Something is amiss outside is all I know for sure as I am awakened by a pounding on the gate. It is still dark and I can't quite figure out the time because I can't remember if you add or subtract 14 hours or whatever the hell it is from the Los Angeles time still showing on my watch. Soon voices and the sound of feet in the other room draw me and before I can ask what is up, Davida points out the window toward the city saying, "Look." The morning sky is lit up by a huge fire under a towering column of smoke coming from what is apparently the center of the city. Davida and the group at City House had been awakened by unusual noise and looked out to see a wall of flame facing them from the other side of the street. Her first thought, she says, was that the Vietnamese were coming. Whatever it was that caused it, they barely got out as the flames were licking at the front of their house when they ran here.

    After a couple of hours of conflicting reports about the extent of the damage, Dave comes in saying that the house was only slightly damaged, is very wet, and that their belongings are intact and safe. We trudge over there in the light of the new day and find business as usual going on in the city until we round the corner of the street and see the totally leveled square block with smoke and some small flames still licking around the remaining embers. There are four UN water trucks in evidence and it turns out that Robin Needham, a CONCERN volunteer seconded to the UN, had run into the highway and diverted the water trucks to the square block area in which it was contained. An eerie sight through the rising smoke is that of several miniature wats (temples), which people place outside their homes in an observance of their religious traditions, left standing untouched in the midst of the inferno.

  After collecting assorted wet belongings and leaving Dave behind to ward off potential looters, Davida and I head back to the Country House, sort ourselves out and start off back toward the border. Once past the checkpoint we turn off on a less-used road and shortly come to a stop at a settlement where we leave the CONCERN car and driver and load into a Land Rover that has been following us, carrying three nurses. From there we head off into what is called "No Man's Land," an area which, they tell me, regularly entertains fighting between the different factions. But today it is quiet and peaceful, the thought of war given the lie by the farmer and the bullock in the ever-present rice paddy.

   After passing over a deep trench that stretches as far as I can see in both directions and is described as a tank trap to thwart a possible Vietnamese invasion, we pass along a road that may or may not be in Kampuchea and into the entrance of Samet, a new camp that houses 80,000 Kampucheans in a much more haphazard, slap-dash manner than was the case in Khao I Dang. After a quick stop at the headquarters building to check in (where I watch a group of small children in rags waiting patiently, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they are crawling with flies), we move on down to one of the section buildings. There Davida and I get out and walk among the crowds, between bicycles and ox carts, and I try to get some sense of this place, which is much more like the town of Aran than it is like the camp of yesterday. There is a motion about the camp; no sense of the organization that was evident in Khao I Dang. Further, there are mini-market places everywhere, all full of contradictions. Ragged men and women sit behind cloths on the ground laid with dried fish brought in from the interior of Kampuchea, soft drinks in bottles purchased from Thai peddlers at the border, live chickens (a sight unknown in Khao I Dang), modern plastic thermo-like containers, all of it for sale, most of it covered with flies. As we move through this confusion, people greet us with smiles, nods, some waves (if I wave first) and the ever-present "Hello, OK, Bye-Bye" from the children.
 

Davida directs me down the road to the CONCERN supplementary feeding center and we arrive just as the rest of the crew comes up in the Land Rover. The center is exploding with children, probably a hundred of them, and they swarm all around us, obviously delighted to see the women and just as obviously curious about me. Cameras come out and the minute anyone produces one, the children mob in front of it waving and crying out, "Hello, OK, Bye-Bye".

   There is such joy in their faces at being photographed that I just keep turning in a circle, pointing the camera and moving my finger up and down, feeling a bit of a fraud because I’m out of film but incapable of disappointing any of these too often disappointed smiles. The group doesn't seem to tire of this game and we go on for quite a while until Robin Needham shows up to take us out for a look at the phenomenon about which I have been hearing so much, the "Land Bridge."

  Setting off in his Land Rover (with UN on the side in large clear letters) Robin first shows us the site a short distance up the trail to which this whole camp is to be moved. "Moved?" The explanation they were given he says, is that the Thais feel that this camp is hopelessly laid out and will never be properly organized since the people just came in and set their belongings down wherever they landed. Their remedy for this state of affairs is to clear a piece of land to the north, diagram some straight lines for some sense of order, and herd everyone in that direction. We stop the Rover and walk to the top of a rise where Robin points out a large flat area that had been used as a camp area before. It is pocked with crater-like holes which he describes as wells. He casually says that the land upon which we are standing and over which the entire population of the camp will travel has been mined, a revelation which causes Davida to jump about a foot off the ground. We then (happily) get back in the Land Rover and set off in a southerly direction back through Samet, down the border road toward Nong Chan and the Land Bridge. As we leave Samet, Robin points out an open bamboo structure that stands away by itself and explains that this is for the occasional Vietnamese refugees who arrive and must be segregated from the Khmers for their own safety.

    The half-hour ride to Nong Chan is filled with tales of the political intriguing that goes on inside the camps, within the Thai military structure and between those groups and the UNHCR. We pass Mak Mun, the camp that had been shelled and reportedly evacuated, which he uses as an example. The Thais, he says, insist that Mak Mun is empty and that all the refugees once in it have been resettled. What is more, they will not allow any UN or voluntary agency personnel to visit the campsite. The matter of its having been deserted, however, is called somewhat into question by the line of Thai peasants moving down the road with their goods to be sold. It heads straight into Mak Mun.

    Though there is an arch over the opening, there is no gate and no sign of Thai military as we enter Nong Chan. What we do see is dozens of trucks unloading sacks of rice and seed on one side of the road and, patiently waiting calmly in orderly rows, dressed in hats, flowing robes and long dresses with bright colored shawls and kerchiefs, thousands of Khmer families standing on the other side. As we drive down the road between them, I am astounded by the organization, the calm, and the almost picnic-like air of the place.