‘‘I will never pray to Buddha again’’

[clicklinder]

One can travel in different ways: observe the surroundings comfortably through a car window; or blend into the local people’s life, experiencing and going through their pain and joy, troubles and concern, just like the author of The Chronicles of Cambodia did. In this book Vlad Linder described in detail his journey to the land of The Khmer Rouge, which took place in April 2012…

I am the author of the book "The Chronicles of Cambodia":



Now I'm a fervent traveller and aspiring writer.
Several years ago I undertook a long journey through
an amazing country, that touched my heart from the
first day I set foot on its soil. And that was Cambodia.

While travelling there, I experienced great things to
remember forever and met lots of wonderful people.
I was so much under the impression, that right after
getting back from the voyage, I decided to share my
experience with a wider audience.

So I am writing this letter to ask you to read my
short novel, it takes not more than 10-15 minutes.


If you love what you just read, please like & repost it. Thanks

Book online availible at: Amazon, Google Play, iTunes

[jaclu]

Chapter 2:
At the end of ch. 1, you mention that over time you recognized the card game as a recurring event amongst this group of women. That must have taken some time, perhaps 3-4 days at least. Yet at the start of ch. 2, we are back to the day after arriving. So even if this knowledge was gained in due time, it couldn't really be present on day 2.
This is a fairly common mistake, streamlining a story to focus on the main plot and referring to some knowledge that couldn't really have been gained at that time according to the chronology as written. Perhaps use a week later or a few days later.
Just after that paragraph, she "answered in rather good English, as far as I could judge"
What does that even mean??
If according to you, the level of her English was rather good, what is the purpose of the disclaimer?

Chapter 3:
When first introduced in ch. 2, the woman was from the neighborhood, and not one of the women of that backyard. Now she is referred to as being your neighbor.

It's hard to pinpoint, but it doesn't feel like your text has a good flow, you switch from mostly using a very to the point way of writing, almost terse, and describing your observations in a rather non-emotional way to suddenly change style completely when describing the scene in Ch. 5 and then back again to the previous style.

I completed the story but didn't have time to make any more notes.

It is by far much easier to read and have an opinion on a texts context, form, and style than to produce text, so best wishes!

[Lucky Lucan]

Nobody should pray to the Buddha anyway, he's not a deity.

the land of The Khmer Rouge, which took place in April 2012…

Considering the Khmer Rouge disintegrated in the late 1990s, it's ridiculous to call Cambodia "the land of The Khmer Rouge".

[Sonic1]

10 mibutes I'll never get back. $1.52 on Amazon. In 2012 you moved to Snooky and helped a local travel to her village. I don't get it.

[Mèo Đen]

Chapter 2:
At the end of ch. 1, you mention that over time you recognized the card game as a recurring event amongst this group of women. That must have taken some time, perhaps 3-4 days at least. Yet at the start of ch. 2, we are back to the day after arriving. So even if this knowledge was gained in due time, it couldn't really be present on day 2.
This is a fairly common mistake, streamlining a story to focus on the main plot and referring to some knowledge that couldn't really have been gained at that time according to the chronology as written. Perhaps use a week later or a few days later.
Just after that paragraph, she "answered in rather good English, as far as I could judge"
What does that even mean??
If according to you, the level of her English was rather good, what is the purpose of the disclaimer?

Chapter 3:
When first introduced in ch. 2, the woman was from the neighborhood, and not one of the women of that backyard. Now she is referred to as being your neighbor.

It's hard to pinpoint, but it doesn't feel like your text has a good flow, you switch from mostly using a very to the point way of writing, almost terse, and describing your observations in a rather non-emotional way to suddenly change style completely when describing the scene in Ch. 5 and then back again to the previous style.

I completed the story but didn't have time to make any more notes.

It is by far much easier to read and have an opinion on a texts context, form, and style than to produce text, so best wishes!

I agree with your points, for me the events in the order described lack coherence and as such are not believable. That's not to say the story is totally fabricated. The events of themselves could have happened but would have been over a longer time frame and in different contexts.

For example the impromptu trip to the province appears entirely contrived. If an unknown girl had a problem with her family I can imagine the author giving money for the trip to help out, but not dropping everything and taking her to the village. If the person had some relationship with the girl then that would be more plausible. It is also hard to imagine that a girl that is a complete stranger to the author would accept such a trip to visit her family with a stranger.

On the trip to the village we hear: "There were several phone calls from the doctor while we were on our way. Each call made the gleam of hope in her eyes get dimmer and dimmer. She fainted twice in my arms: the first time — when she heard one of the injured had deceased without regaining consciousness, and the second time — when she was told her 19-year-old brother had passed away. None survived."

Then on arrival at the village we are told: "The people gave way to us, I made several steps and sank to the stairs leading into the house. My companion brought a pot and a bar of soap, and pointed at a row of big jars with water seen here and there in the courtyard. ‘‘Grab any and wash yourself,’’ she said. I turned round the corner of the house, where nobody could see me, and poured half a big jar of warm rainwater over myself." But in the previous paragraph we are told that her brother had died and on arrival there are no mention of the distraught condition of the family in this stressful time or the funeral rights that would surly be in progress and would have made a strong impression on the author, and surly would have been described in detail if they had happened.

[AnnaKuts]

Chapter 2:
At the end of ch. 1, you mention that over time you recognized the card game as a recurring event amongst this group of women. That must have taken some time, perhaps 3-4 days at least. Yet at the start of ch. 2, we are back to the day after arriving. So even if this knowledge was gained in due time, it couldn't really be present on day 2.
This is a fairly common mistake, streamlining a story to focus on the main plot and referring to some knowledge that couldn't really have been gained at that time according to the chronology as written. Perhaps use a week later or a few days later.
Just after that paragraph, she "answered in rather good English, as far as I could judge"
What does that even mean??
If according to you, the level of her English was rather good, what is the purpose of the disclaimer?

Chapter 3:
When first introduced in ch. 2, the woman was from the neighborhood, and not one of the women of that backyard. Now she is referred to as being your neighbor.

It's hard to pinpoint, but it doesn't feel like your text has a good flow, you switch from mostly using a very to the point way of writing, almost terse, and describing your observations in a rather non-emotional way to suddenly change style completely when describing the scene in Ch. 5 and then back again to the previous style.

I completed the story but didn't have time to make any more notes.

It is by far much easier to read and have an opinion on a texts context, form, and style than to produce text, so best wishes!

I agree with your points, for me the events in the order described lack coherence and as such are not believable. That's not to say the story is totally fabricated. The events of themselves could have happened but would have been over a longer time frame and in different contexts.

For example the impromptu trip to the province appears entirely contrived. If an unknown girl had a problem with her family I can imagine the author giving money for the trip to help out, but not dropping everything and taking her to the village. If the person had some relationship with the girl then that would be more plausible. It is also hard to imagine that a girl that is a complete stranger to the author would accept such a trip to visit her family with a stranger.

On the trip to the village we hear: "There were several phone calls from the doctor while we were on our way. Each call made the gleam of hope in her eyes get dimmer and dimmer. She fainted twice in my arms: the first time — when she heard one of the injured had deceased without regaining consciousness, and the second time — when she was told her 19-year-old brother had passed away. None survived."

Then on arrival at the village we are told: "The people gave way to us, I made several steps and sank to the stairs leading into the house. My companion brought a pot and a bar of soap, and pointed at a row of big jars with water seen here and there in the courtyard. ‘‘Grab any and wash yourself,’’ she said. I turned round the corner of the house, where nobody could see me, and poured half a big jar of warm rainwater over myself." But in the previous paragraph we are told that her brother had died and on arrival there are no mention of the distraught condition of the family in this stressful time or the funeral rights that would surly be in progress and would have made a strong impression on the author, and surly would have been described in detail if they had happened.

I agree not to say that the story is totally fabricated and fictional. It is needed to be noticed that the story represents a traveler's notes. And if so it was written during the journey. It seems to me that nothing in the story is artificial. Some details that do not match or seem illogical do prove that. Even when a person tells you a real story that happened with him/her some parts may be confused. It is normal because the person just wants to convey the essence of events or his/her personal feelings from the experience. According to these arguments we should not get to the details of the story "The Chronicles of Cambodia". Generally it looks quite plausible.

I don’t agree that a person cannot drop everything to help another person in a difficult life situation. I think that for the author it was a matter of conscience. When nobody but you can help, it is difficult to pass by. Furthermore, in the beginning of the story the author says: “…I was rather tired of the predictable life of a settled tourist…”. So it was not some kind of an “all inclusive” journey with a slow paced and comfort life. Youth likes to wander, and the best journeys are not always in straight lines. The author purposefully “set off to a place, where you could hardly hear a foreign tongue and where you wouldn’t have pancakes with strawberry jam for breakfast”. He was ready to drop everything to get a girl to a village or to give a hand in another manner according to a situation. “If the person had some relationship with the girl then that would be more plausible” seems to be some kind of possessiveness. People may help each other not being in relationships like love, friendship etc. Travel definitely broadens the minds and the hearts, and the author shows it by his own example. Reading travel books broadens the minds and the hearts as well.

[Hairy-nosed Otter]

Nobody should pray to the Buddha anyway, he's not a deity.

the land of The Khmer Rouge, which took place in April 2012…

Considering the Khmer Rouge disintegrated in the late 1990s, it's ridiculous to call Cambodia "the land of The Khmer Rouge".

Good to see some serious book worming on this forum. Although, unfortunately, this book is not my bag, I will nevertheless jump in on the edges.
L Lucan I think, is correct in making his two points,
- That Buddha is not a diety, is just a bit of a niggle in the context of this discussion, but an interesting point generally. I finally renounced my identity as a buddhist not too long after i made Cambodia my home, mainly because of that very thing. I just could not square my (limited-) understandings of his teachings with way buddhism has been defied here.
- "...the land of the Khmer rouge". Please! I can see no validity in this attention grabbing sub heading except to put a bit of misleading shock-horror dark tone to heighten a contrived and false tension lurking in the book's setting.
Re AnnaKuts truism - "Reading travel books broadens the minds and the hearts as well"
Well yes, reading any book has the potential to broaden hearts and minds - but when written by an under informed fly-in fly-out, it also has capacity to deceive.
This does not appear to be a travel book at all actually. It may be very good, I don't know, but it is a piece of imaginative transference not even lightly attached to it's location.

[Hairy-nosed Otter]

Oooops.
Dear Vlad Linder, only after posting my previous comments did I realise "clicklinda" was the author of the book I had just treated quite harshly.
I apologise for my brusqueness.
I stand by what I say regarding it's relevance to Cambodia - it takes a very very long time to get beneath the outmost rings when trying to gain a real understanding of Cambodia's onion. Just when you think you have a handle on something - it immediately dissolves and you get down to the next, and often quite different, "truth".

I do admit to being a quite zealous defender of Cambodia from inappropriate use of KR imagery. It is so often used solely for sensation, misapplied contextually, and promulgated with little real understanding of how it actually does playout so awfully in Cambodia today..

But I would have also pointed out the positives in what i saw. Your fine writing skills; your willingness to plumb our inner currents, and to be clear that there is always a place for a really good imagination.
Best wishes with your writing - and don't pay too much heed to ANYbody you read on this forum's pages (especially my opinionated pronouncements)

[clicklinder]

Nobody should pray to the Buddha anyway, he's not a deity.

Considering the Khmer Rouge disintegrated in the late 1990s,
it's ridiculous to call Cambodia "the land of The Khmer Rouge".

Lucky Lucan, many thanks! I am already kept this mistakes on my personal blog.

Best wishes with your writing - and don't pay too much heed to ANYbody you read on this forum's pages (especially my opinionated pronouncements)

Hairy-nosed Otter, thanks for your opinion. This forum is the first and I am very pleased with any feedback.