BLOG

Cambodia Trip Report, Final

After supplying three rural primary school children with books, uniforms, and other supplies, we drove to Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia and spent the night in a hotel.

The next day we went to the Genocide Museum located just down the road from the hotel. Many tourists from around the world had come to see it, to walk the grounds and to read the stories, which were posted in Kmer, French, and in English. The French had controlled Cambodia, Viet Nam, and other parts of Southeast Asia for 90 years until 1960. When they pulled out, the Viet Nam War was launched to see who would fill the power vacuum.

Today the Cambodians are more interested in developing ties with the USA than with France, so English is fast replacing French.

By the way, I was surprised to see so many signs written in English, considering the fact that so few of the people actually could speak our language. But sometimes their lack of understanding was evident, as we saw with this sign: “Don’t take a rusk, don’t pass other vehicles in dangerous (something).”

Perhaps the traffic department was warning people not to pass on a yellow line. If so, they really should have written the sign only in Kmer. It is not likely that English speakers would cross a yellow line, unless they were living there and had learned to drive like Cambodians.

In Cambodia, yellow lines are just decoration to beautify the highways. White lines too make it easier for drivers to gage whether or not they have room to pass when meeting oncoming traffic. Oncoming motorcycles are expected to move over so that cars can pass the vehicle ahead. Two lanes are usually wide enough to accommodate three lanes of traffic.

Traffic changes quickly, so it is difficult to take pictures unless one is ready. But below is a picture that I managed to take of a big rig passing on the yellow line.

At any rate, we arrived at the main gate of the Tuolsleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh.

We bought tickets to get in. The rules and regulations were posted in three languages: Kmer, French, and English.

One of the killing field internment/torture camps had been turned into a museum. There were prison cells to house people as they awaited torture and execution.

A blown-up photograph of prisoners was on display for all to see.

In the main courtyard once stood “The Gallows,” where people were bound and hung upside down and then lowered into water tanks lined up in the background. This seems to have been their version of waterboarding, designed to simulate drowning over and over again.

The trees on the left along the sidewalk had a park bench. We chose that spot to pray and to take communion to present the voices of innocent blood to the divine court for reconciliation and healing.

Below are some of the names of those who were killed here. I assume that these names came from the official records.

Below is their memorial, each generation hoping that such things will not be repeated. But history shows that such things seem to happen somewhere in every generation. The cruelty of fallen men knows no bounds when they desire to enslave others.

Below is the bench under the tree where we chose to pray and take communion.

This was the first time that Setra himself had been able to enter this museum, as the voices crying from the ground had been too painful for him. He felt a great release of millions when our prayer work was done.

We discovered also that this place was a demonic portal, perhaps created by the blood sacrifices that were offered here in the late 1970’s. We closed this portal and bound all unclean entities, replacing them with Seraphim and other angelic hosts, who are to guard it for Kingdom purposes only.

We also prayed to reestablish all of the Father’s original boundary markers for Cambodia that He had set for all nations, according to Deuteronomy 32:8. Cambodia used to be much larger than it is today. We believe that when the Kingdom is fully manifested on the earth, the boundaries of the nations will be redrawn without war or suffering.

We left the Genocide Museum and drove further south to the beach at Sihanoukville, where Setra, his fiancé, and her family could enjoy a day of relaxation and a very short vacation. We found a place on the shore to eat supper.

When we entered the dining area, we could see the ocean directly behind it.

We found a hotel nearby. Across from it were high-rise casinos and bars, complete with barmaids (prostitutes). We went to one of the casinos looking trying to find a good latte or mocha. Outside of the hotel was an elaborate roundabout, built by the Chinese who had largely taken over the town and turned it into a resort area for tourists.

If you look closely, you can see the pearl in the mouth of the male lion in the background. I do not know if very many Cambodians know what this means, but certainly the Chinese people do. It is the same symbolism as when a dragon swallows a pearl.

On July 1, 1997, when Hong Kong was returned formally to China, the fireworks over the harbor depicted a dragon swallowing a pearl. Hong Kong was known as the Pearl of the Orient.

The legend is that dragons come from the sea, and to maintain themselves on land, they must eat pearls. So in the casino where we had our coffee, we noticed a short video on one of the slot machines depicting an underwater dragon flying up into the air. After a short time, he begins to chase a fleeing pearl. The pearl then dives into the water, with the dragon following. When the dragon finally catches the pearl and eats it, the dragon goes up out of the water back into the air. Then the video repeats.

The lion eating the pearl is a not-so-subtle way of saying that the Chinese are swallowing this town and taking over the businesses, casinos, and prostitution rings. Any Cambodian crime bosses who were there previously must give way to the new bosses.

The next morning we drove about an hour to a nearby resort area to spend a few hours at the beach in a more secluded spot.

But first, of course, we had to have second breakfast. It seemed like we were always eating, and after a while, I felt like I was turning into a hobbit. On this occasion, Brad and I limited ourselves to enjoying coconut juice.

Then, while the girls went swimming, we found a nice restaurant at a hotel, where they served lattes and mochas. This gave us time to discuss the work accomplished so far.

From there we drove up a nearby mountain. Here is the entrance to the road as we turned off the highway to go up the mountain in the background.

The temperature cooled considerably as we drove higher and higher amid clouds and waterfalls. As we neared the top, the clouds often veiled the road, as the landscape seemed to change minute by minute. There we came across a large statue a giant woman named Yeay Mao, known as “Grandmother.”

More details about the origin of her legend are posted on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeay_Mao

You can also watch a 4-minute video here that someone posted online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzdPzd6oImI

We prayed at this site as well, near the unusual balancing rock formations.

It was the final place where we were led to pray, and we were led to dedicate the place to the Kingdom of God.

By this time it was mid-afternoon, and we still had to drive a long way, because Brad and I were due to fly out of Siem Reap the next morning. So we piled back into the two cars and drove until about 11 pm before stopping for the night about an hour from Siem Reap. We were very tired, and figured that it would be better to get up early and leave the hotel at 6 a.m. to make it to the airport on time.

On November 22, Setra and D dropped us off at the airport on time, and we were able to meet our schedule with no problem. We flew back to Manila with a stop in Guanzhou (China). We got to Manila more than an hour late (close to midnight), took a taxi to the Red Planet hotel, and finally went to sleep about 1 a.m.

Then we got up at 5 a.m. on November 23 and went to the airport to catch our long flight home via Tokyo and Chicago.

We arrived safely on Thanksgiving evening, November 23.

Other than that, not much happened on this trip.