We counted ourselves fortunate to find a Starbucks at the airport to get a jolt of much-needed caffeine. After 36 plus hours of mostly sleepless travel, we needed a boost before we jumped on our flight to Siem Reap, Cambodia.
We considered ourselves even luckier that our coffee pitstop didn’t lose us our seats on the plane. When we arrived at our gate, we discovered the agents were holding the bus on the runway: our flight was boarding and we were only just missed our departing flight.
We won the lottery with the driver we hired after going through customs in Cambodia. Lee had a minivan and a welcoming smile and spoke excellent English. We spent the day driving through the countryside to scope out an area where we can film Number 18’s backstory when we are in production.
We were warmed not only by the weather, such a stark contrast to the piles of snow we left behind at home, but especially by the kindness of the local farmers whose day we interrupted as we rolled down the red-clay roads. Their smiles and kindness to us a heartfelt welcome to this stunning country.
thanks for sharing your journey guys 🙂
Very exciting!!! Love watching the journey unfold!!!
Cambodia itself has a recent grim backstory that still affects life there today. You may already be aware of that as you try to avoid hidden landmines in the countryside or meet amputees begging at the marketplaces. Grimmer still is the memory and legacy of Pol Pot’s bloody reign in the 70’s. He was Cambodia’s Hitler, if not worse, to his own people.
The Jews are by no means the only ‘holocaust’ victims of recent history, and I wish the West would acknowledge that to gain a more globally responsible vision of concern. For example, the Russian Revolution saw substantially more mass killing than the Jewish Holocaust. And Pol Pot was such a madman that he sought to kill anyone with glasses so that he could secure his bloody reign without intellectuals so much as questioning him.
There could be parallels in cycles of oppression that feed into the tolerance or nature of human trafficking in a country.
Anyhow, any story comes within a larger historical story that may help, at least, to inform the context. I strongly recommend visiting Toul Sleng in Phnom Penh if you can at all, or at the very least watching the movie “The Killing Fields”.
And count the butterflies there as you go 🙂 . Thanks so much for what you guys are doing. God bless!!