Greetings from Siem Reap, Cambodia!  Purpose of the visit was a conference between Cambodia and Thailand to update their Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the suppression of human trafficking.
                                   
I learned about how debt bondage is used to ensure forced labor; about how people are often retrafficked after being returned safely to their home countries because a "better life" is still worth the risk; and about how the Thai government is training its police officers and prosecutors to recognize trafficking victims and arrests have sky-rocketed.

And I have spent a wonderful last five days here, coming early to explore first with my American friend Joe (thank you Tina Detchon!):

Yes, we are American tourists and yes, we bought hats that say CAMBODIA on the brim.  For $12. (a rip-off, in case you were wondering, but we were charmed by our tough female bargainer!).

Of course the pictures don't do them justice, but the temples of Angkor Wat are really majestic and on a scale with Machu Picchu and Petra for human-built wonders in the natural world.

I then met up with the official Thai delegation team on Suppression of Human Trafficking for a conference to update the MOU between Thailand and Cambodia.  First, I got to see the temples a second-time around (my "mentor" Dr. Pisawat is third from the right),

Quite a different experience as we travelled with a police-car siren escort, a long line of black cars, and our VIP bus  ...

... right to the temple doors! 

This meeting was an even bigger deal than I thought because this is the first time that the entire delegation has met in the last 10 years.  The MOU was scheduled to be revised 5 years ago, but because of political tension it had been postponed until this year.  So the conference was a productive celebration and fun to be a part of.  After reading so much about how the Thai police is corrupt and "in on the trafficking," it was reassuring to be part of a conference which the head of police attended along with head ministers of tourism and social development.  It is a complex problem but at least the countries now are working together to combat it.

The official signing between Thailand and Cambodia

And the celebration! (complete with Khmer food, singing, and dancing, and a floating Angkor Wat)

Right now, though, my heart is breaking for the Cambodian people.  The Cambodian people are so eager to please, and wear captivating smiles.  But Siem Reap, the epicenter of tourism, is still very poor.  I thought these signs in my two hotels, which you would never see in a Western country, subtly told of the Cambodia today:

            In my cheap but adequate, $15/day guesthouse, a sign reading "no guns, bombs, or drugs"

              And in my expensive, $220/day hotel, a sign reading "no durians (a popular fruit that smells
                                         like ammonia) or other strong smelling foods"

The Cambodians of  my generation are the first to grow up with the Khmer Rouge as only a legacy and not a reality.  On my flight to Siem Reap I flew over the rice paddies where millions of Cambodians living in cities were forced to move and work during the terror years of the Khmer Rouge 1975-79. (although apparently they still exist and are a danger in the forests. And, guidebooks still warn consistently against the danger of land mines left over from these years).

2 million people died during the Khmer Rouge years, whether from starvation, forced labor, or execution.  The accounts are similar to other accounts of genocide that we learn about in American schools, like the Holocaust.  I am reading First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, a moving memoir for anyone interested in learning more.  (*if you think this doesn't happen today, it is happening right now, in the slave labor prison camps of North Korea.  Click here to watch a CBS interview with Shin Dong-hyuk who escaped Camp 14 after nearly 23 years of starvation and slave labor).

Thankfully, just as I was staring at my book thinking how dark the world can be, I looked out the window to see a rainbow!  A sign of God's covenant with the Earth (Genesis 9:13 for those who don't read the Bible!).  So I was reminded that grace exists even in the darkest spots.