Marc & I are now 5 days into being in Phnom Penh! His team has accomplished much during this time and he has been busy working with his students and local enumerators in making changes to the survey instrument, getting translations done, training enumerators, and working out all necessary logistics. Meanwhile, I've been catching up on some leisurely reading (finishing Jonathan Frazen's 560 page Freedom in 2 days!), learning about Cambodia's very complex and incredibly sad contemporary history, gallivanting around town visiting Wats (temples), local markets, palaces, and museums, getting massages and basically doing my part in stimulating the Cambodian economy. Today, I'm doing a full day course on Cambodian cooking while Marc & Co are out in the field on their first day of piloting the survey.

Talking about food, we have been eating well here as things are considerably cheaper than in the US and we are getting our fix of spicy, tasty Asian cuisine. We've had a number of good Khmer meals (if anyone out there plans to visit PP anytime soon, we recommend Khmer Surin), Thai (Boat Noodle Restaurant is great!) and I've had a very good Dim Sum lunch (at Emperors of China). One of the things we love too are the fresh coconuts ($0.75 each), and the fruit shakes of all kinds & combinations -- they are a must-haves at least once a day in this heat and humidity!

But all is not fun in the sun. Yesterday afternoon, I finally found the courage to visit the Luol Sleng Museum (S-21), which was the school in PP that was converted into a detention center by the Khmer Rough between 1975-1979, and the location of thousands of tortures and death (most were transported to the Killing Fields 10km west and mass murdered there and tossed into shallow pits/graves). It was a eerie feeling to be walking along the halls and up/down the stairwells where so many others have walked in the past towards their doom. The fact that all of this happened in a neighborhood school makes it all the more disturbing -- a school is typically associated with children and therefore innocence, carefree-ness, and logic -- but the Khmer Rouge completely flipped these on their heads. I was especially disturbed to learn that many former cadres of the Khmer Rouge are in the government now -- in fact the current Prime Minister, Hun Sen was in the KR! The ongoing UN tribunal trial for the last 4 KR leaders was a deal brokered between the Cambodian government and the UN is really a "show", to provide some closure for the Cambodian and international community on the horrific events in the 70s. While I agree that the KR leadership were/are guilty of much of the crimes, the roles of Vietnam, China, the US and the former USSR should not be ignored. It would be naive to think that none of the politics within and among these other countries resulted in the implosion of events in Cambodia -- it's unimagineable that the lives of nearly 3 million Cambodians were loss as a result, yet it did happen.

And such is the schizophernia that is Cambodia. It is the land where everyone is smiling, yet what lies beneath this? I suppose this is not just a condition of Cambodia, but really of the human race given the experiences of many other countries and ethnicities. The fact that (some) humans have the capacity to do such horrendous things to each other is something that is difficult to come to terms with.