You Want A Break? OK... Cambodia Smiles

A mother and her sons

The last couple of day's tales have been on the heavy side, so let's take the break suggested in an email I read this morning while getting today's post about the interrogation rooms at Tuol Sleng ready. Louis in Pennsylvania wrote "Doesn't anyone in that country smile?", and the answer is, of course, yes - so I set the post in progress aside and put this one together instead.

Smiling on the grounds of the Royal Palace. 

The people I interacted with in Cambodia were much the same as the folks you'd meet in Thailand. Nothing so odd about that; cultures don't often understand borders, even if politics and some darker examples would attempt to show you otherwise. Most of the problems between Cambodia and it's neighbors have been fueled by greed from one side of the border or the other (as are many of the woes in our world overall) and, as in the case of the Khmer Rouge, sometimes within those very borders.

My tuk tuk driver was quite the joker

Children riding on motor scooters with their parents, folks out shopping in the markets, families selling food from their carts and stalls or knelt in worship at a temple - it's really a case of "same same, but different", but the difference is primarily the flag waving on the pole in the distance.

Two Cambodian monks smile as they walk along, chatting

So... here are some smiling Cambodians I ran across in Phnom Penh to lighten the week up a bit. We'll get back to Tuol Sleng and the "killing fields" soon enough.