Jeffrey James

Nancy forwarded this e-mail to grandma from Jeff.
Thought you guys would be interested.
Jenny

Corkamama-

I'm very excited to hear that you'll be in Minnesota for Christmas. It's less than three weeks away.

Now I'm in Phnom Phen, the capitol of Cambodia, and just had a great lunch after doing the tourist route of museums, palaces, and gardens. It's all very beautiful and I'm very surprised at how much I like this city.The history of Cambodia is sadly fascinating, yesterday we went to S21 which is the site of the interrogation camp of the Pol Pot regimes and to the Killing Fields where tens of thousands of prisoners (many women and children) were beaten to death and left in graves; brutality even the Nazis weren't capable of.

I left a bit frustrated reading the guest book, many ignorant Europeans comparing Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge to Bush/Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib; those atrocities don't even come close to what happened here and it's insulting to the Cambodian people. It's unfortunate how blind peoples hatred for America is.

So far I've eaten frogs, crickets, and spiders here in Cambodia. We're on the look out for snakes and eels and anything else. I have some great videos of us eating this stuff. Yesterdays spider left my stomach a
bit upset with me, luckily I've had over two years of training in Kyrgyzstan for weird foods.

Today is a more relaxed day, taking a boat up the river for happy hour. This afternoon might go drive race cars? The weather is hot and i'm actually looking forward to some bone chilling Minnesotan weather.

Tomorrow we're off to Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. I am regretting not having read up more on the history of SE Asia prior to coming on this trip. On my India trip I read a lot more about some of the history and the works of prominent Indian authors.

What are you doing with your days in Minneapolis? What restaurants have they been taking you to? I'm sure fish tacos and Vietnamese on Lake St.

Doing well in Cambodia,
Jeffrey James