KILLING FIELDS, LIVING STREETS

An hour's dusty tuk-tuk from Phnom Penh brings you to the site of the Killing Fields, Cambodia's holocaust era from 1975 to 1979 in which the mad man Pol Pot savagely murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people to create a "perfect society". City dwellers were forced to farms and died of malnutrition, impossible quotas, or beatings. All teachers, doctors, and educated professionals were killed. Families were destroyed. Hospitals and schools demolished. But the most heart-breaking was that women, children, the old, the infirm, and everyone else were brutally executed with farm tools, clubs, axes, and smashed bodies. You keep asking, between holding back tears, what kind of human could do this. This Genocide Centre points out that atrocities have happened  before (e.g., Hitler, Chile, pioneer America, Serbia, etc., etc.)  and tries to alert us to prevent it again. This place portrays unimaginable horrors and leaves you weak in the knees and the heart.

The journey back into New Year's Eve became a bit of an antidote to the darkness of the Killing Fields. Cambodia is moving forward with youth and prosperity. School kids burst out like at schools anywhere. There are Pottery BIKES, not Pottery Barns. And around the main plaza the streets were absolutely clogged with Hondas and partiers. From the old desolation to the new jubilation. Like the sign says in Cambodian, Happy New Year 2014!