After observing the Land Bridge operation for a while we get into the Land Rover and Robin takes us through the camp, which houses about seven to ten thousand people, both Khmer Rouge and Khmer Serai (though they are kept separate) and on out into Kampuchea itself. We see the tents and temporary structures that house the families that are here for their rice and seed. The land here has a tough look about it and it's not difficult to imagine battles being fought right where we stand. The long line of people coming down the rutted dirt road toward us seem pleasant enough as they return our greetings, but they look tired and worn as they alternately drive or lead their ox carts. It is those who walk in without even an ox cart that make me wonder how far they've come and how they intend to get the heavy sacks of rice back with them into the interior. Out here the gayer colors of the Khmer Serai outfits mix without comment (or apparent difficulty) with the black pajama-clad Khmer Rouge. Politics would appear to be forgotten in the face of hunger.

    As we turn back and head for another area Robin wants to show us, I see the answer to one of my questions. Lines of people walk toward us, evidently heading toward home, carry smaller, more manageable portions of the rice and seeds we saw distributed earlier. Some carry it on their heads, others in parcels at each end of a long pole slung over a shoulder, the more fortunate atop the centuries-old ox carts, guiding them skillfully around, over and through the ruts, bumps and obstructions in the road.

    We pull up at the next stop and Robin guides us on foot through a muddy, stinking stream and up a rise at the top of which I have to stop and shake my head. Before my eyes, in this unclaimed Cambodian/Kampuchean no-man's-land, is a hustling, thriving market. Exploring it we find row upon row of stalls selling anything one can imagine. Food, dry goods, souvenirs, clothing, even what looks to be aluminium cookware, line the shelves of bamboo stands set up in the middle of nowhere. Shoppers stroll the lanes between the stands and conduct themselves and their commerce as though it were the most normal thing in the world - and for them it may be. There is even, and I don't pretend to understand it, a woman in a canvas-covered bamboo stand in the middle of this desolation operating what looks to be a Waring Blender and making some sort of drink with it for a customer. As we walk away from the market I see a man sitting on the ground with what looks to be a pile of seeds or shells in front of him. Robin explains that they are in fact rice husks and under them is a block of ice that the man is selling. Ice? In this heat? Evidently the rice husks have some sort of insulating quality that keeps the ice from melting. The ice itself, Robin suggests, probably started out this morning in Aran Ya Prethet and has, through various channels, found it way here. Enterprise, indeed.

    Back in the Rover, out the entryway and past a wallow where small boys are rinsing down water buffalo (reminiscent of small American boys washing cars), we head back for the area where we left Suchart with the CONCERN car. We bid Robin goodbye and thanks and head back for Aran, where we pick up our luggage and Mary Kate, who has been assigned to Kamput, a Khmer Rouge camp to the south, and our next stop.

    The country as we head toward to south becomes noticeably more tropical with higher and thicker vegetation. It also becomes noticeably hotter. (Suchart has reluctantly agreed to run the air conditioner at a lower and less frigid rate as a sort of compromise with us.) The long, flowing plains are dramatically interrupted by high, sharp, rocky ridges which jut toward the sky, many of them housing ornate and impressive Wats and/or large, modern, smiling statues of Bhudda. We pass through a sudden torrential downpour which is just as suddenly gone.

    Turning onto a road that soon becomes a dirt track, we arrive at Kamput. The Thai military influence is immediately evident here, living testimony to the Thai government's feeling of unease in dealing with Khmer Rouge. The camp is made up of Quonset huts instead of bamboo structures and the insides of the Quonsets are divided into cubicles for the separate families or individuals. Here again, CONCERN runs health care, supplementary feeding programs and a number of workshops, as well as caring for the needs of 460 orphans (unaccompanied minors). I am introduced to a smiling eight year-old who is the CONCERN poster child. A beautiful little girl, she was brought in six months ago after having been found weeping, walking around a pile of dead bodies.

   The people in Kamput are just as friendly and responsive as those in the other camps, despite the relative drabness of their uniform-like dress, and Joan O'Hanlon, the CONCERN nurse, points out that in fact she finds them interested in new and more colorful attire when the opportunity to get some has presented itself. She surmises that the tendency to keep dressing in the black pajama uniform speaks more to the lack of an alternative than it does to any political statement inherent in the act.

  Our tour of Kamput leaves me with the impression of well-organized efficiency with just a shade of intimidation resulting from the overbearing military presence. A story Joan tells about the requirement of "voluntarily" accepting a birth control shot of Depo-Provera in exchange for a food ration card doesn't sit well. When I ask more about it she says simply that it is the Thai authorities who run the camps and set up the requirements and the CONCERN people can't do much about it except to let outsiders know. I get the picture.

    As we leave Kamput we’re driven across the road and shown the new camp that is being built. Kamput now houses 3,200 Khmers. The new camp, when completed, will hold between 20-30,000. The Thai government's plan is to break up the larger camps and have a number of camps set up for the long-term. The idea of the refugees living in this situation on a long-term basis, however, is something that may not go down too well with them.

    Arriving at the CONCERN house in Chanthaburi for the evening, I find it to be a pleasant-looking house of modern style and construction in a neighborhood of the same. It is unimaginably hot however, even though the sun has long since gone down. Modern construction does not mean anything to geckos, evidently, as they make their way industriously up and down the walls and across the ceiling. The bathroom here is a more modern-looking tile one and boasts a shower like the one in Gus' apartment the first night (it seems so long ago) except it doesn't even bother with a heating capacity since no one in his right mind would want anything other than cold water on his body here. The bed situation is a bit of a problem here and when offered the opportunity of a hotel room, I grab it.