One thing we noticed right away in Cambodia is the large number of amputees and blind people; many lost their feet or legs or eyes after stepping on landmines — farmers working in the rice fields, children playing, ordinary people going about their business. Cambodia has one of the highest concentrations of landmines in the world, left over from the military conflicts of the 1970-80s. In 1953 Cambodia gained independence from the French. For the next 15 years, under King Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia remained relatively prosperous and peaceful, though it couldn’t completely isolate itself from the war in neighboring Vietnam. In 1969, President Richard Nixon authorized the secret bombing of Cambodia, in an attempt to drive out North Vietamese forces. The bombing began along the border with Vietnam but soon spread deep into the interior as Vietnamese communists retreated deeper into Cambodia. Several hundred thousand refugees fled their homes. See a map of bombing targets on the Yale University website at http://www.yale.edu/cgp/us.html During the US bombing campaign, more bombs were dropped on Cambodia than had been used by all sides during WW II. By 1973, when the bombing was halted by the US congress, roughly 250,000 Cambodians an an unknown number of Vietnamese had been killed. In 1969, while Sihanouk was on a trip to France, General Lon Nol deposed him as chief of state and Sihanouk took up residence in Beijing where he set up a government in exile, in alliance with a Cambodian revolutionary movement, the Khmer Rouge. In 1970, US and South Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia. Vietnamese communists then joined with Khmer Rouge forces to destabilize the Lon Nol government. The Khmer Rouge rapidly established control over the countryside. On April 17, 1975, two weeks before the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese, the government of Lon Nol collapsed and Phnom Penh surrendered to the Khmer Rouge. The victory of the Khmer Rough then led to one of the most brutal restructurings of society the world has ever seen. For details, visit Yale University’s website at http://www.yale.edu/cgp/ Immediately thousands of people were executed — anyone connected with the Lon Nol government, journalists, teachers, doctors, nurses, business people, anyone with an education. City dwellers fled to the countryside. Chaos followed as families were broken up, children forced to work in rice fields, parents taken to “reeducation” camps, and the sick or weak or elderly eliminated. An excellent personal account of the experiences of a 5-year old girl during this period is the book, “First They Killed My Father: a daughter of Cambodia remembers” by Loung Ung, 2000. Today, Loung Ung lives in America and works for During the 1970-80s, landmines were laid by the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese and the Americans. They were manufactured by many countries, including the US, China and Russia. One of the most popular landmines, the M18A1 is manufactured by the US company, Morton Thiokol. The design of this particular landmine has been copied by (sometimes licensed to) companies in other countries as well. Landmines cost only a few dollars to manufacture, but they are extremely difficult to locate and defuse after they are on the ground. They generally remain live for several decades, so even long after a war has ended, landmines remain a dangerous threat to civilians living in the area. We visited the Cambodia Landmine Museum in Siem Reap. The museum was founded by Aki Ra, a former Khmer Rouge soldier who personally laid thousands of landmines. Later he defected to the Vietnamese and eventually, after the war was over, made it his personal mission to defuse as many landmines as he was able. See his story at http://cambodianselfhelpdemining.org/ For more information about mine clearing efforts in Cambodia, visit: The Landmine Relief Fund http://www.landmine-relief-fund.com/ The Vietnam Veterans Mine Clearing Team – Cambodia http://members.optushome.com.au/glaust/index-1.htm

I’ve always wanted to know how silk is made and at the Artisans of Angkor Silk Factory in Siem Reap, Cambodia, I got my chance to find out. The factory is surrounded by fields of mulberry bushes, which are harvested to feed the silk worms. The building in which the silk worms are kept stands on foundation blocks that are surrounded by small pools of water. This design prevents ants from coming in the building; ants would soon kill the silk worms if they got in. The mulberry leaves are chopped up and fed to the worms, which grow rapidly into caterpillars from only a millimeter to well over 5 cm long in about 3 weeks. Then the caterpillar starts to spin its cocoon from a single strand of silk that emerges from its mouth. The silk strand is eventually 400 meters long. The cocoon must then be placed in the sun to kill the caterpillar inside before it transforms into a pupa; otherwise the moth that develops will break the silk strand when it emerges from the cocoon, rendering it useless for harvesting the silk. About 20% of the pupae are left to develop into moths which will lay eggs for the next generation of caterpillars. The cocoons to be harvested are placed in hot water where they soften. A wire whisk is used to find the end of the silk strand. For the first 100 meters, strands from many cocoons are bundled together and drawn up to form the thread of raw silk, a courser form of silk than fine silk. The remaining 300 meters is used to make fine silk; here strands from each cocoon are drawn up separately. Originally the silk has a yellow color and is very stretchy. To make the silk fibers suitable for making fabrics, they must be bleached and colored. The bleaching process also makes the fibers much less stretchy, which is essential for weaving textiles. The silk is then wound onto bobbins. Silk being selected as warp threads for weaving are threaded though special combs and wound onto large reels where they are cut to length and prepared for the loom. The factory we visited has about 30 looms on which silk textiles are made, using several different methods. The women doing the weaving seem to have incredibly keen eyesight and boundless patience. The fabric they produce is stunningly beautiful and remarkably soft to the touch. The silk from this farm is sent to many women who weave in their homes in rural villages in northern Cambodia.

The stone ruins surrounding the city of Siem Reap, Cambodia testify to an empire that dominated southeast Asia for over 600 years, from 802 to 1432 CE. At its zenith, the Khmer empire had over a million inhabitants. Angkor Wat was the world’s largest temple and Angkor Thom a nearby walled city. The Angkorian period began when king Jayavarman II, who first consolidated Cambodia’s competing kingdoms in 802 CE. He declared himself a god-king, an incarnation of the Hindu god Shiva. Many of the temples at Angkor have bas-relief carvings depicting classical Hindu stories. However, by the late 12th century, ongoing development shows a clear Buddhist influence, as Jayavarman VII builds images of Avalokiteshvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion. The scale of stone temples at Angkor is quite amazing. While huge, many are covered with intricately carved detail. After the decline of the Khmer empire, the temples were completely hidden by the encroaching jungle. The ruins were “rediscovered” by the French in the 1860s, but it took many decades before significant archeology or restoration took place. In 1992, Angkor was declared a World Heritage Site by the UN. Today there are areas which are still largely piles of rubble completely overgrown by tree roots. We were struck by how effective the jungle is in reducing human works of stone into rock piles.

I’ve uploaded some photos of Cambodia to our flickr site: Angkor Temples http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622575042357/show/ Silk Production http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622575139807/show/ Siem Reap http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622699498698/show/ Butterflies http://www.flickr.com/photos/11790404@N02/sets/72157622699521532/show/