Member Spotlight Archives >> Travel Tales from Southeast Asia In Cambodia, nine miles from Phnom Penh, is a plot of land the size of a soccer field. At first glance, people appear to stroll across it, walking amidst grazing cattle and palm trees. But on closer examination, the field is wholly unlike any place else—not for what you see on the surface, but for what lies beneath. “This is the ‘killing fields’. After a hard rain, clothing and bones can be seen protruding up through the earth you walk over,” Travel Director Jan Wheatley says. “It is a humbling site that everyone should see.” Marking the place where more than 20,000 Cambodians were tortured and killed during the massive genocide of the Khmer Rouge is a glass obelisk containing the actual skulls of people who died there during the late 1970s. Traveler Dick Tucker says the image of those skulls is “horrible.” In contrast, afterwards, Dick visited a local school where bright-eyed children in colorful costumes performed a traditional dance for visiting travelers. Dick says it was like going from “one extreme to another.” That dichotomy is not uncommon in Indochina where riches and poverty, power and helplessness, success and failure exist side by side.

On a single journey, Dick attended a ceremony hosted by the Royal Princess of Thailand, had drinks at a birthday party for the Princess of Cambodia and crawled into the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam. “It was amazing to see how the Vietnamese people lived underground in tunnels spanning 125 miles,” Dick recalls. “They lived their lives down there—cooking their meals, having their babies, nursing their sick.” Dick was also fascinated by the shoes they made from tire treads and the spikes they designed from the metal of tanks.   Today, that same ingenuity is seen throughout Saigon.   “In a city of more than six million people, there are at least three million motor bikes,” Dick says. “They managed to use them for every kind of transportation situation. I saw four people on a motor bike. I saw two pigs perched on a bike and, later, a huge hog tied to the back end of another. It was amazing.”   The river of nine dragons, the Mekong, flows through Indochina from its origins high in the Himalayan Mountains. From the waters of the Mekong, Dick witnessed the many faces of Southeast Asia.   “We saw farmers bringing their fruits and vegetables up river. The 270 steps that lead to the Imperial Citadel begin at its banks. And, the beautiful beach of Hoi An where we dipped our toes in the South China Sea is where the river makes its exit,” Dick says.   Before leaving Indochina, the group took in a water puppet show. It is a magical sight where puppeteers work frantically from underwater to put on the brilliant display. It is also a sign of the wonder that has returned to Indochina and the possibilities that are endless there.

   
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