy, led by Pol Pot, was to turn the country into a land of peasants, to completely uproot what he regarded as the corruption of city life.

And it just so happened that eliminating the intellectual and intelligentsia class would also decimate any meaningful opposition to his regime.

What a coincidence.

Pol Pot, who visited Mao Tse Tung in 1975, embarked on his own Cambodian version of the Chinese Great Leap Forward, which was a policy implemented by Mao in the late 1950s that introduced localised quotas for agricultural production, and rapid industrialisation. It was a complete disaster in China, and caused one of the worst famines in human history, leading to the deaths of at least 10m people.

But why should that stop you?

It’s just a flesh wound.

Pol Pot’s Cambodian version was to create a totally agrarian socialist republic. The idea was for the country to become totally economically self sufficient.

Monetary currency was abolished. People could only trade through barter. Rice, gold and jewellery became the unofficial currencies.

The 3m people who lived in cities at the time were moved to the countryside, to be used as forced labourers. They worked alongside the 5m rural people who already lived there.

Families were deliberately split.

The city folk, known as “new people,” were given the worst tasks, the worst land (often completely infertile), and were the ones who first starved when food supplies inevitably dried up. They were moved on frequently.

The regime had a long list of stated enemies within the country. It included anyone with any connections to the previous government or to any foreign government, including civil servants. It included all professionals, artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, journalists, and Buddhist monks.

It even included anyone wearing glasses, as this was a sign of privilege, even though a number of top party cadres themselves wore them.

Everyone’s equal, but some are more equal than others.

So anyone in those categories, including academics, teachers, doctors, lawyers etc, desperately tried to hide their professions, often to no avail.

Many were arrested, tortured, made to write and sign confessions, and then executed.

As the cities were empty, all of the factories, medical facilities and supply lines disappeared overnight, and so medical supplies and repairs and parts for any equipment or machinery were no longer available. Doctors were in hiding, or dead.

The economy collapsed.

Party cadres, on the other hand, were living it up in Phnom Penh, had access to imported goods from China, and went to China for medical treatments.

All education, besides a little bit of maths, and a lot of revolutionary ideology, was completely banned.

Kids as young as 12 were forcibly recruited into the army, and were indoctrinated into believing that brutal treatment of their enemies was necessary. They were forced to torture animals as training.

All children in the country were taught to spy on their parents and on any other adults or children, and many dutifully reported them to authorities on dubious grounds, only to see them forcibly removed, never to return.

All non-Khmer ethnic communities in the country were also targeted.

Throughout these years of brutality, factional fighting began to escalate within the party itself, and many top cadres were, in turn, themselves tortured and executed.

The Khmer Rouge instigated numerous attacks on Vietnam during their rule, and persecuted and executed people of Vietnamese descent within Cambodia.

Eventually this proved too much for the Vietnamese, and they invaded in early 1979, and overran the Khmer Rouge quickly.

Phnom Penh in 1979, after four years of being virtually empty.

During the nearly four years of Khmer Rouge rule, an estimated 2 million people died in Cambodia, a quarter of the population. An estimated 1.2m of these were executed. The rest starved to death, or died of disease.

It’s hard to fathom the extent of trauma this period of intense widespread brutality has caused in this country.

Through various national organisations, through museums and memorials, and through an extensive UN-backed trial of Khmer Rouge leaders, called the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, the country appears to be fully facing up to its past.

I can only imagine what sort of struggle that is for some people.

The Darkest Skies Reveal The Brightest Stars

So it’s sobering to be here, in a country that’s experienced such incredible brutality, and remains economically and politically challenged, with a bunch of social problems to complicate it even further.

But it’s amazing what this place has become.

The people are incredibly warm and generous here. There's a strong sense of community. People look out for each other.

Slowly but surely, services like health and education are improving. 97% of kids now get a primary education, and about 70% get some secondary education.

Those rates have risen greatly in recent years, which bodes well for the country's future.

I'll be here in Phnom Penh for a while yet, and then plan to work my way eastwards.

I have no real idea what to expect there.

I like it that way.❤️

And btw, sincere and gracious thanks to those of you who’ve been supporting me and this blog through the link below. It really helps me. Plus it makes me feel good. I love you.

http://buymeacoffee.com/krolesh9