Bob Daugherty was the guest speaker at last Saturday’s Cicero Kiwanis meeting. Daugherty, a former member of the Associated Press who worked as a White House photographer, captured highlights from his 12-day adventure through Vietnam and Cambodia.
Daugherty captured in detail life and highlights of the people and places he visited including Ho Chi Minh City, Phnom Penh, Hanoi and Saigon. He described both countries as fascinating and places he and his wife, Stephanie, had always wanted to visit.
In Vietnam, he could see the many cultural influences of Chinese rule for more than 500 years, followed by the French and the Americans, which were well preserved in this ancient nation that didn’t gain its freedom and independence until the 1970s.
Cambodia, with a culture nearly destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, boasts incredible Angkor temples, Buddhist monks, spectacular waterfalls in the Cardamom Mountains and the Cambodian Circus, which features no animals but incredible performers. The Tuol Seng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, an interrogation and detention center of the Khmer Rouge regime, preserves evidence and serves as a tragic period in Cambodian history with the aim of encouraging visitors to be messengers of peace.