"I AM your father!"

 - Darth Vader, to Luke.

Random? Not at all!  

Tonight Jena and I decided that the Bangkok airport looks oddly reminiscent of Star Wars.  Particularly the walkway between plane and gate.  That looks EXACTLY like the walkway where Luke meets Vader after leaving the Ewok village. 

Yeah. Weird.

And... The entry way (exit way?) of the airport looks like the medical ship where Luke gets his metal hand. It was trippy. 

Here in BKK we're staying at the Christian Guesthouse. I am surrounded by so much Jesus right now.  More than any other time this semester.  It's also a little weird.  Where did Buddha go? 

The most ironic thing about the guesthouse is it's location - right next to one of the largest red-light districts in Bangkok.  Prime real estate here. If everyone were not leaving for the beach at 8:30 tomorrow morning I'm fairly certain we would be out exploring.  

Countdowns:

1 day til I take the Praxis

2 days til Bob and I go to Ayuthaya

4 days til the longest day ever (aka we fly home)

16 days til graduation

"But, uh, it's like ten in the morning Acomb."

"Yeah, but I already finished my beer. It's whiskey time!"

- one of us, and one of our Thai profs, during a northern thai Songkran festival at CMU.

This confirms, if nothing else does, that Flunk Day does exist in the real world. You just have to live in Northern Thailand. 

I knew 19 of 23 letters I was told to write today.  And I was really close on a couple of others.  I just can't tell the difference between the way Ajaan Acomb says "f" and "p".  Oops. Or the difference between "tong" and "toong" when said by natives. 

Also found out today that one of our language profs was let out of the hospital the other day.  Yay Ajaan Jang!  Very glad she's well and back to good health. 

It's been a productive past few days, with all three "chapters" of my independent study started, and my final reflection for HR class half done.  I think.  I may need to start over. I think it works, but I need a second pair of eyes. The internet in Chiang Mai has been in and out, though which is ANNOYING!!  The internet cafe has been sans internet since they reopened post songkran.  So sad. Emily and I are sitting at a cafe down the block with the cheapest menu items possible so we can use their wifi.  I wish they sold wifi cards at 7-eleven like they sell water and phone cards (public wifi exsists - I can see it, I just don't know how to log in!).  

We have a week left in Thailand.  Each day I go out to do something I think about those things that are going to be so different very soon.  For example, right now I'm sitting in a full cafe and I can hear my keys click over the sound of all the other customers talking, over the kitchen, the wait staff, the music.  That would never happen back home - we talk too loud.  I would still be aware of the keys clicking, but thru my fingers rather than my ears.  

I will soon have to wait for crosswalks in order to cross the street, because traffic will more likely run me over than stop (unlike Thailand and the opposite of Vietnam, where you just have to go, because otherwise they DON'T stop).  I'll have to drive again.  And not drive the way Khun Ahn (our Thai song-taow driver) or the VN taxis drove.  That might, maybe work in Chi-town... but no where else in the states. :) And when I get home, I won't be going back to college (or at least not for long), or the midwest... I'm moving and teaching and stuff.  Old balls (yeah Liz, me too now). Wow.  

Either way, I'm almost more concerned about culture shock coming home than I was going abroad.  Weird, right?  Who does that? Other than crazy old me... Either way, it's a back-of-the-mind kind of thing right now.  More worried about finishing my papers and taking the praxis within the next seven days.  

See some of you soon!

Happy Water-Fighting!

Thai New Year has just ended. Called Songkran, this festival is unlike any other I have experienced. After the religious obligations have been fulfilled (if you are one of those wat-going Buddhists), the entire rest of the week is devoted to a country-wide water-fight. People camp out around the moat, outside their houses or stores, in the back of pickup trucks - anywhere really - with buckets, squirtguns, hoses, tubs and bags of water.  It's insane and so much fun, as long as you properly prepare - ie everything in plastic bags, no white clothes, etc. 

Unfortunately for me, I was sick with a stomach bug (as best as I can tell, some combo of traveller's diarrheah and/or giardia?) for almost all of Songkran. I never made it to the moat, which is where most of the action is.  I did however manage on the last two days to venture around Nimmanhaimin a little bit, which was nice.  I had a "cultural exchange" as Emily likes to call it, with a small boy who had to struggle between his wish to drench/bless everyone who passed his parents shop and his concern that he shouldn't splash the farang girl.  Since he was hesitating I turned around and smiled at him over my shoulder, which he correctly took to mean "Splash me already!" So he threw a bucket of water at my face.  *smile* It kinda made my day. 

Other than Songkran and getting well, my time back in Chiang Mai has been filled with work - independent study, human rights class, and a couple other papers to finish before graduation, studying for the Praxis tests (for my life post-asia), setting up teaching observations (also for life post-asia), and finishing those booklets for AIDSNet... oy. Emily and I have found time to go to the Night Bazaar and the Sunday Market, but no getting lost and having asian adventures. 

I hope to be posting pictures later this week, if I can afford internet.  I'll keep you posted. 

Fairytale, take three and a Return to Reality

The other big visit we made in Phnom Penh, before leaving for Angkor Wat, was the S-21 killing field, Choung Ek. This is what I had to say immediately after the experience:

At the entrance I am greeted with skulls in a twisted form of remembrance, pushing against traditional beliefs in order to make an overt statement. I want to pay respects and do my part to honor the dead, but can't bring myself to do so at this place designed for me, irrespective of the victims needs, beliefs, desires. Instead, my muted cries of agony and apology subconsciously are hurled out to the five directions.

On the right, the site is mapped; graves are marked by boxes, some of the worst given a number and description of who had been hatefully tossed inside. On the final panel the broken English declares that this holocaust was worse than The Holocaust. I wonder at how one can even claim to calculate the value of suffering. What categories are measured - body counts, how they died, what they endured beforehand? Is it better to know why you are being killed, or does ignorance make death more bearable?

Turn left and exhumed graves begin to appear. At first they are merely pits filled with rancid rain water. Then the scraps of clothing become more numerous and capture my eye. Remnants of a life destroyed before their time, left out to fray, thin, and someday rot. I am told the rain has hidden further gruesome memories of life unlived, masking fragments of bone in mud. I can't say I mind.

As butterfly couples float around my shoulders, the garment scraps give way to human scraps. My toe hits an ulna, my heel just misses canines and molars. Horrified, I wonder why they remain unceremoniously packed into the path rather than properly cared for - buried, cremated or even preserved, entombed in plexiglass.

Turn left again and the reverse of skulls is what I now see, signaling my tour is complete. Again I mourn their caging and can only wonder at what I have seen.


I don't really have more to say than that...


When we weren't visiting these sites, we were teaching english at a music school. The kids were so much fun to teach and be with. They taught me how to count and say hello and good bye in Khmer. I have never seen anyone smile as much as they did either. Always smiling.

Non-Sequiter

Okay. This has nothing to do with Asia, and everything to do with my life after Asia. But I'm kinda freaking out and need advice from older, wiser folk, or others who are also graduating and moving and such.

AAAHHHHH! (Whew... now that that's out...)

How does one find housing, when one moves to a new city? Or roomates? How does one live and pay rent and phone and internets, and food and stuff... with minimal income? Or make a deposit on said housing? In essence, how does one live in the real world?

I will be graduating upon my return from these Asian Ambulations, (which is getting a little too close for comfort!), and once that ordeal is over, I'll be joining Teach for America and moving to North Carolina. And Craigslist intimidated me earlier today. As did my pre-TFA planning checklists I was provided with... *whimper*

I never thought graduating would be scarier than traveling halfway around the world.

Fairytale, 2

So... The International Tribunal. Officially called the ECCC - Extraordinary Chambers in the Court of Cambodia, this court has been years in the making. The international community and many Cambodian citizens have been trying to arrest, charge, and try KR officials since the regime fell in 1979. The head honcho, Pol Pot, died before any legal action could be taken.

Initially the public was supposed to apply for passes/clearance to visit the court, so we went on Tuesday after we taught English over the lunch hour, with no expectation of actually getting in to the building or compound. As we arrived the trial chamber was going on a 20 or 30 minute break, and Ajaan John asked if we could go in when the court restarted - AND THEY SAID YES! We were so excited. And a mite uncomfortable, because we were dressed for Cambodian heat and bumming around... not actually sitting in the trial chamber. I definitely went to the ECCC in a peasant skirt and beater-style tank top... :/ Jenna had to borrow Catherine's scarf to get in, because they wouldn't allow in shorts. Maybe we should have dreamed a little bigger.

All embarrassment aside, this was an amazing experience. We were witnessing the first day of trial proceedings in the first case to make it all the way to trial at the ECCC. Whoa.

(Before each case actually makes it to trial, there is a pre-trial period where the judges, defense, prosecution, and civil party attorneys attempt to hash out all of the nitty gritty rules and procedures for the actual trial. Some things are the same as trial - the defense likes to question the detention of the accused in both chambers, and the civil party attorneys don't really get to do anything ever being two examples - but the pre-trial is where Cambodian and international law get smushed together and a procedure and rules are agreed upon, and trial is where things really get adversarial and guilt needs to be proven and sentences handed down. Of the five cases currently active at the ECCC, four are in the pre-trial stage and one - the one we saw - has proceeded to trial chambers.)

The case before the trial chamber currently is prosecuting Kaing Guek Eav, or Duch (pronounced Doy-ik, we think) the man who ran Tuol Sleng/S-21 Prison during the Khmer Rouge. On Tuesday we missed the first Prosecution and Defense opening statements (they each gave 2) and we just missed Duch addressing the court, coming in as the second Defense attorney gave his opening statement. After the opening statements finished, the trial for the day ended with discussion of some logistical problems that had crept up along with some civil party attorney discontent being expressed due to their lack of opening statement.

We decided to go back to take in a full day of court in small groups. I was drawn for the second day of Duch's trial on Wednesday. We arrived at the ECCC at about 8:45 on Wednesday morning excited to hear the outcome of some of the previous day's debates, since the Justices wanted the time to confer, and to see what would happen next. In summary, the Court denied the Civil Parties' request for opening statements and requested that the Defense put forth the challenges they had alluded to the day before in their first opening statement. At first they didn't want to and tried to write everything off as a misunderstanding, but when asked a second time, the attorneys finally spit out their request to have the court release Duch to house arrest, since he had been in jail for 10 years - 2 years without being charged with anything, 7.5 in the custody of the Cambodian Military, and the final 2.5 in the custody of the ECCC (the .5s are approximate). There is apparently a Cambodian statute that says people charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes or related charges cannot be held for longer than three years, that supplied the basis of the Defense's request. The Prosecution countered, but didn't really put forward overly convincing arguments (at least, not as convincing as the defense was, in my view). One of the Civil Party attorneys made the best argument for retaining custody of Duch. She said that the ECCC has until July before their three years of custody are up, so this is a non-issue that should maybe be discussed in July, if ever. She is one smart lawyer lady. And she had badass hair. The justices decided to break for lunch and conferencing.

After lunch, the Justices came back and said they were gonna take the weekend to discuss release, but that they had decided the next order of business should be to read into the court record the "agreed upon facts" from the indictment. Basically, what happened was the pre-trial chamber came up with this indictment, listing the crimes Duch committed. The Prosecution then broke the indictment down into individual pieces of factual evidence and submitted these to both the court and to the Defense. The Defense was then supposed to go through the facts and designate whether they "agreed" with a fact, "agreed in part", "disagreed" or "did not contest" the fact. The facts that are agreed to or not contested are then considered not up for debate or discussion during the trial; that part of the indictment is fact, true. The Justices, on the recommendation of the Civil Parties, decided that it would be best for everyone's understanding of the case and proceedings if the agreed or not contested facts be read aloud. In the first of three parts, there were some 240 agreed or not contested facts that the prosecutor read aloud in the trial chamber. They ranged from the location of S-21 and M-13 (another prison Duch ran for a time), to the number of prisoners held and killed at S-21, to the methods of torture and the genesis of torture training manuals (:Duch. He produced three volumes of torture techniques and rules of interrogation for the prison... oy). I started the reading trying to write down each fact. About 60 in I switched to writing numbers to keep track of the total and jotting down the facts I found particularly compelling. At 200, I quit writing all together and just marked tallies. I have a full page and a half or two pages of notes that are almost entirely number sequences. I felt a little dazed by the time we left the courtroom, especially when I remembered there were still 100 or so facts to be read from the second section of the indictment (the defense had chosen to not respond to the third part, since it spoke about Duch's character or personality or something, and they felt it resembled self-incrimination, so they didn't look at those facts).

The next day Nathan, Patricia and Catherine went to the court, while the rest of us bummed and taught English. Thursday was part of the pre-trial chamber proceedings for Ieng Sary, the foreign minister for the KR. The man who tricked the entire world to allowing them to hold and keep their UN seat while committing crimes against humanity, if not genocide, even after they had been forced from power. He makes my blood boil. On the docket for Thursday was an appeal put forward by the Defense, requesting that Ieng Sary be released from jail due to poor health, if not cancelling his trial completely, since he was suffering from "near fatal old age" or something like that. The appeal was (obviously) shot down, but according to N, P, and C, the whole lot of that court (minus perhaps the Prosecutor) made themselves look like a complete joke before the justices gave their decision. The attorney's arguing skills were apparently far below those of Duch's trial chamber. Sary also liked to make the justices angry by moving to sit with his attorneys, without permission, instead of his assigned place in the middle of the room, which is just a hilarious image in my head, especially since he's too feeble to "run across the border to Thailand" (a direct quote from the defense) due to the fact that he's suffering "terminal old age" (a summary of the defense). Ridiculous.

I need to peace out for the day, before I spend all of my baht on internet. Yeah, that's right! We're back in Thailand! Woo!

Oh - and here are some links if you are looking for more info on the ECCC and the trials:
ECCC Website
Phnom Penh Post - Enlish-language daily newspaper
and... Supposedly the Cambodia Daily has a website... somewhere on the web. But I can't find it. It's another English-language newspaper and I had lunch with three of their reporters on Wednesday.

"I don't care for your fairytale."

- Sara Barellis, "Fairytale"

I've been searching for the proper words to convey the Kingdom of Cambodia, its present and its past as Democratic Kampuchea, and mostly just failing at finding any that seem to successfully capture what I have witnessed here.

Our second or third day in Phnom Penh, we visited Tuol Sleng, formerly known as S-21, a Khmer Rouge prison. They estimate that up to 20,000 people came through Tuol Sleng between 1975 and 1979 and that no more than 14 are lived past the end of the KR's rule. (The lowest estimate of prisoners is the 12,000-some they have records for, and is the number being used in the international tribunal I will tell about later. The lowest estimate of those who survived: 7. Everyone else was killed.) Tuol Sleng is now a "genocide museum" and a crumbling one at that.

14 S-21 inmates, political prisoners, were killed as the KR left the facility just ahead of the Vietnamese army. When the Vietnamese arrived they found these 14 people dead in their cells in the A building of the prison. While these rooms have been cleaned, they have all of the items in them - bed, manacles, sometimes a broom or bed pan, that were there when the prison was vacated. Each of these 14 rooms also has a photo of the individual killed in the room - a photo of their corpse as it was found, and - if they could find it - a photo of the individual from when they entered Tuol Sleng or from before the KR takeover. They are now buried in the courtyard.

The second building - B - was filled with communal cells, similar to those we saw at the Hanoi Hilton. In these cells, prisoners are all shackled or manacled (or sometimes both) to the same pole in the middle of the room. They share sleeping space, bathroom space, dining space. Guards usually keep them from talking. Along with showing one or two of these communal cell rooms, this building also held huge displays of the photos taken of each prisoner when they entered S-21, and showed the chair they sat on for these pictures. It reminded me of the chair you sit in at the eye doctor's... except it held your neck in the correct place, rather than your forehead, and looked like a torture device. They also had paintings of the most common torture techniques used by the KR, and had some of the implements in various corners of the rooms. In one room there was also a display of skulls, bones and clothing recovered from the S-21 Killing Fields - Choung Ek, which I will again, tell more about later.

Building C had the individual cells. One sign told about living conditions in these cells. Prisoners were not able to talk to each other, leave their cells, have exercise or yard time, may or may not have been able to relieve themselves in a pail, and showers consisted of a guard spraying down the cell with a hose once a week. The sign continued that the purpose of this "shower" was not to allow the prisoner to bathe, but rather to clean the cell, which tended to stink too much if this procedure was not performed. Some of the individual cells were made of brick, some of wood. Tuol Sleng at one point had been a high school, so these walls separating cells had been added later by the KR. As a result, some prisoners had no light or ventilation in their cells, except for the small amount able to filter in from the six inches or so left between the walls and the ceiling.  The floor above the cells had two museum exhibits.  One told the history of the Khmer Rouge, from Pre-Takeover to the body counts as of 2005.  The second had some stories of how various KR underlings went from leading a village or small group or a province to being held in Tuol Sleng.  These stories were all told by surviving relatives and the "biographies" they were forced to write as part of their confessions and torture in the prison. They had such high ideals; thought they were fighting for something good and noble.  I can only imagine the horror and disappointment they must have felt. 

The last building - D - had three floors.  The top floor was a viewing room for a documentary about S-21.  To be honest, I was too busy trying to not pass out from heat and stuffiness to remember much of the movie. The bottom floor had a photo exhibit put together by the museum and a Dutch (? - Western European anyway) journalist who visited Cambodia during the KR - one of the few Westerners allowed into the country after the takeover.  He said he put together this exhibit as a way to show what he and his colleagues had seen, what they had wanted to see, and what he now believed about what they were shown.  This group of journalists became western members of the Khmer Rouge's "propaganda machine" after this visit.  The one interviewed for this project said they were all Marxists and members of the local Socialist party.  They went into the visit with the idea that the KR represented a more perfect Maoist revolution.  And that was what they saw.  Everything that should have raised questions - where are the "new people", how much of this is staged, why are so many children working in factories, etc. - became a short-term imperfection that the KR planned to correct once the economy rebounded. The exhibit was bookended with comments from the journalist, which expressed his deep sorrow and disillusionment that have entered his life as a result of this visit and the truth of the KR.  I didn't visit the second floor.  I had had enough prison. 

The next week we all took a day or two to visit the International Tribunal that is currently prosecuting or conducting pre-trial chambers for five of the former KR leaders.  The first two days (the two I went to) were the beginning of the trial for the man who ran the S-21 prison - Duch.  Being at the tribunal was fascinating.  There was so much procedural hoopla that went on.  

... I'm going to need to finish this another day.  The hotel here in Siem Reap (where Angkor Wat is located!! Stoked!) seems to be wanting to shut down the internet and lobby for the night. 

To be continued...