Dear Friends, Here is the latest update on the last journey. Wishing

all of you the best! Please let me know how you are doing as well. Please

excuse the spelling and I cant find the spelling check and every thing is in

Portuguess!

After the crossing from Laos into Cambodia there was no real road to

speak of, only a series of dirt tracks for the first three hours. I didnt

see any vehicles or any human life at all during this journey until getting

near the first town of Stung Treng. Here several major river crossings have

to be negotiated by boat so patience is an attibute when dealing with the

one boatman who knows that he is indespensible and that he can charge

whatever he feels like. The tribuataries here that run out of the mountains

that separate Cambodia and Viet Nam are as large as the Mekong ltself.

The next part of the journey to Ketche is a hellish mixture of broken

bitumen, sand and large stones. This is the only ``highway to Hell``left in

Cambodia that has received no attention during the reconstuction phase of

the Country. Seven long hours later I once again rejoined the Mekong in

Kreche.

I celebrated my birthday in Skol which is renowned for the local

culinary delight of large spiders that are fried and eaten like potato chips

and grown in large pits in the ground. I have always enjoyed stopping here

for this culinary freak show, only this time I shared it with the tour buses

that were passing through. I guess the post-Kmer Rouge days when the Country

was opening its doors are long gone. Lonely Planet even touts Cambodia as

the ``second most desirerable travel destination``in the world.

A major motive for returning here was to explore the Kmer Rouge Legacy

and see how modern day Cambodians are recovering. I decided to travel to

Pualin on the border with Thailand since this was the headquarters and last

strong hold where the biggest perpetraters of the Kmer Rouge are still

hiding today. This area has only become safe in the last few years and is

still heavily mined. For these reasons there is finally a legal border

crossing for foreighners here; in fact the border officials told me I was

the first foreighner to cross here into Thailand.

I spent my last days in Cambodia exploring a series of caves where

massive Kmer Rouge executions took place. At the top of one hill I found a

monastery and a local monk to show me where the worst of these atrosities

took place. He led me down a series of stone stairs where I found a large

Buda at the bottom. From here I could pear into the next cave that was

filled with human bones from children. He explained that this cave was where

the children were thrown after execution and that the next two caves were

segragated as well; one for men and the other for women. In some of the next

caves, some of the bones were gathered up and stacked into large boxes. I

can only tell you that I felt my blood curling as I imagined the horror that

took place on this sacred hill.

The last 50 Kilometers to the Boder are the most heavily mined areas

left in Cambodia. In all my travels in mined Countries, I have never seen

anything like this; both sides of the road are roped off and every 15 feet

there are red flags with a skull depicted and ``danger`` written in both

English and Kmer. It is now estimated that only half of the 13 million mines

have been cleared in Cambodia since the Kmer Rouge layed down their arms.

Every year after the monsoon rains wash away new layers of soil and dozens

of people still lose limbs every month.

Danniel Todd

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