Another thing I like about Alaska is the stupid hats.

I have lived in some pretty cold places. I grew up in Wisconsin. I went to graduate school developed a twitch in Minnesota. Most people there like to act like they are savvy folks, full of common sense, the salt of the earth. This is all an act, though. You know how you can tell? Your average Midwesterner would rather freeze than mess up their hair or look like a smurf.

Here, on the other hand, even on a very mildly chilly day, people will unashamedly bust out the stupid hats. It adds charm to a visit to any public place, everyone walking around looking like four-year-olds with their woolen bobbles and fake rabbit fur. I myself have purchased a truly idiotic hat. It is bright blue, has a smiley face embroidered on it, and is lined with synthetic fur that is somehow, contrary to everything I know about fluorescence, neon brown. It has earflaps. My IQ drops ten points when I put it on. It is an excellent hat.

I just got a domain name expiration notice, which reminded me, hey, blog!

I live in Alaska now, and teach at a one-room schoolhouse. Well, the building isn’t actually one room, but the school part of the building is, if that makes sense. The other half of the building is, I kid you not, an automotive repair shop. I like it here.

By way of easing in to this blogging thing, I’m going to see how long I can go making one post a day, each one saying one thing I appreciate about life here. It’s kind of pollyanna-ish, yeah, but the days are short and cold now and I NEED TO BE MY OWN FREAKING RAY OF SUNSHINE.

So, point one: at night, the wolves and the sled dog team that lives up the road often howl back and forth to one another. Despite the winter weather, I leave my window open to listen to them.

First thing in the morning, Chantha took us to Prasat Kravan, and my immediate reaction was, okay, it’s kinda cute, but with ten billion other things to see, why are we here?

Then we went inside, and dude. Fantastic carvings, mostly of Vishnu and Lakshmi. That Vishnu was always getting up to wacky antics. In one of the life-sized depictions, he was riding a bird-man. I want bird-man-based transport!

Tuk-tuk, motorized rickshaw, is the best way to travel, incidentally. They’re reasonably comfortable, not as loud as riding on the back of a motorbike, you can see everything around you and the breeze is lovely. The only downside is that you get totally coated in Cambodian road grit.

On to Phnom Bakheng. Despite the rather ominous signs (it always worries me when it looks like the instructions in the local language are a lot more detailed than the translation), and despite my paralyzing fear of heights, I climbed it.

My fear of heights used to be literally paralyzing - I’d get up somewhere tall and be unable to move - but in my senior year of high school the gym teacher made my entire grade depend on climbing a telephone pole and sliding down on a zip cord. Overachiever that I was, my fear of failure superseded my fear of falling to my death, and after an hour sitting up on top of the pole crying like a girl (I climb UP things no problem, it’s the coming back down that’s awful) I finally did it.

God, I hated that woman.

But I wasn’t quite as terrified of heights afterwards, so there’s that.

It took me only a few minutes to go up the three stories or so, but about 20 to come back down, clinging to the rocks like an orphan monkey on a wire momma, but I made it. I was kind of concerned that I looked like a moron compared to the people who were skipping their way down the rough, steep stones like slinkies, but when I got to the bottom there were a bunch of people who’d been too leery to climb it at all, so maybe I’m not such a pansy.

We stopped at a number of smaller sites, but skipping ahead - Preah Neak Pean was a massive reflecting pool with all these ornamental spouts. I felt bad for this elephant, since all he has left is his trunk and one foot, but at least someone gave him some candles and flower and stuff.

All the ruins at Angkor are well-stocked with kids who’ll chase you around trying to sell postcards or bead bracelets or whatnot. They’re tireless, and some of ‘em are pretty creative in their sales pitches - one of them demonstrated that he could name any foreign capital, another that she could count in fifteen languages. This lady was the only person I saw there who’d come up with a way of derailing their capitalistic urges and stopping the steady stream of “Three dollars? Okay, two for three dollars? Miss, why you don’t buy from me?” - she was giving an impromptu watercolors lesson.

We hit Preah Khan next. It was extremely atmospheric. It was also full of linga, which represent penises, which represent Vishnu.

Look! Someone put a garland on one of them! What a great country.

It was a lovely way to end our tour of Angkor’s major archaeological sites.

Back in Siem Reap, Chantha took us to Les Chantiers Ecoles, a shop that trains traditional artisans. A lot of the painters are deaf, so in a country without any social services, they’re quite fortunate to have found productive and reasonably well-paying work.

Then it was time for me to catch my plane, so I could get back to the states in time for the start of the new school year. The nicer public bathrooms around were marked with this awesome sign:

Which I totally disregarded in one of them, since I’d already checked out of my hotel that morning and really needed to wash off the glue of tuk-tuk traveling dust and tropical sweat before spending 26 hours on various airplanes. I rinsed myself off under the hose intended for cleaning the facilities, and then it was farewell!

Cambodia was excellent, and I wish I could have visited longer. But it was a great way to finish out my summer in Southeast Asia - the excitement and interest of it helped distract me from my sadness at leaving Vietnam and my trepidation about having to hastily prepare for the upcoming school year.

Angkor was, to my mind, at its best in places where nature met history;

in the more out-of-the way spots not frequented by rumbling hordes of other tourists;

in the nooks and crannies;

and in the details.

I’m very lucky to have had the chance to see another fascinating part of the world.

You know what I did last weekend? I went to Angkor. Yeah, tough life, I know. I apologize in advance if any of these pictures don’t load; I’m running out of server space as a result of my verbosity so I’m having to use a freebie third-party site for images.

Cambodia is weird. You can buy anything there, I think. I almost bought a taxidermy alligator. That would have made an awesome carry-on.

It had a very different feel than Vietnam, and I’m not sure I’d have liked to live there as much, but it was a fabulous place for a vacation. The monks wear orange instead of brown, and the buddhas are serene rather than jolly:

Instead of being fixated on boobs like in Vietnam, ancient architects here were more into penises:

Seriously, granite weenies everywhere.

What you need in this country is someone to help you get around. A mode-of-transportation slash guide. Happily, people are willing to queue for this position. The fellow who drove me from the Siem Reap airport to my hotel lobbied hard for me to hire one of his people - his uncle, his granny, his second cousin twice removed, his dog, whatever - and I ended up engaging the services of his brother Chantha and his adorable little tuk-tuk, which turned out to be an excellent decision.

Happily, I also ran into a fellow single traveler on the flight to Cambodia, and Angela and I turned out to have a similar wish-list of things to see and a similar attitude on travel, so we teamed up for the weekend. She’s a German pediatrician working in Australia, and extremely funny. I must have some really excellent voyager karma, because sightseeing with a like-minded person made the trip that much more enjoyable. Also, cheaper.

Chantha was a superb guide. He managed to gas us up without exploding the tuk-tuk (here, they use OLD SODA BOTTLES FILLED WITH PETROL at the roadside gas stations),

successfully navigated the sometimes hazardous roads,

which were occasionally blocked by more exotic fare,

took us to eat odd local cuisine (in this case, dragonfruit rolls filled with sauerkraut, which was not as horrible as it sounds),

and introduced us to the more odd and obscure local flora.

Basically, he was super, and he drove like a bat out of hell without quite tipping the tuk-tuk over, which allowed us to pack maximum awesomeness into one short weekend. If anyone reading this is planning a trip to Angkor, email me and I’ll give you his mobile and email address.

Saturday morning we went to see the sunrise at Angkor Wat itself, and then poked around there before the tourist crowd got really thick. To be honest, I wasn’t that chuffed about Angkor Wat. Obviously, it’s a really impressive feat of architecture, but it’s so big and impersonal and I’ve seen so many billions of photos of it that it wasn’t as much fun to explore as the other, smaller ruins.

Next, we went to the Bayan, which was possible the most surreally cool thing I’ve seen, like, ever. Modern avant guard architects have got NOTHING on first millennium Khmer builders. It’s a huge building covered in faces!

It should be creepy, but it’s not. It’s transcendent.

They all have individual expressions and looks, and if you climb up on the roof you can get right up close.

It’s a fabulous place to just sit, as this traditional Khmer dancer was doing.

I don’t think pictures do the oddity of sitting up in the labyrinth of spires jutice, so I made a little video that will hopefully give you some of the feel of it.

The Bayan is surrounded by other ancient structures, many of which are covered in well-preserved carvings. At the Terrace of the Leper King (which is, as the name suggests, a terrace with a statue of a guy who looks to be a leper on it) a dude with no legs told Angela and I where we could find a statue of a horse with five heads, which was cool. I wouldn’t want to ride one of those. Next to it was this gorgeous guy. So strange to think he’s been standing there for a thousand years.

To leave the site, you pass through a huge gate with more enigmatic heads on it, just in case you hadn’t seen enough enigmatic heads yet.

Next up was Ta Prohm. Ta Prohm might look a little familiar to fans of terrible movies, because it was used as the set of Tomb Raider. One of the guards who are there to prevent real tomb raiding pointed this spot out as one of the places you see in the movie.

They haven’t fully restored Ta Prohm, because restoring it would ruin a lot of its present appeal, covered as it is with overgrown trees and atmospheric corridors that end in rubble.

This park ranger guy was awesome about showing us cool little places around the site.

For example, he pointed out this little face, which I totally would have missed:

Moving on, we stopped at a bunch of other neato places, but if I blogged everything we’d be here all day, so let’s move on to Banteay Srei. Banteay Srei is this tidy little walled structure where apparently some stonecarvers just went NUTS about a thousand years ago, and most of the carvings have miraculously survived to the present in shockingly good condition. And just in case the site wasn’t interesting enough alone, there’s a band of disabled landmine victims playing mood music.

I bought their CD, since I figure if after having your legs blown off you’re resilient enough to think, “You know, a great new career would be to form a band with a bunch of other guys who’ve had their legs blown off,” you deserve patronage. Plus, the music is pretty good.

Banteay Srei is Chantha’s favorite site, so he showed us all around and pointed out the more interesting bits on the friezes.

This one is Krishna beheading his homocidal uncle Kamsa. I’m not totally clear on what Kamsa did to deserve it. Everyone goes by so many names in Hindu stories that I can’t keep track of who’s who.

My favorite thing about this frieze is how the lions are all, “HOLY CRAP THAT GUY VISHNU HAS A LOT OF ARMS AND HEADS.”

The sign posting here was particularly nonsensical. One of my favorites instructed visitors to not step on the carvings, which would be useful advice for, like, spiderman, since the carvings are vertical. I also enjoyed this one - the main door to the complex, flanked by signs pointing away from it reading “way out” (they pointed at walls, incidentally):

NO WAY OUT. Cue the ominous music, landmine victim band.

Banteay Srei’s artistic longevity in the face of time, nature and weather is all the more miraculous for how most other places have been looted. Most stuff other places looks more like this, these roadside markers with every carving chipped out and relocated God-knows-where.

Moving on: the Chong Kneas floating village. Some of the houses are on stilts. Others are on boats. It’s on the Boeng Tonle Sap lake, which is enormous in the rainy season and slightly less enormous in the dry season, and they just move along with the lake.

Moving from structure to structure in the village requires the balance of a mountain goat.

This guy, who took us out on a boat, was great. I don’t think he said anything that wasn’t an out and out lie the whole time we talked.

Him: Where are you from?
Me: America.
Him: Hey, me too! Where is she [Angela] from?
Me: Australia.
Him: Hey, him [his buddy driving the boat] too!
Me: Actually, I lied, I’m Vietnamese. Xin Chao.
Him: I lied too. My friend is Vietnamese like you. And I’m French.
[a faster boat blows past us]
Him: That boat is good, but the guy driving it? Ladyboy.
Me: You’re just saying that because you’re jealous of his boat.
Him: No, ladyboys are okay. My friend here is a ladyboy.

He picked a really bad time to say that, because his friend happened to have just left the wheel to go bail water out of the boat with a bucket (dude, it was a TERRIBLE boat) and was walking past, and so tried to drown him.

Me: The boat is filling with water.
Him: Ballast.
Me: Really?
Him: No.

Then he took us to see alligators, which isn’t something I would normally choose to do in a sinking boat.

After we were safely ashore, Angela and I went back to Siem Reap and drank two buckets of margaritas. Hooray vacation!

Incidentally, “Siem Reap” means “Thailand Defeated.” Which I think is fabulous. I think we should rename Philadelphia “Britain Defeated.”

Part two of the trip, I’ll post tomorrow…

Well, I’m back in the States! I got in yesterday. It took a tuk-tuk, bus, and four airplane hops to get me back to my place in Wisconsin, but I am pleased to say that I, and more miraculously, all my luggage, arrived in one piece!

I’ve got two posts coming down the wire about my last couple weeks in SE Asia, but in the meanwhile, I would like to share my pain.

The new school year starts Thursday.

I do not have a classroom, nor a fixed office - they turned my old office, which was intended by the architects to be a closet, into an actual closet, without assigning me a new one. Nor do I know where my textbooks have gone. I do not have a budget form, so I can’t order any materials. I do not have a work computer. They have not yet assigned me a class schedule. I initially thought that this was because I’d been away, but no, other electives teachers are in a similar boat. I mentioned this to my immediate superior, and she informed me that I needed to make an appointment to talk to her rather than casually stopping by, and told me to come back tomorrow. And then she went home early or something. I am sorta regretting not taking the 2008-9 school year job offer made to me in Vietnam. I could be on the beach right now, dammit.

It’s cool, though. I’m a veteran teacher. I can get by without a traditional educational infrastructure. Yeah. I’ll just use the Socratic Method.

And by “Socratic Method,” I mean “hemlock.”

I can’t believe I’ve been here for a month and haven’t posted any Buddhas. It’s raining Buddhas here. I’ll make up for it now - and yesterday was as good a day as any to go on a Buddha-hunt; it was the new moon, which is some kind of big dealy-o in local Buddhist practice.

Bright and early, David, Ruth and I went to climb around on Ngũ Hành Sơn, the “Marble Mountains.” They’re named after the five elements, although I can never keep track of which of the five mountains is which element. Anyway, if you want maximum Buddhas per square meter, they’re a good place to go, because they’ve been a holy site for upwards of a thousand years and there are Hindu and Buddhist grottoes all over the place.

The view from the top was very pretty. Da Nang looks a plot less pungent from 3,000 feet.

My Buddha-hunt yielded tiny prey early.

Going into a cave, I found a Buddha covered in babies. At least they look like babies to me. I assume they’re just sitting on him, but God only knows. Maybe they’re growing out of him. I find Buddhism really confusing - I’ve got the basics of most world religions down, but Buddhism eludes me despite many attempts to understand. I need to get a “Buddhism for Dummies” book.

Speaking of babies, this muddy kid followed me around for a while. She was adorable. There were also monks all over the place, but it felt rude to ask to take pictures of them, so I didn’t. I did get one monk inadvertently - he stepped out from behind a tree when I was photographing a garden.

This statue looked to girly to be a Buddha, so I assume it’s Quan Am, the goddess of mercy, who is very popular around here.

There were plenty of pagodas, that’s for sure. They seemed to follow two basic schemes - cute rectangular house with a curly roof, or jenga tower.

I happened upon a really big Buddha, of the Siddhartha Gautama style. He was more than a story tall. “That’s the biggest Buddha I’ll see today!” I thought. Then I went into a cave, where there was a little old lady with a broom and about a billion packages of incense sticks. “Big Buddha!” she said, beckoning with her hand and hobbling off into the dark. If I’d been in a Terry Pratchett novel, some wacky things would have started happening with the space-time continuum at that point, but instead I just followed the bobbing points of lights from the lady’s incense through the dark for a while until we came upon this, feebly lit by natural light from a few cracks in the roof of the cave:

“Lucky mudra,” she informed me, copying the Buddha’s hand gesture. She stuck a few incense sticks into the pot in front of it, then disappeared into the murk.

Later that afternoon, I ran into Debbie in town, because apparently in Vietnam, all Westerners are drawn to one another by invisible magnets. Seriously, I think I’ve met every single non-tourist non-Asian in town. She proceeded to show me the best Buddha yet, a Maitreya at a pagoda near our school.

Seriously. Awesome.

Yes, that’s a Candide reference. I read books!

Saturday after class, Debbie and I headed north to Hue, with the intention of taking a tour of the demilitarized zone. When we got there, we were unable to find the street number of the hotel where she’d made reservations - 1734 Nguyen, she’d written down. So we checked into the big Soviet-style hotel I’d stayed at a few weeks ago, easy enough.

The next morning when I was walking around looking for breakfast, I noticed the street sign. Nguyen Tri Phuong. Tri Phuong…three four. Sure enough, the hotel we were supposed to have stayed at was at 17 Nguyen Tri Phuong. Heh.

Unfortunately (or so it seemed at the time), since we hadn’t checked into the hotel where our planned DMZ tour was supposed to pick us up, they assumed we were a no-show and left without us. I was picking through my city guide, making a list of neato things to do in Hue as an alternative option, when the concierge found us a driver who offered to take us on an individual trip north to the DMZ for only $15 more than the bus trip would have been. Air conditioning? Personal chauffeur? A whole seat to myself? Yes, please.

So we gave him a list of places we wanted to see in the DMZ, and off we went!

The first place we stopped was the Vinh Moc tunnels, where an entire village of people unfortunate enough to live right on the divide between North and South dug a heaping big system of caves out under the bamboo forest and lived there for six years to avoid being shelled to death. They were crazy successful - no one from the village died, and there were actually 17 births in the time.

Our guide through the tunnels was extremely keen and intense, and had a whippy pointer.

We went through with an Irish family. The father asked our guide if she was one of the babies born during the war. She was upset at the question, since she’s about my age. Hee.

The tunnels were super claustrophobic. They had wells, a clinic, personal family living spaces, a meeting area, a rudimentary bathroom - everything you’d need - but I can’t imagine being packed in that tiny space for so long. I mean, they came up at night sometimes, but still.

The tunnels opened out on a gorgeous expanse of Pacific, where guys were fishing in what sure look like curragh. Curragh seem like a really impractical sort of boat to me, but I suppose I don’t know anything about it. Maybe they’re really hard to tip over.

People here are so keen on having their pictures taken. This fisherman totally struck a pose when he saw us with cameras out. I like this photo, because he has a creepy sharp implement in his hand.

Our next stop was the Hien Luong bridge, which crosses the river Ben Hai, the former demarcation line between the two Vietnams. Now it’s a big monument, complete with creepy dioramas. Since the place was abandoned, Debbie and I ran around posing with the mannequins, of course, which was one of the behaviors expressly prohibited on the posted list of rules. REBELS.

Of course, there was the prerequisite gigantic flag.

At the base of the flag, there was a scene of everyone and his grandma going all “Hooray! Reunification! Whooooo!” Probably not a TOTALLY accurate representation of many southerners’ reactions.

Aaaand also the prerequisite de facto shrine to Ho Chi Minh. Uncle Ho seems to have basically joined the pantheon of Confucian gods.

Then we went over to the west to have a look at the Ho Chi Minh trail, which is now a quite lovely and quite deserted highway, the same factors that made is great as a covert transport path making it kind of an impractical place to put a great big road.

Our driver thought it was hilarious that we kept stopping him to look at things like boats and pagodas and water buffalo. At one point, when Debbie jumped out to examine some tapped rubber trees (dude, did you guys know that rubber actually does come from trees, the song about the hopeful ant notwithstanding? I didn’t), he turned to me and said, “Crazy lady. No trees in America?”

He might also have been entertained by the fact that we’d managed to plan an entire DMZ tour that didn’t include visiting any battlefields or military encampments. Not really my thing, nor Debbie’s.

After some other poking around, we stopped at the La Vong shrine, where an apparation of the Virgin Mary appeared to a group of persecuted Vietnamese Catholics and reassured them. (The Catholic and the Buddhists/Confucian political leaders have basically taken turns hassling one another back and forth for the last several hundred years, with both sides stomping on the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao, of course.)

It was an absolutely lovely shrine, despite the fact that the ornamentation looked a lot like giant, terrifying mushrooms. I think there was a hospital or invalid home attached, because there were tons of disabled beggars around. I ran out of small bills pretty quickly, and this one guy with no legs and one arm was looking at me really plaintively, ‘cos he’d just seen me give the midget lady next to him some cash. I didn’t want him to think I was snubbing him just because I didn’t like the cut of his jib or something, so I showed him my Visa and said, in my horrible pidgin Vietnamese, “No more dongs. Card?” Which is the kind of thing that’d probably get you beaten up by a panhandler in the US, but the limbless guy cracked the hell up.

This kid saw me with a camera, and struck a pose, so I snapped a picture and showed it to him on the digital display.

He was so chuffed about it that he ran around shrieking and jumped on his poor mom, who was napping nearby with (presumably) his siblings.

Then he showed Debbie and I the giant cobra he had in a cage. Seriously. I tried to ask where he’d found it, but either he didn’t get what I was saying or I didn’t get his response. To be on the safe side, I’m wearing boots from now on. Aiee.

Anyway, we poked around a few more places, then headed back south to Hue, where we went to grab some dinner. While we were eating, we got to talking with the restaurant owner, about the day, and Debbie mentioned that the one thing she hadn’t got to see up close that she wanted to was water buffalo, so he called up a friend and the two of them took us out on motorbikes into the countryside, riding along irrigation ditches and down dirt footpaths.

A storm was whipping up, so it was very dramatic. Cool winds ruffling the rice, making it look like a wide green lake, rolling clouds. Then we stopped by this dude sitting near the path with his buffalo. We asked him what the buffalo’s name was, and he said the only good name for a buffalo is “Buffalo.”

The water buffalo here always look so relaxed and mellow to me, and you’re always seeing kids leading them around on strings, or sitting on their backs. This one, on the other hand, kept stomping its feet and shaking its horns at me and advancing slowly and threateningly in my direction.

The dude was like, “Don’t worry - I can control him WITH MY MIND.”

Yeah, we got out of there pretty quickly.

On Wednesday our part of Da Nang had a rolling power shutdown. This doesn’t affect life much, since people, even in the cities, aren’t particularly dependent on modern amenities. Plus, a lot of places have their own generators - including the new cinema. So, desperate for a few hours of air conditioning, I went to see a movie.

Sometimes when you’re traveling in an area where people don’t often deal with foreigners, you must resign yourself to the fact that anything you do is going to seem somewhat absurd, and that attempts at communication will make you look even more ridiculous.

Judging from the selection of films offered, what people like here are martial arts and giant monsters. So I elected to see The Incredible Hulk. With my limited Vietnamese vocabulary, I told the girl at the register that I wanted “one ticket - big green movie,” but it was clear from her politely blank stare that she wasn’t accustomed to the lateral thinking required to communicate with non-native speakers. So, sighing, I realized that I was going to have to do a big green Hulk impersonation.

Due to the power outage, classes were canceled. So we foreign teachers loaded up in a hired car and drove out for Hoi An, which, Tuesday being the 14th day of the lunar month, was having a festival.

Here, people set out flowers and food offerings for their ancestors and burn joss sticks and paper money on the 14th night of the lunar month. In Hoi An, they also have a great big street party with all the town’s beautiful lanterns lit. The town, always picturesque, was alive with music and chattering voices and the smells of cookery and incense.

Everywhere we walked, there was something to see. People having a poetry slam, accompanied by a flute player. Children selling candles in little boats to cast on the water:

Traditional music:

a calligrapher demonstrating his skill:

And martial artists performing forms:

Sorry about the crummy picture quality - it was really dark and my camera is really cheap.

I have this fantasy where I move to Hoi An and live out my days making and selling silk lanterns.

On Tuesday, Debbie, Phil, Ruth, David and I hired a driver and went to Son My, better known to Americans as My Lai - the village where a platoon lead by a Lt. William Calley slaughtered more than 500 civilians. The site is now a memorial.

There’s the usual assortment of blocky Socialist Realist art, of course, but besides that, the site is extremely affecting. The paths are designed to look like sand imprinted with bare feet being chased by boot prints, something you only notice eventually.

It leads among various bluntly labeled locations, like this drainage ditch:

“This ditch reminds us that US soldiers captured 170 villagers and shot them dead [in this spot] on March 16th, 1968″

and this house foundation:

“Foundation of Mr Le Ly’s family [home] survives the massacre. Seven members of his family were killed.”

I toured the small on-site museum with a guide, a small, plainspoken young Vietnamese woman dressed in an ao dai. Some of the other Americans there thought it was somewhat propagandized, since of course there are no memorials for the thousands of civilians killed by the North Vietnamese forces, but even though that’s a valid point, it certainly doesn’t detract in any way whatsoever from the horror and shame of this event and others like it.

The way the museum was organized actually gave me insight into why all the Vietnamese I’ve met here have been so friendly and open toward me and other Americans, despite the relative recentness of the war here. The tour guide and exhibits made a point of praising the few officers who didn’t participate, and held up the helicopter pilots who saved a handful of civilians and later helped bring the event into the open as heroes. They showed pictures of Americans protesting at home when the slaughter was publicized. The tour guide also extemporized that maybe some of the soldiers were afraid that they would be shot if they didn’t participate, which I rather doubt, but she was giving them the benefit of the doubt, I guess. The blame was placed firmly on the commanders, the people who sent the soldiers there, and on the people who actually pulled the triggers. And she gave a lot of credit to members of the US military who have since come to learn and remember and pay respects.

I doubt American society in a similar position would be as understanding, or as forgiving.