As butterflies flit about between thunderstorms in a languid monsoon heat, it is hard to imagine anything too serious ever happening in Tay Ninh, a trading post on Vietnam's border with Cambodia.
In the centre of town, policemen snooze at noon under slow twirling ceiling fans; at the border they have newspapers over their heads and even the cigarette runners moving across distant paddy fields seem to be going at half pace.
Most of the visitors are now traders and smugglers, moving cigarettes, gold, and Thai household products with little fear of detection.
Unlike most of the region, there is little in Tay Ninh to distinguish one country from the other. The border looms as a vast plain of barren paddy as flat as a tennis court, marked only by the occasional flag.
But the air of a peaceful, if furtive, commerce belies an awful past. Tay Ninh's role in the bloody history of Indochina is tragically secure. In the next few weeks it should again become apparent as the Cambodian election race intensifies.
It was here on September 24, 1977, that Khmer Rouge forces attacked a village and massacred hundreds of civilians including women and children.
Historians and the few independent observers at the scene later painted the most stark of pictures. Some victims were beheaded, others had arms hacked off and eyes gouged. Bellies were ripped open.