Phnom Penh smelled of guns. A distinctly US odor. Growing up with quasi-hippie parents, you’d think I wouldn’t have access to guns but I shot BB guns, pellet guns and the occasional twenty-two. Most experiences with guns weren’t good. From my uncle shooting a helpless robin traumatizing me when I was 7, to my friend Mike Larsen shooting a herring down at the creek next to the high-school tennis courts making me fell guilty for years, to my friend Jimmy Guerrero bringing a handgun to my college dorm when he visited for a week making me paranoid of getting expelled.

Guns pervade the US psyche and environment. You can smell it everywhere here. And that’s the odor that hit my nose when we stepped off the plane in Phnom Penh. Within in the day of arrival, I was offered to shoot an AK-47. I could ride out with some guys to an empty field and shoot away. It was rumored for a few hundred dollars you could shoot a grenade launcher at cow, something I was tempted to do. Besides war, when else can you shoot a grenade launcher at a cow?

Michelle also tuned into the gun vibe that permeates Phnom Penh and didn’t like it.

Subject: Thanksgiving Greetings from the Developing World

Date: November 22, 2000

Hi Everyone-
It’s me again. I just realized that it was practically Thanksgiving! So I thought I should send something to wish you all a good time. Eat some traditional TG fare for me (losta gravy and cranberry sauce on that turkey, please). I like Phnom Penh a lot more than I did 2 days ago. Today we went to the Tuol Seng Holocaust Museum, which is basically a high school turned death-camp used by the Khmer Rouge from 1975-1979. We topped it off with a visit to the Killing Fields, where all of the people held and tortured in Tuol Seng were sent to die. Needless to say, I am feeling very sad and depressed about human suffering. It’s so hard to believe that during this genocide in Cambodia, I was spending my days in a safe little elementary school in Nor. Cal., talking Holly Hobby and Sesame Street. Anyway, looking into the faces of the people here, it’s hard to imagine the horror of what happened or that it could even happen at all. At least 1 million people were killed, but estimates are that it was more like 3 million. So, very sad today, and we are leaving to Saigon tomorrow.

I will be glad to leave Phnom Penh, but like I mentioned before, it’s not as bad as I had originally thought. We moved to a new guesthouse in a better part of town and we all feel much better now. The developing world is so interesting, especially here because PP is a city of 1 million, yet there are very few paved roads, and no high-rises, or other city markers. No freeways, either. People either live in their businesses or they live in small, open front shacks where they do everything outside (wash, pick lice out of kids hair, pee n’poo, eat, sleep in hammocks, wash vegetables, cook, chop meat, etc.) I discovered a fascinating outdoor beauty parlor yesterday while walking around. Men and women literally set up small beauty shops in a field (men barbers, women manicurists). They bring their own equipment (mirrors, nail stuff, chairs, water) and just get down to business.

The markets here are pretty grisly. Chickens, tied down but still alive, pig heads (decorated with their own tail in their mouths), fish slopping out of their shallow water pan (half dead, of course), slabs of bloody beef (smells really bloody), blood just about everywhere. I always vow that I won’t eat meat when I leave, but once I smell bacon or fried chicken I am back on the meat wagon. Again, there is a seediness that pervades this place. In Thailand, you could wander off the tourist circuit and have a great time. Here, there are either places where tourists and ex-pats go, and there are places where they don’t go and the difference is pretty obvious. So we’ve been spending a lot of money at the ex-pat restaurants and bars. I gather from what I have read and my own observations that this place is a lawless city, where the cops moonlight as bandits, pedophilia runs rampant, and guns are welcomed. They call it “the Wild East” so I can see why a lot of creepy guys who like guns and kiddie-porn wind up here.

Anyway, hope this does not bring you down. On a lighter note, I got a massage today from a blind woman. There is a place here called Seeing Hands Massage and it’s an organization that trains blind people in massage and the profits go to the blind and disabled. On a heavier note, there are thousands of people in Cambodia who have lost limbs due to land mines. I’m assuming that the blind people may have been land mine victims as well, but not sure. Anyway, I miss all yall and I hope you have a great Thanksgiving. Remember to savor the flavor of American food. I’ll be thinking of you!

Love, Michelle