If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it In my efforts to promote what I’m up to I stumble up against militaristic metaphor and simile all the time. Nevermind me; we all do. ‘A weapon in your arsenal’, “an arrow in my quiver”, “cannon fodder” (me), the ol’ “Silver Bullet”; the nefarious ‘War against Blah,Blah,Blah’. It’s an easy trap to fall into and it don’t mean much. But you’re talking to a guy who won’t (and has never) worn ‘camo’ for the same and, prolly, puerile reasons. I killed a squirrel with a pellet gun at the cottage when I was 8 and that was enough for me. I’ve never gotten over it. I might not be firing on all 6 chambers, but I am on all 8 cylinders. And at good times, there’s some nitrous in there besides. So I’m feelin’ good and I’m ready to go, but I ain’t “locked and loaded”; I’d like to say I’m braided and plaited, but that gets me into white dreadlock territory; it’s not a good look. No one ever said it’d be simple. One way or the other the trigger is always cocked and there’s one in the chamber. The gleeful rampant killing thing makes me jumpy as a frog. I mean, it’s well documented; people develop a taste for it. Can’t get enough. It happened here. Take Tuole Slang, the super- notorious “S-21”. It was a primary school until the Khmer Rouge turned it into 4 buildings worth of torture and killing chambers. All the ghoulish medieval stuff. Tourists take tuk-tuks first to S-21 where somewhere between 14 and 20 thousand innocent peeps were ruthlessly exterminated, and then out to the so-called “Killing Fields” where hundreds of thousands more met grisly horrific deaths. Usually bludgeoned in order to save bullets. I did S-21 on my bike and then called off the rest and will now just claim I went to the Killing Fields. Anyhow I got the t-shirt, the hat, and the ticket stub. Too much of a bad, bad thing. This in the 1970’s while most of the world ignored it and, just for good measure, the Americans bombed them into the Stone Age and...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itHere in Cambodia the Khmers generally call each other ‘brother’ and ‘sister’, unless they are actually brothers and sisters in which case they probably just shout: ’Hey you!’ Anyhow, it’s charming and a whole lot better than ‘comrade’, which must have been the reluctant vogue for a grim long while. So by now I have a few Khmer friends and they call me Bong Steve, only it comes out more like ‘Bong Stayeu’, which I like. Now, man, I’m Bong Battambang. I arrived here just yesterday afternoon and already I like it very much, which is handy, cuz it’s going to be my new crib for a small handful of weeks. In the near vicinity and within easy day-rides I can access many places to the NW, towards the Thai border and the NE towards Lao. These are areas where decades of militarism have left behind thousands of tonnes of unexploded ordnance, where the de-mining outfits of all sizes are most active, and where, sadly, amputees can be found in appalling abundance. These are the ‘Maiming Fields’. It’s a 3 day ride up from Phnom Penh; roughly 100 K a day. You gotta get started early cuz by 10h30 the heat’s on. There’s 20 K of pretty ugly sprawl getting out of Phnom Penh and from there all the way it’s kinda hit and miss. Some of the longest straightest hottest stretches of unabashedly demoralizing road, full of marauding lorries and buses gnashing by like Great Whites late for a feeding frenzy. Happily, that shit is well-interspersed with landscapes that make you hold your breath and village scenes that make you want to round everyone up for a group hug. The same river that lends so much grace to Phnom Penh, the Tonle Sap, comes in and out of view all the way to Kampong Chinang: whole floating villages and the most unlikely vessels, countless fishermen and fisherfamilies, bathing livestock, and frolicking kids. The humble stilted house has become my all-time favorite abode. There are many variants, from fancy-pants ones with terracotta roofs and stuccoed walls, to the down-market huts with frond roofs and woven reed sides. The middle-tiered ones are...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it Cambodian School of Prosthetics and Orthotics at Cambodia...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it This is The Angkor Association for the Disabled. Across from the Killing Fields in Phnom...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it They house and feed amputees, and try to teach them skills to earn their own living and not resort to...
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