After accompanying this group of American college students in Indonesia for three weeks, I continued with them for a journey to Cambodia. This was my second time to visit Cambodia as I did so two years ago after spending some time in Indonesia on the same trip this group of college students joined. Cambodia is a beautiful country recovering from an ugly and tragic past. Once the center of the great Khmer Empire that ruled much of Southeast Asia, Cambodia came under the power of the Khmer Rouge in 1975 following the Vietnam War that also extended into parts of Cambodia. The communist focused Khmer Rouge tried to return Cambodia to the basics by emptying the cities and forcing most everyone to become farmers using 11th century methods. In the end approximately one-third of the population was killed and the country is still rebuilding today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia
 |
There were a few parts of Cambodia that reminded me of
spring time in Kansas, including the green rice fields
looking like wheat fields back home and the powerful
thunderstorms that would often roll through in the
evenings, also similar to Indonesia any many ways. |
 |
We visited a school turned prison and torture
center on our second day in Phnom Penh, the
capital city of Cambodia. There the Khmer Rouge
killed thousands, many of which were intellectuals,
searching for information of enemies and seeking to
purge the country. |
 |
We also visited the killing fields outside of Phnom
Penh where many prisoners were taken to be killed
and buried in mass graves (the concaves/indentions
pictured right) during the Khmer Rouge.
Avery sobering experience and sad to consider how
evil man is or can be. How far does an ideology
have to go to consider itself right in killing others? |
