Charting Cambodia

Hi all,

I've only minutes before I must leave to the Bangkok airport but wanted to write quickly to say that from this afternoon until July 2nd I will be in Cambodia and thus will most likely not be with you via these letters. I'm meeting a Cambodian friend there who lives and works in my hometown and, from what I know now, which is slight, we will be traveling together while he continues the outreach and leadership training that he began many years ago.

I knew little of Cambodia until a week ago, when on a bus ride to a mountain village I read a series of articles I found online about the country's history over the last thirty years. For those interested, and I recommend the read, you can find those articles here: http://www.mekong.net/cambodia/banyan1.htm

A small preview - After the Khmer Rouge overthrew Lon Nol's regime and took the capital city, Phnom Penh, they issued the following ultimatum decrees, nationwide:

1. Evacuate people from all towns.
2. Abolish all markets.
3. Abolish Lon Nol regime currency, and withhold the revolutionary currency that had been printed.
4. Defrock all Buddhist monks, and put them to work growing rice.
5. Execute all leaders of the Lon Nol regime beginning with the top leaders.
6. Establish high-level cooperatives throughout the country, with communal eating.
7. Expel the entire Vietnamese minority population.
8. Dispatch troops to the borders, particularly the Vietnamese border.

That was just 32 years ago.

I've now to run off, grab a bag of sticky rice, and chart for the airport. I was last night outside the Prime Minister of Thailand's house with thousands of yellow-shirted and bandanna-ed Thai as they continued their nearly month-long protest against the Prime Minister and, from what a savvy businessman who studied at Skidmore College in PA told me as I took my street stall noodles on the bridge, his prostitution of Thailand's resources to foreign investors and resistance to the people's want of democracy and a say in their government. A grand time was had by all.

Until the 2nd,
js