I Promised: Some History.

This isn't a research paper. My sources are only three: The opening chapter on Cambodia in Lonely Planet's Southeast Asia on a Shoestring; a book I bought from a slick-talkin' boy called Children of the Killing Fields; and our tuk-tuk driver, who works for the guesthouse where we stayed, and who rode beside us on the bus into Siem Reap.

After an extended period of poverty and civil war in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge subjugated their opponents and took ultimate power. They asserted that the new Cambodia would be an agrarian communist society, led by the people, and at first the country was in a state of celebration. Unfortunately, the party didn't last long. What soon became apparent was that the Khmer Rouge was a bloodthirsty regime with zero regard for human life, who believed the only way for their ideal society to succeed was to murder every former soldier or military officer and their entire families, every intellectual, everyone with any level of education, every writer, artist, poet, everyone who spoke out or didn't quite follow orders. They murdered people with smooth hands, merchants, even people who wore spectacles-- people they considered "parasites".

Because the Khmer Rouge wanted no loyalties to anyone but themselves, they severed families, "adopting" children and placing them in labor camps by the thousands. Children and adults alike were forced to work in the snake-infested rice patties in the broiling heat, with as little as two cups of watery rice a day to sustain them. Many of those who weren't shot, smothered or bludgeoned to death died of starvation. Some estimates claim that a third of Cambodia's entire population died in those wretched years, from 1975-1979.

In 1979, Cambodia was liberated by Vietnam, which had formerly been its mortal enemy. Yet after being so tragically and thoroughly devastated, the country has been able to recover.

To make matters much, much worse, Cambodia is absolutely littered with mines left over from the Vietnam war, a disproportionate amount placed by American soldiers. Nearly every day, someone steps off a path and is gravely wounded or killed by a lingering mine. There are people everywhere with limbs missing, scarred or blinded, unable to find work because of the explosion's stigma, reduced to shaking plastic cups on the street with the nubs of their elbows and hoping for strangers' change.

"Pol Pot killed my father," the man beside us called Beebee said, the man who would be our tuk-tuk driver, as we clattered down the road. "I was only two. Whenever I take people to his grave, I piss on it."

Later he told us about the bus driver, a man of about fifty. We learned he made the excruciating journey either to or from the border every single day. He rarely saw his wife, and often made as little as one hundred and fifty US dollars a month.

"He used to be soldier for Khmer Rouge," Beebee said. "Tank driver. So now he is happy. He is happy because he is free."

There's so much we take for granted, it's incomprehensible. What a heavy weight that knowledge is.

After we left the lake, Beebee took us to a Land Mine museum. It wasn't much; just a series of huts around a muddy courtyard far off the beaten path. Yet the piles and piles of rusty old mines were affecting, and the scrap of field spotted with mines half-buried was powerful. There were several volunteers working there, and I spoke at length with an English girl. She told me many of the children about were orphans (though most were in school) whose parents had been killed by mines, and who the man leading the mine relief organization had adopted. Others had heard about the free English lessons being offered by the volunteers, and were eager to learn. If I had known about that place, I would have spent some time there. Compare the kids I get paid to tutor in San Diego to these kids, and there's no comparison.