Going Retro - November 2009

As promised, in a much better mood now. I'm better prepared for my chilly office. I put winter tights on under my jeans, and super warm fuzzy socks on too. Thermal undershirt under my sweater which is under my winter coat. And I brought my sheepskin slippers (from Egli's Sheep Farm back home) and a big jar of Citron tea to school, I think I'm on mug number 4. Also, brought my MP3 player to school, so I've been chillin to some fantastic music: Fleet Foxes, the Weakerthans, Great Lake Swimmers, Sandi Thom, etc.

Now, imagine my shock and surprise when I scanned back through recent posts to the blog and discovered my last narrative entry, as far as the "life of Lisa" goes, left off at Halloween! Sorry guys!

The good news is, November wasn't nearly as busy as September and October.

The first weekend is probably the only one really worth blogging about - Amanda Ammon and I headed to Gyeongju (Korea's ancient Capital during the 3 kingdom's period)located north of Busan, to tour the ancient sites and do our first Buddhist temple stay. Gyeongju is one of those places in South Korea that I think every expat should go see. Once it was a royal city filled with Palaces and Shrines, now it is a small tourist town built around the remains. About the only things still intact are the enormous royal tombs that rise out of the ground like the small perfectly circular hills you would see in the background of a Mario Bros game on a Super Nintendo. We toured much of the sights on foot, beginning at the Gyeongju National Museum, then walking over to Anapji Pond. From there we walked past the first of the royal tombs (Daereungwon tombs), and the remains of Royal Palace - only stumps of stone left in the ground - Cheomseongdae Observatory (the oldest standing Astronomy tower in Asia) and onto the Royal Tomb park. One of the royal tombs has been opened to visitors as a sort of "walk in" museum, where visitors can see how the tomb was designed and how the body and artifacts would have been laid out! We learned that when a King died, his queen and many servants would also be sacrificed and buried with him, the intent being that they would continue to serve the King in the next life.

After pounding all that pavement, I felt relieved when we met up with our friends from Suncheon who would also join us for a temple stay at Golgulsa, a mountain-side temple outside the city. We were dropped off at a highway junction by a rural bus and walked about 20 minutes following signs. I didn't mind. Fall in Korea is spectacular and we were walking down a winding road than ran through a small industrial town settled in the valley of a mountain range. I loved feeling 'away' from the city. We huffed and puffed our way up the short by steep pathway to the temple office for check-in. We then learned that our accomodations were at the bottom of the hill we'd just climbed, and thus we'd be making that trek many times in the next 24 hours. According to the Buddhist tradition, we ate a vegetarian supper and finished everything on our plates (Buddhists try to not to waste anything, particularly food as it sustains our bodies). Golgulsa is a famous temple in Korea because its monks practice Sunmudo, a rare and ancient meditative martial art. Not designed for combat, Sunmudo requires the practitioner to have complete control over their mind and body in order to perform the difficult, almost dancelike moves. So though most of us came prepared to meditate, we were quite suprised to find ourselves sweating and straining through a Sunmudo training session. We had a short lesson in meditative technique and then were treated to a remarkable Sunmudo demonstration that had been put together for a group of Korean visitors to the temple (lucky us).

Soon after that it was time for bed - we had a 4 am wake up call to meet! We slept as most Koreans do, on a hot ondol floor with blankets to serve as mattress and cover. Our pre-dawn alarm clock was a junior monk tapping a wooden bell and chanting outside our building. (Punishment for sleeping in was 1080 bows to Buddha, and no one dared risk finding out how strictly this policy was enforced!) After doing some morning bows and a walking meditation, we met with the monks in the dining hall to participate in the Balwoo-gongyang for breakfast around 6 AM. The Balwoo-gongyang is a meditative meal practiced by Buddhists designed to focus the mind on the food that sustains us: where it came from, the earth it gained its nutrients from, the farmer who cared for and harvest the food to the cook who prepared the meal. Nothing is wasted. The dinnerware consists of a placemat, chopsticks, a spoon and four bowls - one of which is filled with hot water for washing the other three bowls with at the end, so that you begin and end the meal with 4 clean bowls. Done properly, nothing is wasted except maybe a half a cup of water. It was one of my favourite experiences at Golgulsa, not to mention a technique I can adapt the next time I go camping.
After breakfast was finished, I hiked up the side of the mountain to see the Maya Tathagata Buddha (a big Stone Buddha cut in relief into the side of the mountain)and take in a breaktaking view of the mountain valley and forest as the sun rose. I visited the cave shrine for a little bit of meditation. We had some free time in the morning in which you could go on a tour of some local sites, which I opted out of to take the most glorious nap this girl has ever taken. To finish up the stay we ate lunch and then participated in a special tea ceremony with a student monk (He was one of the few who could speak English) who answered our questions regarding Buddhism and the Buddhist lifestyle.

Before heading back into Gyeongju to catch a bus home, Amanda and I decided we wanted to take in one more historic site: Bolguksa Temple, a temple so big and beautiful they made into a UNESCO site. It was raining pretty heavily by the time we got there, so I bought a bright green poncho to try to protect my pack. Despite the rain, the temple and its grounds were stunning, particularly the pond outside which made the brilliant japanese maple trees nearby seem to glow. We were in a bit of a hurry, so as not to miss the last bus back to Suncheon, and in my haste I managed to forget my wallet inside the main Shrine hall, and naturally didn't notice until we were all the way at the bus stop. It was quite a jog to get all the way back up the hill and inside the grounds! Thankfully the ticket guys didn't make me pay again, and of course, this is Korea, my wallet had been put behind the counter for safekeeping, money and cards just as I had left them. I also bought a really pretty souvenir bell similar to the Emile bell we saw at the National Museum from a vendor who happily accepted my money and then stuffed the trinket in a box proclaiming "Made In China". Yeesh.

Here's the photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2273036&id=122614903&l=711a8a0481

I was low on cash and energy after all that had happened in the last 5 weeks, so the rest of the month was pretty low key. Lots of social events of course, but I stayed in Suncheon, and we did a few fun photo shoots with Amanda Gale's fancy new DSLR camera. Photoshoot #1 - Kate, Lindsey C and I dressed up as Marionettes (ala my design for my Halloween Costume); Amanda G dressed up as an Angel and Lindsey V dressed up as death. Photoshoot #2 - at the end of November I put up my Christmas tree and Amanda Gale patiently took about 600 pictures over two days until Mokah decided she was ready to sit pretty in front of the tree for my Christmas Photo Cards I sent out. But we did have a lot of fun with it and Amanda and Kate both got some holiday shots to send home out of it too!

Will try to quickly write up a summary of December and the New Year before I head off on Vacation - Tomorrow I'm flying to Kota Kinabalus Malaysia!!!

I'll leave you on this note: I discovered that of all things, the toilet seats in the teacher's bathroom are heated! I have seriously been considering bringing my laptop to school and setting up shop in the lavatory. :P

Some fun vids....

I wanted to share a couple of vids here for those of you who don't have Facebook. I often post funny music videos from Korea on my facebook page, just to give the folks back home of taste of the popular media over here. Here's a recent ad for Homeplus, SK's Walmart. The men in the video are the hosts of a popular variety show 2 days, 1 night. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNPLVOk-nj8 The store is celebrating their 10th anniversary.

Here's also a new music video that's been released but the girl group HAM (Heart And Mind, they love acronyms over here): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt9BOIAxCWs

Hope you enjoy it, it all just seems very normal to me now...

Mountains, Movies, Myeongsashimni, and so Much More!

Breath, relax, let your mind wander away to the recent past...(trying to get caught up, here's a very brief summary of events in May and June and a bit of July.)

Thanks to May hosting Buddha's Birthday, Children's Day, Midterm Exams and the school Field trips, I had an astounding number of days off work. I used the "float" day in my contract to make room for a long-weekend trip to Seoul at the beginning of the month with a bunch of Suncheon friends, intending to take in Buddha's birthday parades and lantern celebrations. Unfortunately, we were there the weekend after all the really big stuff went down (oops) but we still had a great time shopping (English bookstores and Costco!), eating (thin crust pizza, Indian, Coldstone Creamery, Subway...*drools on keyboard*), touring Changdeokgung Palace, and catching the Nanta stage show (think "STOMP" in a kitchen). We even saw a parade, accidentally! And all of the lanterns from the previous weekend were strung up along the streets of Seoul, making for some beautiful late night strolls. Of course, some of the great highlights of the weekend came from just hanging out in our hotel rooms watching hilarious movies, including a very funny adaptation of a popular Korean folk tale about... well ask me if you really want to know.

The next weekend was time for me to pay the price of signing up for the "Fun Run" category of the "King of the Mountain" race, held at Mt Wolchulsan to raise money for the Yeosu orphanage. However, some important details about the course were not included in the event announcement, like "your average Korean mountain hike will feel like a walk in the park compared to this", "make sure you bring 6 litres of water because you'll sweat at least twice that much out" and "if you are not in excellent physical condition you will regret this race for the rest of your life". Look up "contradictory statement", "misnomer", "self-flagellation" or "oxymoron" in the dictionary and you will find "Mt Wolchulsan Fun Run" as a definition. The mountain is a mere 809m tall and we spent the first 3 hours of the hike climbing straight up it. The kindly Korean government did install railings, ladders and stair cases en route so that we weren't scaling the rocks themselves but that hike was the most difficult thing I have ever done physically. It is the first time I have seen KOREANS sweating and panting while hiking a mountain (they're human after all!). At the summit, I gratefully received a hearty round of applause from those who had already arrived. I'd never felt like I deserved applause more in my life. However, now we had a much longer trail to travel that would take us down the other side of the mountain to the finish line. And while the descent had a much less vertical angle to it, it also had less railings and staircases to help you out. Once in a while there was a rope anchored to help you down a large boulder and more than once I used the old butt-scoot to get down in places where I didn't trust my ruined legs to support me if I jumped down. My hike companions, Amanda and Jennifer, were real troopers. Being in better shape than me, they were very patient: they never complained about waiting for me or how many minutes I was adding to our final run time. And against all odds, and the desire to lie down in the brush and die, we finished the hike six and a half hours after we began. Last team to finish, but there was some satisfaction in the fact that not all teams who start the climb completed it. In all seriousness, it was an incredible day and the view from the top was amazing. It's a beautiful place for a hike. FYI - there was an actual "race" category, and the jerk who won it ran up and over that mountain in 2 hours and 15 minutes. The nerve!


At the end of the month, we packed up some gear and headed to Myeongsashimni Beach on the island of Wando. It was a really fun weekend. A large group of foreigners from around the area were there and we all enjoyed being away from our students for a few days. We camped on the beach, played games, cooked samgypsal and tin foil dinners, and had a big bonfire on the beach. Unfortunately, camping so close to the water had the downside of it becoming excessively chilly at night. We wound up shivering the night away in our sleeping bags wearing whatever layers we could find in our packs! Luckily, the next day gave us beautiful weather and plenty of time to nap in the sun.

The first weekend in June was another wonderful getaway, this time to Sangbulsa temple in a small mountain range near Gwangju. Lower on the mountain from where this temple sits, a mountain stream has carved away at the rock for centuries and created a beautiful swimming hole. We gathered there for a swim and a picnic with a few foreigners. The water was fresh, clear and cold. The temple was charming, quiet, and just full of beautiful paintings, new marble statues and wooden carvings. We did get caught in the rain on the way back down the mountain, and had a bit of an adventure finding cabs way out there, but we did make it home eventually.

The next weekend found me on the road again, this time to Gwangju to go to my first pro/semi-pro (?) Korean baseball game. We bought thundersticks on the way in for 1000KRW and a few in a group even in invested in cardboard sun visors when faced with the setting sun. It was a really enjoyable game, even thought the game itself was a little dull. In South Korea, sports are extremely competitive (like the school system) and baseball has become what I've heard referred to as a "pitchers game", meaning if you enjoy the technique of pitching, you'll it. But otherwise it's pretty much a whole lot of strikes and the occasional walk. What was entertaining though, was the enthusiasm of the Gwangju crowd, who regular broke out into song and synchronized thunderstick dance moves. Also entertaining, matching couples and, even better, matching families; pre-schoolers jazz dancing before the game started and an old lady in our section who refused to give up enthusiastically leading cheers even when it was clear that our team was going to get thoroughly beaten. That's quite alright, there's plenty of other reason's to go to Gwangju (a large city 1 hr away from Suncheon by bus). Reason #2: Ethnic Bar - a really cool basement cafe that is almost entirely lit by large pillar candles, is draped floor to ceiling with beautiful iridescent fabrics that must originate from India and Thailand, features a small pond for lack of a better word) in the centre of it all with candles in it, and it's only furniture are low tables and large pillows lining the floors and walls. We went there for drinks and snacks (birgin pina colada juseyo!) and then headed out to Noraebang (of course) before calling it a night and heading back to the Windmill hotel. Reason #3 Great Food - Gwangju is host to the underground grocer (a tiny shop that stocks granola bars, sour cream, Dr Pepper and sharp cheddar!), a delicious authentic Indian food restaurant, and in the bus station alone: Burger King, TGIFridays and Cold Stone Creamery! I really enjoy Korean food, but sometimes you really want a taste of back home. Gwangju delivers the goods.

The NEXT weekend in June (still with me?) was my good friend Kate's birthday bash at String bar in Gwangyang. The theme for the party was "Anything Bought at a Korean Street Market", which we decided to go all out for. We headed into Yo-young-dong shopping district and picked out only the finest Korean attire that Won can buy: Ajumma pants, crazy Konglish tshirts, and sparkly Ajumma visors. String is a great little bar that is dominated by foreigners. So much so that the sweet Korean couple that runs the place let the regulars "work" behind the bar when it gets busy and happily give over control of the dance music. We had a great time celebrating and of course, topped of the night with a good long round of Noraebong.

Pics from all of these events can be found on my facebook page, or by clicking here

Now I do believe the next weekend I stayed at home and relaxed with my cat, she was probably feeling a bit neglected after all that. The first weekend in July though, Amanda A and I were on a bus from Daegu to Cheorwon, in Gangwon-do on weekend tour package from Adventure Korea. On Saturday we enjoyed rafting on the Hantan river, bungee-jumping (no, I didn't *hangs head in shame*) and a midnight tour of the war memorial situated near Odaemi village where we homestayed with a Korean family. This village area was one of the fiercest battle points during the Korean war and today most of its residents and farmers are paid handsomely to live on the land so close to the DeMilitarized Zone (DMZ), only 6 kilometers away, and keep it populated thus protecting it from any North Korean attempts to infiltrate undetected. On the Sunday, we toured the 2nd infiltration tunnel (a tunnel blasted 3.5 kms long by the North to invade ROK), Unification observatory (which overlooks the Iron Triangle Battlefield and was the headquarters and front line of the North Korean Army, through observation goggles you could their outposts), Wolcheongri Station (which shows the remains of the last train that used to run to border, which was bombed out) and the Labor Party Building (a three-story building constructed in 1946 and used as The House of the Labor Party, many people who were here during the anticommunist movement were later tortured and killed, the remains of the building are eerily pockmarked by bullet holes).

The next couple of weeks saw my school semester come to a close on July 14th and then I had a week to relax before getting on plane back to Canada for my home leave! (Well technically a plane to Tokyo, which then sent me to Canada...). I'm going to take a rest here. But I'll do my best to shortly get a summary of my trip home and how things have been since returning to Suncheon posted. Thanks for reading!

Thoughts about Spring 2009

Ok, I'm trying to catch up, I really am. Over the next few days/weeks I'll be posting shorter entries about stuff that's happened between March and now. Hope you like...

When I returned to work after my two-month hiatus, I had a hard time getting back into the swing of, you know, working. Plus, my school asked me to start teaching classes on the 3rd day (the nerve!) so I was throwing lesson plans together in record time. I was excited. The first year students I had last year would be returning as second years and I felt I built a comfortable repoire with them. I was a little more nervous about the 1st year students. Whatever impression I made, these are the kids I would stuck with all year, and next year too. I seem to have done ok. All reports I receive from my principal and vice principal are that the students love me. Yeah, I'm pretty rad.

In March, the weather warmed up and brought with it "yellow dust" from China and subsequently I was sick for most of them month with what felt like a stubborn head cold. The drop in the quality of air had the same effect on a lot of the foreigners living here. Apparently it happens every spring. Still, it was an enjoyable month. We celebrated St. Patrick's Day at Elvis bar with our fellow expats (and a number of sleazy sailors, yeesh...). I also took in the Apricot Festival in Hadong with Jennifer. We had a great time walking around, enjoying the blossoms and snacked on Octopus Jeon (potato pancake). Every weekend there were festivals celebrating the arrival of spring and it's many flowers/blossoms.

Near the end of the month, my school held "Student Sports Days" for 3 days, where all of the student classes competed in such physically challenging events as Dodgeball, Tug-o-War, Dance, and Kick Baseball. It was a lot of fun. The weather was hot and sunny for all three days and the students really enjoyed the break from their normal routine. I really enjoyed it too. The students at my school are always enthusiastic about competitions, sunny weather and assemblies, so these sports days sounded like a Big Bang concert non-stop.

My birthday arrived, as it always does, on March 30th. I went out with my friends to dinner at restaurant that specialized in marinated pork and beef dishes. Very delicious, but unfortunately there was a miscommunication about the price of the meal and it was quite a shock to receive the bill afterwards. That weekend, my friend Jodie invited me to her apartment to help her with some baking she promised to do for a friend. So I put on my best sweatpants and headed over to her place with a couple of friends (suspiciously dressed very nicely, but I thought nothing of it). When we walked in, confetti canons exploded and I was shocked to see about 20 friends crammed into the Holmes apartment wearing a "lion" or "lamb" caricature around their neck. They had planned a surprise birthday party for Lindsey (who's Birthday was at the beginning of April) and I, following the old phrase about March: "in like Lion, out like a Lamb." I was a little embarrassed to be so under dressed for the occasion, but very grateful and genuinely surprised. We had a lot of fun!

See pictures of the party and other spring stuff here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2235464&id=122614903&l=386c8b11ba

This semester, I've been learning a lot more about just how hard high school students work in South Korea. In one class assignment I had the girls completing poems where they write about their past, present and future. More than one student likened their new high school life to prison. The students have to go to school for 8am and remain there until 10 or 11 pm (unless they have a private school to go to in the evening). The competition is intensely fierce for spots at the top Korean Universities. Students don't have part-time jobs, don't go to parties, and rarely (if ever) date. Extra-curricular activities are limited because students fill so much pressure to spend their free time studying. The high school at which I work is an Academic High School, so there are girls who have moved to Suncheon and live in the school dormitory's because their parents believe they will be able to get into a better university if they graduate from this school. Also the students sleep about 4 hours a night, especially before exams. There is actually a Korean rule of thumb here that parents tell their children: If you sleep for more than 4 hours a night (and therefore miss out on time to study), you'll fail. Now that it is close to exam time again, I'm letting my students watch movies during my class. They NEED a break.

SE Asia Chapter 5: Cambodia

When you work as a foreign English teacher in South Korea's public system, every so often you get this unexpected gift. It happens when your co-teacher turns to you at 8:55am and says "Oh, Lisa, you have no class today." If you are me and your school is awesome (shout out to 순전 여고!) , this happens a lot. But today, instead of wasting time or planning lessons, I'm going to try to get this monkey off my back, my blog about the rest of my trip in SE Asia. It was 3 months ago, I'd be surprised if anybody actually still cares, but I seem unable to write anything else until I get it out of the way. So without my travel journal, here goes...

Cambodia

Siem Reap/Angkor Wat

After a day of much needed R&R to recover from our travels from Bangkok to Siem Reap (see Chapter 4), we rented bicycles to make the trip around the Angkor, the ancient city that has made Siem Reap the bustling, wealthy tourist centre of Cambodia that it is. It's home to many famous Khmer temples ("Wats") including Ta Phrom where parts of Tomb Raider and Indian Jones were filmed and the big kahuna: Angkor Wat.

History buffs can your fix here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor I'm not writing down everything I know about the place, we haven't got time!

I was happy to get back on a bike after having such a great time touring Ayutthaya on one. Even the most unsteady of our troop felt significantly more bike-confident having had a full night of rest and some great food the day before. And Angkor was definitely worth seeing by bike. The forests were beautiful and gave plenty of roadside shade. We pulled up at the first small temple, Banteay Kdei and I was already enthralled by the beautiful gate to the temple, which featured a large serene face of stone smiling at visitors. After Banteay Kdei, we ate lunch at a roadside stand (fried rice, soup and fresh fruits while children and chickens ran amok around us) and then made our way to Ta Phrom, which was so surreal and beautiful. Wandering through this ancient structure, with enormous trees reclaiming the grounds, it was easy to imagine myself as an explorer or picture the temple as it might have been centuries earlier. After Ta Phrom, our travelmate Amanda ventured off on her own, while the rest of us (Susan, Ali, Jennifer and I) continued on to Angkor Thom (Angkor City). On the way we stopped to climb up Ta Keo and paused outside a couple of other smaller sites for water breaks. The day was already quickly slipping past. We biked through the east gate of Angkor Thom and parked our bikes beside the terrace of the Elephants. On foot we toured Krueng Palace, Baphoun, and (my absolute favourite) Bayon Temple. Bayon temple features hundreds of faces staring out over the city and keeping a watchful eye on its inhabitants. It was the perfect place to watch the shadows grow longer as the afternoon changed from golden to deeper hues of orange and red, matching the dusty ground beneath our feet. As we headed for our bikes we did come across a large group of Korean tourists who were thrilled to find out we were teachers in Korea and knew how to say "Hello" to them (which earns a round of applause apparently). I would have loved to stay at Bayon a little longer, but we needed to hit the road before we lost the light. Cambodian traffic is crazy enough in the daytime; we did not want to be on our bikes (without lights) after dark. As we rode past the magnificient sillouette of Angkor Wat at dusk, I felt, for the first time, excited to be going to see it at sunrise the next morning. We ended our day of biking (about 40km) with dinner in the marketplace and an hour long shiatsu massage by blind masseurs. It was lovely. It did not, however, change the fact that I had a wake-up time of 4:30 am coming around the bend.

Let me be very clear. I am not a morning person. I do not like getting out of bed. In my opionion, it is a process that takes all morning to be done properly anyway. I tend to feel a seething (but thankfully temporary) hatred towards those who disturb my slumber. This is especially true of being awakened before the sun is even up! I warned my travelmates as best I could. Every travel book and visitor to Siem Reap advised, you MUST see Angkor Wat at Sunrise. I'd seen the pictures, I was satisfied. But the girls outvoted me 4 to 1. Even Ali, who usually will happily join me in cursing the morning sun that interrupts a night of rest, was tricked by her love of photography into believing Angkor Wat at sunrise was something that could not be missed. And so it was I found myself posing for a now infamous picture for my photo-pass at 5:15 AM and bumping along a dusty road, squished in the back of a tuk-tuk with four cheery-eyed early birds. The child vendors that mobbed us would recieve no sympathetic looks or "No, thank you's" from this Lisa. Maybe afternoon Lisa, maybe even late-morning Lisa, but not pre-sunrise Lisa (some have referred to pre-sunrise Lisa and afternoon Lisa as a Jekyll & Hyde-like transformation). I will say that Angkor Wat was beautiful, I can't deny it. But I also remember hating it for being so beautiful that I had to be there at 6 am to see it and hating all the pesky tourists buzzing around happily who also had to see it. And especially, hating the shrill-voiced lady at the food stand: "Breakfast! Coppee! Hey Lady! You want breakfast? I sell you cheap!" After the sun had risen, I spent at least an hour wandering around inside Angkor Wat, solitary. It was beautiful, but you know what? Even more enjoyable at 4 in the afternoon when Susan and I returned that day to see it at Sunset. Bah! We went back to the guesthouse in the late morning, I had a wonderful nap and woke up feeling a hundred million times more cheerful and ready for lunch. We had some fantastic pizza and then Jennifer and I headed out to "The Happy Ranch" horse riding stables for an afternoon look at rural Siem Reap on horseback. As I mentioned, we returned to Angkor Wat for sunset although we missed the cut off for going up to the lookout. That night I enjoyed a deliriously blissful 3-hour spa package that scrubbed and massaged all early morning bitterness out of me for a miniscule $26. Well that is, until I had to get up at 5:30am the next morning to catch the boat to Phnom Penh.

Phnom Penh

We travelled to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, by speedboat down the Tonle Sap river. It's more expensive than the bus, but if you want to see the best of the Cambodian landscape, that's the way to do it. At the dock in Phnom Penh, a ravenous throng of Tuk-Tuk drivers waited for us. And followed us for a block as we tried to get some distance and get ourselves organized. We found a room at a great guesthouse recommended by my lonely planet book. I say "great" not only because our room was huge and spotless, and not only because the owner arranged our vietnam tourist visa's and travel arrangements to Ho Chi Minh, but also great because she stocked kettled-cooked potato chips and Crunchie chocolate bars, the likes of which I haven't seen since September 2008. By now the pace of our trip was taking its toll on me. I was eager to get to a beach and do nothing but relax for a few days. We decided to stay in Phnom Penh only two nights, long enough to see the royal palace and the Killing fields. We went to the Royal Palace early in the day, knowing we would need a few hours to get grounded after the Killing Fields. The palace site, including the silver pagoda, was beautiful and much less crowded than the Royal Palace in Bangkok, understandably.

Next, our tuk-tuk driver for the day took us to S-21 Toul Sleung Prison, which is now converted into a genocide museum dedicated to the victims of the Khmer Rouge. The Prison itself was once a high school before the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia in 1975 and emptied the cities as part of its design to turn Cambodia into a communist agricultural society. In an attempt to achieve this, the Khmer Rouge systematically killed the educated and professional people in the population. Doctors, teachers, lawyers, journalist, and anyone dared object the parties policies was killed to stem dissent. The high school was converted into a prison where suspected "traitors" were detained and tortured before being sent to Choeung Ek for execution. We walked the halls and holding cells silently, reverenced by the gravity of what happened there. Many of the rooms have been left in the same condition as when they were found. Rusty bed frames, arm and leg shackles and waste boxes are the only objects in the rooms. Some feature black and white photos of the dead who were found here when the Vietnamese took back the city in 1979. Another floor features thousands of pictures of detainees recovered in the Khmer Rouge files and another features artists paintings of the different torture techniques used here, the most savage of human behaviours. Amanda comments on a beautiful flower bush blooming between two of the buildings at S-21, its loveliness standing in stark contrast to its setting. Next, we drive outside the city to Choeung Ek, one of the largest mass graves found after the Khmer Rouge was toppled, and now the site of the Memory Stoupa, which houses the skulls of almost 9000 people, excavated at this site. A tour guide took us around the grounds, describing how Choeung Ek operated and answering our questions. Its hard to put into words the feelings you feel at a place like that. It's estimated that 2 million Cambodians died under the Pol Pot regime.

As we drove back into the city, I felt as though I were seeing it for the first time. A bustling metropolitan of people working and living, children playing. People who'd returned to a city they'd been forced to abandon 34 years earlier came back to rebuild it. I am completely amazed by the spirit of the Cambodian people. Despite horrific loss and tragedy, despite the murder of their educators, lawmakers and medical professionals, they are rebuilding their country at an astounding rate. Every single Cambodian we talked to had lost family members in the genocide. It was a day that filled me with tremoundous gratitude for my family and friends and Canada, a country which makes all of its citizens wealthy just by virtue of living there. We take our freedoms and opportunities for granted there.

That evening, we walked a road along the river lined with cafes and shops. But I lost my desire to stay out in the city. In Siem Reap, the poor were evident on every street. In Phnom Penh, they were on every square of pavement. In Siem Reap, I was able to give groceries and baby formula to mothers begging on the sidewalk, their babies asleep in their laps or on the sidewalk beside them. In Phnom Penh, there were too many to count. Of course, they congregated on this street for a reason. It was lined with restaurants, cafes and shops frequented by foreigners. We stopped and ate at a bakery who's proceeds benefitted an city orphanage and then headed back to the guesthouse. Tomorrow we would get on a bus to Vietnam, by tomorrow night I would be on a beach, worlds away from Cambodia. But not forgotten.

Pictures here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2234943&id=122614903&l=3cca382e02