Same Same, But Different! Pt. 15: Civil Disobedience Here (And There)

The "I have a dream" speech crowd near the Washington Monument 50+ years ago

During the decade of the 1960s - a bit over 50 years ago - the United States had its share of unrest. Not only then, mind you, but it's been the most influential and progressive time during my life, even if I was a bit young to fully grasp what was going on at the beginning of it. Some of it was difficult to watch, but there it was, anyway: beamed into our homes daily by an industry just getting the hang of the immediate impact of televised news.

An image of Victory Monument, taken a few mornings ago by a friend on his way into work

There is similar civil disobedience happening (again) in Thailand; this time perhaps more organized, and certainly more visible. As you saw on the map from last Sunday there are seven key areas that have hosted the largest "camp-ins" in the city's history, and, as human nature has shown us over time, not everyone is content to wait things out. That's when the trouble starts. Acting alone or (more than likely) at the behest of someone or some group, violence erupts. Just as it did in 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama.

The famous Charles Moore photo of high school students being hit with high-pressure hoses in Birmingham in 1963

It depended on personal, regional and cultural differences how one felt about what was happening in the news - as it often does - but enough people were outraged by the 1960s images here today that changes were made. Not all of said changes were taken to heart by everyone, but things have made progress over the last half-century, I suppose.

In keeping with the "same-same, but different" thought today, over the past couple of days there has been similar uncivil disobedience in Bangkok. On the 18th it was reported that a grenade was tossed down from a building in an attempt to take out Suthep Thaugsuban one of the organizers.

A similar view of Victory Monument in Bangkok, taken by the same friend. This time he was on his way home.

Within 24 hours another grenade was tossed by the man below, said to have been caught on closed circuit TV. Aiming for a tent, he missed... and it landed on top of a coffee shop, injuring many folks nearby.

Adjusted photo from the Crime Reporter and Photographer Association of Thailand, published in the Bangkok Post 

Many embassies are advising visitors to reconsider going to Thailand at this time, especially Bangkok, but most people's vacation plans don't include wading into dangerous situations to begin with, so while some would disagree I'd suggest that with some advance planning (and some common sense while there) I personally don't see why a person couldn't have a good trip to Thailand... as things stand today. Situations can change in a heartbeat.

If you are thinking of visiting Thailand (I tend to think about it often), I'd suggest a few things: do your homework, consider steering clear of Bangkok or, if you do spend time there, use common sense and stay away from the demonstrations.  

The True Spirit: "The Day The Kid Got His Peaches"

A San Francisco intersection at Christmas

[Today's post is a repeat of one that I've run the past couple of years, but a reader thought it worth repeating again for the newer readers, and I agreed. A couple of decades ago I read an article with a lesson to it that's stuck with me over the years, and in the spirit of the Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa holidays I thought I'd share it with you again today. If you can make the time in your hectic holiday schedule I hope you'll stop and read it. It's worth the time. Here's wishing the best holidays possible to all of you. Again, thank you for reading my stuff.]

THE DAY THE KID GOT HIS PEACHES 
By Al Martinez [San Francisco Chronicle: December 23, 1990] 

It happened one Christmas Eve a long time ago in a place called Oakland, California, on a newspaper called the Tribune with a city editor named Alfred P. Reck.

I was working swing shift on general assignment, writing the story of a boy who was dying of leukemia and whose greatest wish was for fresh peaches. It was a story that, in the tradition of 1950s journalism, would be milked for every sob we could squeeze from it, because everyone loved a good cry at Christmas.

We knew how to play a tear-jerker in those days, and I was full of the kind of passions that could make a sailor weep. I remember it was about 11 p.m. and pouring rain outside when I began putting the piece together for the next day’s editions. Deadline was an hour away, but an hour is a lifetime when you’re young and fast and never get tired. Then the telephone rang. It was Al Reck calling, as he always did at night, and he’d had a few under his belt.

Reck was a drinking man. With diabetes and epilepsy, hard liquor was about the last thing he ought to be messing with. But you didn’t tell Al what he ought or ought not to do. He was essentially a gentle man who rarely raised his voice, but you knew he was the city editor, and in those days the city editor was the law and word in the newsroom.

But there was more than fear and tradition at work for Al. We respected him immensely, not only for his abilities as a newsman, but for his humanity. Al was sensitive both to our needs and the needs of those whose names and faces appeared in the pages of the Oakland Tribune.

“What’s up?” he asked me that Christmas eve in a voice as soft and slurred as a summer breeze. He already knew what was up because, during 25 years on the city desk, Reck somehow always knew what was up, but he wanted to hear it from the man handling the story.

I told him about the kid dying of leukemia and about the peaches and about how there simply were no fresh peaches, but it still made a good piece. We had art and a hole on Page One.

Al listened for a moment and then said, “How long’s he got?” “Not long,” I said. “His doctor says maybe a day or two.” There was a long silence and then Al said, “Get the kid his peaches.”

“I’ve called all over,” I said. “None of the produce places in the Bay Area have fresh peaches. They’re just plain out of season. It’s winter.” “Not everywhere. Call Australia.” “Al,” I began to argue, “it’s after 11 and I have no idea...” “Call Australia,” he said, and then hung up.
If Al said call Australia, I would call Australia.

I don’t quite remember who I telephoned, newspapers maybe and agricultural associations, but I ended up finding fresh peaches and an airline that would fly them to the San Francisco Bay Area before the end of Christmas Day. There was only one problem. Customs wouldn’t clear them. They were an agricultural product and would be hung up at San Francisco International at least for a day, and possibly forever.

Reck called again. He listened to the problem and told me to telephone the secretary of agriculture and have him clear the peaches when they arrived. “It’s close to midnight,” I argued. “His office is closed.” “Take this number down,” Reck said. “It’s his home. Tell him I told you to call.”

It was axiomatic among the admirers of Al Reck that he knew everyone and everyone knew him, from cops on the street to government leaders in their Georgetown estates. No one knew how Al knew them or why, but he did. I called the secretary and he said he’d have the peaches cleared when they arrived and give Al Reck his best.

“All right,” Al said on his third and final call to me, “now arrange for one of the photographers to meet the plane and take the peaches over to the boy’s house.” He had been drinking steadily throughout the evening, and the slurring had become almost impossible to understand.
By then it was a few minutes past midnight, and just a heartbeat and a half to the final deadline.
“Al,” I said “if I don’t start writing this now I’ll never get the story in the paper.”

I won’t forget this moment. “I didn’t say get the story,” Reck replied gently. “I said get the kid his peaches.”

If there is a flashpoint in our lives to which we can refer later, moments that shape our attitudes and effect our futures, that was mine.

Alfred Pierce Reck had defined for me the importance of what we do, lifting it beyond newsprint and deadline to a level of humanity that transcends job. He understood not only what we did but what we were supposed to do. I didn’t say get the story. I said get the kid his peaches.

The boy got his peaches and the story made the home edition, and I received a lesson in journalism more important than any I’ve learned since.

The Birth Of A Different Bao Bao

Mei Xiang nuzzles her newly born cub Bao Bao

Reader Dax recently sent an email, alerting me to a news item I'd missed. His message read in part "I wanted to wish you the very best of the holidays and congratulate you on the National Zoo's naming of their baby panda Bao Bao."

Bao Bao was born on August 23rd at the Smithsonian's National Zoo to Mei Xiang, brought here herself from China as part of a diplomatic program begun by Richard Nixon back in the early 1970s. Bao Bao is a female, and her name received the highest number of votes from the 120,000 members of the Friends of the National Zoo who participated in the selection process.

Evidently, in Chinese her name means "precious" or "treasure". I don't recall this blog ever being referred to in those terms - and I'd never claim it to be, naturally - but most regulars will remember that since Bao Bao means "gentle" or "easy" in Thai (or so I've long been told) so perhaps today's blip on the wide horizon of the internet would better fit into the same same, but different folder.

If you're dead set to have a Thailand tie-in for the post today I'll refer you to the Chiang Mai Zoo, where they've hosted pandas on loan from China and most likely have some there now. Check their web site for more information, as I've not been there yet - just the Dusit Zoo in Bangkok.

So, as the holidays are ramping up for me I'll close for today and get back to the exhaustive list of things demanding attention, but a special thanks to Dax for taking the time to alert me to the new namesake. Best wishes for the holidays to you, too.

Bao Bao, learning to walk and climb on 6 December

Yes, Thank You... I'm Still Around!

If your month has been as good as mine has, you've been extremely fortunate. I'll hold that hope for you all. Even with losing a couple of favored people from our spinning blue marble I've had a wonderful October.  As I'd mentioned a while back: I have a life that reaches far beyond blogging, and for that I'm eternally grateful.

That said, it's probably only fair to at least check in and make some mention of what I've been up to since that last post on the first of the month.  I've even been a bit slow to answer email and messages asking me "what's up?", and I apologize... I do appreciate you asking.

My most consistently abusive reader prematurely celebrated the demise of this blog, and perhaps one day he'll get his wish. For now I'm enjoying the hundreds of visits a day from people who have discovered what I hope will continue to be a growing cornucopia of information based on my own experiences and not merely borrowed and reworded from elsewhere on the web.

Normally I'm a relatively private person, but let me share a little bit of what my life's like:

I have five books in various stages of production, a couple of family members who need regular care, five men who I meet with weekly as a mentor for about 90 minutes or so (in addition to daily phone contact), keeping in touch by phone, email and messaging with people I care about on different points on Earth, an exercise regimen of sorts, my own personal time for meditation, contemplation and enrichment, a house to keep and the time I spend reading and watching TV. Oh, right... and there's also eating, sleeping and the other minutiae of life.

I'm also asked to speak every so often on travel in Thailand, and that often requires some prep time beforehand - i.e. going through 45,000+ photos taken in Thailand but not well categorized - to assemble relevant photos and prepare speaking notes. Sure, I could just borrow pictures and present them as my own, but that's dishonest.

So, you see, I'm just plain old busy. Too busy for a retired person, that's for damn sure. While this was a nearly all-consuming addiction for me when I began it some 45 months ago, it's not now. I enjoy it, but it's become more of a guilty pleasure to "steal" some time and share with you all.  I'm not throwing in the towel, but - obviously - I'm not posting like I used to.  It's my hope that after this upcoming presentation I'll be able to get back to the list of posts in progress and be here more often.

In the meantime, don't give up on me. I DO answer emails, and consider those of you who've stuck with me as peripheral friends. I'm here if I can help.

So... why today to catch up? First, I'd like to be able to say I've at least posted a couple of times a month lately, and second, today is one of my favorite holidays... All Hallow's Eve. Second only to Christmas, in my book.

Hallowe'en (invariably misspelled in the U.S.A. today as Halloween), is something we've already covered - acknowledging some of how this odd holiday is observed in Thailand [Halloween: Drag Out The Feather Boas] and I've shared some about how I observe it here stateside [Ghosts, Ghouls And Goblins: It's Halloween]. It's a delightful holiday, so I thought I'd add a few postcards from a family scrapbook that commemorate the day.

These were all from around 1910, when they only required a penny stamp to mail.

D.O.M.A. Is Dead, And Congratulations From Bangkok Prompt A Follow-up

Coming clean on a minor white lie: these were the actual subjects. Although I had their permission to post it, I didn't want to identify them, so I'd altered a couple of details 

Nearly two years ago I posted a story about a young motorcycle taxi driver and his boyfriend. It was really more about taking a walk in the area of the (then) new BTS stations, but seeing a firsthand example of how being gay is accepted by so many there made my short interaction with the two guys above the highlight of the afternoon. 

Normally I wouldn't comment here on a news story that didn't have some sort of tie to Thailand, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruling today giving great hope for equal rights to those who happen to fall in love with someone of their own sex provided a tie-in, and in a most unexpected way.

I almost always give my email address to people I meet and visit with in Thailand; new friends and interviewees, of course, but also folks who seem at all interested in photos I take of them. If I hear from them, I'm happy to send their images along.  Less than ten per cent of the time do I hear from anyone - probably more because of a language barrier than anything else - so it's always a nice surprise.

About 15 minutes ago I happened to check the account I use for these contacts, and there was a new item in my "in" box: a short email from the motocy guys, using one of their accounts. It was the same account the picture request had come from, so I was wondering why I was hearing from them past that initial exchange when I'd sent them the picture and asked if it was OK to post on the blog here. That got a quick "OK", but nothing past that since.

It appears as though some news travels through channels we wouldn't expect. I don't know how, but they had heard of today's news regarding equal rights in marriage. Their email message - probably mangled by an online translator - was very short. There was a tiny bit about them and where they were currently living, but the key part was this:

"Happy day gay news america! Gay marry good happy!! Happy You?"

They'd attached another photo of the two of them, this time with one kissing the other on the cheek... something they would not have done on the street when the first one was taken. This shot looked like it could have been taken in their room or the room of a friend, by the background. They both looked happy, too, and it made me feel good to think they were still together, and also to think that good news can travel fast, too... to people and places you'd think less likely to hear it.

As overjoyed as I was to see the news broadcasts this morning, I was even more pleased to receive the email from E & M.  Yes, guys... Happy Me.

Songkran 2013/2556 - California Style

A child receives blessings for the coming year

While San Francisco and "Thai Town" in the Los Angeles area hold more extensive Songkran festivals - with parades, floats and elephants to soak you, no less - I wasn't in the mood for any more of a soaking there than I've been willing to book in Thailand, so I didn't make an effort to attend any of them this year. I did my usual ritual of prayers, candles, incense and meditating, took a shower in lieu of a public soaking and called it a holiday by 08:00.

Detail of one of the beautiful and ornate fruit and vegetable carvings

However, a friend called a while later, saying that his home town of San Jose (about an hour South of San Francisco) was holding what they were billing as their First Annual Songkran Festival, so - somewhat reluctantly - I went and hoped for the best... or driest, whichever.

My worries on the drive there about my camera were, for the most part, baseless; it was a sane and delightful day. I came home with a little bit  of white paste on my face and got a few spritzes from standard squirt guns wielded by giggling kids there, but there were no buckets of water.

A small part of the festivities

Although it only covered an area in total of perhaps two city block lengths there was something for everyone: traditional crafts booths, a variety of food stands (primarily Thai, thankfully), a Muay Thai competition/exhibition, some commercial establishments represented (insurance, cable and phone providers, banks - that sort of thing), a couple of health-related booths, bouncy houses for the kids and a number of other things.

Even though fighters wore protective gear, there was a medical team on duty

There was also an enclosed beer garden where people over 21 could enter and have snacks, enjoy cold Chang beer (one of the sponsors) and share some restrained water splashing. All in all it was a well-planned and well-run event, suitable for all ages.

Water bowls for the blessing ceremony

One of the special areas was a tented spot where one could receive blessings and good wishes from a line of seated monks. In a much more traditional style than the "water cannons" version of the holiday you removed your shoes, accepted the small bowl of water handed you by the volunteer and joined the line of kneeling folks moving along the line of monks.

Pouring a small amount of water from your bowl onto the outstretched hands of the monk you bowed your head and received your sprinkled blessing on your head. All wished you well for the coming year, saying "Good health to you," "Happy new year," "Good fortune in the year ahead," - that sort of thing. Being a warm and sunny afternoon the cool sprinkling felt good, and, being a human being with shortcomings, I'll take any good wishes sent my direction to help balance things out!

Fruit carving at the OTOP booth

There was a booth promoting the crafts association OTOP (One Tambon [district] One Product), which you'll run into in many places in Thailand itself, and another for the TAT (the Tourism Authority of Thailand). The TAT booth was distributing shopping bags, rolled posters of and brochures about Thailand.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand booth

Miss Songkran contest - one of the interviews

There was also a beauty pageant to elect a Miss Songkran 2556 that featured lovely ladies in traditional dress, being interviewed and answering questions as you'd expect at such a contest... "If you were to move to a country to promote Thai culture, where would you choose to live?"

A contestant answers a question

Miss Songkran contestant mingles with the crowd

Part of the Miss Songkran audience makes the most of the shade at the old California Theater

Although it was billed as being open from 10:00 to 17:00 some of the cultural activities began to shut down by 15:00, but the rest of the festival ran the distance.

Two members of the TANC stop to smile

Here's hoping there's a second festival next year. To all who put time and effort into this one San Jose's first Songkran festival yesterday (apparently a lot of that by the Thai Association of Northern California) - nicely done!

Taking A Breather

Water lilies dot the surface of a moat in the Siem Reap area

After the posts about the genocide camp in Phnom Penh it's probably time for a break. We'll come back to Cambodia soon, but per a suggestion we'll return to Thailand for now.

Don't worry, the rest of the Cambodia posts will be much less traumatic and far more scenic; there's an enormous amount of beauty to be seen throughout the country, and we've just scratched the surface.

There's a family reunion of sorts this weekend, so I may not be back here until Monday morning. If I don't post tomorrow (Friday) I'll see you Monday. Just in case: have a great weekend.

Mahjong On A Thai Beach... And Elsewhere

This pick-up game lasted almost all day on a beach in Pattaya

I'm far from the best Mahjong player I know - a country mile removed from it, truth be known - but it's something I'm getting to know, bit by bit.  

The game's origination is hazy at best, but many seem to agree it began in China during the Ming dynasty, somewhere between 1368 and 1644.  That means it's been played by a wide range of people, from casual aficionados to rabid fanatics of the 136-tile game for a good 500 years or so, and it seems to be gaining in popularity again the past decade.

While there is a solitaire version, it's normally played by three or four players - more commonly by four, like the quartet up top today that I watched play for a while one morning on a beach in Thailand.

The tiles used to be made from ivory, but thankfully now almost all are made from plastic, although more costly sets made from bone are still available. A Thai friend asked me bring him a higher-quality set a few years back, so I can tell you from experience that even nicer plastic tile sets (his came in a leather case) can be pricey. My set here at home is a far simpler plastic set. I figure all you really need is a basic set, the ability to form a strategy... and some luck!

Not much of a post for a Friday - and a day late, to boot - but I have family and friends in town this weekend and next, and mahjong may well be one of the items on the agenda.

Consider this to be a placeholder until I try again on Monday.  I'm going to have a fantastic weekend... may yours be as enjoyable.

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.

Cambodia, Pt 4: Faces At The Genocide Museum

Seemingly endless rooms of victim's identification photos were eerily lit by the light coming in from outdoors.

[Note 1: There are images today that represent man's inhumanity to man, and some of them may be a little disturbing to a few of you. Fair warning.]

It was a pleasant morning, the day my Thai friend and I visited the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. We were staying in rooms just a short ride from the museum grounds, and we chatted happily away as I snapped pictures from the back of the tuk tuk, bumping along the streets of Phnom Penh.  We arrived at the front gates, paid our driver, and I soon noticed the faces on many of the people coming out of there.

The sun was shining and there was a gentle breeze blowing, but there was also something else in the air; a feeling that there was still somewhat of a pall over the entire place. Walking along beside me my friend was laughing as he related (for the fourth time that morning) something that had happened to us while we were out having dinner the night before.

Turning to him I put my hand firmly on his shoulder and whispered "I think we should be quiet now," and nodded my head in the direction of the people leaving the grounds; some of whom had obviously been crying recently.  He sobered up immediately, and we headed onto the grounds.

Entering through the front gate opening in a wall topped by wide loops of razor wire we stopped for a moment to take it all in.  It seemed kind of strange to think that a place that looked so peaceful - and yes, even kind of pretty - could be holding such terrible secrets.  We followed the signs over to the first buildings, where there were photographs of those who had (unfortunately) passed through this place.

Some couldn't withstand the torture and died in their "interrogation" rooms, some found a way to end the misery by their own hand.

Upon arriving at the camp, each man, woman, boy, girl and infant were photographed - most tagged with a number - although the people brought there had such an infinitesimally small chance of every leaving the area alive that it seems strange to keep paperwork.  Regardless, it was overwhelming.

Wired to another prisoner one young man stood with a defiant look as he came into the camp. I'd guess he didn't walk out of there alive, the poor soul.

Hundreds of pictures, thousands of pictures... room after room of them in displays 30 feet long, and more. Large images, 11" by 14", all the way down to 3" by 5". Even if you believed the low-ball figure of 15,000 souls lost in this place it meant that what were on display were only a tiny fraction of the images that must have been on file there at one time.

Some of the people in the pictures appear confused, some look dazed, some already bore evidence of beatings and injuries. There was obvious fear on many of the faces that looked directly at you as you passed bulletin board-type mass-framed pictures of people who would soon enough end up in mass graves not all that far away.

This young man managed to kill himself before he was slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge.

Stunned and slightly numbed by the visuals now behind us we left the display rooms and made our way to the interrogation rooms themselves. I don't know how I could have thought that the worst was over...  because it wasn't. The images today aren't the ones that have stayed with me since that morning.  Some of those will be in the next part.

Children were completely expendable, and I'm told 99% of them were put to death.

I don't understand how a child of this age could be guilty of any political crimes, do you?

I've edited the selection of photos today to be as gentle as possible, but there's no real way of candy-coating torture and murder on such a scale as that visited upon the people of Kampuchea. If the upcoming images are rough I'll warn readers at the start of the post.

[Note 2: The black and white images today are pictures of photos in the museum itself. I've adjusted and monkeyed with them a little, but there are still reflections and imperfections from the original prints. Best I could do. ]

Cambodia, Pt 3: The Genocide Museum In Phnom Penh

The barbed wire remaining on the site of "S-21" is no longer electrified, but can still raise unpleasant images.

Just as a fair warning: the posts over the next few days may be unpleasant for some of you to read. I thought perhaps this introduction might be a way to ease you into it, if that's possible.

Man's inhumanity to man is often difficult to face, but it's something you can't avoid when visiting a site such as Tuol Sleng, one of over 150 "interrogation" centers the Khmer Rouge used as what were, in essence, really nothing more than torture chambers and murdering sites while they ran roughshod over the men women and children of Cambodia (then Kampuchea) from 1975 until their fall in 1979.

Not perfect, but a pano showing part of the inner courtyard of the S-21 grounds

Tuol Sleng was a high school until the Khmer Rouge won the civil war in Cambodia in 1975, and in August it was converted into a prison and interrogation center, housing as many as 1,500 prisoners at a time. Estimates as to how many actually passed through Security Prison 21 (aka S-21) differ, but the number lies somewhere between 15 and 20 thousand. You can bet only a few handful walked out of there as free citizens.

Open office windows at S-21

When they began their reign of terror in 1975 the Khmer Rouge justified such centers as merely a means of locating and prosecuting those from the previous Lon Nol regime, but their means of gathering information began brutally and degenerated from there.

Most of those brought to S-21 ended up at Choeung Ek sooner rather than later; Choeung Ek being the site better known to the world as the Killing Fields, where over a million met their deaths in some of the most brutal ways imaginable. For the first year S-21 was open for business the bodies were buried on the grounds and nearby area, but they ran out of room.

A tourist comes out of a torture room on the second floor of one wing. 

If you take that figure of a million and break it down for the roughly four years of the regime's reign that comes to over 680 human lives snuffed out per day.  I suppose "snuffed out" is too gentle a term, as most of them came to a far more unpleasant and violent end, but that's a story still to come. Let's just say for now that ammunition for a quick kill was both expensive and in short supply, so they used whatever they could lay their hands on to do the job.

Although it's a tourist stop the current government endorses visitors to see - if for no other reason than to say "never again" - it was, naturally, a very somber and quiet place.  

For the boorish there were signs like the one above, advising visitors to show respect for the carnage wrought there by refraining from joking and laughing. I personally saw nothing but groups of somber folks - Western tourists, but also small school groups - moving slowly and quietly from room to room and display to display, each more disturbing then the last when you followed the course suggested by the arrows on the walls. 

Next we'll see some photos used by the Khmer Rouge to document the people who passed through Tuol Sleng, and then in the next post we'll move on to the actual processes themselves.

One young man who passed through the Tuol Sleng interrogation center. May he be at peace.