I forget, but I think it was some VOA news I visited before clicking the link there for the Facebook page, of Khao-I-Dang Learning Centre. (link.......?..)
I have snooped around the area where it was located, but never exactly visited it, and certainly not when it was in action. Because I knew/know so many Khmer who spent a good chunk of their lives in the border camps I was happy to find more information on the place.
When I first hopped off the plane, pretty ignorant of Cambodia, not many people would openly tell you they were DK. I'd seen a Piliger (sp?) news show and interview, and then 'The Killing Fields', but when the woman I was shooting pool with in the Heart said mid-conversation, 'during DK', I had to ask for the long version.
At that time, the biggest Khmer in/out grouping was Returnees, and everyone else. And generally the group of English/Rusian/German/Spanish/French speaking students who struggled home from foreign universities after the fall of the Soviet Union were NOT included in the Returnee group. (Though they gave me long term hope that scholarship programs ARE money well spent! And maybe worth a K440 Thread themselves.)
'Returnee' specifically meant someone who was in, maybe even grew up in, one of the refugee camps on the Thai border. Of course, they all looked Khmer, and spoke Khmer fluently, but, by and large, they were pretty different, and, generally as proud of the difference as those that stayed were proud of having stayed.
(Yes, a percentage came, and went more than once, but it wasn't a large percentage.)
Anyway, I was wondering if any of you have noticed this distinction at all over the last ten years? How have your Returnee friends got on over the decades since UNTAC?
Khao-I-Dang Learning Ceter
Two of the richest businessmen I know personally (one is an okhna) both learned their trade by stealing things in the camps as kids.
A lot of the camp guys were ethnic Chinese from the NW, who survived Pol Pot, but didn't fancy a 2nd round of persecution from the Viets who may have suspected them of being a 5th column, from what I've been told. Also a lot of schucks, chancers and shysters on both sides of the border not willing to let a crisis go to waste.
A lot of the camp guys were ethnic Chinese from the NW, who survived Pol Pot, but didn't fancy a 2nd round of persecution from the Viets who may have suspected them of being a 5th column, from what I've been told. Also a lot of schucks, chancers and shysters on both sides of the border not willing to let a crisis go to waste.
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