A headline in former King Norodom Sihanouk's blog: I thank you for insulting me.

Not words you'd expect from an ex-king, but there it is.

Norodom Sihanouk is a blogger, and like most of us who do this regularly has an opinion or two. He posts in French, Khmer and English and gets about 1000 hits per day. Not bad for a cancer-stricken 82-year old taking treatment in China.... more

I was wrong! (Now there's a phrase my husband would swear I don't utter often ... )

The best story out of Cambodia today is NOT the potty coverage I wrote about earlier ... complete with stand-up comic and dramatizations of how happy everyone is to be able to poop indoors.

This one is even stranger, therefore appealing to my... more

Lots to talk about from Cambodia today ...

The Catholic Church is working to reestablish itself in Cambodia after being all but wiped out during the Khmer Rouge years. Church officials say there were 65,000 Catholics before Pol Pot's reign of terror, and less than 1000 by the time it ended in 1979.

Making headway in the predominately Buddhist country won't be an easy matter.

Appreciation for history as a valuable Church tool was evident recently during a synod focused on "The Word of God Guiding Church History." The special national meeting, held July 11-14 at St. Joseph's... more

There's often a schizophrenic bent to news from Cambodia ... violent mood swings with a touch of vertigo in print ... and today is no exception.

On the high end of self-rightous, erroneous and disingenuous bluster, the Cambodian Government has banned the wearing of swimsuits during the Miss Cambodia Contest. The official line is that bathing costumes somehow endanger the Cambodia Culture ...

Cambodia, a socially... more

I'm writing about Cambodia today, both here and on my Older Parent blog. That one, appropriately, is about old stuff and problems. This is just about problems. First of all, I'm sure most of you have heard about the death of Ta Mok, aka "The Butcher". This lucky stiff (and that should be a pun, but isn't) is another in a long line of monsters who'll never suffer justice being served.

An interesting ... more

As I was asking in my previous post …

How do the people of Cambodia feel about upcoming attempts at justice regarding the Khmer Rouge?

Hopeful, it appears, at least regarding the trials. The future, however, is never to be trusted.

My good friend Gay is now sponsoring a college student she met while in Phnom Penh earlier this year. Sek Peov works at the hotel where she stayed and acted as her moto driver and guide. His intelligence, hard work and honesty inspired her to help him with his future. With the trials forming, she asked him in one of the many emails that go back and... more

With so much going in Cambodia these days, and seeing as how it is my kids' birth country ... and because of the suspension on Cambodian adoptions that's been going on for almost five years there's very little info about the country here on Adoption.Com ... I feel an obligation to write about it, to pass on news, and to keep a dialog going that has Cambodia at least mentioned occasionally.

The topic may not be top of the pops for many ... it certainly isn't... more

Continued from a previous post ...

Ask almost any Cambodian adult how the genocide happened and they'll shrug.

Unlike every other genocide, the almost two million Cambodians killed by the Khmer Rouge were not separated from their torturers by race, religion, ethnicity, cultural identity, or anything else. Those that did the killing were exactly the same as those that died. There was no, Red/White, Hutu/Tutsi, Shiite/ Sunni, Serb/Croat, German/Jew ... pick a genocide,... more

It's off to a slow start, but at least it's something. An event a whole generation has been waiting for is finally beginning to begin in Cambodia.

Maybe.

The genocide of the 1970s is close to fading into history without retribution. The perpetrators, Khmer Rouge leaders personally responsible for the deaths of close to two million people over a three year period, have been comfortably sliding into senectitude for almost thirty years. While the world dithered and officials wrangled, time... more

It's spider season in Cambodia, and we all know what that means ... CHOW TIME! Come and get 'em.

That's right, spiders are back on the menu, boys, and selling like ... well, hot cakes? (If hot cakes had eight hairy legs, bulbous bodies and the ability to pull fabric out of their middles ... )

During the years of terrible deprivation caused by the stranglehold the Khmer Rouge had on virtually the entire Cambodian population, spiders, frogs, water beetles, crickets ... basically anything that could be caught ... became food. Nutrition was where you could find it, and... more