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Glossop to
Canberra...

...and back
again

As I said, driven snow.

Anyway, Phnom Penh was found. The land of the Toyota Land Cruiser and the beggar. In equal numbers of both: heaps.

I halt here for some advice - I seem to be missing something obvious. Why does the UN, WFP (World Food Programme) and their fellow government-funded aid agencies spend so much of their budgets on high spec Toyota LandCruisers, instead of cheaper, yet equally capable models?

Welcome to Phnom Penh's kitchen, where ...

... the BK's come
HOT ...

... your McDonalds is delivered upside down, and...

... where pizza's come in a HOUSE instead of a HUT.

On dirt-track sections of roads, you watch on the horizon as a distant dust cloud becomes larger. The chances are, the white, growing, metallic object in the middle of the cloud is a UN LandCruiser. A leather upholstered, climate controlled, CD surround-sound, top spec Toyota LandCruiser.

Bowling along, these sterile cocoons leave the population they are supposed to be assisting, struggling for breath in their dusty wake.

This Memorial Stupa at Choeung Ek, outside Phnom Penh, houses some of the skulls from the 8985 bodies exhumed from 86 of the 129 mass graves. Just one of the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge regime period.

3 years, 8 months and 21 days of direct Khmer Rouge control left over a million dead.

I am not saying that all UN/WFP/etc personnel should be on nothing but pedal-bikes. Just that the balance is somewhat listing.

Listing with the aid of your tax-dollar.

Weeks 32 to 37 (continued)