Located on the mainland Southeast Asia between Thailand to the west and north and Vietnam to the east and southeast is the humble yet rich in historical significance country of Cambodia. Its capital city is Phnom Penh and its nationality is known as Khmer. Siam Reap is the gateway to the Angkor region, a main destination for tourism where the temple of Angkor Wat is situated.
Why do I introduce you to Cambodia?
It's not that I had traveled to this country recently, but my instinctive interest to put travel through global news that had recently stirred my attention to relay to you the shocking buzz I heard on television news program as well as read on the internet and newspapers. Yes, it had been a big headline these past two days and it sparked a notion for me to share it on my blog somehow.
What am I talking about?
"It's the Cambodia Bridge Tragedy."
It all happened Monday night, 22 November of 2010, when a third of the country's 14 million population thronged to the capital city to witness the last night of the Cambodia's Water Festival, the largest annual festival in Southeast Asian nation. Apparently, thousands of people were trying to reach Diamond Island, a small stretch of land owned by a local bank and filled with new exhibition centres, restaurants and entertainment areas, via the bridge that connects the capital to Koh Pich or Diamond Island. The island was mostly popular among women shoppers especially during the festival when retailers offered discounts on clothing and other goods. But the merriment turned horribly tragic as thousands of people pushed and shoved in opposite directions, squeezing their way through the crowd while on the bridge to get to the man-made Diamond Island, when someone reportedly shouted that the bridge was about to collapse, sending confusion to all the visitors that swiftly turned into mass panic with people getting knocked down, crushed underfoot and others jumped or gotten pushed to the river. Death toll has risen up to 456 as of today with still many more others injured.
There were horrific footage showing twisted bodies - both alive and dead - piled on one another as I glued my eyes on the television watching the appalling stampede tragedy which was one of the world's worst stampede in history since 2006, when 362 Muslim pilgrims were crushed to death while performing a stoning ritual at the entrance to the Jamarat Bridge near Mecca in Saudi Arabia. To the country of Cambodia, it was its biggest tragedy in more than 31 years after the Pol Pot regime, referring to the Khmer Rouge, whose agrarian revolution from 1975 - 1979 killed an estimated 1.7 million people in Cambodia under the command of Pol Pot.
Watching the footage on television as I tuned in to the news channel sent shivers to my spine! I really felt for the families who had lost their loved ones because of this tragedy and I send them my heartfelt condolences. This was yet another lives lost in this unfortunate tragic circumstance.
