Since the 1800s, the country has endured French rule, the Lon Nol government, the Khmer Rouge regime and Vietnamese intervention in 1979. Today, both politically and economically, Cambodia is in a shaky position. Many locals are pessimistic about the prospects of democracy in their country, while rampant corruption blights Cambodia's economic development. The people are so poverty-striken that they have destroyed much of the forest and fauna, and now look to exhaust the supply of fish within the country's Great Lake. Most Khmer still live in rural villages, planting rice, just growing enough food to live.
Any electric light comes from a jerry-rigged system attached to a car battery.
Clean drinking water is a luxury. Sanitation is several boards nailed together over a ditch to preseve modesty. But for the Khmer life continues. Sitting in the quiet evening, I would listen to the crickets hum and watch the children with tiny wooden boxes fish for giant snails in the canals and discuss the future with the young boys who squatted beside me. I had come here to learn about the Cambodian auto-genocide, but what I really found here was the courageous spirit of the Cambodian people.