Adventures Part 3 (final and finally!)

So, on to the third and final part of my recent trip overseas, this time: Cambodia.

I arrived in Phnom Penh in the evening after a pleasant, amply leg-roomed, 1 hour flight from Bangkok and was met at the airport by my friend's dad's fiance Sue. She and her husband-to-be Dave both live in Phnom Penh and work at an international school. Dave was away in the UK and it was the school holidays, so Sue was able to be a tourist with me and show me around PP. After being in Thailand it was a bit of a shock to the senses to arrive in Cambodia. Even in the dark, it seemed rather less orderly and not as well off as Thailand. As we were driving along in a tuk tuk from the airport someone tried to grab my backpack off my lap. Thankfully I had a firm grip on it and grabbed it back... the guy balancing on the back of a motorbike beside us wasn't able to secure it and they drove off. "Welcome to Cambodia!" I thought as Sue and I released our shock with irrepressible laughter for at least the next half hour. My relief was immense (to say the least), but my bag was clutched to my bosom for the rest of my stay!

The general feeling I had that Phnom Penh wasn't a particularly safe place wasn't helped by the tightly locked metal gate, guard dog and double-locked front door at Sue's place. "Oh, women can't go out by themselves at night", says Sue. "Actually, a group of women isn't such a good idea either. There really needs to be a man with you if you're going to walk in the streets at night." Ah.

So, somehow between us we managed to drag my luggage up an impossibly steep and narrow 3 flights of stairs, to Sue's flat. I was somewhat surprised to see that Sue lives without hot water. And without a washing machine. And microwave. Did I mention, no air-conditioning? (it's as hot as HK in PP). Truly, I was awestruck by her hardiness... and she's from New Zealand! Where nothing poisonous lives and where the air is cleaner than clean. What a woman I thought to myself and then I thought to myself... how will I get through the next 3 days??

Ok, so I lived. Sue has fans and the air does start to cool down in the wee hours of the morning. And who needs hot water in the hottest month of the year(?), which is April which is when I was there. And having no washing machine isn't so bad when you have a maid that comes to clean and for an extra few dollars from me, was willing to was my clothes by hand. Sue does her own but I wasn't feeling up to it at that point in my travels. No siree bob.



I had a ball seeing the sights of PP on the back of Sue's moto. I thought it was understandable to be a little bit nervous, given the road rules in PP, or rather the lack there of. It's mostly up to one's self how one goes about negotiating the traffic. Officially it's right-hand drive. But Sue, driving like a true local, went up the wrong side of the road sufficient times that after a while, I was deeply confused at any one moment about what side of the road we should be on. According to Sue, there ARE some traffic rules. Like, Dave, for instance, was pulled over by a policemen and fined for having his moto headlights on during the day. Whereas it's ok not to have your lights on at night, only the King may have his lights on during the day. $10 please. He managed to bargain him down to $2 which doesn't seem so bad. Apart from the fact that the policeman was making up this road rule as he went along, you have to understand that they get paid the grand total of $30US a month and have to supplement their income by other means, one of which is fining foreigners for all manner of ridiculous offenses.

In our short time together, Sue and I managed to visit the National Museum, Phnom Wat (main temple), the Russian Market, the Foreign Correspondents Club for dinner and a number of other eateries... as one does. We also visited the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng Prison to stand in the place where unbelievable horror has taken place. It is a sad part of Cambodian history but one that the people are remembering in the hope that it will be prevented from ever happening again.

I'm so grateful to Sue for our time together. She was incredibly generous in so many ways, including giving up her own bed for me to sleep comfortably on while she shacked up in the lounge room. She and Dave will be getting married in the UK in a couple of months.

From PP I flew to Siem Reap after deciding that I'd had enough of buses altogether. It was a great decision as it was a mere half an hour of flying time which meant that just as we finished our ascent, our subsequent descension was announced. Before I knew it I was settling in to my little hut at Palm Village on the outskirts of Siem Reap town - making plans for the final 4 days of my trip.

My first day in Siem Reap was the first day of 3 public holidays for the Khmer New Year. In the morning I went to a temple in town called Wat Damnak which is where the office of Life and Hope Association is situated. Crossroads loaded a 40 foot container of goods for Life and Hope in March. The container is currently awaiting some sort of clearance in Cambodia before it can leave HK but it will be on it's way (hopefully) very soon. For some reason it didn't occur to me that the L&H office was in the grounds of a temple because it is run by monks, so I was a little surprised to find out that in fact, my contact, Cheun, was one such brightly be-robed man. He greeted me from a good 10 feet away which was very thoughtful of him because my natural urge was to reach out and grab his hand. I suddenly remembered that women aren't supposed to touch monks (or is it the other way around?), so I made a mental note-to-self for later: don't touch the monk!



Cheun greeted me with the warmest smile and lead me to the car where another monk, a driver, and 2 Singaporean guys were standing chatting. The guys from Singapore were holidaying in Siem Reap and wanted to see something a bit more meaningful on their last day there. We piled into the car and drove out of Siem Reap, past Angkor Wat, for an hour, to visit L&H's orphanage. It was very cool driving along chatting with monks, after admiring them around the place as photo opportunities up to this time. Cheun shared with us his experience of the Pol Pot regime, as a 10 year old boy, living in a children's camp away from the rest of his family. He talked about being so hungry he was forced to steal food from the fields where they used to work for long hours each day. They had to grow food that they weren't allowed to eat. His mother died during that time but the rest of his family survived.

The mission of L&H is about educating people, children and adults, as they believe that illiteracy is the root cause of all suffering. The orphanage has about 40 children who we were able to spend time with. We were shown around the place and had a great lunch of papaya salad and skewered beef with rice... After the orphanage we drove past their Junior High school where children from the local area can continue their education for no cost. We drove back in to town to their boarding house where 12 girls live so they can go to high school. They come from remote areas where it would have been impossible for them to continue at school. Life and Hope also has a sewing school where disadvantaged adults can learn skills that will enable them to earn a living.



There are of photos of my visit to Life and Hope here.

The next day I was picked up by Roeurt who is the director of an organisation called RICE. Actually, I'm not sure what RICE stands for. I imagine it is something in Cambodian... Roeurt worked for the UN in Cambodia for over 10 years and he a colleague were the first people to view Pol Pot's body when he died. Over the course of the day, I learned a lot about Cambodia and the government from him. Not surprisingly, the government in Cambodia is very corrupt. It cares very little for it's people, preferring to spend money on big hotels to line individual's pockets rather than basic infrastructure such as roads. There are a number of main roads in Siem Reap which were paved for the first time about 3 years ago and all the funding came from foreign donors. According to Roeurt, Cambodia is rich in natural resources and yet 70% of the population live on less than $1US a day. Government officials are keeping the wealth for themselves and their families.



I loved the work of RICE. It relies completely on foreign donations as the government is rarely willing to help NGOs financially. Roeurt took me to visit their orphanage where there are 30 children, 6 of whom are blind. They teach the blind children to read braille and play musical instruments. Two of the blind children played for me when I arrived; a small 7 year old who sang and played a drum and an 18 year old on the recorder. Half way through their song I had one of those moments when you get a big knot in your throat and feel like balling. (It was a beautiful song). RICE's mission is to provide the orphans with life skills and ensure that they have employment before they leave the orphanage - "otherwise our mission has failed" said Roeurt. RICE also visits rural communities seeking out people who are blind and therefore destitute. They take the blind person and give them skills to make a living. I had the privilege of being taken to visit a blind man than RICE has helped. It was an hour's drive out of town (along a dirt road recently graded by a Singaporean company), to a small village of about 500 people. When they found this man his was the lowest of the low, looked down on by everyone in the village. RICE taught him how to raise pigs. He is able to prepare their food and feed them, he can tell when they are sick by touch and he is able to go to market and choose the best piglets. Now he is the wealthiest man in the village and highly respected! He is the only one to have a house made from cement. It was incredible to meet him and his family.



RICE also goes to local villages and teaches them updated methods of farming. They have a health program where they accompany villagers to hospital to make sure they are taken care of. When people go to hospital on their own they are often left for days without being attended to. If they are in the company of an NGO representative they are seen immediately because they are kept accountable by someone who is considered important... (obviously more important than the villager). There are photos of my visit to RICE here.

For the following day I visited the world heritage site of Angkor Wat and the other amazing temples just out of Siem Reap. The rest of my time was spent reading, enjoying the pool at Palm Village and riding a bicycle around the dirt roads surrounding us. By the time I was packing my bag to leave, I had fallen in love with Cambodia. The people are very gentle and affectionate and I love the pink earth... it gives everything a very soft look and turns a rich salmon colour after the rain. You can see all the rest of my Cambodia photos here.

Adventures Part 2

So, continuing on from my last entry...

I left Bangkok after breakfast the morning after the tour finished, taking a taxi to the Mochit bus terminal. It was a multi-storied mass of people and ticket booths and I had no clue where to start looking for the one little booth selling tickets to Lom Sak. So, eenie meenie miny moe seemed the most logical approach and one that worked extremely well as, by a small miracle, I ended up at the booth right beside the Lom Sak ticket seller. Triumphant and relieved I took myself, luggage and ticket to the seating area and waited patiently for my bus departure time in just over an hour. I didn't think to ask any questions regarding the trip, so by the time I had been on the bus for over an hour I had no idea if there was even a toilet on the bus. Two hours in to the 6 hour+ trip and this very question began to plague me. It was time for charades. The lady next to me shook her head in a very discouraging manner and as my bladder continued to call for attention I began to feel increasingly alert (but not alarmed). Would we be stopping then, perchance? More shakes of the head. As alarm began to take hold, I suddenly had all manner of things to say about the Thai transport system as more and more people piled onto the bus, squeezing down the aisles and making the way to the non-existent toilet impassable even if there was one. At this point, I began to make an inventory of my options which ranged from bringing out my inner-crazy-foreigner who would make a scene and stop the bus, to silently wetting my pants. The situation was so unthinkable actually, that I decided to seek answers further afield and swung around to ask the man behind me the same two questions. Toilet? No. We stop soon? Yes, 15 minutes. Yes? 15 minutes??? Halleluiah, praise the Lord! I was so thrilled I thought I would burst with joy. There was a touch and go moment when 15 minutes became 20 became 30, but we did finally stop and it was then that I was overcome with a deep and abiding happiness. Even after we got back on the bus with another 3 hours to go (which turned out to be 4), I was just joyful. I didn't drink anything for the rest of the trip but everything in the world was just fine.

We arrived in Lom Sak as the sun was preparing to set and still feeling very pleased with the state of affairs, I found myself a tuk tuk to take me to the Grand Natirat Hotel. After the lovely places we stayed at during the tour, the 'Grand' part of the hotel's name seems a little unwarranted but it was a place to lay the head for the night and I had the best massage ever in their dingy little massage room.

The next morning I made my way to the town centre in search of chemist for electrolytes and internet cafe to check my emails and found both thanks to a kind English man who happened to be walking down the street and had been living in the town for 5 years with his Thai wife... I suspect Lom Sak doesn't see many foreigners so he was an unexpected but welcome sight.



Back at the hotel I was ready with my luggage at 1pm to be picked up by a lady from Mercy International - an organisation that Crossroads sent a container to in 2004. Pawinee, (the director and founder of Ban Meata in Lom Sak), chatted to me about the work of Mercy as we drove out to Ban Meata (House of Mercy) about 30 minutes away. When they started in Lom Sak 19 years ago, there was nothing but a patch of dry and unusable land where now there an oasis of beautifully kept gardens, several dams, a small farm, children's village and a school. They now have paved roads and electricity and Ban Meata is even marked on the map as a village. The whole locality has benefited from the infrastructure that Mercy has put into place at Ban Meata.

Pawinee showed me around the school first, pointing out items that had come from Crossroads including furniture and computers. They have just added a high school to their infants and primary and now have 1000 students and growing each year. Every day they provide a free lunch for all the students as well as a free bus to pick up children for school each day. They are currently extending the high school to accommodate the new grades as they start each successive year, and have a vision to open a university in about 5 years. Next Pawinee took me to see their cows and goats. There are about 60 cows, with 12 calves born this year already. They teach the children how to care for them, particularly those that don't excel academically and who will probably become farmers when they leave school. The cows are adorable with big floppy ears and docile personalities. They're not uptight like our cows!



Next we drove down the road a bit to the farmland where they have two fish farms and food crops of about 20 different kinds, including bananas, papaya, lime, tamarind and mango. With these crops they can feed the children and sell any excess for income (especially the fish). They are also growing teak for future income.

Lastly, we went to the children's village and I was able to play with the kids for a little while before dinner. There are currently about 90 children living there (I think), from babies to teenagers. Most of them are orphans, and all come from difficult or tragic situations where parents have died from AIDS or are in jail or have been left by their spouse and have become just too poor to take care of their children. They really thrive at Ban Meata though, in the loving care they receive from their 'house mums' and other adults who work there.



By the time dinner was ready, another girl, Sherie, from Australia arrived also who comes to volunteer at Ban Meata every year and hopes to return long term with her husband in the future. We had dinner with the children and then played with them until it started to get dark. They were incredibly affectionate with both of us - it was a very special experience for me!

I stayed overnight in the volunteer's dorm and after a leisurely breakfast with Sherie the next morning, Pawinee drove me back into Lom Sak. I took the bus to Khon Kaen which is where I would be meeting my sponsor child the next day. Knowledge is power and now that I knew to expect a toilet-less bus I had the power within me to not drink during the 4 hour trip. It was hardly surprising that I didn't really even need to go when we stopped half way, but I went anyway! I arrived in Khon Kaen in plenty of time to off-load the luggage and have a look around the town for the afternoon, feeling very excited about meeting my sponsor child Tor the next day.

In the morning director from Tor's project and the translator were waiting for me in the hotel lobby. They were clearly very excited about me being there and we chatted for a bit about the day ahead. I asked if they might be able to help me buy something for the family before we went. I had in mind something like a pig or a goat perhaps... but Sadjit, the project director, said that they really need clothes and that she would take me to 'Big C' to get some things. OK, great! It turns out my translator, Daeng, was an AFS exchange student in Tasmania some years ago. He was delighted to meet Another Fat Student, when I told him I went to Japan with AFS for a year (long time ago now). At Big C Sadjit helped me to buy clothes for Tor, his sister Peung, father and grandfather as well as some bulk milk, shampoo, ovaltine and some other essentials.



As we were driving east of Khon Kaen to Chiang Yun where Tor lives, they told me that I was the first sponsor visit they have had to their project and they even went out and bought a camera for the day. Sadjit took a phone call and then said that apparently there weren't that many people waiting to greet me because many were away for the New Year. I wasn't exactly sure what she was talking about because I had had visions of driving out to a little house in the middle of some rice fields and certainly wasn't expecting any welcoming committee. In actual fact, we went straight to the Chiang Yun church which partners with Compassion to implement the sponsorship progam in this area. What a surprise to find about 60 people there waiting to greet me, with "Sawasdeekaaaaa's" and necklaces of flowers. I felt like the queen coming to town, which was strange to say the least. Amidst all the excitement I was introduced to Tor and his grandfather and all manner of other people and then ushered upstairs to their main meeting room. Some of the children danced and then Sadjit introduced me to everyone and had me come up and say a few things which was also a little unexpected, but I bumbled my way through! They gave me some gifts including a very loud pink Hawaiian-style shirt they insisted I don immediately. Many people wear them during the New Year water festival celebrations and as half of them were wearing similar shirts and we were about to have a mini water festival of our own, it was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.



Outside we sat in a long row while the children came past us pouring water in our hands, rubbing powder on our cheeks and blessing us for the new year. A much more tame version of what would be happening all over Thailand in a few days, where the whole population would be drenched and powdered from top to bottom with new year joy. After drying off a little Daeng and Sadjit took me out with Tor and his grandfather to meet his father and sister at their house. It wasn't in the centre of a rice paddy at all but in a street just off the main road of the town. It was a 2 story wooden house, with the main living area downstairs (I think many Thais use the upstairs for storage because it's so hot up there, but I'm not completely sure)... downstairs they had a mattress-less double bed where all four of them sleep, a cupboard and a tv. I'm guessing the cooking area would have been out the back. Tor's mother left with a man to live in Germany and doesn't send the family any money. His grandmother died a couple of years ago. The father and grandfather drink a lot apparently. His father makes about AU$25 a week as a town garbage collector. Tor's grandfather is the primary care giver as the father is working and in Bangkok a bit with his new wife who lives there. His grandfather clearly loves the children dearly, but he is quite frail and I think life must be very hard for him.

We sat on a bench at the front of the house and I gave out the things I bought for them at Big C as well as some things I brought from Australia for the kids. Then the grandfather presented me with a beautiful piece of handmade silk cloth that his late wife had woven. I was extremely humbled as it was probably one of their prized possessions.



We took Tor, Peung and their grandfather out to lunch at a nearby restaurant. The food was so 'Thai Spicy' that I cried and sniffled my way through the meal much to their amusement. What got me was that no-one else got so much as a teary eye, including the children. Making conversation with the kids was difficult because they were so shy and I could only draw out muffled one-word answers. But I suspect that having lunch with a big snivelling foreigner would have been quite an event in their lives.

We stopped by the church to pick up a few more people who all piled in the back of the ute, and then drove for an hour to a village famous for its snakes. They run shows in which teenagers dance with snakes around their necks and even put them in their mouths. Then men come on and 'fight' with the snakes which was really the snake being provoked into striking when it clearly would rather have been heading for the hills. As the snake would attempt to 'exit stage left' it would be poked and prodded until it flared and attempted to strike the man who would then gallantly leap back to safety. All a bit galling really, but the main objective was to give Tor a nice day out, so as long as that was happening, it was all good. After we got the kids ice creams we headed back to Tor's house and said our farewells. His grandfather took both my hands in his and said that he couldn't express how much it meant to him that I came to visit them. He was so vulnerable and heartfelt I wanted to ball. I tried to let him know what it meant for me to come and meet them all. It was an amazing experience. I would have liked to hang out with them at home more and gotten to know them and play with them. Maybe next time!



I spent the later afternoon at the church with Sadjit and Daeng before we headed back to Khon Kaen for a hot pot dinner. There were 3 other project workers with us and when they took me back to my hotel, they all came into the lobby to farewell me. One by one they took my hands and expressed their gratitude that I came to visit Tor. I was so touched by their humility and by all the hard work they put into the children in the project. I left them feeling like I had made good friends who I can hopefully visit again in the future.

I was very grateful that Sadjit and Daeng were constantly reaching for my camera to capture every moment. You can see my photos here.

The next morning I had only a couple of hours spare before my flight to Cambodia, via Bangkok, but I managed to squeeze in a flying visit to Ban Meata's orphanage for HIV+ children. You can see all my Ban Meata photos here.

Will write about Cambodia in my next post...