Day 7 - 28 October

Today began at the Destiny Rescue Coffee House, a great place with lovely staff. We met the staff of the rescue homes and became aware of the need for confidentiality and sensitivity. For this reason I have no photos of the day. We visited a rescue home that receive rescued girls regularly and spend their time providing for the immediate needs of girls such as food, clothing, accommodation, and counselling, and then saw the programs aimed at meeting the long term needs of the girls like education and vocational training. This was an emotional day of meeting residents, national staff, and the ex pat leadership. The struggles were different for each group, but I felt for each group for the struggles they meet each day.
We then had to catch another old and rattly bus, this time to Siem Reap, the tourist capital of Cambodia. On the way we stopped at a market where a number of different 'treats' were on offer including the spiders in the photo. No chance I was going to try them. I ate pineapple!
The lovely little guest house was friendly and cute. The staff members were delightful people. After dinner we went to the night market. I bought a number of lovely textile pieces, Cambodian traditional scarves and silk pieces which were beautiful. The ice-cream was interesting as were the fish that eat the skin off your feet while you soak in their fish pond. Crazy!

Day 6 - 27 October

Today was our last day in the capital. We spent the morning at the Destiny office. We helped make teaching materials for the Learning Centre. We were able to contribute money toward the purchase of homes for some of the slum dwellers. I also purchased 100 small butterflies, made by the rescue girls, which I planned to sell when I got home to raise money to purchase a washing machine for the Learning Centre. (I have since sold all the butterflies, and raised enough to buy two washing machines, one for the learning centre and one for the child care centre.)
After lunch, (a western roast dinner cooked by an Australian who trains rescue girls to both run the restaurant as well as a hairdressing and beauty therapy school) we headed to the bus as we travelled to Kampong Cham.
The bus was old and rattly and took a couple of hours. We got to Kampong Cham at dusk and checked in to a great motel. After the Phnom Penh guesthouse it was a palace.
We went for an evening walk along the river bought a meal and crashed.

Day 5 - 26 October

I spent the day at the Child Care Centre and the Learning Centre helping out. At the Child Care Centre we spent the morning washing and dressing children, playing with them and sitting in on their group time and book reading.
At the Learning Centre I spent time with Pat and the national teachers developing as many learning materials and helpful strategies for the teachers as we thought would translate well into the Learning Centre environment. It was so difficult to communicate without the language as concepts are difficult to communicate without educational understanding as the language is a little more complex than 'Hello' 'How are you?'
I had taken quite a few things to donate including clothing, reading books etc. I also took a disc from school with so many ideas for reading resources including templates for books. I don't know how useful they are when they have to be translated but I hope some of the material is helpful.
I was inspired about how much help I could be in this setting. I know I could make a difference in the education of these children. I can only see two things which could stop me from functioning well in the ministry.
1. A lack of language and the difficulty learning Khmer language.
2. The oppressive heat, humidity, smells, food, and any other lifestyle difference you care to name.
All things that can be overcome but certainly a challenging environment to work.

Day 4 - 25 October

After everything I said about yesterday it is hard to believe that there is another day that provided more shocks and challenges and confronting images, smells, sounds and experiences to assault my senses. It is the day that has stayed with me more than any other of my trip.

It could be that I was not prepared when I hopped in the tuk tuk from the guesthouse for the images which were to meet us. We arrived to see this scene. Yes the water is a sewer. This is the view from the balcony in the centre of the picture.

This was hard enough but then we walked into the dwellings. You could scarcely call them homes. I felt like a voyeur but couldn't help myself. I simply had to take photos of the children as I couldn't believe that parents raise children in this kind of environment. The little faces haunt me daily and I certainly would have taken half a dozen of them home to Australia if I could have done so.

We went from there to another slum village. Not easy to see but slightly better to look at than the sewer we had just seen (and smelt).

Day 3 - 24 October

A Sunday unlike any other. I must admit to being spiritually aware during the whole day, but not in a positive worshipful way that is encouraging, but in a shocking and confronting way which left me aware of the overwhelming evil capacity of the human heart. We spent the morning at the 'Killing Fields' followed by time at the S21 prison. The guy who guided us through the Killing Fields was so helpful and spoke such great English. It has always been fascinating to me to try to understand whatever could make someone kill off his own generation of his own race. What could possibly have motivated Pol Pot to do what he did. It was great to hear a Cambodian view of the Cambodian genocide.
I know it looks like a high school because actually it was. However there is a ghostly feel to the place which was Tuol Svay Prey High School, where Pol Pot rounded up the middle classes, and herded them into buses heading to Choeung Ek where they were killed on mass. It was fascinating to learn about Vann Nath, the only remaining detainee of S21 still living. His paintings line the walls of the museum and give very poignant images of the human cost of the Khmer Rouge era.
The day left each member of the team quiet and thoughtful and left a heaviness on the group.

Day 2 - 23 October

A relaxing breakfast before taking a walk through the streets. The overhead wires don't really pass Workplace Health and Safety. Rachel arrived earlier than we thought and she spent the morning sleeping off her trip from the UK. I took photos of the beautiful patterns of folded towels in the motel room. Too cute.

We headed to the airport at lunch time, ate a lunch from the eatery and checked in for our flight to Phonm Penh.




What a culture shock! Arriving in the Cambodian capital was an attack on every sense. I was overwhelmed by the heat, the dirt, the noise of horns beeping, the smells, the lack of hygiene, the decrepit look of the buildings and the poverty and beggars everywhere.There just don't seem to be footpaths or perhaps there are but there is so much junk on each footpath that you end up walking on the road, which is really dangerous.

Day 1 - 22 October

Brisbane to Brunei to Bangkok
Our late flight landed in Brunei early in the morning. We knew we had a 4 hour lay over at Brunei which sounded really boring, so we decided to take a transit tour. Simeon had taken the same trip a couple of years ago when he headed to Europe and I kn0w he enjoyed it.
My uncle had also been pilot for the Sultan so I was interested in seeing the unique culture.

We took the trip with a group of four older men and two young twenty-somethings. When I asked them why they were travelling to SE Asia, they looked at me sheepishly, um-ed and ah-ed before telling me that they were going for a 'lifestyle' holiday. It was obvious what they were going for, and since part of our trip was to observe the extent of prostitution in Cambodia and Thailand, I struggled to be polite to them.

The trip was enjoyable, most particularly the architecture of the mosques and temples, covered in gold and each one built to honour a particular sultan. The floating village was also fascinating.
I would love to have had longer to explore. There are houses, schools, markets etc all on stilts over the water. Because it is Friday, and it is weekend, children were attending the mosque for lessons.
They look so cute in their pink temple outfits.

The heat is oppressive and takes time to acclimatise. We flew to Bangkok and settled into our motel, had a nap and rested for the day as we had to wait for Rachel to arrive from the UK.