Crocodile Tears

I started my day today with a blow-dry. At 9:00am sharp, I was waiting for the hairdresser, and we got down to business pretty quickly. I know I have mentioned previously that the chairs at the basin in the salon are almost horizontal—below, you can see what I mean.

After I'd had my blow-dry and finished up at the salon, I met Thy and Tim at the front entrance. It was my wish this morning to visit a crocodile farm. We had a lengthy conversation with Billy, our guide at the wildlife and aquarium park, about crocodile farming in Cambodia, and I had done some research and found one online. Thy said it was far out of town, and I was sure it must be a different one from the one I had seen, but I thought it was worth a look, so I went along with it.

We drove for around forty minutes and ended up in a semi rural area. There were rice fields and people working the land, big tractors, and cattle everywhere. The cattle looked a lot like the cattle in Tanzania, which are very different from the ones we have in Australia. The thing about them is that so many of them looked half starved.

We stopped at what looked like a motorcycle repair shop, and Thy got out to ask a man some questions. I knew we were in the right place because I could see a rack full of crocodile skulls. Tim got out and opened my door for me, as he always does, and led me behind the building. There seemed to be a few properties—one was a poultry farm, but everything else looked like shops or storage areas, definitely not residential homes.

We stopped at one place with a storeroom full of crocodile skulls and bones, and a woman told me I had to pay her $3 for entry. I paid the fee, and then Tim walked me up a flight of concrete stairs painted white. When we reached the top of the stairs and stopped, we were overlooking a grotesque scene: three hundred crocodiles crammed into a small area. They looked like grey, lifeless statues—some with their mouths open, others so tightly packed together I was surprised they could even breathe.

Below, you can see some of the photos I took of this absolutely horrific scene.

It is incomprehensible to me how any human being could allow these magnificent, prehistoric creatures to live in such filth and squalor. For reptiles that naturally roam the waters, they had only a tiny, filthy pond that reeked of decay. You can see it below.

Tim and I walked along concrete bridges that were firmly set above the crocodiles. There was fencing, but everything seemed so amateur, and I was genuinely frightened—one slip, and you’d be food for these very hungry creatures. An old lady approached me, and with Tim translating, she said she would feed the crocodiles the meat in her hand for $2. I said yes, please—it looked like the kind of place where the crocodiles were rarely fed. She dropped the meat down to them, and a few of them jumped towards it until one finally got hold of it.

I know that Thy took me to the wrong crocodile farm because the one I had seen online looked a little more touristy. This, on the other hand, felt like a backyard operation. I knew that where I was today would not have pleased Jesus. This was a very bad place. The animals were crammed into a confined area, squashed together. They looked sick—technically alive, but their soul had been stripped, stolen from them. This was the definition of animal cruelty, and I could not believe I was there. I wanted to leave very early on. There was a palpable sense of menace in the air—the skulls, the walking dead animals. Everything about it felt wrong.

As a vegetarian, people often ask me about my eating habits and choices. I physically cannot eat meat—if it was once alive, I just cannot consume it. But I’m not entirely sure I fundamentally oppose killing animals for food. I’m not convinced humans were originally meant to eat meat, but we do now, so I think the critical question humanity must answer is how we source our meat and what kind of cruelty our food endures before it reaches our plates. It’s the same with clothing and accessories—we need to ask where these things come from and what suffering they might represent. If you are going to kill an animal for its meat or its skin, you should first treat it with dignity, fairness, and compassion.

I also think people managing live animal resources need to be reasonable, and for a country that is 99% Buddhist, I was shocked to see the absolute moral repugnancy I witnessed today. There should be laws preventing crocodile farms from operating like this—and indeed, many countries already have protections against this sort of abuse. It’s just a shame those laws haven’t reached these parts yet. But they will one day, I’m confident of that. Treat the animals well, and if you must kill them, do it humanely, with as little suffering as possible. Instead, we antagonise animals, torture them, and deprive them of their basic rights to clean water, space, and food. We kill them like serial killers—systematically, calculatedly, and without mercy. I hate humans.

After we left that godforsaken place, we went back to the Nerk restaurant to regroup. In Khmer, "Nerk" means "to miss," and I think that is a great name for a place where people come together to share a meal. I've stopped eating club sandwiches and have taken a liking to a local dish called vegetable Amok. It consists mainly of vegetables cooked in a traditional Cambodian sauce. You can see photos of it below.

This afternoon, we went to the War Museum, which displays old tanks and artillery on a large property. At the entrance, I saw a donation box for the Red Cross, and I took a photo of it because I love the Red Cross. I love the fact that it is a universal organisation, with a presence in some form or another in every corner of the world.

Tim came in to the museum with me to have a look around, and he talked a lot about the Vietnamese, the Russians, the Khmer Rouge, and the Americans. It was hard to follow what he was saying, and even he admitted it was very complicated. You can see a piece of artillery below.

I have come to like Tim a lot. He's a little eccentric, and that is something I really value in a person. While we were at the war museum, he found another tree with leaves he can turn into musical instruments. He picked one and belted out a song.

Then he started eating a leaf from this tree:

And he asked if I'd like to try one. I tried it, and before I could say anything, he said, "It's very sour." I'm not sure what the significance of this tree was because he kept talking about it in the car on the way home, saying he wants one for his house. I think he likes the sour taste.

Just as we were nearly back at the hotel, I saw a sign hanging from the wall of one of the shopping complexes. I can't criticise the use of crocodile skin because I have cow leather handbags. And that's an important point because, to me, there is no difference in the value of the life of a cow or a crocodile. But what I can criticise are the ungodly and inhumane living conditions that these magnificent creatures have had to endure.