I wrote (below): “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?”

After today’s shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords I am reminded that our lack of civil discourse is tearing this country apart. We would not survive another civil war.

Reprint below:
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

First a picture:

This is a direct photo through the windshield of our motorhome, Turtle, of The Mittens in Monument Valley,  Arizona. I doubt there is a very expensive RV resort, or Five Star hotel, that could offer an equal view. This was a no service parking spot on the Navajo reservation. Boondock spots (sometimes called dry camping) are free, but we paid $5 for this one. I’d say $5 is close enough to free to qualify.

We almost never park in RV resorts/parks. We have nothing against them. We have a park model at Far Horizons Tucson Village, a great RV resort in Tucson, AZ where we spend most winters. We love it, and the annual fee, while high, is not unreasonable spread over a few months. But when we are traveling, we refuse to spend $20 to $50 per night to be packed together with other RVs just to have electricity, water and sewer. We need all that once a week or so, and we can get it at fuel stations and parks for free. Saving an average of $30 a day allows us to travel indefinitely, instead of budgeting tightly for short trips.

This summer trip to Alaska and back, from Tucson, close to Mexico, would be beyond our budget if we spent approximately $1000 a month — we’ll be out for six months — for RV parks. For the first three months, we have paid to park a total of $37 for two nights on Homer Spit and one night at a Forest Service campground overlooking Turnagain Arm, both on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. What we saved went to food, a 30,000 mile service on the motorhome, fixing a leak (important this wet summer) diesel, food and a boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park.

“But aren’t you afraid?” We have been hearing that since we first began bicycle touring in 1995. 40,000 miles and hundreds of tent boondocks (we call it bush camping in a tent) and several years worth of motorhome boonedocks, and we have never had a problem, save for a very few overzealous hire-a-cops. Barney Fife lives out there folks, and he might just make you move on to prove his authority, but not very often.

(I’ve written an essay on why Americans are so afraid. Read it at:Just One Opinion

We’ve boondocked at Walmart and other commercial establishments with space who allow parking. We’re don’t open an awning, put out lawn chairs or haul out the barbicue, we just park, cook inside and sleep. But our favorite ones are dirt roads on public lands where parking is almost always allowed. Last night we spent about one foot above the almost flooding waters Matanuska River near Palmer. We decided on what we call “anchor watch” by setting an alarm on our Android every two hours to make sure we weren’t trapped by rising water. All was well each watch, and we got to see the light change throughout arctic the night. You can’t buy that.

So now you can impress your friends with a news word of the day, boondock.

A decent weather day offered some great views of the St. Elias Mountains in the Yukon Territory, a few miles north of Haines Junction. The pullouts all had no overnight parking signs, so we had to look for side roads to explore. After one false start, we found this abandoned sub-division with spectacular views. It is strange to see sub-divisions so far in the countryside, right next to the largest contiguous wilderness protected area in the world, half in the Yukon and half in Alaska. Somebody had big dreams, but it’s just too remote.

We expected bears or moose, but only had birds and wildflowers for company. The daylight is almost continuous now, and the light, when there is a break in the rainclouds, just fades and warms slowly toward 11pm, and it is light all night. I enjoy waking up and looking at the light at 2am or so, just as morning color begins to wash the sky.

These remote boondocks are so quiet. We’re always ready to move quickly if necessary, but have never had the need. It takes some experience to hide a motorhome in the bush, but we’re getting pretty good at it!

Alaska next.

Long days of slantlong  light, and the landscape rolling off to infinity, makes for a magical sense of otherness, of strange timelessness. We love the road, and this one is special.

The Longsword Winery in the Applegate Valley of Southern Oregon, was the first winery that hosted us for a night under the Harvest Hosts program. For a $20 membership you receive access to a growing number of  wineries and farms who will allow you to park your RV overnight without a fee. Longsword is a small, relatively new, family run operation with some very good wines and several significant awards. We tasted  several wines and bought one, somewhat pricey, but excellent wine as a gift for special friends. Our free night cost us $30, but we not only got the fine wine, but a personal history of the winery from the weed whacker wielding winemaker; you must be a master of all trades to start a wine growing and making operation. We enjoyed a lovely sunset, quiet night and glowing sunrise.

We left Turtle (our motorhome if you don’t know her name already) parked at the winery, unloaded the road bikes, and despite three flat tires, and some cold and wet weather, got in a 44 mile ride to a lake at the headwaters of the Applegate River, and the surprise discovery of a restored covered bridge.

We said our thanks and drove off into the late afternoon light to the nearest Wal*Mart, not nearly so nice a boondock spot, but a better place to buy food! Our first Harvest Host experience was great and we’re looking forward to more as our Alaska summer progresses.

This is a republication, with changes, of an earlier post.

It appears the volcano in Iceland is not going to go back to sleep without causing mankind to take notice of the disruption possible. Thousands of flights have been canceled by the the ash cloud ejected from the eruption under a glacier. The ash is even more destructive to air traffic because some of it may be turned to glass by the ice before being ejected high into the air.We’ll just have to wait and see if this will last for weeks and cause major economic disruption in North Atlantic and European transportation, or fade away quietly. I wouldn’t bet on either.

We rode mountain bikes across Iceland one spring and learned just how unstable a place it can be. No, not the banking system, that might be another post, but the land itself. Iceland is part of the Atlantic Ridge, where Earth’s crust is being ripped apart as the tectonic plates slide on the molten mantle. In the first picture, Claire is straddling the North American plate and the European plate.

All this volcanic activity so close to the surface has been both a blessing and curse to Icelanders since settlement times. Steam from vents warms homes, produces electricity and draws tourists for their short summer. But where there is steam, there is fire, and water. With lots of precipitation, and just bussing the Arctic Circle, Iceland is and land of fire and ice, and roaring powerful rivers. Iceland has the third forth and fifth largest ice sheets on Earth, quite a distinction for such a small island nation.

Powerful rivers with thundering waterfalls carry the rain and glacier melt to the sea, along the away, often harnessed for electricity to smelt aluminum from ore shipped from all over the world. In recent years this has been a major contributor to the Iceland’s economy, replacing the fishing industry facing increased competition in the North Atlantic fishery. The harnessing of their rivers is a contentious issue with Icelanders; they like the money, but aren’t so sure about the environmental consequences. The also fear the consequences for the unprecedented purity of their gene pool, from the importation of foreign smelter workers.

This beautiful lady we met at a national park in the far north. She is pure Icelandic, lovely and nice too. She is studying to be an opera singer in Europe, and works summers as a park ranger. For years, scientists have been using Iceland as a place to study the genetic makeup of humans; their line goes back to the 9th century, and they are isolated halfway between continents and far north. With new gene sequencing methods, it won’t matter so much if science looses that pure strain, but it seems to be still important to the people of Iceland. I wouldn’t call it racism in this case, more cultural pride.

Should you be concerned with a small volcano on a tiny island nation far away? Possibly.  Activity in the current location has always been a  precursor to large eruptions under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in southern Iceland. In 1783 an eruption killed a fifth of the population by famine, and created severe climate disruptions in Europe. A large, ash producing eruption, could cause rapid climate change in many parts of the northern hemisphere. Geologic evidence points to many such events in human history.

So, are you ready for a winter all summer next year? You might want to watch tiny Iceland for the foreseeable future.

Claire and her mountain bike in the center of Iceland.

For more photos and story about our tour across Iceland, click here

It’s easy: just go to the right column of this Home page, and scroll down to article subjects, and click on 2009 Asia Adventure and it will take you to the first blog, Shangri-la; Journey into Myth, search for Reality.

When you get tired of reading, looking at picture or videos, you can just bookmark the blog where you are, so you can start where you left off, the next day, or week. At some point, I’ll have the posts on their own Adventures page, when I decide on a format.

Even if you think you’ve seen all of the posts, you will find things you missed the first time around. If you missed checking for a few days, you probably missed something interesting! With my short term memory, I’ll find something interesting! And don’t forget to look for our articles at Just One Opinion; many of them have basis is what we have learned during our travels.

Your comments are still welcome. Enjoy!

Man throwing a net on a backwater of the Mekong in Cambodia

Happy Christmas from Bangkok

Happy Christmas from Bangkok, from Bob and Claire and Lucky. P-bear, Lai Lai and Foster send their best wishes from Tucson.

We’ll celebrate by crossing the International Date Line on Christmas Day. Does that mean we get Christmas twice?

Happy Christmas

Claire and Bob Rogers

PS. See a video of us having a look-back at our Shangri-la journey from Bangkok, Christmas Eve day.

No Cars or Trucks in this part of the Mekong Delta

Mid Afternoon Shade Hammock and Soda Break (check out the 7UP bottle

We are enjoying our first day in the Mekong delta; the ferry crossings, river views, the traditional, and rapidly changing ways of life. We hope to post some videos as we cycle upriver on what we think is a riverside tiny road. We’ll give it a go tomorrow.

Ferry Crossing in the Mekong Delta

Pretty Girls Everywhere!

Man Praying in a Temple