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Travel is a huge part of who I am and what feeds me as a person. Pre-kid we tried to get out more, but now we are down to one or two international trips a year. I've been reflecting a lot lately about our recent trip to Cambodia.
Cambodia is incredibly stunning and heartbreakingly debilitating all at the same time. The spirit of the people, the colors and smells all mixed with the suffering and pain of a nation who is incredibly poverty ridden and desperate, as well as being one of the few nations who have survived genocide in our lifetime. We went for all of the reasons I've just listed, we knew we'd be pushed to explore our own biases, be stretched in new and challenging ways, and well, hell....we love it. Give me a backpack and we are out. No itinerary, no reservations. Just us and the open road.
Most people think of sex trafficking and Pol Pot when they think of Cambodia. Both are accurate - but we can't forget the other nations that drive that market or in the 70's, bombed the hell out of them all which contribute to the horrors that exist today. We visited the infamous Killing Fields and spent a heartbroken day wandering the grounds, the shallow graves, stepping over the bone fragments and clothing still embedded in the ground. Monks chant there 24 hours a day. I have photos of the wall of skulls but I'll spare you that. In fact, I'll spare you the lot of it, but as my heart and mind drifts eastward this early morning, remembering the Temples at Angkor, our bus hitting a water buffalo, the many, many people who survived tremendous tragedy and still laugh in the streets, and the ever so amazing Phnom Penh, it makes me also wonder where you would go, if you could go tomorrow without restrictions, to a place that speaks to your soul.
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