TravellingTiki: October 2020

NOTE: This is the first installment of what Linda is choosing to call “The Sidebar” – so called because it is a departure from our normal “travelogue” blog posts, more of a "thought" piece, and it will be tracked on the “sidebars” of the blog in the future (and evokes beverages, to us, rather than courtrooms). Some of you may be familiar with our other side post: “Curmudgeon’s Corner” which features venting, mostly from Mark.

Wait for it....

However, that said, this first Sidebar does begin with our recent travels in Asia, specifically Vietnam and Cambodia.

It was December, 2019, and Mark was battling a bad cold / cough that we are pretty sure was NOT Covid. So he decided to stay in the hotel room, while Linda went on the last tour in Vietnam – to the infamous Cu Chi Tunnels. Just the name is enough to send shivers down spines of those who remember them, or even just remember reading about them or seeing them in documentaries about the Vietnam War.

Blurry for obvious reasons

The tunnels were a vast 124 mile network near and in Saigon (today’s Ho Chi Minh City) that were used as Viet Cong storage and supply routes, living quarters, ammunition factories, and hospitals as well as a hidden points from which to attack American forces at night. It was the center of operations for the Tet Offensive in 1968. The tour guide worked very hard to keep the narrative neutral, even for our group – of which I (Linda) was the only American. She talked about how they made the tunnels “Vietnamese-sized” and because they were better able to squat and move around low to the ground, they were better guerilla fighters.

Vent in termite mound

Yes, we could go into the tunnels… and I was thinking that it was a good thing Mark didn’t come on the trip. He hates tight spaces. Particularly tight, dark, humid, hot spaces! I only went through the “short” one, which was plenty for me. The entrances of course were hidden carefully, and there had to be hidden vents for air and for cooking so the Americans could not find them.

However, I have to admit the most chilling part of the tour was a demonstration of the various “man traps” that were used throughout the forest and the tunnels themselves to kill the enemy with bamboo and scrap metal, which is what you do when you don’t have a lot of bullets and bombs. It was terrifying as I was imagining my brother, who fought on the ground in Vietnam, having to avoid these simple, yet very effective traps. If they didn’t kill you immediately, the infections from the injuries in the jungles eventually might.

Though estimates vary, the midrange is that 2,450,000 people died between 1955 – 1974, of which “only” 282,000 were Americans. One estimate is that 670,000 civilians were killed in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, but other sources say it was more likely 1,092,000, as many were never accounted for. Very sad and shocking numbers.

A few days later, we were in Cambodia. One day was a tour of the “Killing Fields,” and an associated prison (once a school) now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh. I didn’t feel as if I knew enough about these events (other than from the movie,) but I admit to being more than a bit shocked to learn that the others on our tour did not know ANYTHING about this horrific time in Cambodia’s recent history, between 1975-1979. These were not uneducated folks – from Germany, England, Ireland, Belgium, and Scotland.

During the Khmer Rouge regime, only 40 years ago, between 1.7 to 2.5 million people were killed, after confessing their “pre-revolutionary lifestyles and crimes” and being sent to farms to be “re-educated” and dealt with ultimately by bullets, machete, or starvation.

Rules at prison S-21

The number of people killed made up about 31% of the total country’s population of ~8 million! And who were the people killed by their own government? Anyone who worked for the prior government, monks, foreigners and anyone who had any contact with any foreigners (including missionaries and relief agencies,) anyone who had been educated (including doctors…talk about shooting yourself in the foot,) and anyone who wore glasses (because you obviously read books and were educated).

We visited only one of the 20,000 mass grave sites in Cambodia, and it just hummed with the spirits of the dead. The tower or stupa of Choeung Ek was thoroughly chilling but beautiful. Walking around the former orchard, you could actually see the clothing and bones of victims on the sides of the wooden walkways.

The Genocide Museum in the city was also very disturbing…classrooms turned into cells, and the thousands of pictures of the inmates who were processed, tortured and then sent to the fields. Except for a few…in fact there were 2 elderly gentlemen there signing books that survived by having unique gifts – the ability to fix typewriters and the gift to be able to paint Pol Pot in a flattering way. Ha. They were about the only uplifting points in the day.

The Khmer Rouge wanted to bring everyone to ONE level and to punish the elites, by literally emptying out the entire city of Phnom Penh in a few days and sending all the “intellectual city dwellers” to be “re-educated” on farms.

The question kept spinning in my head -- How can humans do such awful, dreadful things to each other?

I imagine many would dismiss these cases as due to them being “Asian” or located in “Third World sh**holes.” But these things have been happening in Europe (WWII) and instigated by Europeans as well (Africa). IS it happening in other places now? Yes. And could similar things happen in other places as well? Yes, of course. Including the USA? It didn’t take much for me to draw a line from the wartime US vs. THEM thinking and the Cambodian campaigns of mistrust of government and the educated …to what we are seeing in US politics right now.

Federal agents teargassing in Portland, July 2020. Noah Berger, AP

Disturbing and chilling, to say the least.
And ... Halloween and Los Dias de los Muertos just around the corner, along with the US election.

I was going to end it there, but didn’t want to end on such a depressing note....

I became curious as to where the saying “Man’s inhumanity to man” came from … I was pleasantly surprised to find the source to be none other than Robbie Burns, the national Bard of Scotland! It is from his 1784 poem: Man was made to mourn: A Dirge.

I love how the poem begins…!

Robbie! (Thanks, Pamela!)

When chill November's surly blast
Made fields and forests bare,

And there it is in stanza 7:

Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn!

"See yonder poor, o'erlabour'd wight,
So abject, mean, and vile,
Who begs a brother of the earth
To give him leave to toil;
And see his lordly fellow-worm
The poor petition spurn,
Unmindful, tho' a weeping wife
And helpless offspring mourn.

So the poem talks about how people don’t care about one another and even worse, scorn each other, how the rich ignore the poor... and the best outcome is death as a release. And that brings me back to thinking about the USA right now.

Sigh.