Bears and Snakes and Vomit. Oh My!

Laos has been entertaining so far. The trip to the Laos Vietnamese Friendship Circus was a lot of fun and caused Susan to face her largest (and I mean this literally) fear. To my knowledge, the only thing she truly fears is snakes (or anything that has the shape of a snake such as a worm). All went well through the wonderful acrobatics and clown performances. The only animal act advertised was a bear riding a bicycle. Instead, a large box was brought out into the arena accompanied by a muscle bound strongman. He reached inside and managed to remove a 12-15 foot (it was at least 30' and 10-12" across in diameter - Susan) Burmese python. After wrapping it around his body (it must have weighed a hundred pounds (it easily weighed 200 lbs - Susan)), he paraded around the ring to the gasps of the crowd, especially those in the first rows. He then placed it in the center of the ring and it started to slither around as he attempted to direct it. The folks in the front rows looked pretty nervous. Then he returned to the box and pulled out an equally large python. He now had two snakes to control and the second was far more active and intent on entering the stands. There was just a small raised ring separating the arena from the stands and the 2nd python started to slither over causing the first couple of rows to scramble back to the delight of everyone else but Susan, who had her eyes tightly shut. Thankfully we were about ten rows up on the other side of the arena or Susan would have been out of there! This reminds me of a really funny story of Susan finding a large styrofoam cup with a lid in the refrigerator up at Mammoth Lakes. She opened it suspecting some mouldy leftovers. Instead there was a mass of wiggly 3 inch nightcrawlers used for fishing bait. The box flew up as Susan screamed. Worms landed all over the kitchen and I fell on the floor laughing. For the record, I knew nothing about the worms which had been left by a prior occupant. I only marginally redeemed myself by collecting and disposing of the worms. Yesterday we drove to Luang Prabang after visiting a village and spending the night with a village family sleeping on the floor (or a wooden bed covered by a thin mat in my case) under mosquito netting. Not the most comfortable night, but what a visit to remember. They took us on a hike through the hills to a muddy pond where villagers young and old were busy catching fish with baskets for our dinner. Along the way we met the most delightful farmer. He had a twinkle in his eye and the most infectious laugh. He was about half my height and found me to be really funny - especially my belly which he rubbed and hugged. He had all sorts of clever inventions that created a clatter if someone approached the hut he shared with his wife. Daniel especially liked his homemade cell phone. It was comprised of a large log of bamboo hanging from a tree which he would strike with a mallet to send various signals to his closest neighbors about a half a mile away (ie: "please come help on a project" or "extra food, come on by"). Before dinner, a village elder honored us by leading a special blessing ceremony called a "basi" with the help of other villagers. Our family sat around a large arrangement of flowers with a candle and strings coming down the sides. The elder recited a long series of blessings in Lao for good health, happiness, employment etc as strings were tied around our outstretched wrists. Each of the villagers then cut off additional lengths of string to tie around our wrists and add their blessings. Its origins appear to reflect aspects of Buddhism, Animist beliefs and Lao general friendliness. We viewd this as similar to a blessing that we often sing for visitors at Handong. Getting back to the drive to Luang Prabang, it took us about 6 hours and involved going through about 3,000 curves in the road. Everyone in the family but me got carsick along the way prompting a mental note to never travel without Dramamine in the future. We are now deep into the mountains and jungles and spotted a bear along the way. We are delighted to have two Laos traveling with us in addition to the van driver. One of the Lao speaks English well and told us of village life along the way. We met him through a literacy project that we are helping with that involved a visit to a village school where we helped him entertain the students with songs and games centered around the literacy project. Each student got a book in their own language which they were encouraged to trade between themselves. Other books went to the library. Most Laos that live in the villages are illiterate, so the project is quite a help. The other Lao had never been out of his village, so he came along to see his country. Today we have an elephant ride through the jungle scheduled for Susan, the kids and our Lao guests. I'll stay behind to read, which is about as adventuresome as I get outside of watching pythons at the circus.

Arrival in Laos in Sleeper Train

I have long wanted to ride on a sleeper train and we finally got the opportunity in our trip from Bangkok to Laos thanks to Thailand Railways. The sleeper train was everything that I hoped for. The attendant turned the beds down and made them up with linen, a pillow and a blanket. There is an upper and lower bed on each side of the railroad car with the lower bed replacing the seats used during the day. Due to some sort of a problem, our over night train was delayed a day. Changing to new tickets resulted in the whole family being in the upper bunks. The kids we delighted and Dad was less so. Shinnying up a steal ladder and swinging into the bunk concerned me a bit. With a little practice, it wasn't a problem and I was safely tucked in my real sleeper bed. Susan and the kids were as delighted as I was. It is like being rocked to sleep with the rhythm of the train wheels on the track. I felt like a character in Agatha Christie's "Murder on the Orient Express". As I fell asleep, I could hear the distant sounds of various languages whispered in Thai, French, English and who knows what other languages. Similar trips on a sleeper train in the US are very expensive. A sleeper berth on a trans pacific flight would probably cost well over $5,000. If you care to travel to Bangkok, you can have this delightful experience for $20.00 and wake up the next morning near the outskirts of Laos. In the morning the attendant converts the car back to seats where you can eat breakfast ordered from one of the attendants and watch the scenery through the windows. Laos, by all accounts is a poor nation. I was very surprised to find the capital city of Vientiane is beautiful and far from what I expected. You see the French colonial period reflected in the old architecture and French style layout of the main boulevards. There are lots of restaurants and people strolling along the walkway that runs along side the Mekong River. After the hectic pace of Bangkok and Phnom Penh traffic, it was gratifying to see a less hectic pace during the off rush hour time periods. I also saw signs of economic development with new hotels and other building projects. Our friends have given us a wonderful tour of the city and I could easily envision living in a community like this. On Sunday we will head off with our friends for a visit to a village (where we will help with a literacy project and experience the hospitality of a village family that has invited us to spend the night and join them in their meals) before we move on to explore many of the beautiful sights of rural Laos. Tonight we will attend a performance of a Laos Vietnamese Friendship Circus. First impressions are important, and Laos has made a nice impression on us thus far. Undoubtedly we will see signs of serious poverty in the days ahead, but there are also signs that the Lao people are a resilient and happy people with lots of potential.

Thai fun, fellowship and food.

When Susan Song became Susan Chinn, she warned me that odd things happened in her life and I should be prepared. I've remembered that warning over the years, and never more so than during our recent world travels. When you look up "stodgy old bachelor who is content to stay home and read a book" on Google, my picture used to pop up at the top of the listings. Well, we are now half way through a trip to Southeast Asia growing out of a venture to The Republic of Korea as a visiting professor. You would think, during the past 6 months that we were, by now, accomplished world travelers. In truth, the stodginess has not strayed far from this happily married man. During the first leg of the SE Asia tour through Cambodia we were met by people in ministry each step of the way to handle translation, accomodations and even selection of places to eat. I was along for the ride and enjoying each moment of the adventure. The second leg of our trip took us to Thailand. Here we were truly on our own and I was more than a little apprehensive. I had lots of questions and few answers. Susan, however, is the happy traveler and ready to conquer every challenge. So, here we are at this wonderful Christian guest house that makes us feel right at home in a quiet section of town with a library on site. I'm ready to settle right in with a couple of carefully selected good books and spend 5 days in Thailand reading. Some world traveler! We finally ventured out yesterday in quest of a recharger for a cell phone which we failed to bring along. For those (such as myself) less schooled in world travel, you can get a SIM card and minutes for your cell phone that make it useable in a foreign country for just a few dollars. What a bargain (and reminder of how much our home cell providers are making money hand over fist back in the states for the same service.) We asked around and got the name of an electronics warehouse that has anything and everything cheap here in Bangkok. So, we loaded the family into a cab yesterday in search of the needed recharger. The cab took us to a beautiful building and we walked into a mall that reminded me of every indoor mall in Orange County. Half of Bangkok must have been in this same mall as we set off to find the needed recharger. Immediately we noticed there were no electronic stores in sight, but lots of fast food places. So here we are in Thailand, home to some of the best cuisine in the world and I hunt down a Burger King and the kids insist on McDonalds. We compromised by going to both places as Susan wisely abandoned us for a Thai noodle shop. After our meal we sought out an information desk to find the electronic section of this mall. Apparently we got our signals switched, for there wasn't one. There were some stores on the 5th floor that carried cell phones who might be able to help us. No luck on the recharger, but we found a brand spanking new cell phone for less than $20 at this high end mall (they even had luxury automobile dealerships). Daniel is becoming a bit of a wiz at electronics, but the stodgy professor was taking no chances. We had the clerk at the store set the whole thing up and figure out what our phone number was (and list it on the contact phone listings.) From there it was back to the guest house and the books. We'd survived our venture out on our own and returned victorious. No point in pushing it. Today is Sunday and it is time to find a local church. We ran into a family and another group of short term missionaries who planned to attend the Evangelical Church of Bangkok this morning at breakfast. Good, I think, we can follow them. The group fills up about 4 different cabs and off we go to the Bangkok Sky Train that will take us the rest of the way to ECB. Unfortunately, our cab driver had a mind of his own. Fortunately, the leader of the short term missionaries was in the 4th cab. When our cab headed past the intended station, our guardian angel had his driver give chase (follow that cab!) and eventually jumped out of his cab to pound on our window when we got caught in traffic and redirect our poor cabdriver to another station for the sky train. But for his intervention, I have no idea where we would have ended up (confirming the folly of having strayed from the comfort of the books back at the guest house.) The sky train was crowded and fun and took us to our destination. We enjoyed another outstanding worship service at ECB though I was puzzled by their perspective on missions. They send missionaries out around the world. They share this same puzzling trait with the church we visited in Cambodia and our Korean church. They don't seem to realize that Jerusulem in the Great Commission is Anaheim California and they are part of the outer parts of the world where missionaries are sent. And then the lights came on as I fully realized for the first time that every local church in every part of the world is Jerusalem for purposes of the Great Commission. From a Thai perspective, Anaheim California is the outer parts of the world. Great insight Professor Chinn (duh!) Still, it was a reminder of how personal God's word is to us and the local body of believers we worship with. After the service I feel the siren call of the books, but realize it would be awkward to explain to others that we went to Thailand and failed to experience the incredible food. So, we checked with some of the parishoners and headed off the the one that was their favorite. I should have asked about the price range. Suffice it to say that we spent about 2 weeks of Susan's carefully calculated food budget for our trip. We truly didn't care as we ate one of the best meals ever. Every dish was served family style and came with a variety of sauces that delighted the taste buds. The best of all was the giant prawn dish with a delicious sauce and tasty ingredients sprinkled on top. Thankfully the kids are at that stage of development where they claim they will never eat a shrimp. So Susan and I were able to split the dish of 4 baked shrimp that were easily 4 times as big as anything I've seen described as colossal back in the states. Each of them was as big as a medium sized lobster. We've now arrived back at the guest house where I'm back with the books - and memories of some fun times and meals in Bangkok without a guide and on our own. I may yet turn into a world traveler.

A Floating Village and a New Destination!

The floating village is probably Susan's favorite memory of Cambodia. Tonle Sap Lake is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.  It provides support for many of Cambodia's fisherman who, in turn, supply fish as a staple for the Cambodian diet.  What makes Tonle Sap so interesting is the impact of the monsoon rains.  During the wet season the lake greatly multiplies in size and the incoming water actually reverses the flow of the river that normally feeds out of the lake and eventually into the Mekong river.  In the wet season the water level rises well over 20 feet.  As you can imagine, the fishing villages on the edge of the lake would normally disappear entirely.  Instead, they become floating villages.  The villagers' homes are either built on top of scaffolding allowing them to perch above the flood level, or are on barges or houseboats that rise along with the water level.  We boarded an old wooden boat that reminds one a bit of the African Queen (of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn fame) though with some benches mounted in the center under a wooden roof with a tin covering.  The muffler less motor was beneath the ancient floorboards and was operated by what looked like a bicycle chain connected to the throttle.  The skipper was one of the villagers who was assisted by a young boy about Robert's age.  He scampered all over the boat and liked sitting on the tin covered roof where his steps resonated like a drum to our small group of passengers below.  This of course was an irresistible attraction to our kids who scampered up on the roof as well leading to quite a din of noise below.  As we puttered along we were treated to an incredible sight of the village perched some 25 feet above our heads by thin wooden poles with more wooden poles as cross braces. We saw all sorts of buildings supported high in the air including a school, police station, countless houses and even a large restaurant.  Meanwhile, at the river and lake level we saw all the nets, traps and other trappings of this large fishing village along with countless boats, many of which were making their way to and from the lake, most with the clatter of diesel motors though some were propelled by paddles.  Village kids played and fished with nets along the shoreline. During the rainy season, the children are dropped off at school by canoe.  It was all truly an amazing sight. Rather than the original plan to stay another week on a remote island in Southern Cambodia, we climbed aboard a small shuttle to travel to Bangkok Thailand for the next leg of our journey.  It was hard to say goodbye to our students from HILS who would remain in Cambodia for another month to work on development related projects.  Crossing the border into Thailand was a stark reminder of how poor Cambodia is.  Gone were the constant signs of poverty.  Thailand has many modern style homes and more conventional style stores and restaurants.  The highway opened to multiple lanes of traffic with everyone driving on the left rather than the right side of the road. Our transportation dropped us off at a parking lot in downtown Bangkok at the beginning of rush hour.  We had no idea of where we were and only the vaguest notion of where we would go. The immediate need was a place to stay. Friends had recommended a home for traveling missionaries called the Alliance Guest Home. Susan had an address from the internet and, with the assistance of a friendly Thai fellow passenger from the shuttle, we managed to find two taxis to take us and our luggage the address. We requested but had not yet received confirmation of the reservation, but it seemed a good place to start. After a bit of a harrowing ride through the streets of Bangkok, both taxis arrived at the destination where we were delighted to discover that they did have a room available.  What a wonderful place! The guest house is set back from the traffic at the end of a long alleyway with lots of quiet places on the grounds to sit and read along with a well stocked library of books. No TV in the room and nary a complaint from Daniel, Mary and Robert, all of which have become avid readers during our time in Korea.  We ventured out last night to the streets to find dinner.  We stumbled upon a sidewalk gas grill where they were cooking pork chops and what looked like a T Bone steak! We found a table and enjoyed a delicious dinner.  I ordered the steak.  It was about 4 dollars and Daniel ordered another steak for about 2 dollars.  Our total bill was $11.00 including Susan's fish and chips, fries for Mary and Robert and 5 bottles of ice cold soda.  We'll be back!  The guest house served a breakfast this morning where we spent a wonderful time with a Cambodian missionary couple asking about their work in a larger village.  They were here for a short stay to rest and recharge their batteries before returning to their work in Cambodia.  We stayed at a similar guesthouse in Phnom Penh for traveling missionaries.  What a vital resource they provide to traveling missionaries. Susan has promised to try and include a few pictures of the floating village she took with her iPhone. Enjoy!

Traveling Thoughts

We must apologize for the lack of photos. We brought along an IPad and haven't figured how to load pictures yet.  It has been nice to have an Internet connection here in Siem Reap though slow and unreliable at times. It has allowed me to catch up a bit on the blog. Siem Reap has been a surprise.  It is a major international destination because of its proximity to Angkor Wat. We saw few Americans in the rest of Cambodia.  Here they are in abundance as well as 4 and 5 star hotels with rooms starting at three to six hundred dollars a night. Thankfully there are plenty of low cost guest houses as well.  We are staying at the Thunborey which has beautiful rooms with lots of stained wood and AC at $28.00 a night. it would easily be $80.00-100.00 a night in the US.  It is the most expensive place we have stayed in Cambodia. The food here is also very international. We had Indian cuisine upon arrival and two wonderful Korean dinners.  On the road our meals at roadside very humble open air places were $3.00-4.00 for often satisfying and tasty meals of fried rice, pork and fish soup. Here the meals are more expensive though still reasonable by US standards. The kids have especially enjoyed the 'night market'. The streets are bathed with colorful lights, street food and lots of live music.  Of course their major interest was hunting souvenirs. Our tour of Angkor Wat was the experience of a lifetime.  Imagine a vast and beautiful lost city of temples from 1000 years ago that was built with the unlimited wealth and captured slaves of a great military power. Surrounded by a huge moat that is 4-5 meters deep and at least 100 meters wide, it is indeed one of the ancient wonders of the world.  As usual, the kids were far more interested in the abundance of monkeys than the elaborate sandstone carvings that grace almost every inch of these well preserved and carefully restored memories from the past of the Angkor Empire.  After Angkor Wat, we visited several other temple sites including one that is being reclaimed from the jungle and was filmed in one of the Indiana Jones films.  The temple sites reveal the wars that raged betweem the Hindus and Buddists for many years.  Thankfully the relationships are much more peaceful and friendly in our times. Today we will visit a floating village and a folk village. We were pretty tired and sore yesterday, but a good night's sleep is wonderfully refreshing.

Village Life

One of our first projects upon arriving in Cambodia was to travel to villages in the southern part of the country where a ministry was working with the villagers to improve their lives.  Cambodia is a poor country, and the poorest generally live in remote villages.  Homes are often simple huts constructed on top of stilts.  Some are more elaborate than others, but all are unsecured by doors. They lead such simply lives that there is nothing to steal.  Chickens and pigs roam beneath the structures.  Hygeine is an important issue.  Animal waste is often uncollected and a danger to their health. Bathroom facilities in remote villages often don't exist. Water usually comes from wells or cisterns that collect rain water from the roof during the rainy season.  The cisterns usually do not supply enought water year around during the dry season.  Wells can be contaminated.  In the village we visited, the few wells were insufficient to supply the water needs and the one at the village school was contaminated with arsenic.  A number of years ago, before the assistance of the ministry we visited, a number of the villagers died of diarrhea from the contaminated well water causing others to flee the village.  Thanks to the help of the ministry we were with, new wells were dug and the villagers were trained to collect animal waste and restrict the large animals from freely wandering in areas where the people lived.  The wells were hand dug by the villagers and encased in concrete to keep them clean and protect the villagers from accidentally falling in.  Each well could be dug for $100 and shared by several families.  It was called the Living Well program.  More wells still need to be dug when money is available, but it stopped the spread of disease so the villagers no longer needed to flee their homes. Despite the poverty, village life is quite pleasant.  The people and children are happy and content as they live their simple life and work their fields. When darkness falls, the activity stops in the village we visited, for they have no electricity. Thankfully, the government has run electricity to a nearby village which suggests it may be coming to them as well in time.  The children, and there are lots of them, are educated in the village school.  There are about 270 children in this school that serves just this village.  Thankfully, the government built them a new schoolhouse to replace the old one room school. Now they are able to have smaller classes divided by grades. There are 4 teachers for the 270 students and, we are told, each is paid a salary equivolent to $15.00 per month.  Even by Cambodian standards, this salary is especially low. Still, there are few expenses in the villages and my sense was tha the villagers assisted by providing food and shelter.  The typical village family has 10-12 children. In the cities, families average 4-5 children.  City dwellers remember fondly their childhoods in the villages.  Children in the cities must play in the streets where traffic is a constant danger. We very much enjoyed visiting the village school where the children were very happy and greated us with collective words of welcome and huge smiling faces.  Our kids, although shy, were able to tell a little about their school experiences in the US.  We were able to leave small gifts for the chilren and teachers that our group brought along from Korea. We also visited a small house church that meets beneath one of the village homes. Not many villagers attended the service, but it is there for those who want to learn more about the God this ministry serves. We were delighted by the beauty of praise songs sung in Khmer and were able to join in with our English.  The village pastor shared a message while we sat on mats laid out on the ground (my old bones used a wooden bench instead.) After the service the people mingled and then returned to their simple village lives. The ministry that is working with the village we visited is also helping to improve the farming techniques to make the farms more productive.  Villagers are usually resistent to change until they see their benefits. Slowly change is coming as farmers try using gas driven generators to pump water to their fields during the dry season. Crops are improving and more land is put into production. We visited with the village chief who was kind enough to help show us around the village.  He is a very nice middle aged man who lived in a home similar to the othe villagers.  His primary responsibility was to resolve disputes that might arise between the villagers.  From all appearances he did his job well. One final village story for now. We met a young man in this village who was seriously injured when he was stepped on by a water buffalo while working a field as a child (water buffalos are a beast of burden in Cambodia and are everywhere). A series of surgeries failed to save his foot and his leg is now deformed as well. He has a beautiful voice and sang us a song he wrote in Khmer.  It was a story about his life, a lost love after his injury, and his hopes for the future. He is now setting up a computer lab in one of the village huts with the hope of teaching computer skills to the village children.  It is an ambitious plan, especially without electricity.  He is now using battery power, but the ministry hopes that some form of solar energy might help as well.  Even solar energy is problematical during the monsoon season when there can be little sun light during the day.  It is good to see the hopes and dreams of the village people as they seek to preserve their culture in a modernized world.  We are very thankful for our time with them and inspired by their simple lives. I'll resist the urge to compare them to wealthy, spoiled and often unhappy Americans in the US (of course I didn't resist the urge at all as you can clearly see). More later on this wonderful country. We are off today to visit Angkor Wat and an ancient civilization.

Tears for Cambodia

The children handled Tuol Sleng Prison and the Killing Fields pretty well.  I didn't.  As I'd been told by others, there was not a lot to see.  Unlike a US museum, there were no clever graphic dispays or recreation of the events, just what was found after the Vietnamese invading forces conquered the Khmer Rouge regime of Pol Pot.  As you walk through, you hear either an audio description of what happened or read simple displays on the walls.  It is your imagination that transforms these audio and visual images to the the seemingly unimaginable nightmare suffered by the Cambodian people between 1975 and 1979.  When the Khmer Rouge won the civil war in Cambodia, Pol Pot was allowed to impose the communist ideology he had learned from studying Mao Tsu Tung during his student years in Paris.  His dream was of a communist society built entirely out of agrarian workers who worked in common and shared everything in common as well.  To fulfill this dream, it was necessary to tear down what was already in existence and remove all those who stood in the way. The cities were all evacuated and everyone became a peasant working in the fields.  The existing peasants were called "base people" and were glorified by Pol Pot.  The doctors, lawyers, shop keepers, teachers, intellectuals, government officials and former regime soldiers were "new people" and must work to become like the base people.  The work was backbreaking and food was scarce since most of the rice was exported to China to pay for the arms needed to prepare for war with the Vietnamese who Pol Pot hated and distrusted.  From the beginning, possible threats were dealt with by lethal force.  The Khmer Rouge had a saying that, "when you remove a weed, you must take out the root as well." As their paranoia grew, they started systematically exterminating all the above classes of "new people."  Anyone who could potentially divert loyalty from the new regime was killed.  I listed classes of people and asked the kids how the Khmer Rouge treated them.  The Village Chiefs? They killed them. The doctors? They killed them. The lawyers? They killed them. The teachers? They killed them. And so on. And yet that was not enough.  Once they killed a person, they must kill his entire family as well, for they were the roots of the weed and might seek revenge.  Wives, children, babies, none were to be spared.  At least 1.7 million innocent human beings were murdered, died of starvation or died of the harsh working conditions or disease in the rice fields.  Tuol Sleng Prison was a location where primarily soldiers and government officials were taken for torture and death. Following months of torture they "confessed" and implicated others who were in turn arrested and taken to the prison where the process was repeated. The Khmer Rouge took photos of each prisoner and kept records of their confessions. Thousand of photos of them are on boards throughout the prison.  As you walk through these horrid cells, you see their last sights and can feel the terror they experienced. Their stories are told by former guards and the relative few who survived.  After their confessions, they were blindfolded and taken on trucks to one of the killing fields.  Bullets were too precious to use.  Instead, they were forced to kneel before pits dug by other forced labor. All must have sensed their doom at that moment.  The guards struck them with heavy objects on the back of their heads as another guard slit their throats with any object that was available such as machetes or the jagged edges of palm fronds.  They were then tumbled into the pit. Those who survived the assault were soon dead from the lye that was poured over each group of bodies to stifle the stench and ensure they were all dead.  Babies were executed by swinging them by their feet against what they called the killing tree where their skulls were smashed and brains spattered on the tree.  Their cries and screams were muffled by the martial music that was amplified during each night's gristly work. We toured the field used for the Tuol Sleng Prison. Over ten thousand bodies were excavated from these pits when they were dug up.  As we walked the grounds, you can still see bones and remnants of their clothing emerging from the ground.  There is a memorial in the center where the recovered skulls of the victims are preserved and can be viewed on 15 different levels. Although the resiliency of our children and the Cambodian people has allowed them to move on, I cannot.  I cannot shake the visual images in my mind of the terror they felt as they were trucked to their brutal execution.  The sad looks on their faces in their booking photos is imbedded in my mind as I know what awaited them.  Their torturers and executioners knew the same fate awaited them if they did not support the regime.  It is tempting to blame the Cambodian people for allowing this to happen.  I wonder if many of any society would have the courage to resist under these circumstances.  All we like sheep are led astray . . . God have mercy on the Cambodian people.

Cambodia

All aboard for Cambodia, Thailand and Laos

Living in Korea has opened the door to experiences and opportunities to travel that our family could never have imagined.  We feel so blessed.  During our time here we wanted to make the best of this opportunity.  We've been able to explore Korea over the past 5 months and, starting Friday, we will extend the exploration to Southeast Asia (also called Indochina.)  Handong International Law School (HILS) where I am a visiting professor, has a conference they help to sponsor every year in Cambodia called "Law and Development".  The idea is to meet with Cambodian law students and professors to hear presentations on the subject of the conference and develop good relations between the students and the professors along the way.  I'm hoping this project will be a good one for Trinity Law School (where I normally teach) A side benefit to the trip will be our escape from the frigid Korean winter into the warm tropics, shorts, suntan lotion and mosquito repellant!  

Cambodia, for those who did not follow the news events of the late 70s, was taken over by the Khmer Rouge following a civil war.  Pot Pot was the leader of the Khmer Rouge.  He was a despot on the scale of Adolph Hitler.  Nearly 1/4 of the population of eight million Cambodians was murdered during his reign of terror.  I won't try and detail the horrors of his regime which has been extensively documented by historians.  It is enough to say that Cambodia still bears the scars of this tragedy where today there is likely not a family that was did not lose loved ones just 30-35 years ago. 

Our whole family is going with me to this conference where Susan and the kids will explore Phnom Pehn and its immediate surroundings while I am busy being a professor.  Before and after the conference we will have opportunities to visit some fascinating sights with the other professors and students from Handong.  Before the conference we will visit a village where we learn about village life and see a working farm where many modern development projects are at work.  We'll sleep on mats on a large concrete slab covered by mosquito netting (we started taking malaria pills last Friday.)  Assuming Dad survives his night on the concrete slab, we'll also visit a school run by a Christian NGO (non government organization) where our kids will be able to see and understand  the life of a child in rural areas.  I'm especially looking forward to the kids jumping into a rural pond and learning first hand what leaches are and how they attach to your body.  We'll warn them, but I've yet to see the boys pass up an opportunity to cool off with a dip in anything that looks like a pool. 

During the trip we will travel to Angkor Wat which is one of the wonders of ancient civilization.  It is a city of temples and ruins that displays beautiful architecture unlike anything that developed in Western civilization. Daniel has taken on the task of studying this civilization in preparation for the trip.  After this visit, the Chinn family will go its own way.  We've found a place called Lazy Beach off the coast of Cambodia where we can rent a wooden bungalow on stilts at the edge of the beach and jungle.  It sounds like a perfect place to swim, snorkel, relax, swat mosquitoes and enjoy the warmth for several days. 
From Lazy Beach we will travel through Thailand to catch an overnight train to Laos where we will be able to spend some time with some good friends who are in Laos to assist in a Laotian government related program.  They will help us explore the wonders of Laos with some highlights including a visit to an elephant sanctuary (Mary is researching elephants and Robert is researching monkeys) and a  visit to a rural Laotian Village school where we hope to help deliver a library of children's books as part of a literary project. 

Susan has been busy preparing for the trip by picking up gifts and school supplies for some of the places we will visit.  The kids have decided to contribute a big part of their Christmas money to help the children at a village school in Cambodia.  They clearly get that trait from their mom. 

We will probably not have the ability to make any blog entries while we are away, but I imaging we'll have some stories to tell after we return on February 5th.  Mary is planning to keep a journal on the trip so she can write a blog entry.  As we come to mind over the next month, we'd appreciate prayer for our safety as we travel.  And may God Bless you all in this new year. 

Ken Chinn