Stan and Nicole in Vietnam/Cambodia: So much to tell

We have done so much over the last few days. Rather than sharing it all at once and exhausting you readers, we share it over two or three posts.

First off Nicole was very brave and donated 350ml of blood at the children's hospital. This took about an hour all up. While lying down giving blood there is a maze painted on the ceiling. You are meant to guide a mouse through the maze to a block of cheese at the end. Funny thing is that there was absolutely no way the poor mouse could get to the cheese. Other than that, there was a lot of information on the wall regarding all the people who donated blood in 2010. Of the 1031 people who donated blood, over 800 were foreigners. It is good to see tourists helping out. We tried to see if there was anything we could help with at the hospital (Stan with IT or Nicole with Pathology), but the language barrier was insurmountable and after a lot of attempts and lots of smiling, we continued on.

Another interesting trip we did was to the War Museum here in Siem Reap. This consisted of many old guns, tanks, artillery and other weapons of war which have been collected together and are slowly rusting away. When we entered, we were asked if we wanted a tour guide "for free" (which you are expected to tip at the end of the tour). If anyone ever travels to Cambodia, we would highly recommend that you always take these tour guides when offered. Aside from making the museum more interesting, they always have a fascinating story to tell which personalises the civil war much more than history plaques can do.

Our guide Sinath

Our tour guide was Sinath and his story was fascinating and very sad. Sinath was 10 years old in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge took over the country. Over the next several years every person in his family was killed in the genocide. At the age of 14 he joined the army and begun fighting. He joined so that he could get some clothes and because he was starving. When we met Sinath he was blind in one eye, was missing one leg below the knee and a little deaf. Sinath joked to us that he was like a cat because he had nine lives. And in that he was quite correct. He is lucky to be alive today. He was shot three times and showed us his AK47 scars, two on his leg and one in his stomach. He was also badly burnt when he was behind an RPG that was being shot. The final 5 "cat's lives" were all from either stepping on mines, or being near mines as they went off. He lost his leg when he stepped on a mine. At the same time he went blind in one eye when a piece of his toe bone went through his eye. He invited us to look into his blind eye as one could still kind of see the bone embedded in the eyeball. He showed us all the various bits of shrapnel still under his flesh from the other mines he had survived. Indeed, the ball bearings from claymore mines were easily distinguished, but there were a few other that seemed much more jagged and painful. One ball bearing in his leg had travelled about 8 inches from where it had entered and was causing him a lot of pain. Sinath joked that he would never be able to get through an airport metal detector because of all the metal in his body. It would be so nice to say that Sinath's life improved after the war, but sadly, about five years ago his wife was out walking with his young daughter when she stepped on one of the many landmines in Cambodia. Both her legs were severed and she died very quickly. The daughter had one of her mother's leg bones pierce her abdomen and died after about 15 minutes. What a sad tale. One that happens all to frequently here in Cambodia.

Sinath had many sad stories to tell. Once he and his friends tried to go "grenade fishing". His friend was showing them how to do it but made a stupid mistake. He pulled the pin on the grenade and threw the pin into the water while holding on to the live grenade. Six of Sinath's friends died and he was extremely lucky to have been walking away when the grenade exploded.

The museum was really worth the visit because of Sinath. Without the story behind it, it is nothing more than various tools of war which are (thankfully) rusting away in the humid Cambodian weather. The museum itself is located on a former mine field. Once Nicole and Stan heard this they were VERY careful to step only on the paths. Even though these mine fields have been cleaned, the rains will often move the mines in the mud underground. It wasn't too far from here that Sinath's wife and daughter had stepped on a mine.

Here are some of the things to see at the War Museum: