The three rivers

I had just landed at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok when I received the text message from Sheridan that he had hand-delivered the Freedom Film Festival 2010 entry to the organiser. I didn't know what to feel. There I was in Bangkok with the Red-shirt protesters taking over the heart of the city.

My whirlwind journey covered Bangkok, Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City,  in eight days from May 13, which inevitably included the deadly street protests in Siam Square, the killing fields and S21-prison in Phnom Penh, the Cuchi tunnel and the aftermath of Orange Agent in Saigon. Or I could also say: from modern day anti-government protest, the Khmer Rouge atrocities, and the South Vietnam war. All were devastating.

I left Bangkok with the image of smoke billowing from underneath the Rama VI expressway as I headed for the airport. I left Phnom Penh with the images of the Tuol Sleung prisoners of a forlorn mother cradling a baby, a bright eye toddler and eleven year old comrades trained as spies. I left Ho Chi Minh City with the images of deformed babies preserved in formaldehyde in lab jars. I saw countless wats, pagodas and mosques, crossed three important rivers in these landscapes, Menam Chao Phraya, Mekong River, Saigon River, and saw ruins, heritage and hope.

Hanim, the graphic artist, called me a war tourist with a thirst for the macabre, and somebody suggested the Nazi concentration camps should be on my next travel list. I didn't plan my trip to be as such but the trip was nothing as I had imagined. I felt it was 'planned' for me. It jumped on me like a surprise birthday party when it wasn't even my birthday. It's difficult to understand deaths. It is even more difficult to understand cruelty inflicted by fellow countrymen. What madness.

The trip changed the way I look at people, governance, politics and histories, permanently. The history textbooks told me nothing but selected events without context.

And what of the little temple at Section 19? A speck in the universe as compared to the turmoils in Indochina, regardless, it is still an important story to tell.