cambodia

That's myself and Arrun. He is a hotel worker, translator, student, tour guide, and hoping to save enough money to get a tuk tuk. It's hard to tell but I think only a week and a half ago or so I was in Cambodia working on a project, my first visit to the country. My feelings about what I saw and experienced have yet to resolve themselves into total coherence and objectivity - it came in the middle of a whirlwind global trip. I do recall the number of young people we met who were tireless, firecely intelligent, self educated working as cooks, drivers, hotel receptionists. Working to get a leg up in the harsh realities of the new Cambodian economy, where first world luxury plays out for the tourists and those who work for the government in the dissolution of memory and history, secret history kept forever intangible.

Eric's already written about Dith Pran's death, but here's the New York Times obituary in which they recount his work with Schanberg for the paper. Read it here. Reading about him reminds me of the great people I met in Cambodia. I have to get back there.