Location:Indonesia
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Injury alert!
Danielle has an allergic reaction to malarone and her body has been covered in welts for three days. This diagnosis comes from Dr. Gortenberry and is definitely accurate. He just prescribed her Cetirizine, which is the same as Zyrtec.
Too much adventure
Decided at the last minute to take a ferry to Indonesia and lounge on the beach for a few days. It's pretty much better than anywhere (except yellowstone duh).
Location:Bintan Utara,Indonesia
Cambodia! Shhh
Cambodia! It is an awesome place. Much more rural and undeveloped than Vietnam. Made me happy, see?
Listen up though. This trip has really brought home just how little we know of this part of the world. For example, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge - by many measures the worst genocide of the twentieth century (not that it's a competition) - we all knew the names but none of the history. I didn't even know that it succeeded the Vietnam War - from 1975-79, about two million out of the seven million total Cambodians were killed. "Never again"...?
Anyway, let's get a little more focused. We arrived in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday. It's a great city - really more of a village, but on the scale of a village. Great food too!
We rented a bungalow-hotel room in this really nice place. The beds had mosquito nets to keep out the malaria/dengue carriers.
Also helpful were the geckoes that ate the mosquites.
Best of all, there was a great pool nestled in basically a rain forest!
On our first full day there, we spent the morning focusing on the genocide.
We went to the S.21 prison, which housed political prisoners. The regime just tortured them brutally until the prisoners "confessed". Our guide was a survivor-her entire family had been killed. She actually talked about how she was happy that her infant child had died from starvation because it was one of the less painful ways of dying. Seriously. Here is an interrogation cell.
Brief history lesson. Pol Pot had the most rigid and extreme form of communism of any of hi contemporaries. He believed that any status symbol was an evil that had to be eradicated (riparian doctrine). So when he took power, the first thing he did was kill anyone with a college degree or who was "educated." then he forcibly removed everyone from the city and forced them into farm work for like 15 hours a day. He intentionally separated kids from their families, brainwashed the kids, and then had them kill their own family. Millions died of starvation, exhaustion, and malaria.
Then america overthrew him!
Just kidding. We did absolutely nothing for four years. Then Pol Pot invaded Vietnam out of paranoia and Vietnam invaded him back, overthrowing his regime. Pol Pot himself escaped and lived on the run until 1998. America and the rest of the international community did zilch.
Back to vacation. After visiting the prison, we went to the "Killing Field", where about 20,000 Cambodians were killed. We had another tour guide whose entire family died. There were pieces of bone, teeth, and skulls scattered throughout the fields, and a memorial seven stories high filled with...skulls.
Our guide was a character. He was, in Val's words, a little disturbed. He would kind of just string together a string of indictments. "Mao. Beijing...very bad. Communism! I know. I saw. I there. Cambodia. Very bad...shhh!" He would shush a lot but we weren't sure why.
Then we went to some museums which frankly were not that impressive.
The next day we are taking a six hour boat to siem reap, home of the massive Angkor wat temples!
Listen up though. This trip has really brought home just how little we know of this part of the world. For example, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge - by many measures the worst genocide of the twentieth century (not that it's a competition) - we all knew the names but none of the history. I didn't even know that it succeeded the Vietnam War - from 1975-79, about two million out of the seven million total Cambodians were killed. "Never again"...?
Anyway, let's get a little more focused. We arrived in the capital, Phnom Penh, on Friday. It's a great city - really more of a village, but on the scale of a village. Great food too!
We rented a bungalow-hotel room in this really nice place. The beds had mosquito nets to keep out the malaria/dengue carriers.
Also helpful were the geckoes that ate the mosquites.
Best of all, there was a great pool nestled in basically a rain forest!
On our first full day there, we spent the morning focusing on the genocide.
We went to the S.21 prison, which housed political prisoners. The regime just tortured them brutally until the prisoners "confessed". Our guide was a survivor-her entire family had been killed. She actually talked about how she was happy that her infant child had died from starvation because it was one of the less painful ways of dying. Seriously. Here is an interrogation cell.
Brief history lesson. Pol Pot had the most rigid and extreme form of communism of any of hi contemporaries. He believed that any status symbol was an evil that had to be eradicated (riparian doctrine). So when he took power, the first thing he did was kill anyone with a college degree or who was "educated." then he forcibly removed everyone from the city and forced them into farm work for like 15 hours a day. He intentionally separated kids from their families, brainwashed the kids, and then had them kill their own family. Millions died of starvation, exhaustion, and malaria.
Then america overthrew him!
Just kidding. We did absolutely nothing for four years. Then Pol Pot invaded Vietnam out of paranoia and Vietnam invaded him back, overthrowing his regime. Pol Pot himself escaped and lived on the run until 1998. America and the rest of the international community did zilch.
Back to vacation. After visiting the prison, we went to the "Killing Field", where about 20,000 Cambodians were killed. We had another tour guide whose entire family died. There were pieces of bone, teeth, and skulls scattered throughout the fields, and a memorial seven stories high filled with...skulls.
Our guide was a character. He was, in Val's words, a little disturbed. He would kind of just string together a string of indictments. "Mao. Beijing...very bad. Communism! I know. I saw. I there. Cambodia. Very bad...shhh!" He would shush a lot but we weren't sure why.
Then we went to some museums which frankly were not that impressive.
The next day we are taking a six hour boat to siem reap, home of the massive Angkor wat temples!
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