We finished all the beers at 1 AM during on our last night in Cagayan De Oro after which I grappled with sleep and the pleasant memory of a car named Altea, travelled to Laguindingan Airport at 3 AM and touched down in Manila at 6:25 AM, napped at Red Planet-Binondo at 10 AM after brunching at the New Toho Food Center and Lan Zhou La Mien, went to NAIA 3 at 7 PM and arrived at Villa Langka Boutique Hotel in Phnom Penh at around 2 AM.
I told myself that I will spend the Sunday in my hotel to mend myself and that was how it was until Moe and Vin arrived in the afternoon and convinced me to join them fo a visit at the Killing Fields where we also had our late kunch.
The "Killing Fields" was coined by Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran whose ordeal under the Khmer Rouge Regime and eventual escape was made into a movie with the same title that I first watched as a high school student in Almaguer, and refers to several locations in Cambodia where almost 1.4 million of the estumated 1.7 to 2.5 million Cambodians who died in the genocide were executed.
The "Killing Fields" in Phnom Penh is actually an extermination camp in the village of Choeung Ek where prisoners who survived torture at S-21 or Tuol Sleng Prison were bludgeoned, stabbed, hacked and bashed to death because using bullets for execution was deemed too expensive.
Only 7 of the estimated 14,000 people who were interred at Tuol Sleng and transported to Choeung Ek survived, with most of the Cambodian prisoners executed at Choeung Ek while prominent persons and foreigners were killed and buried at Tuol Sleng.
I've been to Tuol Sleng in 2004 and since then, and I've been hounded by the graphic photos of prisoners taken when they were alive and after their gruesome deaths.
I was told Choeung Ek would be more disturbing but I found it sanitized after being turned into a memorial park, the tree where infants were bashed to death now richly adorned with multi-clored bracelets.
In Tuol Sleng, I can actually visualize the prisoners and hear their screams of agony.
We Grabbed from the "Killing Fields" to the Russian Market [Phsar Tuol Tom Poung] for what is allegedly the best iced coffee in Phnom Penh where we got lost trying to find and when we did at Shop 547 of "The Best Iced Coffee in Phnom Penh, only one serving is available which we agreed for Moe to have while we settled for the version of the nearby "The Best Iced Coffee of Cambodia".
"How can such a gentle people be capable of such extreme violence?" I pondered during Monday's monologue on private sector engagement but come ot think of it, such genocide is actually being perpetuated today in the name of profit and wealth creation, with entire communities dispossesed and laborers worked to death for the benefit of a few billionaires!
Just how much is the share of the cooks, servers, entertainers and cleaners from the bill we paid for our reception dinner at the Bhopa Phnom Penh Titanic Restaurant?
If the monolithinc private sector multi-nationals is the devil incarnate and Oxfam is the pretentious angel of salvation, can they actually work together on equal terms to save humanity?
That I was not able to rationalize despite ascending Cloud for three pints of craft beer and pizza...
I told myself that I will spend the Sunday in my hotel to mend myself and that was how it was until Moe and Vin arrived in the afternoon and convinced me to join them fo a visit at the Killing Fields where we also had our late kunch.
The "Killing Fields" was coined by Cambodian photojournalist Dith Pran whose ordeal under the Khmer Rouge Regime and eventual escape was made into a movie with the same title that I first watched as a high school student in Almaguer, and refers to several locations in Cambodia where almost 1.4 million of the estumated 1.7 to 2.5 million Cambodians who died in the genocide were executed.
The "Killing Fields" in Phnom Penh is actually an extermination camp in the village of Choeung Ek where prisoners who survived torture at S-21 or Tuol Sleng Prison were bludgeoned, stabbed, hacked and bashed to death because using bullets for execution was deemed too expensive.
Only 7 of the estimated 14,000 people who were interred at Tuol Sleng and transported to Choeung Ek survived, with most of the Cambodian prisoners executed at Choeung Ek while prominent persons and foreigners were killed and buried at Tuol Sleng.
I've been to Tuol Sleng in 2004 and since then, and I've been hounded by the graphic photos of prisoners taken when they were alive and after their gruesome deaths.
I was told Choeung Ek would be more disturbing but I found it sanitized after being turned into a memorial park, the tree where infants were bashed to death now richly adorned with multi-clored bracelets.
In Tuol Sleng, I can actually visualize the prisoners and hear their screams of agony.
We Grabbed from the "Killing Fields" to the Russian Market [Phsar Tuol Tom Poung] for what is allegedly the best iced coffee in Phnom Penh where we got lost trying to find and when we did at Shop 547 of "The Best Iced Coffee in Phnom Penh, only one serving is available which we agreed for Moe to have while we settled for the version of the nearby "The Best Iced Coffee of Cambodia".
"How can such a gentle people be capable of such extreme violence?" I pondered during Monday's monologue on private sector engagement but come ot think of it, such genocide is actually being perpetuated today in the name of profit and wealth creation, with entire communities dispossesed and laborers worked to death for the benefit of a few billionaires!
Just how much is the share of the cooks, servers, entertainers and cleaners from the bill we paid for our reception dinner at the Bhopa Phnom Penh Titanic Restaurant?
If the monolithinc private sector multi-nationals is the devil incarnate and Oxfam is the pretentious angel of salvation, can they actually work together on equal terms to save humanity?
That I was not able to rationalize despite ascending Cloud for three pints of craft beer and pizza...
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