If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itAGENT GREEN It’s hard to imagine a green more green than new paddy rice. Young Cambodian corn is in the running as is the foliage on a happy rubber tree. I just rode through Kratie (pronounced ‘Kratcheeay’) province where latex is where it’s at and there are thousands of hectares of rubber plantations – the trees standing like ranked battalions of wounded and bleeding soldiers. It’s cashew country too and those trees are not particularly green. They are in fruit right now though and their dun-green leaves are set alight by the scorching orange or deepest yellower than yellow fruit. It could be a question of contrast, as it’s actually the end of the dry season. I can’t imagine how green it is during the monsoon. Or it could be because I look at the world through amber lenses which tend to bump up the green. The otherworldly white Ibis standing sentry over the paddy just to point out to you what color means. By contrast your slate grey water buffalo with the mouse-colored nit-picking birdie on his back… the one you see when you ‘google image’ symbiosis. I rode from Ratanakiri to Kratie and then from there to Kampong Cham and then on down to the capital and in those few days saw much of what one could ever hope to see in the Kingdom, except the temples, which is the big draw, of course. I am continually struck by the fact that what you look at on the map never has any resemblance whatsoever to what you see on the way… it’s a human nature thing. What we build in our ‘mind’s eye’. The wend along the Mekong from Kratie to Kampong Cham doesn’t look particularly appealing – I had an image of a grind with a few select hi-lights – yet it was one of the most beautiful rides of my entire life. It’s Cham country, which is already special. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge genocidically did their level best to eradicate the Cham Muslims, because, well, they are Muslim. He got them down into the hundreds before the Vietnamese came packing a slew of...
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If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it Phnom Penh, 27 April...
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If you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share it Racking up the miles! Delivering both mirrors and therapy to amputees all over both Cambodia and...
Read MoreIf you enjoyed the read, please feel free to share itAt the Veterans International Provincial Rehab Clinic in Prey Veng – a handful of hours South of Phnom Penh (by bike) – I was able to get in front of a leper, and congenital amp, and a stroke victim. All of them complained of aggressive Phantom Limb Pain. It was a breakout session for me as these are all disabilities that are afflicted somewhat less with PLP. They all have mirrors now and have been at it for 2 weeks or so. They were busting to give it a try. Mirror Therapy is now being prescribed for maladies as diverse as arthritis and CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome). The message is in the mirror. By helping to re-ignite, re-map and re-locate tasks in the brain and by firing cleansing signals from one hemisphere to the other… the mirror is a key the size of a squash racquet… a key that will unlock and set free an awful lot of suffering. Visualize...
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