The trip ahead

For the next two weeks, photographer Jeff Gritchen and I will be traversing parts of the countryside and blogging along the way while also working on longer stories. Our guides are Peter Chhun, 61, an NBC producer and Chantha Bob, 41, a waiter at Sophy's restaurant in Long Beach.

  Peter was a cameraman for NBC and covered the wars in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in the early 1970s before communist forces prevailed. Chhun was on leave when Cambodia fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975 and was spared being swallowed by the atrocities that followed.

  Bobby wasn't so lucky. He was just a child in Battambang Province in the westernmost part of the country when the Khmer Rouge took over. Bobby's father was a somewhat prosperous farmer who was taken away by the Khmer Rouge. A horror Bobby witnessed. Although Bobby, his mother and several siblings made it to the U.S., the war and continuing skirmishes after the Vietnamese invasion kept the family from reuniting and half of Bobby's family is still in Cambodia.

  Both have and abiding belief that they were spared so that they can come back and make a difference.

--Greg