Again, lots of photos because I saw lots of beautiful things today. It was my third and final day of touring temples arround Angkor and Siem Reap. We had to go much further away today, so I got a glimpse of the rural areas of Cambodia, too.
These names probably won't mean anything to you, but they'll be helpful to me when I read this in the future: Banteay Srey, Banteay Samre, Roulous Group.
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| This is a Naga. I'm not sure if they are good or bad. One supposedly served as an umbrella for the Buddha when he was on his way towards enlightenment, so they can't be all bad. |
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| You have no idea how patient I had to be to capture this shot. |
In between temples I stopped at the
Cambodian Landmine Museum, which was established by a man who used to be a boy soldier in the Khmer Rouge army, then later undertook to start disarming landmines all over Cambodia. (There's still something like 3 million unexploded landmines and bombs in the country, and they occassionally hurt or kill people.) It was kind of a sad place, but very interesting, as it contained narratives of the founder's time in the army and his later work in disarming mines.
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| A typical home in rural Cambodia. |
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| All the mines at the Landmine Museum have been disarmed, but signs like this can be spotted around the country. |
I learned more about this part of Cambodia's history this evening, when I went to see a documentary film about Pol Pot. Until this week, everything I knew about Cambodia I learned from the movie
The Killing Fields. If you haven't seen this movie, go rent it. Then after you've watched it, watch it again with the director's commentary. So much of what I saw today tied in with what I already knew, and added to it.
Tomorrow morning I head to Phnom Penh.
These names probably won't mean anything to you, but they'll be helpful to me when I read this in the future: Banteay Srey, Banteay Samre, Roulous Group.
Any fear of the mines? Is it easy to tell where they are concentrated? If so, how do people still step on them?
ReplyDeleteI'm not afraid of the mines, because they've long been cleared out of the places tourists travel. But from what I've read, apparently the mines are still scattered all over the rural areas, which is most of the country, and plots of land have to undergo archeological-type digs to find and clear them. So they are everywhere and hidden. I just looked this topic up on Wikipedia, which says that one out of every 275 people in Cambodia have lost a limb to a mine. I've seen many, myself. People with missing limbs, that is.
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