Beach time!

Last weekend it was our last weekend in Cambodia, so we decided to grab our chance to leave for one last trip! We decided to head to the South of Cambodia to explore the beaches. 

As a transportation we chose for a night ride with a hotel bus to Sihanoukville (which was good, we slept the whole time!), the capital of the beaches. Most people stay at this place, but I like to go beyond the commercial touristic places so we planned to stay on the island Koh Rong for the weekend. 

A 2,5 hour boat trip brought us to our destination aka paradise! :D We heard from friends that Monkey Island was a good place to stay so we booked our bungalows there. I must admit, it was the best accommodation on the island with the best atmosphere, the best beach bar and our bungalows where located just 20 meters from the ocean. Fantastic! We noticed that a lot of hippies lived there or stayed for a while at least. They smoked weed (which is very illegal in Cambodia, if you are caught you go to jail for at least one year) and did fire acrobatics at night as one big community. They where a good example of people that want to escape from their life at home for a while. 

On Sunday we took the boat back to go ashore at Sihanoukville. By tuk-tuk we went to Ostrich, which was one of the best beaches. We relaxed for the afternoon, I even had a massage at the beach (mmmm... :D)! To end our journey, we experienced a beautiful sunset!

Koh Rong

Monkey Island beach bar

Investments part I

Since I've been here, I started looking around and wondering where the best investments can be made with the money I fund-raised in Belgium. 

To start, they seriously needed new material like notebooks, erasers, pencils, markers and other school material. We also decided to include a cheap 'my clear bag'. This is a plastic school map where they can put all their material and books in. These prevent that their stuff gets wet when they walk to the school during rain periods (which is common during the rain season). Underneath you can see a picture with the end result: a whole tuk-tuk full of stuff for the kids!

Besides school material, I also invested in an extension of their current curriculum. They had a Let's go 1 and Let's go 2 class, but a lot of students are too smart for these classes so they need a new level (which they didn't implement yet). Together with the teachers we decided to buy the Let's go 4 books for the students. They really check out the cheapest way to work with the books, so they only buy one real version of the book. The other part is copied from that original example. By working this way it only costs $1 per book! Besides adding a new curriculum, we also copied the student books for the other classes (Let's Go 1, 2 and Elementary). They have all their books for all the classes for the upcoming year!

              

 

Besides an extension of their educational curriculum, the school also needed reading books. Till now, the kids never read any books so we carefully selected various books to get them reading! And it works! The kids are eager to read the stories by carefully following the words with their finger :)

In the future they want to build a library to boost their reading skills even more, I'm glad we were able to give the first push with the raised money! ;) In total I invested approximately $740 on all the school books, reading books and material. 

Thanks for the financial support to everyone who helped to make this possible!

Reflection moment

During the day I teach at KKO but after my priceless shower moment, Isabel, Owen and I usually go to the center for a nice dinner and drink. If we can, we go to the center by scooter which is the best transportation I must say! :D

Driving around in the traffic with a hot evening breeze is the perfect moment to feel that you’re alive and fulfilled! By living in an unknown city at the other side of the world, you can experience how life is in other places. The contrast with my home in Belgium makes me rethink things and questions. I wanted to write down some of them to remind myself in the future and to make other people think about these things.

Why do we care so much about materialistic things?

At home, materialism is always there. Nice clothes, nice house, nice furniture, nice shoes, nice school material, nice everything. If you compare with what you see here, it makes you realize in what a materialistic world we live in. Here, the children don’t even have toys to play with. They don’t even have separate coloring pencils. They just have 1 set of colors which they share with the whole class without making a fuzz.

Some kids at my school don’t even have 2 outfits. Every day they wear the same old and dirty outfit. I have seen sad things among the poorest children. Some boys have their pants ripped in the middle so you see everything (they don't have underwear). They realize it, and they try to cover it but they don’t have money to buy a new one or to let it repair. The clothes I brought with me were nice. Now that they wash it here, the color is changing and they look awful, but I don’t care anymore because each time I want to say out loud ‘Damn, my nice clothes!’, I just realize that’s it’s just not worth it.

Do we realize how lucky we are that we have the opportunity to travel around the world if we want to?

This questions pops into my mind every single time I teach my sewing and elementary class (see my blog about teaching at KKO, in these classes we talk about other countries, cultures and habits). In their books, they have exercises to talk about the countries they already went to (it’s a western book). Each time the teacher says: “Well, this question is not for you guys because you never went abroad. Let’s ask these questions to Roos and see what she can tell us".

I tell them stories about trips, adventures and stories of all kind to inspire them, which works. But after class I feel bad, very bad. These kids know that they won’t be able to travel and see the world because of their background but still they keep smiling, listening very carefully and asking questions. At home, we always want more or think ‘oh he traveled more, I’m jealous about that’. Now I realize that actually we must be REALLY happy that we are able to go to Germany, France, the Netherlands or other countries nearby your own country. Or even the possibility of going somewhere outside your own village or city is something they can only dream of. During the weekends, they have to stay home to look after their younger siblings or work at the rice fields. They never go out for a party or something like that because it’s too expensive. 

Experiencing the way of life in Cambodia makes me think about life. It makes you a healthier person in a way because you realize how lucky you are and must be when you wake up in a normal bed, you can choose between different outfits and you always have food to eat....

Sick sick sick

On Friday I went to my school to teach the kids, like usual. But, on the way there, I suddenly had stabbing pain in my intestines. Teaching was not the best option that day, so I decided to have a rest in the office for a few hours but the pain stayed and I went home.

This weekend, it even got worse with more stabbing pain and even diarrhea with blood! It sounds worse than it is, because in fact it's normal to get if you are abroad in an undeveloped country like Cambodia. The funny thing is that when I was in Belgium, I received antibiotics in case you would experience something similar. I laughed with my mum and told the pharmacist: "Well let's hope I'm not getting that, because that's over the top!". But you see everything is possible if you're abroad, even the unexpected! :p

Luckily I have my wonderful roomie Isabel and Owen who take great care of me!! Even though I was sick, we laughed so much these days because it seemed so surreal. They took enough pictures of me so I can't forget this weekend, haha :D

Off we go to Battambang!

This weekend, Isabel and Owen and I headed to Battambang, a city in the west of Siem Reap. It was one big adventure!

Early in the morning we were meeting our tuk-tuk driver for a tour in Battanbang, but first we started our day with a delicious pancake with bananas (the small, sweet Cambodian bananas) and Nutella. This dish can also be found on the streets of Siem Reap. A fresh fruit shake was also part of our breakfast off course! We were ready to go! :D On our way, we stopped to see a group of monks. They stood in a line, one by one, to receive food from the people. The monks only eat this food during the day and for the inhabitants it's an honor to give a meal to them. 

          

For 30 years, Battambang was a property of the French government, which explains the architectural influence in the streets. It's kind of strange to see French houses in Cambodia :) In the center, we went to see a statue built from melted metal from the guns used during the Khmer rouge regime (see my blog about Phnom Penh). He explained that this monument is very important for the inhabitants. They cried tears of joy when they collected the guns to melt. Next, we saw this statue of a Buddha with a stick. A weird story, about a man with a magical stick but he lost it in Battambang. The local people were so honored that the magical stick is somewhere here, so they called this city Battambang which literally means 'city of the lost stick'. 

            

Enough history for the morning shift, so we headed to the popular Bamboo train. Finally, this was one of the main reason why I wanted to travel to this place! Years ago, there was a train railway but nowadays they don't use the train anymore. So, the Cambodian people were creative and used these rails to transport supplies from the fields to their village. They installed bamboo platforms with a boat engine, I just love the concept! :D At the end of this year, they are planning to use the rails again for a train, so it was now or never to explore this unique transport!

Carola, Owen and Isabel and myself ready for the take off!

Enjoying the ride :D

We took off for a ride, but after a few minutes an other bamboo train approached us from the opposite direction. What now? Well, in just one minute they take the platform from the rail and let the other one pass. I just love their down-to earth way of approaching things or problems! After a break and a first sun burn moment, we finished our ride for the day. 

Just taking the platform of the rail, no problemo!

During lunchtime we saw the country side including fruit and vegetable fields. We even stopped at a local mushroom farm and we learned about the whole process of growing big white mushrooms. Later, we also stopped at a rice field. This was interesting because in Europe we eat our rice without knowing how they grow it!

Our bumpy ride in the Tuk-Tuk took us to the other side of town, to a mountain which is well-known for its killing cave and bat cave. Once you are at the top, you get to see a cave (10 meters deep) where people were pushed into during the Khmer rouge regime. You could see the bones lying at the bottom of the cave, very sad to see these things.... At the top of the mountain, you can also wander around and enjoy the beautiful view and the charming golden temples. Once we were finished we took a scooter to go down, this was one hell of a ride! A steep way down and 2 girls together with 1 driver on an old scooter: one may wonder if the brakes were still working properly! 

We ended our day trip waiting at the foot of the mountain at the bat cave. Between 5 and 6 pm, millions of bats fly out of the cave to search for food. During a whole hour, you can witness thousands of black spots flying in a snake wave. So cool! It was a beautiful natural phenomena to watch!

Beautiful interiors in the temples!

The Killing Cave

Isabel and myself at the top of the mountain

The bat cave

Millions of bats, so cool to see!

The typical snake move

We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant with good Dim sums and had a delicious piece of cake in a local bar called Choco L'Art, owned by a French girl and her Cambodian boyfriend.

The next day was memorable! We returned to Siem Reap by boat. The Tonlé Sap Lake (well-known for the floating villages) is situated between Battanbang and Siem Reap so it seemed like a perfect ending of our week-end. It takes 7 to 8 hours, which is long compared to a 2,5 hour taxi drive, but it was worth the adventure! It started off well, but after 3 hours we got stuck in the middle of nowhere! Our boat engine broke down... After half an hour we could continue our way. The funniest part was the fact that before we reached the big lake, we first had to float through a very narrow river. The tree branches came into our boat and hit us (see the pictures), haha! :D

Great ending of a nice week-end with my room mate Isabel (Portugese girl), floor mate Owen (Taiwanese boy) and Carola (Swiss girl)!!

Early in the morning

Typical houses along the river

Old lady fishing

Cute kid on the boat, hihi :D

Our boat in a very small river side, oh god! :D

Watch out!!

Just arrived in the Tonlé Sap Lake

Floating villages

Mountain bike tour @ Angkor complex

KKO, the non-profit organization I teach at, also runs a sewing class and a mechanic store as a learning school for young adults. They look for motivated students from the surroundings of Siem Reap via radio announcements and select the most patient and trustworthy ones.  

Because an organization needs money to survive, or at least to pay the running costs, KKO also organizes mountain bike tours at the Angkor What temples for tourists (given by one of the students themselves). I'm always driven to try out everything, so I couldn't miss out on a tour with my own school :) 

Vanessa, Maddy and I joined a group of Indian expats who currently live in Singapore (always interesting to meet people this way). Our journey was one hell of a ride! The morning tour till lunch was just perfect with the sun and the rural jungle paths we drove on in between the temples. No tourists, only nature and sometimes small hidden temples. 

In the afternoon the atmosphere changed. It started raining really hard, but we didn't want to quit! So we kept going but half an hour later and liters of water later, we had to give up because it was impossible to keep biking in the spontaneous swimming pools. Besides this, one of the Indian people called Tiger, cut himself badly at a tree so he had to return to the hospital to get stitches. It was a pity that we had to stop our tour, but we enjoyed it a lot and most of all: it's was an unforgettable adventure!

We saw beautiful places

Children making art pieces made out of flowers to use to play games with each other

Monkey enjoying his shop

A small hidden temple

Tiger and our tour guide

Steep roads!

One of the Angkor gates

The rain started and never seemed to end... :p

Game over!

But we kept smiling!