A hasty hello from Cambodia

Feb. 24, 2009

Hello from Siem Reap. I write this greeting with haste because in another fifteen minutes I'm off to watch a documentary on the Pol Pot Regime and the genocide that he oversaw in Cambodia during the mid to late 1970s.

I left the lovely, slow-paced country of Laos this morning taking a short flight from Pakse. It's hot here and quite dusty, a little reminiscent of some of the cities in northern India, though not nearly as frenetic or polluted. My initial impression of this city is that it is more modern than expected. The people so far have struck me as kind, much like the Laotians, though there is a distinctly higher level of pressure put on the tourists here by the tuk tuk drivers and the women selling goods in the market.

What is also striking is how young the population is. I have yet to see a local over the age of 35. According to American journalist Karen J. Coates in her moving book Cambodia Now, as of 2003 roughly 50% of the country's population was under the age of 19.

I'm off now to go watch this documentary and learn more about why that is the case.