Monk Beng Pok

Monk Beng Pok is the abbot at the Sampeau Mountain Buddhist temple known in Khmer as Wat Sampeau. Though he doesn’t know the exact date of his birth he was born in Phnom Sampeau region of Battambang in 1940.

Sampeau Mountain is also notorious for the Killing Cave one of the locations where the Khmer Rouge summarily tortured and executed thousands of people.

When I asked him how he survived during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror from 1975 to 1980 he replied by not eating more than the daily allotted rations the farmers were given and keeping his head down while working hard.