I’ve been unable to communicate after leaving Bangkok, away from broadband Internet and telephone communication since the weekend. I hope to catch up to current in the next few days.
Sunday was an exhausting day. Tim, Chris (doing most of our photography) and I awoke at 4:00 a.m. (3:00 p.m. Saturday on the East Coast of the U.S.) Bangkok time to catch a 7:00 a.m. flight to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. From there we went through immigration, customs, and bought our visas ($20 each).
We were greeted at the airport by our friend Vibol, who is Indochina director for the Bible League. We rode in a Toyota pickup that seats five (again, no American models on the roads), with another Bible League worker, Moy, as our driver. We arrived at Vibol’s home where he leads a house church — but today Tim would preach. We were led to an open-air upper room above the main home, with a wood plank floor and two oscillating fans to cool a congregation of about 40 people of all ages. The seats were stackable plastic lawn chairs you usually see on American porches. As we exited the truck we were greeted in the front yard by several children starting their Sunday school lessons. They had beautiful smiles and a lot of enthusiasm.
The church service was inspiring. These people truly love the Lord and their worship demonstrated that.
At lunch these beautiful people who have so little treated us like
royalty, seating us at their best table, and blessing us with their
kindness and joy.
Fellow travelers and ministers John (left), from Malaysia, and Luy, a Cambodian
Phnom Penh is huge, and the poverty as you drive along is unceasing. In fact, all of Cambodia is that way.
From the church service, before our three-hour trip to Svay Riengh province, we visited Tuol Sleng, where the Khmer Rouge turned a high school into a torture chamber. The contrast to our morning worship was stark.
Of 17,000 prisoners held at Tuol Sleng, only seven survived the evil of dictator Pol Pot. The facility, now a museum, is wide open to walk through. Conditions during 1975-1979 were squalid and inhumane, to say the least.
Large boards of photographs of those who were tormented and killed stood inside what were once classrooms that had been converted into cells. Also hanging on walls were artwork that depicted the atrocities carried out there, painted by one of the survivors. They were painful to look at. The worst showed two Khmer Rouge soldiers executing babies; one throwing an infant upward and the other shooting it in mid-air.
Left: Wall cut open between former classrooms, where brick cells were built for prisoners; Right, an individual cell
From there we went to Choeung Ek, where many Killing Fields atrocities were carried out.
Left: Self explanatory; Right: Ground at Choeung Ek with victims clothing and bone fragments in dirt
Mass grave where 166 victims who had been beheaded were found
The site is an open, grassy lot where a Buddhist temple once stood. The ground is littered still with scraps of clothing and bone fragments of the Khmer Rouge’s victims. Dozens of craters are spread over the area, which once were mass graves. A monument commemorating the victims, which contains dozens of skulls stacked up, stands in the middle of the site. A large pile of the victims’ clothing lies on the floor of the monument.
With those images heavy on our hearts, from there we moved to our destination in eastern Cambodia, the Svay Riengh province, on the border with Vietnam. It was a three-hour drive from Phnom Penh, and much if not most of the road is dirt ? a very bumpy ride. Along the way we collected a few more Christian leaders who were to attend the church planting conference that Tim would lead.
The poverty and primitive standard of living persisted. Despite that, I did not see attitudes of misery and suffering ? just a land of people, with their own culture and traditions, living life. There were plenty of warm smiles along the way toward us. That’s not to say everyone had joy in their hearts; just that I saw very little desperation. Beggars were few.
One of the greatest experiences was one that a new friend, Ted Randall from Raleigh, told me I should expect. Children who are learning English in school ? or sometimes piecemeal from tourists they engage — are eager to try it out when they see Americans. So far I have seen no greater enthusiasm in the children that in those who are trying to have a conversation with us in English. The ones I have encountered are learning well, and it presents an opportunity to share the Gospel.
We reached Svay Riengh and our hotel well into the evening, exhausted. The weight of seeing the Killing Fields and Tuol Sleng; the culture shock of the degree of poverty; a lack of sleep; the heat and humidity; and the caffeine withdrawal all contributed to me wondering what I was doing there. I wondered how I would survive two and a half weeks. I was suffering sensory overload and an inability to process it all, and I knew it would not let up. It hasn’t.
It didn’t help that our hotel was a haven for geckos. The place was crawling with them. We got to our room ? no Hilton, obviously ? and I breathed a sigh of relief that at least we didn’t have one of those lizards in our quarters. But after the light was on for a bit, Chris and I discovered that we indeed had a roommate, which emerged from behind the fixture when it was illuminated, to eat the insects the light drew.
He kept to himself and turned out be pretty good company. Things are going great now and God is really blessing this trip.
