001Okay, thank you all for coming. Um, yeah, we would like to share our things about our trip. Um, for me it was the first time Brett has been there seven times uh to visit her son. >> Um, it's quite a journey. Um, there are a number of airlines that that go there. We chose Korean Air >> which flies directly from Boston to Soul, South Korea. It's it's just a 13 or 14 hour flight, not a problem. Um it was about 27 hours from door to door. Um >> and so when you're there, be prepared to uh to be tired. Um at any rate, um >> in this talk, um you know, Cambodia is regarded as a third world country. Some of the slides bely that fact. And um also one of the things we like
002to sort of dramatize is um and and I think Rajas's introduction was just perfect uh the interconnectedness of it all and how what we have done and what we are doing and what some of our other friends around the world have done um have both negative and positive impacts on countries like Cambodia. And so let's just uh dive right into it. >> That's me, right? Okay. >> This is my son, Jackson Fchett. His wife, his name is not Jackson, Jackson. Jackson Forchette. His wife, Wanette, and their two kids, Remy, who is five, and Olivia who's who's four. Jackson did his PhD work in interdisciplinary ecology from 2011 to in Virashe National Park which is up in the north um near near the Vietnam border studying um endangered gibbon apes and their relationship to the forest
003ecology. He graduated in 2014 and he moved to Ponumpen first working with the British NGO Fauna and Flora International and now with Conservation International. And this photo was taken in in uh Jan early January at this really beautiful outdoor restaurant that restaurants in Cambodia. I could go on and on. For those of you who may not be familiar with um where Cambodia is, uh this is what used to be called pos possibly still is the Indo-Chinese Peninsula. Uh there's little old Cambodia. There's Thailand. Uh the war that they were fighting was along these borders right here. And this long country, there's a label up there, but Vietnam goes all the way down here. And the Mikong River travels through Cambodia here in the uh eastern section and then goes back into the famous uh delta
004area. And before I leave this slide, I'm going to talk about one individual who was raised in the country, this little country called Brunai. So the capital is Ponampen. As you can see, it's not far from Ho Chi Min City, which at the time when I was a young man was called Saigon. Um, and the United States did an extensive amount of bombing all along this corridor right here. Uh, they got lots up there. Uh, the North Vietnamese would come down would use this cor. They were, you know, a lot of activity around Saigon and and the delta area. Um, and so as you can see, um, Vietnam, Ponampen, Cambodia is very close association there. Uh later we'll talk about of course Bangkok is up here. Thai and and we'll have another map that'll talk
005about see now you can take >> okay next slide. So my son's apartment is well located in the heart of the city near the central independence monument, Wat Baton Park, the royal palace, the Mikong river in Tonlay sap which is the confluence of the two rivers is one of the reasons why Ponen is such a central and good location for the capital. A lot of trade goes through that that area and um so Jackson can oh and the national museum as well and Jackson can walk to CI about a block away at the Ponumpen Center. There are so many restaurants of all different kinds modern malls. They're all walkable or a short tuk tuk ride away. >> You need to explain a tuk tuk. >> We will. Okay. You will see tuk tucks will come
006into this later. And this is a view um from their rooftop if you will. Um this is the the National Mall if you will. Um uh the statue of uh Prince Suk. Um and people walk this mall every night. Um >> in one direction. In one direction only. >> In one direction only. >> You identified as a foreigner if you go the other way. >> Counterclockwise. Yes. and and um except for westerners that don't that don't get the message. Um at any rate uh this is a very typical scene um in Panon Pen and Cenry both uh zoning they've never heard of zoning. Okay. Um so single family dwellings next to highrises is a piece of property becomes available gets built on basically. Um and this is also a view from the same rooftop. This
007is one of the uh markets and we'll show you some slides of the market and there's a couple Buddhist monks going into uh to do some begging there. Couple more sites. Um this here again is the mall. Uh couple beautiful fountains. U this these are very wellkept, but across the street there are some buildings that you don't want to get too close to cuz they're falling down. And this is again typical um not only of an Asian country. I've I found the same thing in Spain, in Italy. Um you know, bombing cities that had bombs going back to World War II and still have not been repaired. Uh that kind of thing. Uh you will notice this building here that has a scaffolding around it. Uh there is like an 85% vacancy rate in Panumpen.
008there was this huge building uh uh glut that just happened with Chinese investment and a lot of it was going to be to do online gambling and suddenly the Hansen government said wait a minute we don't want that >> and then of course COVID also happened so this right now it's cheaper to leave a building vacant than to partially rent it because the operation and maintenance would be more costly than whatever wherever the taxes are on it. So that's the way that one is working out for me. Um couple more uh things here. This is the National Independence Monument. Um it's just on the mall. Uh this is one of the fountains on the mall at sunset. This is really a beautiful mall. We walk there most nights uh that we were in town. Um
009this is one of the large uh temples, very famous temples. There's a bunk going into it. Um, this is a casino. Um, and these long buildings right here. And in fact, this building right over here is where Jackson uh works for um Conservation International. His office is there. They have about 50 70 people. What have you got there? >> This is the thing that they that they kick. >> Oh, >> you're going to talk about they people just like they go out and they have soccer games with these little and on the mall. Yeah. There's always a game going on. And then they kick these um these like birdies. >> I can't do it otherwise I >> They also do hacky sack, you know, and they're amazing. I I've never seen somebody like with eyes
010in the back of the head, they do this and it goes in the right place, you know, whatever. So, >> um >> so anyway, um we were lucky enough to go to CM Reap um uh for Christmas. Um it's definitely um a wonderful place to go. We debated whether we should go because the war was right along the border and um basically um less in some cases than 100 kilometers away from where we were and you we're going with children. It was one highway. Uh there were hundreds of thousands of refugees crowding where they could go and guess where they were going. Um, and so it was a decision. What changed was we heard that the Thai airline was flying to Sam Reef every day and the Cambodian airline was flying to Bangkok every day.
011We figured if they got the word that it's safe, it's probably safe for us, too. So, Stan is the second largest city in Cambodia and most people um go here to to visit the Ankorwatt temple um complex. Um but there are lots of other Yeah, there are lots of other things to see. Um there's a huge lake there. The largest lake in um Southeast Asia, it's called Lake Tonop. And there's very many things to visit there. You can visit floating villages. We'll show some pictures of that later. Crocodile farms and there's bird watching, amazing bird watching in the Pretoal um bird sanctuary. And um on a previous visit, we went to uh Jackson and I went to Botmong which is used to be a French it still has a lot of French influence. So there's
012there's French architecture and it has a also has a kind of a new artistic community which is growing there and u it's a very interesting town and we also went down to the to the uh coast to Ke and Campot where where the pepper is from the best pepper you can taste it in there. Um, okay. So, we can So, near CM Reap is the Anchor Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was home to the Chimera Empire, which was the dominant power in Southeast Asia for centuries. Anchor Watt. Okay, Rob, could you do the the there? Okay. This was taken at the equinox just a couple weeks ago. >> Oh, wow. And so probably it maybe you know this is probably why it was in this particular in this particular orientation. >> Um
013>> there were about 30,000 people. >> Yeah. I don't know people. >> It's like it's Stonehenge. It goes >> it's the kind of the iconic symbol of Cambodia. As you can see it's on the flag. It's in the middle of the flag and it's anchor watt. This particular temple complex is the most famous and best preserved of the over nearly 1,000 temples surrounding Camre and actually going up into Thailand a little bit too in a 150 square mile area and they've discovered more and more about it by using um the special kinds of cameras that they can see what's going on. I can't remember the name. It starts with an L. Lidar. Yes, thank you. Um, Ankerwat temple itself was built in the mid 1100s by Surya Varmman II and it's dedicated to the Hindu
014god Vishnu. This all started this particular um empire in the year 802. Java Yarmman II proclaimed independence from Java and declared himself a god king ushering in the Camir Empire which lasted until the 14th century. At its peak, it was possibly the largest city in the world with a population of between 700,000 and 900,000 people. And yet by the mid400s it was largely empty and for the next 400 years was repeatedly sacked or swallowed up by the jungle. Wooden structures where most of the people lived have rotted away. So why did the empire fall? It's not entirely clear, but it probably was a a lot of different reasons. One could have been the years of drought. So in effect, climate change had a lot to do with it. there were maybe decades of drought and
015this is a completely water dependent country. Uh and also Terravada Buddh Buddhism is a different focus of Buddhism. It replaced the Mahayana Buddhism which was maybe a little more progressive um and more inclusive. Whereas the you know the terravada Buddhism focuses on individual enlightenment a lot more and there was less appetite for building these big temples also um and also the rise of the surrounding um kingdoms in now Thailand and Vietnam which forced a move to the more defensible area around Penampen. I >> I just re realized that while Brett was talking there was a slide missing. I don't know what happened to it. This is what happens when you try to do last minute changes, right? So anyway, there was a slide missing that showed the population of Punan Pen and how it literally
016crashed as Brett said um that you know down to just like tens of thousands of people instead of millions. >> Well, that's later. That's later. >> Yeah, you think so, huh? >> It's not there. >> Okay. Um Anchor Watt is an engineering marvel. It's hard to believe that people could build this back in the ninth, 10th centuries. So, um, every single one of these stones is handcarved. They they carve these stones uh the base stones are are three to six tons in size. Big blocks uh between elephants and barges on canals that were built specifically to channel the blocks to this site. They truck 15 million stones. It's estimated to form this site. Okay. It's the largest u u religious site in the world. Uh uh it's h it's um bigger than the pyramid but
017not quite as high as the main py pyramid at Gaza. Um let's see if there anything I'm forgetting right here. Um it was dedicated to the uh the Hindu god Vishnu. And as you saw in that u previous slide, it faces west. And I I when I looked at this slide, I said, "But the sun is not perfectly in back of it." And I was saying, "Well, that's a few hundred years ago. Continental drift is happening." So, chances are at one point in time, the sun was absolutely directly over the top of that. I would not doubt that in the least. >> During the course of the day though, doesn't the sun move? >> I'm sorry. >> During the course of the day, doesn't the sun move in relation to the tower? >> Oh, yeah.
018Yeah. But this is this is on that one day of two days of the year, the two equinoxes, it's right in that position. >> So anyway, um when you go inside, it's even more spectacular than outside because the walls are lined with these bar relief um type stories. They have epic stories uh uh stories of the underworld, stories of battles, uh stories of peacemaking. And this whole card, which is like a quarter of a mile or longer, uh is is just all by relief. And I have a background in project management, consulting. And so I looked at this and I started to calculate how much labor went into not only constructing it but just the carving alone of all this stone. It's it's it's unimaginable. It's it's pretty uh dramatic. Um so notice the um
019how they put things together in the artistic sense of architecture and and art. you know, the the some of it, you know, this this is was perhaps about a 4 foot by 4 foot. Um, but some of these other very fine carvings I frankly, even if today with my little Dremel tool, I don't think I could do that well. I It's just just amazing. Um, it's not not shown in this picture, and I wish I had put that slide in there, but just inside this is a large swimming pool made of stone. So there it is. Um let's see a couple things here. Um a big Sanskrit stellar. Um their their script the Cambodian script was influenced uh from the Indian Sanskrit. Um and is very common in in that area. Uh this is the
020one of the outside walls of Anchor Watt. And one of the things that I was amazed at were these windows. um these what they're called mullions, these separators, you know, were installed to keep out critters, two-legged and four-legged. Okay? Um they're all made of stone. So, here we are in the 9th century. Somebody must have invented a way like a lathe to turn stone. And they're pretty darn close in terms of their design. And there are hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. uh within this structure. Uh it's it's pretty pretty amazing. Ready? >> Okay. We visited two other temples this year when we were there and you can see how this is this is my favorite. This is Tap Romero and it was built in um the 12th to 13th century. It's a Mahayana Buddhist
021temple and university. It was built by Ji Java II for his mom. >> And there was actually a bar relief of the bomb. >> Yes. >> No pressure on your son. >> Right. Exactly. No pressure. Um it is currently being restored, but you can see how the jungle trees have completely taken over much of it. This is the site where the movie Tomb Raider was filmed. I don't know. I never saw that but um it was quite a it's quite a beautiful thing. And then this is um this is anchor Tom which means great city. Um this was also built by Java II and this was probably at the height of the empire the Camar Empire. Um this is a fortress um complex with biion temple at the middle with immense multiple faces and we're
022not sure whether they're Buddhist face or Java the seventh face. Apparently some of the some of the um sculptures of him that you see in the museum look very similar to these. So it could very well have been of himself. His reign marked the height of the Camar Empire and he's credited with so many public works, hospitals, libraries, rest homes and most important he was well known for religious tolerance. So they wouldn't like necessarily tear down the previous um the god Vishnu. They would just allow it all to to exist together. In fact, if you go into Ankarwa, which is primarily Hindu, there are many Buddhas that you will find in amongst the um in amongst the buildings. And this is um a statue lined bridge at the gates of Anker Tom. These are historic
023crossway crossways crossing moes and they're flanked by rows of 54 divas or gods and assuras, demons. And the stone figures are holding a giant serpent and naga in a tugofwar. And this symbolizes the Hindu myth of the churning of the ocean milk to create the nectar of immortality. The sevenheaded naga which you see all over uh buildings in all over Cambodia is a protector. It's a snake. A protector of Buddha and a symbol of water, fertility, and royalty bridging the human and the divine. These are absara dancers. Classical Cambodian. You can This is also um harks back to Indian dancing as well. They're called Absara dancers. Classical Cambodian performance art rooted in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. They are characterized by slow graceful movements representing and they represent heavenly nymphs. And not far from Anker's temples
024is the Toni Sop Lake area. and its floating villages and shops. Water is life for these people. Rice and fishing. They float because the water levels of the lake fluctuate greatly over the year. And 3 million people live on and around the lake. Most live off fishing, but the tour boats stop at the restaurants and crafts houses where artisans weave baskets and rugs. Invasive water hyasin are converted into um into income by these artisans especially women whose livelihoods have declined as the fish populations have dropped over 80%. Um these these are all this is made from that oak these this this basket these are all made from um from those water hyets. >> Uh show them the egg carton. >> Oh yes. Yeah. You go to the supermarket, no plastic, no cardboard, >> no straw,
025and then the eggs are nestled in here. >> I could not resist that. Okay, this is my smart, compassionate, generous daughter-in-law, Wanette. Her story is both exceptional and is the quintessential Cambodian story. It's the people's story. I've been struggling with how to talk about the horrors that befell the Camar people from the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s. I first heard about Cambodia when I was a student at TUS in 1970. And the killing of peacefully protesting students by National Guard at Kent State was directly related to the exposure of the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia where 500,000 tons of of uh bombs were dropped on the Cambodian countryside. Many of us were on the streets protesting. Others of us were in the National Guard, but we're okay now. In Cambodia, >> I was
026in the National Guard at the time. >> Yeah. In Cambodia, the stage of the 20th century tragedy was set by centuries of land seizures by Thailand and Vietnam, later by French colonialism. a brief hopeful period after independence in 1953 followed by the superpower conflict of the Vietnam War called the American War in Cambodia. >> Oh yeah, here's the slide. >> Yes, it's there. I knew it was there. Deep resentments happened between the city elites and the farmers and country people. So there was a lot of these people lived in two different worlds. Those of us um of a certain age might remember the name Lan Null, the US anointed leader of the 1970 coup which sent Prince, beloved of the country folk into exile. The civil war that followed brought to power with the tacet
027support of Cananuk. He regretted it later. Pulpot and his murderous Cimeair Rouge Mauist ideal of a completely agrarian self-sufficient Cambodia. To achieve this, he and his angry agrieved fighters emptied Ponumpen, forcing city dwellers into the countryside despite their having no farming skills, no food, and the impossible goals for a for rice production. Families were split. Anyone with education, western influences, artists, monks, dancers, musicians were murdered. Millions were murdered. Nearly a third of the population. China and the west turned a blind eye after you could uncertain. The west was had was not about to get involved in another anything in in Southeast Asia at that point. Um, even though Jimmy Carter did speak out against it, after four years of hell, the Vietnamese drove out the Cime Rouge, but sporadic fighting continued for many years. Hansen
028became the prime minister in 1985 and has ruled ever since. His son is nominally ruling, too, but he he's a he's still he's still the one. Everyone in Cambodia carries the burden of those years. No, thank you. Wet's father and one's sister are the only members of his family of educators to survive. He was separated from his wife and unborn child, never to learn their fates. Wanette and her three siblings were the children of a forced state marriage. And when that marriage broke up, Wanette stayed for a time with her father and aunt. She then went to live with her mother in the streets of Ponampen, then to an orphanage run by some kind Indian Catholic nuns. Even at the age of eight, Wanet knew that she needed to get an education in order to
029escape the cycle of poverty and exploitation. When her mother came to take her back from the from the school from the from the orphanage, the nuns hid her and her half brother in the rice barrels. When she was nine, a Jesuit priest known as Kik came into her life. He promised the nuns that he would pay for one's education and did all the way through graduate school. >> And there were what, seven or eight of young women like that, right? >> Oh, there were a lot more than that. That was a different a different priest also gave uh Wanette and seven other women land in Ponumpen so they would not have to resort to other ways of life. Um, Kik whose real name is Enrique Figeredo Alvar Alvar Gonzalez aka the bishop of wheelchairs is
030the son of a Spanish industrial family. After being called to the priesthood in 1985 during his university studies, he's a Jesuit. He was sent to Cambod to a Cambodian refugee village, refugee camp in in Thailand in um and began working with people with disabilities, particularly victims of landmines. He was part of the international campaign to ban landmines, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Thanks to Kik and to Wanet's own sense of self-drive and care, she earned her bachelor degree and a master of independent of international business law. Okay. Assigned to work with Cambodian refugees in 1985, Kik began a life's work that has helped countless numbers of people. Photos of the village when he arrived versus three years later. >> This amazed me. Um Brett brought back a number of TK's books and I
031I paced through when I saw these pictures. I said, "Wow, one person, this is what one person as sort of the seed crystal bringing people together was able to accomplish in three years." >> Okay, we can go to the next one. So many people had been injured and maimed by landmines that it created a huge need for wheelchairs. Kik brought people together and including many of those crippled by mines and they were began manufacturing wheelchairs. I asked one where she would be today had it not been for Kik. She answered, "I'd have five kids and be working in a factory for $50 a month." So her her story was extraordinary and it just kind of illustrates how um really to fate how how much um our fates are are up in the air. Okay. Um
032during the Paul Park regime, so many people were murdered. Um that when uh Paul was finally, you know, kicked out with the help of the Vietnamese, um there were no records of who owned land anymore. Nobody knew. And for a country that was heavily dependent on its agriculture, how do you how do you get a whole country restarted? So in came the NOS's, these conservation organizations. Um these folks right here. This was at a little party sometime before um we left. But it was people like this that came in. uh the alphabet soup of conservation organizations uh wildlife conservation society which is an offshoot of the Bronx Zoo came in and they started negotiating with the government on behalf of farmers to get either um property owned that they could assign farmers to or at
033least get some leases. And they made a contract with these farmers that they would pay the farmers a premium for their rice if they grew their rice in sustainable ways. Sustainable ways for the forest, sustainable ways for other wildlife that was there. It's been very um highly successful. So I wanted to introduce these people to you. Um, and one of them is is the grandson, Jackson Fchett. Um, and you know, it's it's just amazing some of the backgrounds of some of these people. Jackson got interested in conservation at the science museum in Boston. >> You know, he I >> actually go for it. He got interested in he he wrote every paper he ever wrote was about the jungle because he went to Bise when he was nine. He was kind of scared to death
034but he he was always interested in in the jungle and then he went to work when his first job was at the uh science museum. >> One of the first pictures I saw of him was with a ball constrictor wrapped around him. Uh so he worked for a while for Fawn and Floor International, but you know, prior to that in in his in his life, you know, he he went to South Africa on one project and he was wrestling, you know, crocodiles so they could tag crocodiles. Um I we went for a trip out to Montana to Glacier. Uh his assignment there was taking a census of the grizzly bears. Hello, Mr. Grizzly Bear. Can I take a blood sample, please? Um there was he's done some interesting things. Um the next fellow in the
035line um over here is uh if I can read my own notes here. Um >> Sam Leslie >> is is Samuel Leslie. Um Samuel's first project, he was from the States, but his first project was in Mongolia. And lo and behold, he's got a Mongolian uh wife. and his organization is the International Union of Conservation of Nature. There are 1,400 different government and civil membership organizations that form the IUCN. They are the authorities on on extinction and and other aspects of what's happening in in the wildlife community. Nick Spencer is a Brit. He was involved in building highways and kind of the conservation elements if you will of of highway logistics. He got recruited by World Conservation Society and now he is the the CEO of the Ibis Rice Company which we'll talk about. Um
036Alistister Mold is the one who was born in Brunai. His father was a British officer. He's never lived in the UK. He's been to like eight other countries but never made it back to the UK. Um he's also on the board of directors of of Irish Rice and he runs a number of the uh projects in Cambodia. Um this is uh Reine Woff. This woman is amazing. She has she's German. She has lived in Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Austria, Rwanda, and briefly South Africa. She's also worked in Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, eraser in the Balkans, specifically the Republic of Georgia, Central Asia, and the Portuguese-speaking West African countries of Cabo Verdie and Sal. >> And she's only 18. No, >> these people no longer have a particular national identity. >> They are
037world citizens and they are about making the world a better place. It's it's pretty amazing. And lastly, um, Rachel Kurthers, who spent the last 15 years of her life in the jungle studying the elephants and just got her PhD >> from the work with the elephants. So, pretty amazing uh people. Um, and it was just such a pleasure to uh to be with them. So, a little bit about some of the organizations real quick. A lot of Jackson's experience has been with primates. Uh we visited him uh in Surinam a number of years ago. Um you've never lived until you've watched a uh capin monkey bite into a very large um meie not memory >> and larvae from >> and and get sprayed with it. You know >> um I mentioned um you know the
038uh crocodiles in South Africa. um he used some of that knowledge and when he got to Cambodia um he was instrumental in getting the project going to rescue the uh Siamese um crocodile right u in in in there um the organization itself of conservation international is involved in lots of land conservation they do a lot of aerial work to find out if trees are being poached or anything like that um it's you know they have what does it say? Um 100,000 um let's see I lost track of that one. I'll come back to it. But at any rate, let me just move on. Um so there's Nick again. Um they came up with this wonderful phrase over here, the real taste of conservation. uh they're not marketing yet in the US, but so successful has
039been their work with these farmers in terms of the sustainable rice production that they were able to build a factory and start to manufacture rice cakes and rice cereal. Um they're in Canada, they're in Europe someday. He said the US market is too complex. He had some other words for it too, but um but he he is quite a personality. He is a fun human being to work with. His wife is half Cambodian and half American. >> No, no, his wife Oh, yeah. His wife is half half Mongolian. >> Alistair's wife is Cambodian. >> Yes. >> Um, so here's a picture of some of the uh the territory with the with the rice patties and and and the forest. And this is, you know, taken right off their their web page. So they have 51,000
040community members, Cambodian community members involved in their project. So there's 51,000 people that are families that are being employed, if you will, and fed uh through this effort. Um, one of the sad >> and and I think the you know, these are not topdown kinds of projects. They're all really involving the uh the local population. They are most of the people that work in Jackson's office are Kamai people which is the the people of Cambodia and that the same would be true here. Um there is you know as an international head often of these but they do as much as possible empower the the local people which is I think why it works. >> All of these organizations by the way suffered with the cancellation of USA ID. >> Oh my god. So, um, families,
041lost jobs, whatever. So, um, yeah, you're on. >> So, Aho is an international humanitarian charitable organization which in Cambodia uses trained African giant pouched rats to help find landmines. A hero rat, you can see that Remy is holding one there, um, as they are called, can search the area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes. A task that would take human D minors with metal detectors up to 4 days. These rats are intelligent. They're easy to train with a highly developed sense of smell, and they're too light to set off the mines. They can smell a mine even to the depth of over 2 feet. In this way, more than 17,000 miles and other ordinance, unexloded ordinance, have been found and destroyed, allowing many square kilometers of land to be restored to the
042local communities for farming. They hadn't been able to go onto this land because it was just too dangerous. >> Uh two days before we went to this particular um exhibit, um a farmer had, you know, lost both his legs. He was just plowing the field with a tractor. Yeah. >> 50 years from the time they mined, they still That's right. They're still there. >> I mean, millions of mines. Um, they have a demonstration and training facility, a popular tourist spot, um, in CMRE. Um, we went there because Olivia's, my four-year-old granddaughter's best friend, insisted that we go there. Aruni said, "We're going to. That's what she wanted to do. Um, when this effort started, Cimeair Rouge gorillas were still active in the remote jungle. And in 1996, they murdered two D minors, Huen who was
043Camair, and Christopher House of Brit. Herorat House was named for Chris and is working now in as his legacy. They put a little harness on the rack on the rack >> and one guy walks down one side of the path, the other guy walks down the other side um of this area that hasn't yet been tested and they they have a guide wire attached to their ankle and they hook to the to the rat's harness and the rat goes and scouries the path, smells it, it digs a little and then moves on and they throw a little flag where the digging took place and they go that way. They do a whole field. It it was just an amazing >> The rats have a pretty nice life, too. Actually, they they only have to work
044during the part of the day when it's not too hot and they work for about six years and then they can retire on social security. >> Yeah. So, social security. Yeah. >> Okay. This is Smiling Gecko campus and it's another example of a project started and funded internationally which benefits the poorest of the poor in Cambodia. In 2014, Hannis Schmidt, a Swiss artist and amazing photographer, started this campus. He purchased land about an hour and a half outside of Penon Pen. He provided a school for local children and housing for several families who were living in the massive dumps outside of the city. By providing these people with security and teaching them some skills, the project has grown into a campus which now includes a cultural arts center, K through2 education for upwards of a
045thousand children, agriculture and husbandry, a fish farm, which was incredible, craftsmanship and production, and providing humanitarian emergency aid. Schmidt secured funding from Swiss and other international donors and created a resort to help to help pay for the enterprise which is right in the center there. I don't know if you can see these. This is sort of cool looking houses. We'd stayed in in one of those. >> I think it's this with the swimming pools. Which one are you saying? >> With the swimming pools. >> Yeah, that's and and um >> school's there. >> Yeah, the school is up there. Yep. >> Dormitories. >> Yep. the fish farm. >> And um part of the resort is a worldclass restaurant called Un. It's named for the talented young chef whose story includes being sold into service, escaping
046a predatory employer and working in a garment factory before her cooking talents were discovered and fostered by um this organization. The story demonstrates how much human talent is there and how much is squandered by poverty and neglect. >> So um religion is a big part of Cambodian life. Um it's estimated that between 93 and 97% of the population are the Buddhists. Uh it's a state religion and central to their cultural identity. Um it's deeply ingrained in daily life. There are over 4,000 pagotas um large pagotas with multiple types of you know whatever they they call them spires. Um uh and their religion is somewhat flexible. Their form of Buddhism is flexible in that it also incorporates a lot of the animistic uh beliefs of spirits and and family that have gone before them. Um, and
047you can actually get a sense. I spent a little time with some Buddhists and studying Buddhism. You get a sense of how their belief um gets becomes part of how they conduct themselves every day. Um, it it's it's pretty amazing in in that sense. Um, everybody just about has some sort of a temple. businesses, not as much in Ponampen, much stronger uh in in the countryside. Um and uh I've often wondered about that. Um um there are the big temples that are just down the road. So you'll see these little arches. There are a number of pagotas, you know, just here and there. And every little town has their little store selling these little shrines. Um and there often every day the food is is put there at at the uh at the shrine. Um
048one of the things that really impressed me um was transportation. Uh they have these things called tuk tucks which which vary from real like converted motor um you know like golf carts. Okay. um to actually, you know, big commercial things uh that pulling heavy duty trailers with a motorcycle. They've come up with some way to strengthen the motorcycle and have these these hitches. They're just amazing. And you you'll see these things hauling all kinds of stuff. And for that matter, you know, even the motorcycles carrying a a mattress, but here's somebody just, you know, bought a whole new living room set, taking it home on, you know, typical trailer. Uh here's a couple refrigerators. Um and, you know, it's it's it's very common. Uh the problem of course with this is you have tuk tucks
049and you have motos and you have cars and they're all vying for a place on the roads in Cambodia. So the intersections are absolute chaos. Why there isn't carnage, more carnage is is is amazing. There are so many people, they can't afford cars. Most people um most of the citizens living on less than a dollar a day. Um so even the educated citizens that are in Ponampen and CMRE uh they can afford things like motor scooters a lot better than cars but and there are so many >> cars are actually not very practical in there. >> What >> cars are not very practical in the I mean getting out of town other than that. Um, this is a a parking garage where Jackson works for just Motos, which is what they call their motorcycles. And
050it is just amazing. You will see whole families with kids and everything, you know, um, on these motos ding to and forth in traffic. I mean, it's like, whoa, you know. So, um, another thing that surprised me from business sense, um, there are more electronic billboards in Panama Pen than there are in Boston. >> They are everywhere. E-commerce, you know, there's a little television screen just outside the elevator in Jackson's house the advertising certain things. I mean, um, Brett on her phone still has this app from which you could call taxis or tuk tucks. You can order food. Uh, and it's not unusual to see a young woman with a big 50 lb bag of rice sitting on her lap driving a moto, arriving at at somebody's door, and somebody will come out. She'll hold
051up her cell phone, they'll hold up their cell phone. The cell phones talk to each other. She doesn't say anything to the people who just received the rice. The cell phone knows. She hands over the rice. She leaves having been paid all over the cell phone. >> E-commerce. Are they st as well? Right. To do this, you need to have a lot of towers transmitting. >> Yeah. >> Towers. Cell towers. >> Um, you know, it's funny. I did not see a whole bunch of cell towers but again there were so many >> operated in the building >> so many temples pagotas and spires though they're probably hidden somewhere you know >> so >> yeah so um there are more than 100,000 expats in Ponumpen alone expats uh in a way coming in the conservation expats
052and others uh really saving the day. But there are so many that this Australian fellow opened up a market which he called super duper and you know they provide jobs. Uh they are well stocked. They are the cleanest market I've ever seen. Much cleaner than any of our supermarkets and they cater to a lot of brands which the locals don't buy. If you want your V8 or your Campbell soup or your El Paso tacos, you can go there. You know, they they have it all. Hines ketchup right there. Um and for those of us from Massachusetts, how do we live without our cranberry juice from Ocean Sprays, you know. Um they also had Ben & Jerry's. I thought that was rather interesting. Uh Starbucks are ubiquitous throughout the country. Who would have thought it, right?
053and and they even have good old Kentucky Fried Chicken uh there. >> Um this is the uh Central Market. Um it was built um in the 60s by Van Molivan. It was an architect. He was um a modernist architect trained in Europe and um during the period this period between independence and the um you can buy anything in this in this market. There's jewelry, there's um um all kinds of articles like this. It was outside of the central market that we got these um lacquer lacquer work pieces. Um, >> they'll have a c they'll have a counter >> as long as the width of this room. >> There must have been a 100,000 watches in it. >> I don't know who buys all of that stuff. >> And around the corner it was cell phones
054and there must have been thousand cell phones then, >> right? There's a lot of really interesting architecture in the city that didn't seem to be destroyed by um the Camar Rouge. Um, maybe it's because it was a an actual Kama Kamai architect who designed them. He designed the university and the independence monument as well. I took an architectural tour one time. There's a lot of great things to do in Ponen. Okay, so the people's markets are this is where the locals shop. You've got narrow aisles. You've got live fish. You've got people sleeping in hammocks. Huge bins of noodles, carved wooden elephants, jackf fruit, vegetables, flowers, jewelry, cell phones, Clark's shoes, ll bean plaid shirts, pocketbooks made from recycled fish food bags, which I love. Those are just wonderful. and um linen pants, silk scarves,
055Carter's clothes for kids up to the ceiling with fabric. Um hello madame, we have more for you. Every neighborhood has a market and those they also have the special larger markets like the Russian market and the one I showed you before, the Central Market. Okay, >> I was um very impressed by this somewhat ugly looking stuff down here. This is buffalo jerky. They dry this in the sun. You can walk down the streets and they'll have, you know, new buffalo jerky freshly cut and drying in the sun. Um their immune systems are a lot stronger than ours, let me tell you. Am I done? You're done. Okay. Um I was also blown away not only by the markets but by the the work ethic of the people. Um so street merchants, you know, this cart
056arrives at the square almost every night with the watermelons, at least during the season that we were there. Um these folks will prepare some food, fresh food for people commuting to work and we'll serve it. You know, they she arrives on her bicycle, maybe they did, too. You know, uh these people here were selling toys. Um it was not unusual when we walked the mall at night to see this this older woman. Um she's not begging. She brought her bathroom scale and she put her bathroom scale in front of her and people will come by and they will step on the scale and weigh themselves and they will give her a payment for the ability to weigh themselves. >> Everybody's an entrepreneur. Everybody's figured out some way to that that they can uh survive the
057system. >> Restaurants are plentiful and inexpensive and from every nationality. Full meals are available for under $8 US. Rob was coerced into trying some roasted crickets at $3 and he declared them excellent. Many restaurants and shops are operated by NOS's and offer training for young people in the restaurant business and sustainable crafts which offer a living wage to artisans and employment to disabled individuals. We have some things up here on display if you want to come up and look afterwards. Um some of the products that are made, the um hand hand dyed um cotton beautiful cotton clothing and my favorite cookbook. Thank you, Jan. >> Yep. >> Okay. Um lastly, um housing. Uh I mentioned no zoning. You can see it here. high-rise next door to shacks. We're out on the Meon River on a
058on a little uh boat cruise. Um and you know there's you know that's a fairly nice house. Um nice houses like this strange thing. They all seem to add these little awnings. In some cases they have picnic tables under them. In some cases they become businesses. They all you know so many of them seem to have the these awnings. Of course, it's a hot country. Shade shade is helpful. Um, and you know, right next door, this house could be a couple hundred years old right next door. I mean, it's it's it's very u typical. Um, here's a a couple more examples. And I thought this was interesting. This is rice drying in the sun. They've done we were there just after the rice harvest. They put tops out and and um and they're drying it
059right there. So, um, so I just want to, um, leave you with a a couple more thoughts here. Um, this is, uh, again, Anchor Watt. This is an aerial view of the one square mile, uh, temple. Uh, for those of you familiar with the Ashen Town forest, it's about one square mile. So, if you've walked the forest, so here's a little something I wrote um as I was, you know, working tonight and I discovered a set of notes that I had and I and I this just came together. Houses on stilts, many with awnings, peculiar yet practical, like the people, pragmatic, their struggle so common it's mundane. Old houses, gray, weathered wood, hint of their history. Ubiquitous shrines and temples richly adorn in the midst of poverty. Their arches inviting, artistic and proud, more spiritual
060is the countryside similar to the US Midwest. What might be the connection? Young Muntz, children really wandering from door to door, begging a Darth Vader helmet with bright red lips smiling worn by a young lovely driving a moto. A baby strapped to her chest. The road through the town, any town, every town, a strip mall of convenience, lumber, furniture, cell phones, ATMs, and names that speak to the confluence of cultures. True Money, Chipmong, Shelter of Love Center, Lucky Express, Crud, Brand Soda, Gansburg Beer, Works with a Z, Freshly, Greet, idle, Sting, Total Energies, Gas Stations, People Smiling in the face of poverty. What is subsistence? Thank you. >> Thank you.