CAMBODIA DENTAL MISSION 2012

I awoke this morning after a quiet night to the sounds of Phenom Penh. There is a constant buzz of motorbikes which is only occasionally broken by the shrill honking of a horn as drivers negotiate their lanes and often the lanes of oncoming traffic. My intention today was to understand Cambodia and to do so meant understanding what happened here at the end of the 70's. During the reign of the Khmer Rouge, 1 out of every 4 citizens were killed either in prisons or forced labor camps. Our visits to the Cambodian genocide museum, in a former high school turned into a prison, and the "killing fields," where the Khmers' atrocities were discovered, revealed the complex time in which countrymen fought each other in a quest to survive over a cause that neither fully believed in..... Sadly, the genocide has never been fully dealt with and few of the Khmer Rouge have ever been brought Returning from the outskirts of the city, our tuc-tuc (scooter towed carriage) driver used his horn to ward off the other drivers as if to say "there are humans among this metal and rubber mess." his driving was more like a rhythmic dance than a taxi ride and we made it safely to lunch. Cambodia is very hot, very humid, and very inexpensive. Our multi-course lunch was only $8 per person. And our full day tuc-tuc was only $20. Tomorrow, we begin seeing patients on the Cambodian border with Vietnam. Time to get some rest.