Southeast Asia
July 26th, 2010
By Bob Rogers
After 35 years, the first Khmer Rouge mass murderer has been convicted in Cambodia. We’ve all heard of the killing fields of Cambodia, when the Khmer Rouge murdered between one and two million other Cambodians. It was one of the worst periods of mass murder in history. It was the Chinese Cultural Revolution gone crazy. The Khmer Rouge, in attempting to bring about an agrarian utopian society, sought out and murdered anyone with an education, and anyone associated with them.
I remember following news reports of the carnage in this far away land, and wondering how such a thing could happen in a society. After Claire and I bicycled the length of Cambodia near the end of our In Search of Shangri-la tour, I am even more puzzled, and not a little disconcerted.
While the Cambodians are not as laid back as Lao, or as industrious as Vietnamese, they were friendly. Though not as outwardly happy as the irrepressible Lao, they were reasonably outgoing. And yet, some of the older Cambodians we saw must surely have been murderers. The Khmer Rouge were peasants, and we traveled through the rural countryside at twelve miles per hour, bought food from them at markets and street restaurants, slept in their guest houses. We smiled and received smiles in return. And yet, there was a pall of uncertainty for me, as I watched a landscape roll past, a rice small field that just might have been a killing field.
The Image most people have of the killing fields and mass graves, are of one central location near the Capitol, Phnom Penh. But, the killings took place in villages across Cambodia and the mounded mass graves still stand above the rice paddies, sometimes marked by simple concrete altars festooned with flowers and incense. Someone remembers and makes offerings to the gods, offerings of remembrance, and perhaps a hope that such a thing never happen again. It is an eerie sight to see the rice people working their fields so close to the bones of those killed there.
The reason Cambodia has been so slow to begin the process of justice escapes me, but I am not Asian. I didn’t grow up working dawn to dusk fighting the vagaries of nature, just to have a bowl of rice. From what we saw in Laos and Vietnam, Southeast Asians tend toward forgiveness. They hold no grudges against the former enemies in what they call the American War. Perhaps the Cambodians have passed on opportunities for justice all these years because they are either forgiving, or they are guilty. Now a generation is coming of age with no memory of those times. Perhaps the justice beginning now will educate them.
If such a gentle people were capable of those atrocities, what society is not? If Cambodians could become so divided that they began murdering other Cambodians, could we? How far must civil discourse erode before “the other” is so reprehensible to deserve killing?
For more on Cambodia go to New Bohemians, In Search of Shangri-la
May 19th, 2010
When the snow turned back to rain, we knew the cold front had passed and our water would not freeze. What a relief. I (Bob) get a tad tense at the prospect of a night of alternately running the furnace until the batteries are deplete, running the engine to charge them up again, and perhaps running out of propane. We’ve had a few nights like that, and the memory is not pleasant.
We were got a pleasant surprise when a Paul, from a neighboring motorhome, recently arrived from the pass, came by to invite us over for before dinner libations. We figured they had a bout with the snow, and needed a drink; we certainly did. Paul introduced me to his long time friend John, who set out to make our drinks and introduce himself. We found we had in common time spent in Laos and Vietnam. He didn’t specify which branch of service he was in, but we guessed it was the one that is secretive. After several, appropriately vague, stories about his ventures there, we shared our experiences being lost in Laos on the spider’s web of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and we could tell he knew all about the anti-personnel “bobmbies” that scared us.
Some of his memories were unwelcome, and had lingered for 40 years. When we made clear the Lao people held no grudge about the war years, or even the continued problems with the bombs, I think it was something he needed to hear.
 Paul is a lot younger than Bill; they met through one of their wives, and have been fishing and RVing buddies for years. They were going on a fishing trip to the east side of the Sierras, when they were turned back by the storm, which had closed the pass not long after we came through.
We enjoyed their company, as we do all the RVing people we meet, and said goodnight reluctantly.
We saw them leave in the morning, and hope it was for a fine week of sunshine and full creels, because Bill is fighting cancer, and because they both deserve yet another fine RV trip, and many more.
March 10th, 2010
 Hai Van Pass in Vietnam This view is probably familiar to many in my generation who served in Vietnam in the 1960’s and 1970’s. It was taken, looking north, from a headland jutting out into the South China Sea, forming a barrier to weather, and no doubt troop movements, between South Vietnam and North Vietnam. The two Vietnams are now officially one country, but we found, as we pedaled from the DMZ south, two fairly distinct cultures. In Hue, the former Saigon where Claire was born, is called Ho Chi Minh City, south of Hue it is still called Saigon, even on train schedules.
The Vietnamese people are increasingly entering the world economy, and will challenge many other Asian economies in coming years. They are incredibly industrious, and highly intelligent. Economists should keep their focus on China, but watch Vietnam out of the corner of your eye. They are not far behind.
March 3rd, 2010
 Why are these Vietnamese schoolgirls wearing masks Vietnamese school girls, in the hot Mekong delta, ride their bicycles to and from school. They wear these beautiful pant/dress outfits, and large face masks. We learned that they wear the masks mainly to protect their skin from the sun and air pollution, not so much their lungs. It is the same reason they wear full covering clothing in such a hot climate. In much of Asia, class is shown by lightness of skin: if you have clear white skin it means you are from the upper classes, not from the working classes.
Supposedly classless Communist Vietnam, was more complex than we had imagined.
Photo by Claire Rogers from the back of our tandem Zippy on our In Search of Shangri-la journey throughout SW China and SE Asia.
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