My project coordinator Kimlay was waiting for me outside the airport together with fellow volunteer Rachna, and we headed for our guesthouse for the week, the Narin 2. Within minutes of arriving we met the third member of our group, Alannah, who'd arrived the night before. The three of us were given a room together on the top floor, which is where most of the guesthouse staff live, sleeping in the corridor and showering on the balcony area outside our room!

The other two girls from our group had yet to arrive so the three of us headed out for a wander around the city. Somehow, we made our way by foot to the riverfront via the outside of the Royal Palace (turning down numerous tuk tuk drivers along the way). Not used to the heat of monsoon season, we were sweating all over the place within minutes, and were pretty pleased when it started to rain. We discovered aircon in a fancy restaurant where we felt slightly out of place, all sweaty and dishevelled. We made a good call when we decided to take a tuk tuk back to the hostel, as it started to chuck it down within seconds of climbing in. We passed the rest of the afternoon getting massages - unfortunately I ended up in more pain afterwards than before!

Back at the hostel we met Melissa, the fourth member of our group, as well as Jess and her mum Debs (Australians volunteering at a childcare centre) and we all headed out for dinner by the river. Kids selling books kept 'harassing' us while we ate, and one kid with a great personality and great English won us all over and got sales out of us. We later learned that we should avoid buying things from kids as every sale they get is another day their parents send them out selling things instead of going to school...but every night we ate at the riverfront, the same kids kept coming back so that we got to know them over the week and spent some time chatting with them even as they tried to sell us stuff, so atleast they got some English practise!

Back at the hostel, we spotted a rat near the kitchens. We decided to pretend we hadn't spotted a rat near the kitchens.

written by  lucy3119 on August 6, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Met Maz (the fifth and final member of our group) and Toyah and Maddie (volunteers working at an orphanage). Visited Library 1 (actually a school, not a library!) and the childcare centre where our orientation took place. We walked through the rubbish dump slum where the kids who come to the volunteer schools live. Walking through a slum is so different to just seeing one on TV. An adorable pair of girls followed us around giggling and grabbing our hands as we walked. This was our first experience of how cheerful many Cambodians remain despite their less than ideal circumstances.

Exploring the slum

Rubbish dump by the slum

Later, we stocked up on lunches for the week at the Lucky Mall...intrigued by 'fried ice cream', I bought some only to find it was revolting. Made up for the disappointment by buying cake.

In the evening Kimlay and Ritthy took us to a restaurant used by the locals where we barbecued our own meat and squid on a table-top BBQ. I gave the squid a try despite not being a seafood fan...can't say it's grown on me. As the restaurant was aimed at locals rather than tourists, the whole meal plus two giant kegs of Angkor beer came to just $2.50 each!

DIY BBQ

BBQ night

As everyone else went to bed, Alannah, Toyah and I hung around downstairs where we were tricked into downing more beers with the staff, who were having a leaving party for one of them.

written by  lucy3119 on August 7, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Road to the project

Dusty

I was assigned to Class C, the beginner's English class. They'd been slowly working their way through the alphabet for a few months and I started off by watching the usual teacher teach them the letter 'W'. They basically learn one word starting with the day's letter and learn a sentence with that word in it - for example: 'Watch...this is a watch...my mother gives me a watch'. They do a lot of reciting as a group, then take turns to read the sentences individually from the board. It was pretty straightforward but I found a real problem with this approach - the kids were memorising the sentences, rather than really reading them and forming words from individual letter sounds. It was clear they had no grasp of phonics, as when I gave them two words starting with the same letter, they couldn't grasp the fact that both started with the same sound.

However, I had to stick with the same approach that the kids were used to, as their English (and my Cambodian, I guess!) was too basic for me to be able to explain a new approach to them. I decided to see how things went over the next few lessons before getting disillusioned...

On the way home, spotted a family of six all on one moto. Was impressed.

Ate dinner at the Orussey market near our hostel at the suggestion of another two volunteers, Anna and Andy, who'd been volunteering for over a month by the time we'd arrived. We got a very edible pork dish for literally nothing at all (less than a dollar I believe), with free soup thrown in.

written by  lucy3119 on August 8, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Helped paint the school walls white ready for a mural that Jess and Debs would be coming to help paint over the next couple of days. Somehow managed to end up looking like I'd sat in the paint pot and wandered around the Russian market after school without realising (the others said they "thought I already knew about it"...)

Mural painting

Another dinner at the riverside, panicked and ordered a pizza with a whole fried egg on top of it. Our bookselling friends returned for a banter (and to try and get us to buy books, obviously! Jess and Debs ended up with pretty much a full library of books to take home with them by the time they left!)

written by  lucy3119 on August 9, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Because some kids attend both classes, and the morning class is a good three letters behind the afternoon class, it's a bit of a nightmare trying to keep track of who knows what already! Still, whether they know what they're doing or not, the kids are ridiculously enthusiastic, standing up on their chairs and screaming 'I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW' whenever I ask them a question, and literally ploughing each other down when I ask one of them to write on the board! If only kids in England tried to impress their teachers as much!

Jess and Debs came to paint the mural onto the outside of the school wall, and since we got a 2 hour lunch break, the volunteers, teachers and even some of the kids AND our tuk tuk drivers (who wait around all day to take us home as it's the only way they're guaranteed business) joined in.

The finished mural

After work Alannah, Rachna and I went shopping for supplies for the school, and we unintentionally discovered where all the tourists hang out...very oddly, in stationery shops.

We spent another evening at the riverside, this time accidentally wandering down the slightly more expensive (by Cambodian standards, anyway!) side of the road and ended up eating on the balcony restaurant of a hotel - at least it meant one night of not having to come up with excuses as to why we didn't want to buy any books from our bookseller friends!

written by  lucy3119 on August 10, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

I will miss the "Hello teacher!"s and the "PICK ME PICk ME PICK ME"s and the hugs and high-fives, and the little notes and pictures snuck into my back pockets when I'm not looking.

Actually, tomorrow was supposed to be my last day at the school, but my volunteering was unexpectedly cut short when my foot swelled up to twice its Normal size and became ridiculously painful, thanks to a bite (the only bite!) that I'd got three days before. The kids' attempts at blowing on my "balloon foot" didn't really help so it was off to hospital for a second opinion! Left the Royal Rattanak hospital with about a million different kinds of pills to take, handed to me in a slightly too cheerful paper bag! A pair of volunteer medical students we met one day informed me that I really didn't need all those pills but I wasn't taking any chances - I needed to be able to walk again in two days time, ready for our tour of Phnom Penh! So I had to pass up dinner and spend the night (and the following day) in bed under the fan in my stuffy room with my foot in the air.

Phnom Penh hospital's cheerful bags

written by  lucy3119 on August 11, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

Was rescued at lunch time by Jess and Debs, who I hobbled downstairs to eat lunch with before they left for a weekend in Siem Reap.

In the evening, I decided to ignore the doctor's instructions and head out for another BBQ dinner to celebrate Ritthy's birthday, with volunteers, his friends and teachers from all the volunteer schools. The restaurant not having a cake knife handy for cutting his birthday cake, Ritthy decided a meat cleaver would be a good enough substitute.

We also got to try snake on a skewer, but the thing was all bones and we soon gave up gnawing on it for fear of broken teeth.

Snake snacks

Barbequed snake

written by  lucy3119 on August 12, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

1 comment...

Royal Palace

We moved on to Wat Phnom, the city's best known temple. We noticed cages full of birds outside, and discovered you could pay a dollar to release two birds (one for you and one for your partner) for good luck re: marriage/babies. Being single, our main priority as we handed over our cash was just to help our birds fly away to freedom, though I wouldn't be surprised if the same birds keep ending up being caught over and over again!

My bird ready for release

Releasing birds at Wat Phnom

Mural inside Wat Phnom

We then visited Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum (also known as S-21, an old school converted into a prison by the Khmer Rouge). It's where political prisoners were interrogated and tortured (and often killed) before being sent to the Killing Fields. It was a pretty moving experience seeing the converted classroom/prison cells (some apparently still with blood stains on the floor tiles) and the mug shots of all the victims - many of them children. Only 7 prisoners are known to have survived, and one of them was actually selling and signing his autobiography outside the prison.

S-21 prison (Tuol Sleng)

They left the blackboard

Not surprisingly we then headed on to the Killing Fields, where we walked along a path scattered with the clothes and fragments of bones of the buried victims, washed up each year during the rainy season. Apparently bones were placed along the footpaths so that new arrivals to the camp would have to walk over them. The memorial, filled with the bones of those found in the mass graves, was eerie but fitting.

Victims' clothes are still washed up

Killing fields memorial

For our final dinner in Phnom Penh we found ourselves accidentally back at the restaurant we ate at on the first night, and our bookseller friends soon found us - by this point, they didn't even bother to try to sell us anything, they were just happy to have a banter and tell us about their lives.

written by  lucy3119 on August 13, 2011 from Phnom Penh, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...

We couldn't believe just how bad the main road through Cambodia was - if it had been a proper surfaced road, it would have taken less than half the time to make the journey to Siem Reap. It was a reminder of how much Cambodia still has to recover from its all too recent struggles.
We kept ourselves entertained on the bus journey by watching Cambodian music videos, which divide into two categories:
a) miserable videos, in which the heroine ultimately dies in the arms of her lover (dying of shock was our favourite)
b) covers of English-speaking songs with hilarious subtitles (my favourite being a toss up between "...lying a roll on..." and "ho ho ho, where do I go?")

During our lunch stop Alannah and I hunted down and bought tasty tarantula snacks, but considering I couldn't even touch the thing without feeling nauseous and Alannah wasn't a fan of the hairy legs, we never actually made it to the sampling stage.

The main road to Siem Reap

Spiders for lunch

We arrived at our incredible, luxurious, AIR CONDITIONED hotel WITH POOL, the Angkor Spirit Palace and met Lily, Kimlay's sister and our Siem Reap coordinator. We went for dinner at Lily and Kimlay's father's restaurant (keeping it in the family, clearly!), next to the Central Market which has been all but abandoned by tourists in favour of the night market next to Bar Street. As a result it was cheaper and we bought most of our souvenirs there.

First stop - Bayon in the Angkor Thom complex. Not being the biggest fan of tour guides as you can't really soak up the atmosphere of an incredible place like Bayon when you're listening to endless temple trivia (sorry!), Alannah and I were forced to get 'lost' in the endless labyrinths of the temple, stumbling upon all sorts of places the tour guides don't take you - at one point, we ended up in a pitch-black chamber with two more tourists with a torch, bat-spotting...until one of them almost collided with Alannah's face (a bat, not a tourist). We finally made it up to the top of the temple, where we came face-to-face with...er...faces. Huge ones. Made of stone. Had to join the queue for the obligatory nose-to-nose tourist shot.

Next stop - Ta Phrom. I was most excited about this one - the trees growing out of the rock just blow my mind. It was wonderfully atmospheric and not as crowded as Bayon (our guide informed us that this was because "all the Japanese tourists have gone for lunch"!), but for some reason viewing platforms had been built in front of the most picturesque parts of the temple, which slightly ruined the effect!

Ta Phrom

And finally - Angkor Wat - not as amazing as the others, particularly because the incredible, iconic front of the temple was covered in scaffolding!! Oh the irony of scaffolding - ruins famous landmarks but at the same time stops famous landmarks from becoming ruins! Things really got exciting when it started raining - taking another little breather from our guide (who was at this point complaining about Korean tourists!) Alannah and I were gazing out at the scenery when we started to hear the sound of torrential rain...the thing was, we couldn't SEE the rain. We waited, completely baffled, until eventually about 100 metres away we saw torrential rain. It took another five minutes for the rain to actually reach us - it was the most bizarre weather-related thing I'd ever seen. Weather in England tends to be slightly more predictable. Climbed to the top of Angkor Wat, which had some great views of the temple and surrounding landscape, and watched monkeys walking along the roof. Had 5 minutes of panic when I couldn't find the way out thanks to the symmetrical nature of the place, and suspected I would be stuck there for ever.

Angkor Wat corridor

written by  lucy3119 on August 15, 2011 from Siem Reap, Cambodia
from the travel blog: Cambodia 2011
Send a Compliment

---

comment on this...