Reflection

When i think back on Cambodia, it reminds me the most of East Africa.

Driving down the road atop a charter bus moving you from Poi Pet [Point A] to Phnom Penh [Point B], my senses pick up almost identical sensations: the same muted muddy blues, greens, and rusted browns dripping down concrete buildings you'd see everywhere outside of Kampala; that same red dust coating the poorly paved highways adjacent to the vast flat flood plain. The same parenting style where guardians go without dressing their babies at all or a few rips in the shirt of a toddler. Street children make their appearance here just like the their other southern neighbor. But instead of huts, there's stilted housing and instead of matooke, there's rice fields, and instead of black skin, there's dark brown skin baked that way by arduous day harvesting labor.

Along the road "People's Party of Cambodia" signs sit attached to an empty building, having a difficult time deciding whether it wants to be proud or ironic.

It's absolutely bizarre how Thailand has managed to be so vastly different from everyone else around here.

if you haven't seen my pictures, they say more words than I can muster right now. We'll go to coffee and talk about the people I met and the places I've seen of the Great Angkor Empire sometime, for sure.