Soldiers stand guard in Oddar Meanchey as civilians make the best of things after being evacuated to displacement camps during the border fighting in July.
An elderly man cuddles his granddaughter in the IDP camp at the Kouk Mon pagoda. Most of the people sheltering here are very poor and had lived right on the borderline, where Cambodia and Thailand have overlapping claims.
Mon, an elderly woman, passes her day by lashing and splicing bamboo to be used in makeshift housing. She once lived on the borderline and says: “I saw Thai people every day. Before the war we were like brothers and sisters. We don’t want war.”
A woman makes do with what little there is in the IDP camp at the Kouk Mon pagoda. About 30 families are currently in the camp, nearly all elderly women or young children. It had housed 170 families who have found alternative accommodation and dispersed across the country.
A 500-pound bomb is embedded in a farmer’s house near the foothills of the Dangrek Mountains, which forms mu
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