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17 Mar 2002
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It's Sunday here in the zoo. Not the human zoo, but the real zoo that Mr Lim is creating in the factory gardens. Next to the bear cage we now have a large aviary stocked with parrots, budgies and... guinea pigs. Rabbits and guinea fowl run wild in the garden, slowly eating all the plants. When we arrived in October the garden was quite bare, but since then both mango and palm trees have been planted. Tables and chairs have been set up and a path laid to reach them without walking on the grass - it's going to be soggy in there during the rainy season. This evening we ventured into the garden after dinner and sat for a while. Rabbits hopped round us nonchalantly as we admired the colours of the birds. The factory is closed on Sundays so all was quiet and it was really rather peaceful sitting there. There's a slight problem with mosquitoes mind you, and for some reason they find Ming especially attractive. But all is not well in the garden; like Cambodia itself, violence lurks just below the surface and the following day we saw the gardener remove a dead and bloodied guinea pig from the aviary....