Blog entries

• Previous |
• Next |
• All

• Cambodia

  Tuesday, Aug 21, 2007 12:57AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  

  I still don't have anything real exciting to write about, but I'm so glad and surprised that I already got readers.  There are some pictures up now, including ones from my trip to Cambodia.  Tell me what you think.  The girl I'm biking with is a woman Sri-Ma's (pronounced Sai-Ma) daughter.  Sri-Ma was with my group the entire trip, and we visited her family at one point.  Sri-Ma is the girlfriend/ prodigy of Arn Chorn Pond, a Cambodia American human rghts activist/ music producer.  He started an organization called Cambodian Living Arts (CLA), which aims to revive traditional Cambodian arts after the Khmer Rouge wiped out so much of the native culture during it's reign from 1975-'79.  I stayed at Arn's house on the Mekong River, where he has a small recording studio, run by guys he found in the countryside.  One's nose is broken, from an explosion of a bomb dropped by Americans during their secret bombing of the country.  The damage left by America and then the Khmer Rouge is still apparent over 30 years later.  At the end of the trip we went to the CLA headquarters in Phnom Penh to record a CD with a village from outside of Siem Reap that we have a great relationship with.  While we were at CLA we were audience to a performance of an opera.  Many of the performers, who were all were in their teens, were former prositutes Arn informed us.  This is because so much of the population is impoverished.  The opera was beautiful, but made even more so by that it was performed by people who now had a life they could be proud of, showing that change is always possible.  Cambodians I think have a greater capactity for leaving the past and getting on with life, not to say that they're unaffected by post traumatic stress disorder, as many of them are from the Khmer Rouge days, where they witnessed and were subject to countless atrocities.  There's a ton more to write about my trip, but more than is good to write (or to read in your case) in one sitting.  Thanks so much for your interest, and I hope you enjoyed it.  I'll write more, and put more pictures up from my trip.  Chumreplea!
  
  http://www.thefluteplayer.net/  (This is a site for the movie made about Arn.  It has info about him as well.)
  

  Add a comment